Morrissey Strikes Again
-
Who Shot Sam?
- Posts: 7097
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 5:05 pm
- Location: Somewhere in the distance
- Contact:
-
invisible Pole
- Posts: 2228
- Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2004 2:20 pm
- Location: Poland
-
Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
Paul Morley goes for the full 5 stars in the Observer Music monthly:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/10be ... 87,00.html
Morley has always loved his lists of adjectives and nouns, but I've always been a fan of his. He's always interesting, thought-provoking and original. The review has me salivating, particularly due to the praise heaped on Visconti's role here.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/10be ... 87,00.html
Morley has always loved his lists of adjectives and nouns, but I've always been a fan of his. He's always interesting, thought-provoking and original. The review has me salivating, particularly due to the praise heaped on Visconti's role here.
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
What, according to you, is the most remarkable event in human history?
Thomas, Bruges.
--
Penicillin? Anesthetic? The drainage system? False teeth?
http://true-to-you.net/
Thomas, Bruges.
--
Penicillin? Anesthetic? The drainage system? False teeth?
http://true-to-you.net/
echos myron like a siren
with endurance like the liberty bell
and he tells you of the dreamers
but he's cracked up like the road
and he'd like to lift us up, but we're a very heavy load
with endurance like the liberty bell
and he tells you of the dreamers
but he's cracked up like the road
and he'd like to lift us up, but we're a very heavy load
-
Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
Love these two:
Who would you most like to see touched, affected, or even changed by your music and lyrics?
Robert, Parsley.
--
I am often approached by people who are so completely out of character from the clichéd impression of a Morrissey or Smiths listener, and that always astounds me. I think my appeal is wide, but I'm always told by the print media that it is narrow - and of course, they should know, and I shouldn't.
The audience I am trying to reach are champion figure skaters. I think they need me the most.
How do you go about choosing songs for your forthcoming tour?
Simon, Durham.
--
I usually pick the songs that I'm sure people would least like to hear. And I'm never wrong. If I don't give people something to complain about then I've failed.
Who would you most like to see touched, affected, or even changed by your music and lyrics?
Robert, Parsley.
--
I am often approached by people who are so completely out of character from the clichéd impression of a Morrissey or Smiths listener, and that always astounds me. I think my appeal is wide, but I'm always told by the print media that it is narrow - and of course, they should know, and I shouldn't.
The audience I am trying to reach are champion figure skaters. I think they need me the most.
How do you go about choosing songs for your forthcoming tour?
Simon, Durham.
--
I usually pick the songs that I'm sure people would least like to hear. And I'm never wrong. If I don't give people something to complain about then I've failed.
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
-
Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
You Have killed Me on Radio 6 right now. Lovely chorus. Oh it's gonna be a great LP. Went ahead and ordered it off CD-WOW last night, with bonus DVD, though that's probably be a waste of time (includes video, plus making of video, yawn). Now have my tickets. Swoon.
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
-
Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
You Have Killed Me vid just on Channel 4. The gag is Moz and the boys are playing in the 1972 Eurovision Song Contest in suits of the era. The Italian theme of recording the LP in Rome is continued in the Italian 'Signore e signori' intro and the green, red and white guitar straps of the band! Moz looking cool and dapper. His voice sounds gorgeous. There are numerous audience shots of the most Moz-inappropriate audience imaginable. Lovely song. Fun vid.
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/musi ... 347296.ece
The Smiths: Johnny Marr looks back
The Smiths' most celebrated album, The Queen Is Dead, was recorded 20 years ago. Here, their celebrated guitarist reflects
Published: 24 February 2006
When Morrissey and I started The Smiths, we thought pop music was the most important thing in the world. It was almost a spiritual thing for us, and because of that, we knew what it meant to be a fan. Our relationship was very emotional, complex and deep. We were with each other constantly for five years.
The Queen Is Dead was our third album and we knew it had to be special. Our trajectory and gone up from day one, but although we were enjoying massive critical and commercial success, it had reached a plateau. I was thinking that if we wanted to be in the same league as The Who or The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, we had to do it now.
I remember preparing songs before we went down to Surrey for a stretch at a recording studio called Jacobs. I was ready to submerge myself completely - it was periscope down. The logistics of recording the record were quite fragmented. We'd already nailed a couple of songs at RAK in London, and we were also doing some concerts, one of which was in the Shetland Islands.
We knew we had our best songs yet, but our way of writing had been the same as ever. "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out", "Frankly, Mr Shankly" and "I Know It's Over" were done in one evening. "Cemetery Gates" I might have got the music for the night before. I'd work on chord changes, and then Morrissey would come round to my place in Cheshire. We'd sit face to face about two feet away. I'd have an acoustic guitar and I'd be holding a recording Walkman between my knees to get a rough arrangement down. We wouldn't breathe out until I'd pressed the stop button.
Other times, I'd drop off a cassette of some music at Morrissey's house. He lived about two miles away, and I'd ride round there on my Yamaha DT 175 and post them through his letterbox. "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others" was done that way. All the music for that came in one wave while I was watching telly with the sound down.
Jacobs was a residential studio near Farnham. That sounds a bit decadent, but contrary to most albums that were made in the Eighties, ours were done quite cheaply. Firstly, we were on Rough Trade records, and secondly we were quick. Some bands would spend a week on one song, but it was unusual for us not to get two songs down in a day. The Smiths were super efficient, pragmatic and inspired.
Andy [Rourke, bassist] and Mike [Joyce, drummer] had rooms in the main building. Our engineer Stephen Street was in there, too, and Morrissey had the big corner room with the Jacuzzi. I'm joking about the Jacuzzi, but he definitely had the best room, partly because we liked making him feel good. We all loved each other, and Morrissey spent more time alone than the rest of us. There was also a separate building, a kind of producer's cottage. I slept there, mainly because I was making noise during the night working on what was going to be happening the next day.
The album's title track was partly inspired by The MC5 and The Velvet Underground. A Velvets outtakes album called V.U. had just come out, and I loved "I Can't Stand It", mostly because it had this swinging R&B guitar. I'd wanted to do something bombastic like that for a while, and "The Queen Is Dead" was the right place to drop it. There's an eight-minute version of the song out there, but it sounds like we've run the marathon then done two laps of honour. Stephen Street's edit for the album was a good decision.
Using [the actress] Dame Cicely Courtneidge's voice at the top of that track was Morrissey's idea, but it was also very apt for The Smiths collectively. We were all fans of classic British films like The L-Shaped Room, A Taste Of Honey and Hobson's Choice. The aesthetic of those movies was a huge source of inspiration, feeding into our music and artwork. Morrissey's never really been given full credit for that.
We got clearance to use Cicely's voice pretty easily, but we were less lucky with our original idea for the album's front cover. We'd wanted to use a still of Harvey Keitel from Who's That Knocking At My Door, but he knocked us back. We also asked Linda McCartney to come and play piano on "Frankly, Mr Shankly", but she couldn't make it, bless her.
People sometimes ask me who Anne Coates [credited with backing vocals on "Big Mouth Strikes Again"] is, but it's actually a name I made up. The high, synthetic-sounding backing vocal on that song was down to a bit of kit called an AMS Harmoniser. Another talking point is the lyric for "Frankly, Mr Shankly." At the time Morrissey didn't say anything about it being a dig at [Rough Trade boss] Geoff Travis and his bad poetry, but even if he had done, I wouldn't have cared. As I recall, a couple of people at the label said, "Tut! Tut! Somebody's not very pleased with you boys." There was no real indication of what was to come, though.
It was very upsetting when Rough Trade injuncted the album. Given its title, we were expecting flak from the tabloids, but the Rough Trade thing caught us off-guard. We'd made this great record that we'd thrown our hearts into, and we didn't know when the public would get to hear it. It was time for me to up periscope again, but I couldn't really do that until the record came out. I felt that we were stuck in purgatory, and it added to the mounting sense of heaviness that was surrounding us at that point. You can hear it on songs like "Never Had No One Ever."
Andy's problems with heroin were another worry, but we were all very supportive on a personal level. It wasn't doing him any good to carry on being the way he was. There was no problem with his playing on the album; it was more the live shows and the worry that something was going to go cataclysmically wrong for him personally, which in fact it did. When he did get busted and we had to sack him for a while...well it was probably a blessing, really. Much, much worse could have happened.
With the album still injuncted, I decided to go and kidnap the master tapes. It felt very noble, felt like I was doing my band mates and the fans a big favour. My guitar tech, Phil Powell, and myself drove all night in two feet of snow and got to Jacobs just before daylight. With the dawn came the realisation of how stupid our mission was. The people at the studio - it wasn't their fault that they hadn't been paid by the label. They told us they didn't have the authority to release the masters, and we drove off again a bit sheepishly.
Things were finally resolved, and in May 1986, we released "Bigmouth Strikes Again" as a single. We were ecstatic. By this point we didn't care what people thought of it - it was just a huge sense of relief to have something coming out. I'd played a couple of gigs with Billy Bragg on the Red Wedge tour, and in my memory, the release of The Queen Is Dead is tied in with that event. The politics of the tour was one thing, but I felt I'd been treated like shit by the other bands. My wife, Angie, drove The Smiths up to Newcastle and we gatecrashed the next Red Wedge concert. We had no equipment with us, so we hijacked The Style Council's gear and got on stage unannounced. We played the best 20 minutes of our lives. I was so proud. It was partly a sense of vindication and partly just "Great! We're back."
About two months after that, we were booked to do Wogan on BBC1 and Morrissey didn't turn up. Having driven a couple of hundred miles to get there, the rest of us weren't too happy about being left out of the loop, as it were. I didn't care so much when it was some naff show in Italy, us following some guy with a parrot, but this time we felt disrespected and embarrassed. It wasn't like it had been my idea to do Wogan in the first place.
We still had another great album to come, but in the long run not being able to find the right manager was a big factor in the band's demise. Extraneous stuff took over, and I'd defy anyone to try and be all the things that I was expected to be. Just to try and write and perform that music was enough. But in the early days I'd been the one who'd booked the van or tried to blag studio time, and those jobs fell back to me when we were without a manager. It was an insane extension of my original role, and me trying to do all that on the back of a No 2 album was ridiculous.
When I crashed my BMW and managed to walk away pretty much unscathed, it was a turning point. I'd been living the life, and when people see photos of the car wreck, they can't believe I got away with it. It was like a fog had lifted. I stopped drinking a bottle of Tequila before grabbing my car keys. It was time to wise-up and get a haircut.
For a long time, The Queen Is Dead wasn't my favourite record, but I think it stands up very well. We meant every note of it, and it was never a chore. It's audibly a product of its time, but it didn't kow-tow to the fashions or trends of the day. Stephen Street [engineer] deserves a lot of credit. He was the same age as us and we recognised him as a kindred spirit. He had his own quite serious agenda, and there was mutual respect.
The legacy of The Smiths still has a huge impact on my life, and that's fine. When Morrissey and I got together in 1982, it felt like it was going to be significant, but I didn't expect to be talking about The Queen Is Dead two decades later. I last spoke to Morrissey 18 months ago, just about business stuff. Whether we'll ever be on friendly terms again is hard to say, but it's nice to be nice, isn't it?
The Smiths: Johnny Marr looks back
The Smiths' most celebrated album, The Queen Is Dead, was recorded 20 years ago. Here, their celebrated guitarist reflects
Published: 24 February 2006
When Morrissey and I started The Smiths, we thought pop music was the most important thing in the world. It was almost a spiritual thing for us, and because of that, we knew what it meant to be a fan. Our relationship was very emotional, complex and deep. We were with each other constantly for five years.
The Queen Is Dead was our third album and we knew it had to be special. Our trajectory and gone up from day one, but although we were enjoying massive critical and commercial success, it had reached a plateau. I was thinking that if we wanted to be in the same league as The Who or The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, we had to do it now.
I remember preparing songs before we went down to Surrey for a stretch at a recording studio called Jacobs. I was ready to submerge myself completely - it was periscope down. The logistics of recording the record were quite fragmented. We'd already nailed a couple of songs at RAK in London, and we were also doing some concerts, one of which was in the Shetland Islands.
We knew we had our best songs yet, but our way of writing had been the same as ever. "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out", "Frankly, Mr Shankly" and "I Know It's Over" were done in one evening. "Cemetery Gates" I might have got the music for the night before. I'd work on chord changes, and then Morrissey would come round to my place in Cheshire. We'd sit face to face about two feet away. I'd have an acoustic guitar and I'd be holding a recording Walkman between my knees to get a rough arrangement down. We wouldn't breathe out until I'd pressed the stop button.
Other times, I'd drop off a cassette of some music at Morrissey's house. He lived about two miles away, and I'd ride round there on my Yamaha DT 175 and post them through his letterbox. "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others" was done that way. All the music for that came in one wave while I was watching telly with the sound down.
Jacobs was a residential studio near Farnham. That sounds a bit decadent, but contrary to most albums that were made in the Eighties, ours were done quite cheaply. Firstly, we were on Rough Trade records, and secondly we were quick. Some bands would spend a week on one song, but it was unusual for us not to get two songs down in a day. The Smiths were super efficient, pragmatic and inspired.
Andy [Rourke, bassist] and Mike [Joyce, drummer] had rooms in the main building. Our engineer Stephen Street was in there, too, and Morrissey had the big corner room with the Jacuzzi. I'm joking about the Jacuzzi, but he definitely had the best room, partly because we liked making him feel good. We all loved each other, and Morrissey spent more time alone than the rest of us. There was also a separate building, a kind of producer's cottage. I slept there, mainly because I was making noise during the night working on what was going to be happening the next day.
The album's title track was partly inspired by The MC5 and The Velvet Underground. A Velvets outtakes album called V.U. had just come out, and I loved "I Can't Stand It", mostly because it had this swinging R&B guitar. I'd wanted to do something bombastic like that for a while, and "The Queen Is Dead" was the right place to drop it. There's an eight-minute version of the song out there, but it sounds like we've run the marathon then done two laps of honour. Stephen Street's edit for the album was a good decision.
Using [the actress] Dame Cicely Courtneidge's voice at the top of that track was Morrissey's idea, but it was also very apt for The Smiths collectively. We were all fans of classic British films like The L-Shaped Room, A Taste Of Honey and Hobson's Choice. The aesthetic of those movies was a huge source of inspiration, feeding into our music and artwork. Morrissey's never really been given full credit for that.
We got clearance to use Cicely's voice pretty easily, but we were less lucky with our original idea for the album's front cover. We'd wanted to use a still of Harvey Keitel from Who's That Knocking At My Door, but he knocked us back. We also asked Linda McCartney to come and play piano on "Frankly, Mr Shankly", but she couldn't make it, bless her.
People sometimes ask me who Anne Coates [credited with backing vocals on "Big Mouth Strikes Again"] is, but it's actually a name I made up. The high, synthetic-sounding backing vocal on that song was down to a bit of kit called an AMS Harmoniser. Another talking point is the lyric for "Frankly, Mr Shankly." At the time Morrissey didn't say anything about it being a dig at [Rough Trade boss] Geoff Travis and his bad poetry, but even if he had done, I wouldn't have cared. As I recall, a couple of people at the label said, "Tut! Tut! Somebody's not very pleased with you boys." There was no real indication of what was to come, though.
It was very upsetting when Rough Trade injuncted the album. Given its title, we were expecting flak from the tabloids, but the Rough Trade thing caught us off-guard. We'd made this great record that we'd thrown our hearts into, and we didn't know when the public would get to hear it. It was time for me to up periscope again, but I couldn't really do that until the record came out. I felt that we were stuck in purgatory, and it added to the mounting sense of heaviness that was surrounding us at that point. You can hear it on songs like "Never Had No One Ever."
Andy's problems with heroin were another worry, but we were all very supportive on a personal level. It wasn't doing him any good to carry on being the way he was. There was no problem with his playing on the album; it was more the live shows and the worry that something was going to go cataclysmically wrong for him personally, which in fact it did. When he did get busted and we had to sack him for a while...well it was probably a blessing, really. Much, much worse could have happened.
With the album still injuncted, I decided to go and kidnap the master tapes. It felt very noble, felt like I was doing my band mates and the fans a big favour. My guitar tech, Phil Powell, and myself drove all night in two feet of snow and got to Jacobs just before daylight. With the dawn came the realisation of how stupid our mission was. The people at the studio - it wasn't their fault that they hadn't been paid by the label. They told us they didn't have the authority to release the masters, and we drove off again a bit sheepishly.
Things were finally resolved, and in May 1986, we released "Bigmouth Strikes Again" as a single. We were ecstatic. By this point we didn't care what people thought of it - it was just a huge sense of relief to have something coming out. I'd played a couple of gigs with Billy Bragg on the Red Wedge tour, and in my memory, the release of The Queen Is Dead is tied in with that event. The politics of the tour was one thing, but I felt I'd been treated like shit by the other bands. My wife, Angie, drove The Smiths up to Newcastle and we gatecrashed the next Red Wedge concert. We had no equipment with us, so we hijacked The Style Council's gear and got on stage unannounced. We played the best 20 minutes of our lives. I was so proud. It was partly a sense of vindication and partly just "Great! We're back."
About two months after that, we were booked to do Wogan on BBC1 and Morrissey didn't turn up. Having driven a couple of hundred miles to get there, the rest of us weren't too happy about being left out of the loop, as it were. I didn't care so much when it was some naff show in Italy, us following some guy with a parrot, but this time we felt disrespected and embarrassed. It wasn't like it had been my idea to do Wogan in the first place.
We still had another great album to come, but in the long run not being able to find the right manager was a big factor in the band's demise. Extraneous stuff took over, and I'd defy anyone to try and be all the things that I was expected to be. Just to try and write and perform that music was enough. But in the early days I'd been the one who'd booked the van or tried to blag studio time, and those jobs fell back to me when we were without a manager. It was an insane extension of my original role, and me trying to do all that on the back of a No 2 album was ridiculous.
When I crashed my BMW and managed to walk away pretty much unscathed, it was a turning point. I'd been living the life, and when people see photos of the car wreck, they can't believe I got away with it. It was like a fog had lifted. I stopped drinking a bottle of Tequila before grabbing my car keys. It was time to wise-up and get a haircut.
For a long time, The Queen Is Dead wasn't my favourite record, but I think it stands up very well. We meant every note of it, and it was never a chore. It's audibly a product of its time, but it didn't kow-tow to the fashions or trends of the day. Stephen Street [engineer] deserves a lot of credit. He was the same age as us and we recognised him as a kindred spirit. He had his own quite serious agenda, and there was mutual respect.
The legacy of The Smiths still has a huge impact on my life, and that's fine. When Morrissey and I got together in 1982, it felt like it was going to be significant, but I didn't expect to be talking about The Queen Is Dead two decades later. I last spoke to Morrissey 18 months ago, just about business stuff. Whether we'll ever be on friendly terms again is hard to say, but it's nice to be nice, isn't it?
-
Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
-
Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
the heavy advertising of Douglas Coupland's encounter with Moz in today's OMM got me very excited, that somehow this was going to be an extra special interview (based not on reading any of his books, though I've always admired him for using 'Girlfriend In A Coma' as a novel title, but on the idea that this might be well-written, perceptive, interesting), and given that Moz gives some of the best quotes around, endlessly self-camouflaging and hilarious, but actually it was barely worth reading:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/stor ... 61,00.html
You don't get the sense he actually met him at all, other than his large head and his comment on plastic. Are his novels this bad?
Note the inclusion of EC's withering remark about great song titles but without songs, which I seem to recall was fairly recent, and rather over-harsh.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/stor ... 61,00.html
You don't get the sense he actually met him at all, other than his large head and his comment on plastic. Are his novels this bad?
Note the inclusion of EC's withering remark about great song titles but without songs, which I seem to recall was fairly recent, and rather over-harsh.
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
-
Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
For a bit of recent Moz live, check out the SXSW stuff on the BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/southbysouthwest/
And if you 'listen again', Moz is the first up (it's not labelled, and I also accessed it under Stuart Maconie). First Of The Gang and I Have Forgiven Jesus are very familiar if you've been listening to Live At Earl's Court, as I have, but what gets me going, and maybe it's a homage to Douglas Coupland (though I have already concluded the article was so bad because Moz felt he was an asshole, ironic given Coupland's own comments about being interviewed!), is Girlfriend In A Coma. Don't know if he's played this live before - I'm not aware of it. Not on the last tour, at least. Hope he does it when I see him.
Anyone got a link for a recording of the whole show?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/southbysouthwest/
And if you 'listen again', Moz is the first up (it's not labelled, and I also accessed it under Stuart Maconie). First Of The Gang and I Have Forgiven Jesus are very familiar if you've been listening to Live At Earl's Court, as I have, but what gets me going, and maybe it's a homage to Douglas Coupland (though I have already concluded the article was so bad because Moz felt he was an asshole, ironic given Coupland's own comments about being interviewed!), is Girlfriend In A Coma. Don't know if he's played this live before - I'm not aware of it. Not on the last tour, at least. Hope he does it when I see him.
Anyone got a link for a recording of the whole show?
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
-
miss buenos aires
- Posts: 2055
- Joined: Wed Jun 04, 2003 7:15 am
- Location: jcnj
- Contact:
Otis, that article was terrible! Terrible! Here's the thing: when I sit down to read an article about Morrissey, I want to read about Morrissey, not about Douglas Coupland and how he feels about interviews. Frankly, I couldn't care less how Douglas Coupland feels about interviews. I feel like this sort of self-absorption on the part of the writer is becoming more and more prevalent these days. I blame the Internet.
http://www.morrissey-solo.com/discuss/i ... ead=319726
If you poke around the above thread you should be able to find most of the show in excellent quality MP3s - including Girlfriend in a Coma.
He sounds in excellent voice and the band sounds great. Great version of Far Off Places - it seems they are doing Stop Me If You.... aswell.
If you poke around the above thread you should be able to find most of the show in excellent quality MP3s - including Girlfriend in a Coma.
He sounds in excellent voice and the band sounds great. Great version of Far Off Places - it seems they are doing Stop Me If You.... aswell.
echos myron like a siren
with endurance like the liberty bell
and he tells you of the dreamers
but he's cracked up like the road
and he'd like to lift us up, but we're a very heavy load
with endurance like the liberty bell
and he tells you of the dreamers
but he's cracked up like the road
and he'd like to lift us up, but we're a very heavy load
-
Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
Well that makes two of us. I suspect there will be howls of protest. And most people here will neither know nor care who he is. The irony is he says there's no point in giving interviews cos it's all on Google already. What a twat. If I was the commissioning editor of the piece, I'd refuse his fee, ask for all expense to be refunded and explain that he was commissioned to get an interview. Maybe the OMM are pretending it's a clever joke, but it really is below the high quality mark they normally achieve. Shame on them. So have you read any of his novels?
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
-
Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
Mike popped in there first! Hey, Mike: poke round is the right word. I can't access the yousendit files without downloading something first. I just want to hear the show straight through. I guess it will appear on Dime soon, or maybe has already!
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
-
miss buenos aires
- Posts: 2055
- Joined: Wed Jun 04, 2003 7:15 am
- Location: jcnj
- Contact:
-
Who Shot Sam?
- Posts: 7097
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 5:05 pm
- Location: Somewhere in the distance
- Contact:
Stellar review of "Ringleader" from Otis' mate Alexis in the Guardian. Can't wait to hear this one...
Morrissey, Ringleader of the Tormentors
5 stars (Attack/Sanctuary)
Alexis Petridis
Friday March 24, 2006
Guardian
It is hard to express the shock delivered five minutes and 18 seconds into Ringleader of the Tormentors by the sudden appearance of Morrissey's testicles. Until that point, everything has been much as you might expect. Opener I Will See You in Far-Off Places has grinding glam guitars and a couple of waspish one-liners. The second track proceeds with a stately, lovely piano figure, a funereal organ and the image of Morrissey strolling through his adopted hometown of Rome in the usual melancholy haze, "so very tired of doing the right thing". And then, up pop his testicles.
His only previous pronouncement on this subject came 20 years ago: "I always thought my genitals were the result of some crude practical joke." And indeed, Morrissey's testicles are no normal testicles. Judging by the metaphor here, they are massively distended, swollen - presumably by decades of loudly trumpeted celibacy - until they resemble "explosive kegs between my legs". "Dear God," he adds, as indeed you might if you were trying to walk through the Eternal City while suffering from distended testicles, "please help me."
God is apparently listening, for relief swiftly arrives in a manner so startling that the thought of Morrissey's combustible crown jewels, which seconds before seemed like the most diverting image rock music was likely to serve up for the foreseeable future, are instantly forgotten. Over the next few lines, Morrissey is cruised ("Will you follow me and know more than you do?"), seduced ("And now he motions to me with his hand on my knee") and finally finds himself "parting your legs with mine in between".
One shouldn't be startled to hear a middle-aged man singing about having sex with another man, but this is Morrissey, who has spent 30 years deflecting questions about his sexuality by claiming that he didn't have sex with anyone. Twenty-three years after offering the most memorable come-on in pop history - "you can pin and mount me," suggested the Smiths' Reel Around the Fountain, "like a butterfly" - here he is, finally admitting that someone has taken him up, so to speak.
The subsequent relief yields one of the loveliest and most affecting moments of his entire career: strings soar, drums thump and Morrissey's voice vanishes slowly into the distance, singing: "The heart feels free, the heart feels free." He sounds contented, which proves oddly touching - and that there's a first time for everything.
This being a Morrissey album, however, happiness can't last. Within seconds of Dear God, Please Help Me's slow dissolve, he is singing a song called You Have Killed Me and comparing himself to film director Pier Paolo Pasolini, who compellingly illustrated the downside of trawling the vias for a shag, when a bit of rough trade he picked up in Ostia ran him over with his own Alfa Romeo.
Much of Ringleader of the Tormentors is given over to fretting about the effect that admitting sexual satisfaction - or, apparently more disastrous still, love - might have on Morrissey's image. "I am the same underneath," protests the album's remarkable centrepiece, Life Is a Pigsty, as if trying to reassure both his fans and himself. The following song is titled I'll Never Be Anybody's Hero Now. It's all a bit ridiculous - in the admittedly unlikely event that Morrissey was filmed throttling a kitten, thousands of fans would storm the chatrooms claiming it was the kitten's fault - but nevertheless, this seems to have inspired some of his most impressive songs in years.
Life Is a Pigsty is woozy and hallucinatory; bedecked with white noise and weird sound effects, it builds to a thrilling, timpani-laden climax. At Last I Am Born is a fabulously overblown, deliriously joyful closer that marks the events detailed in Dear God, Please Help Me and their aftermath with a self-aggrandising cry of: "Historians note!" Mercifully, those events also seem to have obliterated the memory of being successfully sued by Smiths drummer Mike Joyce, which led Morrissey to fill 2004's You Are the Quarry with the kind of songs that people who hate Morrissey thinks he writes: depressing, swingeing, self-pitying.
There was also a sense that You Are the Quarry was handicapped by the stinginess that landed him in court in the first place, awash as it was with cheap, synthesised strings. Here, the violins are not only real, but scored by Ennio Morricone. T Rex producer Tony Visconti lends everything a muscular authority. They have even splashed out on a children's choir, who turn The Youngest Was the Most Loved's refrain - "there is no such thing in life as normal" - into something impossibly moving.
To get the praise into perspective, it's not the Smiths: hiring all the famous names in the world won't re-create the magical, mysterious synergy at the heart of Half a Person or How Soon Is Now? But Ringleader of the Tormentors has a mystery and magic of its own.
Morrissey, Ringleader of the Tormentors
5 stars (Attack/Sanctuary)
Alexis Petridis
Friday March 24, 2006
Guardian
It is hard to express the shock delivered five minutes and 18 seconds into Ringleader of the Tormentors by the sudden appearance of Morrissey's testicles. Until that point, everything has been much as you might expect. Opener I Will See You in Far-Off Places has grinding glam guitars and a couple of waspish one-liners. The second track proceeds with a stately, lovely piano figure, a funereal organ and the image of Morrissey strolling through his adopted hometown of Rome in the usual melancholy haze, "so very tired of doing the right thing". And then, up pop his testicles.
His only previous pronouncement on this subject came 20 years ago: "I always thought my genitals were the result of some crude practical joke." And indeed, Morrissey's testicles are no normal testicles. Judging by the metaphor here, they are massively distended, swollen - presumably by decades of loudly trumpeted celibacy - until they resemble "explosive kegs between my legs". "Dear God," he adds, as indeed you might if you were trying to walk through the Eternal City while suffering from distended testicles, "please help me."
God is apparently listening, for relief swiftly arrives in a manner so startling that the thought of Morrissey's combustible crown jewels, which seconds before seemed like the most diverting image rock music was likely to serve up for the foreseeable future, are instantly forgotten. Over the next few lines, Morrissey is cruised ("Will you follow me and know more than you do?"), seduced ("And now he motions to me with his hand on my knee") and finally finds himself "parting your legs with mine in between".
One shouldn't be startled to hear a middle-aged man singing about having sex with another man, but this is Morrissey, who has spent 30 years deflecting questions about his sexuality by claiming that he didn't have sex with anyone. Twenty-three years after offering the most memorable come-on in pop history - "you can pin and mount me," suggested the Smiths' Reel Around the Fountain, "like a butterfly" - here he is, finally admitting that someone has taken him up, so to speak.
The subsequent relief yields one of the loveliest and most affecting moments of his entire career: strings soar, drums thump and Morrissey's voice vanishes slowly into the distance, singing: "The heart feels free, the heart feels free." He sounds contented, which proves oddly touching - and that there's a first time for everything.
This being a Morrissey album, however, happiness can't last. Within seconds of Dear God, Please Help Me's slow dissolve, he is singing a song called You Have Killed Me and comparing himself to film director Pier Paolo Pasolini, who compellingly illustrated the downside of trawling the vias for a shag, when a bit of rough trade he picked up in Ostia ran him over with his own Alfa Romeo.
Much of Ringleader of the Tormentors is given over to fretting about the effect that admitting sexual satisfaction - or, apparently more disastrous still, love - might have on Morrissey's image. "I am the same underneath," protests the album's remarkable centrepiece, Life Is a Pigsty, as if trying to reassure both his fans and himself. The following song is titled I'll Never Be Anybody's Hero Now. It's all a bit ridiculous - in the admittedly unlikely event that Morrissey was filmed throttling a kitten, thousands of fans would storm the chatrooms claiming it was the kitten's fault - but nevertheless, this seems to have inspired some of his most impressive songs in years.
Life Is a Pigsty is woozy and hallucinatory; bedecked with white noise and weird sound effects, it builds to a thrilling, timpani-laden climax. At Last I Am Born is a fabulously overblown, deliriously joyful closer that marks the events detailed in Dear God, Please Help Me and their aftermath with a self-aggrandising cry of: "Historians note!" Mercifully, those events also seem to have obliterated the memory of being successfully sued by Smiths drummer Mike Joyce, which led Morrissey to fill 2004's You Are the Quarry with the kind of songs that people who hate Morrissey thinks he writes: depressing, swingeing, self-pitying.
There was also a sense that You Are the Quarry was handicapped by the stinginess that landed him in court in the first place, awash as it was with cheap, synthesised strings. Here, the violins are not only real, but scored by Ennio Morricone. T Rex producer Tony Visconti lends everything a muscular authority. They have even splashed out on a children's choir, who turn The Youngest Was the Most Loved's refrain - "there is no such thing in life as normal" - into something impossibly moving.
To get the praise into perspective, it's not the Smiths: hiring all the famous names in the world won't re-create the magical, mysterious synergy at the heart of Half a Person or How Soon Is Now? But Ringleader of the Tormentors has a mystery and magic of its own.
Mother, Moose-Hunter, Maverick
-
Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams
Indeed, more of the testicles! The same line gets quoted here, but this is a much more lukewarm review, without the same thread of 'Morrissey's at it' + 'Visconti is a genius' that all other reviews thus far have had:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/s ... 19,00.html
This is from the Observer weekly review, as opposed to Paul Morely's premature Observer Music Monthly review from February which created the above-described blueprint.
Moz was absenting himself from the BBC last weekend, it seems. Was supposed to be playing live on Jonathan Ross's show, despite the eye-wateringly embarrassing interview of last year on the same thing, and also appearing on Top of the Pops, but neither happened. Boo hoo.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/s ... 19,00.html
This is from the Observer weekly review, as opposed to Paul Morely's premature Observer Music Monthly review from February which created the above-described blueprint.
Moz was absenting himself from the BBC last weekend, it seems. Was supposed to be playing live on Jonathan Ross's show, despite the eye-wateringly embarrassing interview of last year on the same thing, and also appearing on Top of the Pops, but neither happened. Boo hoo.
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
-
Mechanical Grace
- Posts: 878
- Joined: Thu Sep 18, 2003 12:40 pm
-
Who Shot Sam?
- Posts: 7097
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 5:05 pm
- Location: Somewhere in the distance
- Contact:
-
Mechanical Grace
- Posts: 878
- Joined: Thu Sep 18, 2003 12:40 pm
Doesn't appear that anybody's posted this yet:
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/art ... 1002237669
Morrissey Boycotting Canada Over Seal Hunts
March 28, 2006, 4:15 PM ET
Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.
Morrissey is refusing to play any shows in Canada in support of his upcoming album, "Ringleader of the Tormentors," in protest of the nation's "barbaric slaughter of over 325,000 baby seals." Morrissey is also encouraging fans to boycott Canadian goods.
"I fully realize that the absence of any Morrissey concerts in Canada is unlikely to bring the Canadian economy to its knees, but it is our small protest against this horrific slaughter -- which is the largest slaughter of marine animal species found anywhere on the planet," the artist said in a statement on the noted fan site True to You.
He proceeded to rail against the use of seal skins as a commodity. "The Canadian Prime Minister also states that the slaughter is necessary because it provides jobs for local communities, but this is an ignorant reason for allowing such barbaric and cruel slaughter of beings that are denied life simply because somebody somewhere might want to wear their skin," he said.
As previously reported, "Ringleader of the Tormentors" is due April 4 via Attack/Sanctuary. A European tour begins Saturday (April 1) in Gothenburg, Sweden.
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/art ... 1002237669
Morrissey Boycotting Canada Over Seal Hunts
March 28, 2006, 4:15 PM ET
Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.
Morrissey is refusing to play any shows in Canada in support of his upcoming album, "Ringleader of the Tormentors," in protest of the nation's "barbaric slaughter of over 325,000 baby seals." Morrissey is also encouraging fans to boycott Canadian goods.
"I fully realize that the absence of any Morrissey concerts in Canada is unlikely to bring the Canadian economy to its knees, but it is our small protest against this horrific slaughter -- which is the largest slaughter of marine animal species found anywhere on the planet," the artist said in a statement on the noted fan site True to You.
He proceeded to rail against the use of seal skins as a commodity. "The Canadian Prime Minister also states that the slaughter is necessary because it provides jobs for local communities, but this is an ignorant reason for allowing such barbaric and cruel slaughter of beings that are denied life simply because somebody somewhere might want to wear their skin," he said.
As previously reported, "Ringleader of the Tormentors" is due April 4 via Attack/Sanctuary. A European tour begins Saturday (April 1) in Gothenburg, Sweden.
This morning you've got time for a hot, home-cooked breakfast! Delicious and piping hot in only 3 microwave minutes.
I downloaded the B-Sides of the single from Itunes - Human Being is especially brilliant - its even got a great sax solo - there's something very Bowiesh about it to me - beautiful production by Visconti.
echos myron like a siren
with endurance like the liberty bell
and he tells you of the dreamers
but he's cracked up like the road
and he'd like to lift us up, but we're a very heavy load
with endurance like the liberty bell
and he tells you of the dreamers
but he's cracked up like the road
and he'd like to lift us up, but we're a very heavy load
-
Otis Westinghouse
- Posts: 8856
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:32 pm
- Location: The theatre of dreams