[Closed] Hatful of Hollow. Still can't figure out if The Smiths....

brilliant.

Mediocre. Although 'How Soon Is Now' is a good track.

smiths, pretty damned good

morrisey, bit of a camp old ham but good writer

brilliant.

Absolutely brilliant and so is Morrisey.

Brilliant. Standout tracks:

"What Difference Does it Make"
"Handsome Devil"
"This Night Has Opened My Eyes"

Brilliant.

The musicianship is stunning, the lyrics are brutally honest (only Billy Bragg comes close in this respect imo), very funny and frequently both at the same time.
I don't think any other band have ever packed so many conflicting emotions into the same piece of music.

They crystallised a place and a time for me, but are also oddly timeless and appeal to people all over the place, not just Northerners.

They got better as they went on, which is pretty unusual these days and they split up at the right time.
None of them are any good without the other three & they haven't ruined things by reforming either.

If Morrissey had a better voice, they'd have been pretty much perfect. 😀

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Listen to "asleep" and try not to cry. Simple, beautiful and utterly moving. Basically only Morris and a piano.

the smiths - queen is dead

one of the greatest albums of all time!

Brilliant.

Never got as in to them at the time as I wish, in retrospect, I had done.

If you see what I mean........

brilliant

Please,please,please let me get what i want this time....BRILLIANT

Brilliant.

There's a Light...
Bigmouth Strikes Again

Two stand-out tracks.

Brilliant - if you were a student around 1982/3. If however, 30 years on, you are trying to get into them for the first time then I can understand your predicament. If you want to get into the Smiths I would say start at the beginning with "The Smiths" and none of this jumping in with The Queen is Dead or Meat is Murder although both are fine albums - after those they were a spent force anyway.

Nope, sorry. I've always thought he was a bit silly and the songs are awful. I've just watched a couple of youtube interviews with morrisey which really annoyed me and some of their songs and I just don't get it.
The lyrics are great? I must not be on the right crack, 'This Beautiful creature must die, a death for no reason'? WTF?

What a funny thing musical taste is.

Brilliant [i]but [/i]I was never sure if Morrissey was in on the joke when he was in The Smiths.

Easiest gig to get to the front 🙂 Hand in glove, Rusholme Ruffians, What she said, brilliant songs.

Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce massively underated, Moz and Marr just had that elusive it. Hate it when people say best band in the world etc but the Smiths were pretty good.

The best band there ever was ever.

Sorry pigface.

some amazing albums and some toss

Very good guitarist, Incredibly irritating front man with a whiny, reedy voice.
Bollocks lyricist (Sorry Pete) with an overwheening tendency to disappear up his own 'arris on frequent occasions when writing.

Anyone who has a tree growing out of his arse needs a swift steel-toe-capped clog in the nuts...

Some people are unable to appreciate the wryly ironic.

As someone close to Manchester i'm afraid the whole 'Smiths are brilliant' thing passed me by. The lyrics aren't 'wryly ironic' merely self-congratulatory & deliberately obtuse. Yes, Morrissey has a good command of the language however, it doesn't follow that he can write great lyrics.
I find him obscenely annoying and smug. IMHO only appeals to those (former) students who liked to think they were somewhat more intelligent than the mere hoi-polloi.

I actually find it hard to politely express the emotions that Morrissey engenders in me, for fear of being arrested...

So who is a good lyrcist in your opinion MuddyDwarf?

I wasn't around to enjoy the smiths, but I love their music, Marr's guitar openings on "what differnce does it mak" makes the hairs on my neck stand up just thinking about it.

I never studied English or History, but I still have a good idea wht the mozzster's lyrics are about. As for the vocals - I can understand why they aren't to everyone's taste, but who wants everyone to be Mariah Carey?

If you don't like at least one Smiths song and one Joy Division Song - your heart is dead to music.

I turned on the telly a couple of years ago to see Morrisey performing at Benicàssim, I don't know if it was nostalgia or not, but the music seemed to have stood the test of time and didn't sound dated. I now have some Smiths' cds which get played occasionaly.

It was also quite a surprise to see that he had actually turned up to perform!!!

Strangely enough, i DO like Joy Division!

As for lyricists, i love Dylan, i like Justin Sullivan's earlier work, Steve Earle, Joe Strummer/Clash, Dar Williams.

The lyrics that really make me think & stir stuff within me though are those from Dick Lucas, frontman/Lyricist from SubHumans/Culture Shock/Citizen Fish, a far, far better writer than Morrissey could ever hope to be in my opinion.
All subjective of course, but this whole 'misery of being a student' that Morrissey put forth just smacks of a lazy whining knob bemoaning his fate rather than actually doing something to change it.

Can you tell i don't like his work? 😆

Morning Simon.

IMHO only appeals to those (former) students who liked to think they were somewhat more intelligent than the mere hoi-polloi.

Funnily enough, The Smiths were perhaps the first band my generation discovered without recommendations from older brothers or friends.
And they were loved by EVERYONE at the time:

I was a Peel obsessed 13 year old when the first singles came out and they very rapidly became hugely popular in our North Manchester Comprehensive. Everyone liked them - scallies and studious types, swots and scoundrels.

They seemed to be designed just for us - the sixties musical references (just perfect for 'Forever Changes', Hendrix & Floyd obsessed scallies) and the knowing nods to Manchester and the North suited us down to the ground.

They broke taboos as well - just look at 'Suffer Little Children' for example - people only spoke about the Moors Murders in whispers when I was growing up and NEVER deliberately in front of kids, yet here was a band singing about the perpetrators, the victims and their families in a way that demythologised them and made them seem somehow more human. Unheard of.

And when your 13, smothered in Clearasil and embarrassment, being able to identify with someone even weirder than yourself is a massive help - that's why kids of all types saw Mozzer as a role model, not just bedist loners.

EDIT - you're right about Dick and Subhumans/Culture Shock/Citizen Fish though 😀
Try a bit of early Blyth Power as well, 'A Little Touch Of Harry In The Night' should do the trick.

I love The Smiths and I love Morrissey, but I wish that fragile work-shy tosser would stop bailing out of gigs.

He has cancelled/walked off stage on each of the last three times that I have had tickets to see him (Camden Roundhouse/somewhere else in London/Bournemouth Academy). The last time I saw him was December 2005 at the Ally Pally, it was recorded as a live album and PJ Harvey was the support.

I was obsessed with The Smiths in my youth and I still beleive they were the most important band of their generation.

Morrisey and Marr were pure genius.

Unfortunatley Morrisey has become something of a twunt - kissing Jonathan Woss's arse, apearing on the 1 show. Declaring that out of work white collar workers don't deserve any sympathy for their plight - these are your former student following who made you ****!

Can still get lost in their albums tho....

Never saw the appeal of the self indulgent, Oscar Wilde reading, boy misunderstood, sensitive soul with his heart on his sleeve, eating veg etc. If you wanted to create a persona for the disaffected youth/goths /weirdos you would have created Morrissey...staying true to his routes he lives in LA now IIRC. Utter c0ck reminds me a bit of Jim morrison in the sense that if it was not for his persona I may have actually liked them/him.
Bit false , very hyped and full of sh!t.

If you don't like at least one Smiths song and one Joy Division Song - your heart is dead to music

+1

There's a Light... excellent

though that Morrissey chap fills me with indifference.

What a funny thing musical taste is.

The Smiths/Morrissey - brilliant seems to be the favoured comment above and I agree.

Incredibly irritating front man with a whiny, reedy voice.

The last time I saw him was December 2005 at the Ally Pally, it was recorded as a live album and PJ Harvey was the support.

staying true to his routes he lives in LA now IIRC.

What a funny thing musical taste is.

Yup some have, and judging by some of the comments above, some never had and never will.

theotherjonv - Member

If you don't like at least one Smiths song and one Joy Division Song - your heart is dead to music

+1

Clearly musical tastes differ. Because I disagree with your tastes does not mean I have none you arrogant xxxxxx 🙄

Joy Division = the band the Smiths always wanted to be.

Yup some have, and judging by some of the comments above, some never had and never will.

You know this sort of judgemental crap used to annoy me. These days it just makes me laugh. I've never seen the attraction of being so condensending and dismissive of other peoples taste in music as it just makes you look petty.

Oh and for the record I'm with junkyard and muddydwarf on this issue.

Well I still love 'em, but the thing about music is that you have to accept (and indeed revel in the fact) that not everybody is into the same thing. This is the reason that I despise Simon Cowell and his chums, insisting on churning out formulaic s***e in order to make as much money as they can before people realise they're being taken for a ride. What tyres for listening to Frankly Mr Shankly?

gonefishin wrote

You know this sort of judgemental crap used to annoy me.

I prefer to keep an open mind and whether I like something or not, I would hope that I could at least appreciate the talent of that individual or group regardless of past or present image and where they currently live!

Joy Division = the band the Smiths always wanted to be.

Bolleaux! 😉 New York Dolls if Mozzer had the choice!

If you read the other comments, the ones you agree with, they are even more judgemental and (some) seem more to do with image than musical content or writing ability.

The comments that I agree with are the ones that are critical of the music of Morrissey and the Smiths and do not criticise their fans. I've seen one comment that could be classed as judgemental was made by muddydwarf and is clearly stated as an opinion. So no, judgmental stuff on this thread is from the fans.

I have kept an open mind and come the cocnlusion that I don't like their music.

The irony about the "wry irony" may be that Morrissey wasn't ever being ironic (at the time, at least).

LOL @ the tags

lol! quality tags. anything to do with The Smiths gets people going 😀

Evans knows I'm miserable now

I din't do that one, I swear! 😀

funny though! lol.

Apparently, Nainesh's mate played bass in morrisey's band. He never got paid so he left a message on mozzers answerphone asking for his money. Morrissey sent him a fax saying '**** off you ****in' yid'. Which isn't a very nice thing to say to a jewish person. (So says Mr. Carter.)

So Morrisey is a Nazi? Knew it. It's that haircut gave him away. What a ****.

Eric Clapton was once a Nazi/National Front sympathiser.

On "Later with Jools Holland", Morrisey and his band dressed in identical light brown suits. During the "interview at the piano", Morrisey told Jools Holland that the suit he was wearing was the same one that Stanley Baker wore in an old film called "Hell Truckers" and that Stanley had left it to Morrisey in his will.

As Morrisey stretched his mouth into a faintly mocking grin, Holland swallowed it hook, line and sinker...

Loving these tags. 😀

Mozzer comes over as a bit of a knobster in interviews - never sure if he's just winding people up but he does have a real chip on his shoulder regarding Britain and seems to think he's under appreciated in his homeland.

Funny, it's always the ones you least expect to be the band idiot who turn out to be the divas: Mick Jones in the Clash springs to mind......

Never understood the rampant hero worship of 'Rock Stars', as opposed to love of the music.
With a couple of rare exceptions they tend to be a bit of a let down in real life if you do get to meet them.