Late Night Stargazing

On the back of airing some of his recent rather unpalatable views, I’ve read several articles where the question has been posited: should Morrissey’s statements lead those who loved The Smiths should now take a long, hard look at themselves?

It’s a no-brainer for me. I’ve always tried hard to divorce an artist’s political viewpoints from the art that they make, as long as those political ideas don’t encroach into their art.

Let me give you an example. David Hockney is, undeniably, a very fine artist. And politically, I had thought his views broadly chimed. He declined a knighthood in 1990, something which almost always earns extra kudos points in my book. But then in 2017, he redesigned the masthead for The Sun newspaper, albeit for just one edition. To my mind, that’s an endorsement of the rag and all of that has been printed in it. Suddenly, I view his work with a little more suspicion.

As for Morrissey and The Smiths; well, you can look at the lyrics he wrote when he was in The Smiths and compare it to those he has composed in his solo career, and for me it’s very difficult to make a case that his lyricism hasn’t been in decline for quite some time now.

But look at some of lyrics from The Smiths days, and I’m still struck with just how achingly beautiful, evocative, poignant they could be.

Tonight’s song is one of those; they released two versions of this song – an acoustic version which appeared on Hatful of Hollow, and an electric version which pops up on the B-side of the What Difference Does it Make? single.

I’ve plumped for the acoustic version, albeit the 2011 version remastered by Johnny Marr. I don’t usually like to highlight specific lyrics, but these lines get me every time:

“When you cycled by, here began all my dreams

The saddest thing I’ve ever seen.

And you never knew how much I really liked you

Because I never even told you

Oh and I meant to.”

The Smiths – Back To The Old House

More soon.

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I Won’t Share You

I’ve spent much of the last couple of days watching the televised games from the 3rd round of the FA Cup (and avoiding the cricket, of course).

The 3rd round is where the Premiership team get involved, and on Friday night, that involved watching Liverpool v Everton, and one particular banner that the camera focussed in on caught my eye.

I wasn’t sharp enough to take a photo of it, but there it was, a red banner with a picture of Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp on it, along with the words:

“The drive
And the dreams inside
This is my time.”

How nice it was, I thought, that tribal and regional hostilities could be laid to rest and a fan from Liverpool could quote the final song, on the final (proper) album, by one of, if not the greatest, bands from Manchester, even if they didn’t realise that’s what they’d done:

The Smiths – I Won’t Share You

More, of a very different nature, soon.

Reissue! Repackage! Repackage!

“Re-issue! Re-package! Re-package!
Re-evaluate the songs
Double-pack with a photograph
Extra track (and a tacky badge)”

Part of me wants to disapprove of the latest reissued, remastered version of The Smiths’ The Queen is Dead.

But I really can’t.

Listening to the 3 discs (1: the album remastered, 2: demos and “previously unheard” material, 3: Live in Boston, much better than “Rank”) is like falling in love with the band all over again.

I think they missed a trick by leaving the brass – yes, the brass – off of the final version of “Never Had Nobody Ever” though:

The Smiths – Never Had No One Ever (Demo)

Ordinarily, I’d not endorse something like this, but, frankly (Mr Shankly) this is a must own for fans.

Go get.

More soon.

How to Do a Cover Version

If ever there was a post that would earn me my second ever Take Down notice, this is it.

But then again, I’ve basically said that Bill Wyman is a paedophile on these pages before and nobody batted an eyelid, so maybe I’ll be okay.

In 1958, The Staple Singers released a record called “This May Be The Last Time”, and it went like this:

The Staple Singers – This May Be My Last Time

But that’s not the original version; it can’t be, because that came out in 1958, and I’ve tracked down a recording from five years earlier, which appeared on this album:

The Original Five Blind Boys of Alabama – This Could Be The Last Time

“My”…”the”…okay the title may be ever so slightly different, but it’s the same song, right?

And that’s fine, they’re both utterly great versions.

And then in 1965, this got to #1 in the UK Charts:

The Rolling Stones – The Last Time

Well, that sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Yes, there’s some different lyrics thrown in, but that’s no problem, the Stones are proud of their blues and gospel roots, so they obviously credited – or the very least part credited – the original artists, right?

Oh. Bit awkward.

It wasn’t until 2003 that Keith Richards decided to set the record straight: “We came up with ‘The Last Time’, which was basically re-adapting a traditional gospel song that had been sung by the Staple Singers, but luckily the song itself goes back into the mists of time.”

Hmmm.

Let’s take another look at that single sleeve again. There’s another name that leaps out, isn’t there? Andrew Loog Oldham.

Oldham was The Stones’ manager (I can heartily recommend his autobiography “Stoned”, by the way, but I’ve not read the pip-squeezing other two “2Stoned” and “Rolling Stoned”) and producer, and creator of this:

The Andrew Oldham Orchestra – The Last Time

Hang on just one moment, though. Something about that rings a few bells too, doesn’t it?

From this:

The Verve – Bitter Sweet Symphony

As a result of a fairly infamous legal battle, centred around the alleged plagiarism by lead Verve-ist Richard Ashcroft, Jagger and Richards were added to that as co-composers, so they got their slice of the pie.

Which, given the above, is a bit rich, really, isn’t it, dear reader?

Mind you, Ashcroft really should have known better. It’s not like Jagger and Richards didn’t have form for that sort of behaviour…..For back in 1991 this record met a similar fate:

Carter USM – After The Watershed (Early Learning The Hard Way)

…which borrowed heftily from this:

The Rolling Stones – Ruby Tuesday

Ah, plagiarism. As some anniversary or another of this album’s release is almost upon us, it seems appropriate for me to sign off with this:

The Smiths – Cemetry Gates

More litigious nonsense soon.

Replenishing the Vinyl

There’s a reason this series is called what it is. I may have mentioned it before, if so, forgive me and skip on a couple of paragraphs whilst I run over it one more time.

Between 2008, when I moved to London, and 2012, when I moved into the flat I live in now, I lived in a shared house.

The living room housed all my music, CD and vinyl, along with a battered old stereo with a turntable and CD decks on which you could play whatever tickled your fancy.

Truth be told, the vinyl got played less than rarely, and so it was that it wasn’t until I moved into my new (current) flat that I realised the turntable no longer functioned.

Fast forward a couple of years: I have bought a new turntable, connected it up to my amp and speakers and decided that the first record I’m going to play is something by The Smiths.

This has become something of a tradition of mine; whenever I has moved home – which happened a lot, I now realise, looking back – the first thing I would do in my new pad was set up the stereo and play a record by my favourite band.

Except – where had all my Smiths album gone? And…wait…and my Wedding Present albums? And my R.E.M. albums? And my Billy Bragg albums?? And oh gosh, so much more.

All gone, and I have no idea who could have taken them. There are suspects, but nothing I can prove. But whoever took them knew what they were doing: it was like someone had worked out which records I treasured dearly and then taken them.

So when I say that I’m replenishing the vinyl, I’m actually trying to buy the records I lost, and if I get a few other bargains along the way, then fair enough, I’m owed that break.

But the thing is (Part One), I’m kinda nerdy picky about replacing the stuff I lost: for example, all of The Smiths records were the original prints on the Rough Trade label, so if I’m going to buy them again, that’s what I want, not any of the poxy re-releases.

Thing is (Part 2), the original Rough Trade releases of The Smiths records are quite expensive to replace. But I have managed to track down two so far.

And here’s a song from the first, from their debut album that I dedicate to whoever has my records:

The Smiths – You’ve Got Everything Now

Thieving bastards.

More soon.

“In the End, It Took Me a Dictionary to Find Out the Meaning of Unrequited” #4

Let’s be honest, if I’m going to post songs about unrequited love, then there’s a fairly healthy stash of tunes to choose from in The Smiths’ back catalogue.

This one has always been a favourite of mine, a tale of a boy and a girl, one consumed by the fear of rejection, frozen in the teenage terror of revealing to the other that they, y’know…erm…kinda…erm…y’know…think they’re pretty sweet, and the other confused about why he doesn’t just come right out and say it.

When I was a teenager, this was definitely a situation I experienced. Confession time.

I was set up on a date by a mutual friend once. Thing is, I didn’t know it was a date. What had been arranged was a few drinks with a friend, and then I’d crash on her sofa, but it turned into what I now know is one of those “OK, we’re all here, great! Oh no! I just remembered I have to be somewhere else, you two will be okay won’t you? Bye!!” kind of things.

But stupid teenage me, despite raging levels of testosterone, was too dumb to read the signs.

I was supposed to be crashing over at the mutual friend’s place that night, and so when my “date” said it was fine and I could stay at theirs instead, that’s all I assumed it was: me sleeping on a sofa or in the spare room.

See, at this young age, I didn’t know that women colluded like this. As far as I was concerned, it was all just terribly bad luck that our mutual friend couldn’t stay, and jolly good of her friend to step in to keep me company and let me crash over. 

And whilst I really did like the young lady in question (quite a lot), I had no idea that the feeling was reciprocated.

As we left the pub at chucking out time, to a chorus of “*****’s going to have sex tonight!” (her name removed, just in case) from a loitering group of lads, I remember thinking “Ha! Idiots! Course she’s not, this is nothing more than a convenient arrangement to save me getting a taxi home! I’m just sleeping on her sofa! Fools!!!”

And so it was that as we cosied up on the sofa, watching television as her parents slept soundly upstairs, that I utterly failed to recognise or act upon every advance she made, of which, she subsequently told me, there were many.

Whenever I hear this song, I think of that night, and shiver:

The Smiths – Girl Afraid

More embarrassing revelations soon enough.

There’s Just One More Thing…

I mentioned last week that my old mate Rich was coming along to The Wedding Present gig last night, on his birthday.

Rich, as I’m sure I mentioned before, is the chap who properly got me into what we now rather endearingly call “indie” music; my brother had laid the foundations, but it was Rich who built on them.

I will never forget the time he played me The Smiths’ “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”…

The Smiths – There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

…closely followed by Billy Bragg’s “The Man In The Iron Mask”…

Billy Bragg – The Man in the Iron Mask

…and then I think something by The Chesterfields, probably this:

The Chesterfields – Nose Out of Joint

…followed up by Microdisney…

Microdisney – Town to Town

…by which point I was smitten.

Last night, The Wedding Present played none of those songs, for what I hope are fairly obvious reasons, but they did play this, which I made sure Rich and I had a hug to on the line “You’re not like anyone I ever met”.

The Wedding Present – A Million Miles

Now we’re all grown up and responsible, professionally, Rich is a teacher. To me, he’s always been one.

Happy (day after) Birthday mate. Love ya.

More soon.