You Know I Couldn't Last...

[ow_tiobe_sb]

My dear wife scored two tickets to the Morrissey concert tomorrow night at the Boston Orpheum as my anniversary present.  :wub:  Given the occasion, I thought I would pose this question to any Morrissey/Smiths fans out there: Has Morrissey lost it?  I'll explain my question by way of some other criminals' wisdom.

SICK BOY: It's certainly a phenomenon in all walks of life.
RENTON: What do you mean?
SICK BOY: Well, at one time, you've got it, and then you lose it, and it's gone forever. All walks of life: George Best, for example. Had it, lost it. Or David Bowie or Lou Reed—
RENTON: Some of his solo stuff's not bad.
SICK BOY: No, it's not bad, but it's not great either. And in your heart you kind of know that although it sounds all right, it's actually just -----.
RENTON: So who else?
SICK BOY: Charlie Nicholas, David Niven, Malcolm McLaren, Elvis Presley...
RENTON: OK, OK, so what's the point you're trying to make?
[...]
SICK BOY: All I'm trying to do is help you understand that The Name of The Rose is merely a blip on an otherwise uninterrupted downward trajectory.
RENTON: What about The Untouchables?
SICK BOY: I don't rate that at all.
RENTON: Despite the Academy Award?
SICK BOY: That means ---- all. The sympathy vote.
RENTON: Right. So we all get old and then we can't hack it anymore. Is that it?
SICK BOY: Yeah.
RENTON: That's your theory?
SICK BOY: Yeah. Beautifully ------- illustrated.

Some (former) fans have argued that Morrissey lost it with the release of Bona Drag in 1990--following the generally well liked Viva Hate (1988)--and that it was clearly lost and gone forever by 1992's Your Arsenal (I actually disagree and think that there are several redeeming moments in many of Morrissey's post-Smiths records.).  More recently, Morrissey emerged from years of languishing in completely unnecessary best-of compilations with 2004's You Are the Quarry, which, IMO, deserved much of the excitement that surrounded its release.  Morrissey's 2006 release, Ringleader of the Tormentors, however, largely sounds to me as if it were material that did not make the A-list for You Are the Quarry and was simply recycled into a new album.

So, to revise my question a tad, has Morrissey lost it--full stop--or does his possession of it come in cycles, contrary to Sick Boy's "unifying theory of life"?

I suppose there are also those champing at the bit to say that Morrissey never had it to begin with.  To those people I say, respectfully, :P.

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and The Last of the Famous International Playboys

[captainspud]

Random thing-- you should probably obscure the cursing a little more.

For the childrins, donchaknow.

[ow_tiobe_sb]

Random thing-- you should probably obscure the cursing a little more.

For the childrins, donchaknow.

Done.  My apologies to those offended by the lack of obscurity.

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and The Prat in the Hat

[tommyboy]

I think the problem may be complicated by the law of diminishing returns. ANY artist who keeps producing work in any field will eventually face the problem that their audience will become jaded to their work. It's just a function of the way our nervous system and perceptions work, the familiar diminishes in importance and only the new and different is noticed. Most artists have a style, and that style eventually starts to sound/look/taste/read as stale and repetitive if one is exposed enough to it.
Mozzer is subject to both this AND Mr. Sickboys law, so can never sound as good to me as the first Smiths album did. Even if he's objectively ten times better now.

[Mr. Hamrick]

One of my best friends and I had a very similar conversation to the Sick Boy and Renton conversation a few weeks ago regarding John Mellencamp.  Well, sorta similar.  The point of the conversation was how and why John Mellencamp has lost it while Bruce Springsteen has proven that he still can get it going on occasion and does so with his latest album.

The going theory is this:  An artist can become so out of touch with a majority of his fans and more importantly his most diehard fans that after a while his new work becomes little more than an effort to cash in what brought him to the party regardless if what what brought him to the party is still relevant or not. 

Therefore, the question with Morrissey, and this is someone who is not a huge fan of his (though I like The Cure and liked The Cure when most of the current "teenage goth crowd" were in diapers), would the material he is creating as good an expression of him artistically as (likely) his earlier stuff was.

[ow_tiobe_sb]

I like what I am hearing, and it all makes a good deal of sense to me, fellows.  As a teacher of poetry, I often like to test and re-test certain paradigms, and Mr. Yeats provides a wonderfully confounding paradigm that I like to raise with my students from time to time.  Let's face it, Morrissey is no Yeats, but both were/are in the business of creating poetry, granted under very different historical conditions and under different pressures in  their respective modes of production (which, to me and to many, under most circumstances, would make these two akin to apples and orangaes), but the question of appeal is a perennial one.  So consider Yeats, writing challenging, time-tested poetry at the beginning of his career, full of the mystery of youth and age and heroism and the Sidhe, and then consider the former Senator, the "public smiling man," the aged poet and playwright, writing challenging, time-tested poetry at the end of his career, full of the mystery of youth and age and heroism (in the looming face of death) and the goddesses of literature.  As much as he might protest that he tried not to be, Yeats was very much the product of his time and yet a voice from elsewhere, spinning each work as the arachnid does its web: from himself.  IMHO, he struck a marvellous balance between history and the mind, placing himself and his poetry in the position to speak to themselves about poetry and history and granting the reader something like a box seat for an endless engagement of evesdropping at the Orpheum.  IMO, it is the task of a great artist to achieve this stance using the colour and tenor of her or his time against itself, creating a friction that gives us pause, makes us gasp in awe, performing endless revolution as a viable dance, puzzling us with the task of discerning "the dancer from the dance."

What am I on about, you may be asking?  Certainly, today's Morrissey is not the Morrissey of the Smiths' first album or Meat is Murder, etc., nor is he the Morrissey of his first solo outing.  I do think that in moments on You Are the Quarry (in which the title puts the audience on the defensive, if not on the run, from the start), Morrissey comes to grips with his physical age and his artistic youth, playfully thumbing his nose at his checkered past with his former band (legal battles, etc.) and the comings-and-goings of his fandom, and the failed rantings of his critics, and, if only for scant moments, he is in accord with himself, even at the risk of being out of touch with--perhaps even alienating--his audience.  I like to think it is that impulse of the artist, the impulse which Yeats never strayed from, that makes for having and keeping it (and, strangely enough, that may be a skill that Springsteen possesses as well).  All those figures mentioned in the excerpt above set the onlookers (if not the "Shoplifters") of the world at odds with themselves as they wove their curious webs across the eyes of stardom.  Some did it with a sensual twist of the hip (Presley), some did it with a shift of perspective (Reed), but all were strangely adversarial.  This speaks to tommyboy's point about the new in the sense of that which appears on our horizon and resists.

I suppose the next question is, has Morrisey become complacent or has he successfully resisted himself and his own paradigms (e.g., solitude and the ironies of love, criminality, smexual ambiguity) over the years?

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and The Prat in the Hat

[detourne_me]

definitely smexual ambiguity.

i think Morrisey is a particular example that is hard to compare another musician with... maybe Bowie,  but Bowie's bounced back and I believe he has done so because of his mainstream appeal.
The same for Springsteen (although the Boss is just that, the Boss)  They can appeal to a wider demographic, where Morrisey has been put up on an Indie pedestal by fans and critics, he's a victim in this instance of both his own self-imposed paradigms and those of his fans/critics.

anyway in my opinion Morrisey never really had it in the first place... reason being i became acquainted with his work while in Uni (after Morrisey was put into the lost it category)  although Meat is Murder has a pretty sound, i disagree with it and well (to use the term i once proudly waved as a banner, in a derogative way) the sheer whiny emoness of his music.  but to each their own, I know you'll enjoy the concert despite what any heroin fiending Scottish junkie has to say about it! :D

[thanoson]

I appreciated Bona Drag and Viva Hate. They were almost the sound of the Smiths; Almost. Couldn't figure what was missing. Then my friend summed it up. The Johnny Mar twang in his guitar. That was the key ingrediant to the sound. Without that, it just seemed lacking. Though, there have been a couple of songs that i have liked since. Irish Heart/ English Blood makes me sing out loud every time I play it. Plus, he HAS grown older and looks it. That was also part of his appeal. It appears now that my friends dad is singing a song. An image that I really don't want to see.

[ow_tiobe_sb]

"Now My Heart Is Full"  :wub:

'Twas a blast last night! (And my poor, brave, loving wife suffered through it all, from the Klaus Nomi operatic processional to the second shirt tossed to the adoring groundlings.)  In case anyone is interested, I have reproduced the set list below.  I was a bit surprised at some of the selections, in particular the numbers from Strangeways, Here We Come.  At other times, I felt I was witness to a re-performance of the 1992 live album Beethoven Was Deaf, but that did not diminish my enjoyment of the concert.  Moz also pulled out some of my favourite yet infrequently played (at least in his post-Smith's career) Smith's numbers, including the dulce ballad "Stretch Out and Wait" and "The Boy with the Thorn in His Side."  I was also relieved that only one piece from Ringleader of the Tormentors made it into the set.  Highlights included the amusing juxtaposition of the crowd-pleasing "The National Front Disco" (N.b., performed in the same evening with "Irish Blood, English Heart") and a raucous, earsplitting rendition of "Death of a Disco Dancer"; Morrissey's reminder to the audience that Oscar Wilde once gave a recitation on the Orpheum stage; and a series of languorous gyrations on the surface of the stage before the drum kit at the culmination of "Dear God, Please Help Me."  :thumbup:

"Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before"
"Billy Budd"
"Tomorrow"
"Shoplifters of the World"
"Irish Blood, English Heart"
"The Loop"
"Sister I'm a Poet"
"Why Don't You Find Out for Yourself?"
"Stretch Out and Wait"
"Jack the Ripper"
"I Like You"
"The World Is Full of Crashing Bores"
"All You Need Is Me"
"One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell"
"The National Front Disco"
"Death of a Disco Dancer"
"I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris"
"The Boy with the Thorn in His Side"
"Dear God, Please Help Me"
"How Soon Is Now?"
Encore: "First of the Gang to Die"

I should add that Morrissey actually looked younger and fitter than he has in some time (even the gray was gone!).  He was clearly cognizant of this fact, given that he removed his shirt and ostentatiously framed his chest with his arms twice in the course of the concert.

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and The Prat in the Hat