the smiths / morrissey

Started by phil marlowe, March 30, 2003, 12:18:24 PM

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Stefen

I wish I could go. It's always best to go to either the first show or the last.
Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

MacGuffin

It's good that they are making over The Palladium, because it's really in need of a make-over. But it was the perfect venue to see Moz. I had a better time at this concert than the last time I saw him at The Wiltern. The gen. admin. (pit) atmosphere was right for this. And although I wasn't close enough to catch any of the three shirts he threw to the crowd (or his sweat), I was the closest to him than I had even been before, meaning I didn't need binoculars. He looked much better this time; he dropped some lbs. and the grey hair was gone. The opening act, Kristeen Young, was quite good. She was like a blend of Siouxsie and the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs. When she was done, they showed some film clips of the New York Dolls, Bridget Bardot singing, James Dean's screen tests for East Of Eden, a clip from the tv show The Untouchables (one of the characters was named Morrissey). And then the curtain screen dropped...


Playlist:

How Soon Is Now?
In The Future All's Well
The Loop
Jack The Ripper
Sister, I'm A Poet
London
Tomorrow
Human Being
Why Don't You Find Out For Yourself?
The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores
I Like You
The Death Of A Disco Dancer
Billy Budd
Shoplifters Of The World Unite
All You Need Is Me
One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell
Irish Blood, English Heart
Stretch Out And Wait
Throwing My Arms Around Paris
I Will See You In Far Off Places

Encore: First Of The Gang To Die


Ran for just over 90 minutes. Kinda bummed he didn't play more early stuff, and I was expecting something special for the final night (only one encore song?), but The Smiths songs, especially Disco Dancer, sounded great. The band was really rockin' this time. For the encore they came out in matching soccer uniform shirts.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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modage

so, i used to be a pretty big morrissey/smiths fan in college and i never got to see him live.  then he had his 'comeback' albums which i pretty much hated.  and now he's playing Hammerstein Ballroom here for 5 nights and they have been discounting the tickets like crazy and marked sunday's show down from like $65 to $22 a ticket and its general admission and not a huge place so i bought one.  with fee's it was $33 but its morrissey so thats still pretty good.  anywho, he'll prob play half songs i love and half i don't know or hate.  hopefully it'll be fun, i'm going alone.  (morrissey wouldn't have it any other way).
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

tpfkabi

The Smiths are probably one of the classic bands that I've heard or read the most about, but have not actually heard much of their stuff.

Are there any plans to remaster their CD's?
All copies I see seem like Beatles discs - made when CD's first came out.

If they started remastering them, I'd probably buy them up like Talking Heads and Rolling Stones.
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

MacGuffin

Morrissey vs NME: Mozgate Part II
Source: Dave Simpson; The Guardian

Consider these two statements:

While, to the immigrant, entry to this country was admission to privileges and opportunities... the impact upon the existing population was very different. For reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country."

"The gates of England are flooded. The country's been thrown away."

The first is taken from the late MP Enoch Powell's notorious "Rivers of Blood" speech to the Conservative Political Centre on April 20, 1968.

The second is attributed to Morrissey, on the cover of this week's NME magazine and under the headline "Big Mouth Strikes Again.... On dear, not again". At the heart of it is an extraordinary kerfuffle over immigration between Britain's respected veteran music publication and one of pop music's most widely-loved veteran Mancunians.

The background is this:

Following their recent Love Music, Hate Racism campaign the NME planned to give away a free Morrissey single to coincide with an interview with the ex-Smith in the paper. NME journo and Guardian blog contributor Tim Jonze (a Smiths fan whose photo of himself outside Salford Lads Club appears on the blog) met the man.

During the interview, Morrissey apparently made some remarks about immigration. Jonze conducted a second - telephone - interview in which the remarks were not only repeated but expanded upon. Then the proverbial hit the fan. The Morrissey-sanctioned fan website true-to-you.net carries some eye-watering (often legal) correspondence between Morrissey's management and NME editor Conor McNicholas.

The management accuse "the eNeMEy" of a "hatchet job", resisting attempts to stop publication, and point out Morrissey's "antiracist" songs such as Irish Blood, English Heart and I Will See You In Faraway Places.

The NME editor says the paper are "not accusing Morrissey of racism," but says his comments are "unreasonably skewed towards immigration" and are "unhelpful at a time of great tensions." To further inflame or muddy the issue, writer Jonze has disowned what he says is a "rewritten" piece and asked for his name to be removed - bizarrely, the story carries the credit "Interview - Tim Jonze; Words - NME".

So what are Morrissey's comments?

A music-based interview suddenly veers from chat about the industry and Johnny Marr to ask Mozzer (who lives in Rome, an immigrant there as his Irish parents once were into the North West) if he'd consider moving back to Britain.

Morrissey:" ... [W]ith the issue of immigration, it's very difficult because although I don't have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England the more the British identity disappears. If you travel to Germany, it's still absolutely Germany. If you travel to Sweden, it still has a Swedish identity. But travel to England and you have no idea where you are... If you walk through Knightsbridge you'll hear every accent apart from an English accent."

Cue NME outrage and branding of Morrissey as a "Tory."

As the paper points out, this is not the first "immigration" controversy involving Moz and NME. In the 1990s the parties fell out after Morrissey was accused of "flirting with disaster" and racist imagery after draping himself in the Union Jack onstage. Such accusations were never levelled at Noel Gallagher and the Spice Girls, although in the latest interview NME again tackle Morrissey about the "ambiguous" lyrics of the song Bengali in Platforms and the notorious line "Life is hard enough when you belong here." To which he retorts that the song is written from the viewpoint of a "protagonist", who "didn't belong here." Annoyingly, no further clarification is sought or proffered.

To further muddy the issue, unlike Powell's largely venomous, racially-slanted speech, Morrissey's follow-up interview comments consist pretty much of what you'd expect of any reader of this newspaper.

Explicitly denying that immigration is the reason he doesn't want to live in Britain, he damns this country over the cost of living and the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, admits that managed immigration "enriches" the country, says his favourite actor and singer are from Israel and Iraq, says he finds racism "very silly" and supports the Love Music Hate Racism campaign. Indeed, he wanted the slogan on the (now withdrawn by NME) free single.

Although the use of language like "the gates are flooded, anybody can have access to England" is perhaps unfortunate when taken out of context, in the context of the interview his position is remarkably similar to that adopted by all three mainstream political parties in this country - that immigration is beneficial but shouldn't be a free for all, nor should it be contrary to the retention of a firm and recognisably British national and cultural identity. Without wishing to sound like his hero Kenneth Williams, the latter is the central thrust of Morrissey's position.

In fact, as NME know full well, the singer has been hankering back to a nostalgic, almost mythical England of tea rooms and bowler hats as long ago as the Smiths. He has displayed infuriatingly Philistine tendencies in unwelcome statements like "All reggae is vile".

But while he may be old-fashioned, reactionary and remarkably, stubbornly resistant to our changing world and probably shouldn't have allowed himself to be embroiled in all this again, I am not convinced that he is anything more dangerous than his own famous description of himself as an "arcane old wardrobe".

I agree with NME that in the current climate Morrissey's comments - and certainly, the way they have been sensationalised - are "unhelpful", so why are they a) prompted in interview and b) splashed across the cover of the paper?

I'm sure NME will benefit from the extra sales. However, if Morrissey can be pilloried for expressing similar views to David Cameron, is it any wonder he prefers to live abroad?
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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MacGuffin

Oh God, kill me now. Everyday Is Like Sunday turned into an NFL ad :

"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks