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Skylarker
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THIS IS NOT AN ATTEMPT TO STIR SHIT ABOUT MORRISSEY. Just a few honest observations...
It's a disappointing performance.
It's simply not that great of a song...a Green Day chord progression, if Green Day were on Demerol. God, why did he pick this as the song to play on TV?
Boz looks like an old clown, Sol and Jesse look like thugs. The drummer looks bored.
NO understatement from Morrissey anymore, it's GONE. The "gracias" made me cringe. His "I've just gotten back from a funeral" outfit and the band being dressed up in T-shirts of a singer who no-one, aside from Boz, probably even owns a record by is also a little sad.
Oh well...still a great feeling to see him on TV, for some reason.
His "I've just gotten back from a funeral" outfit
THIS IS NOT AN ATTEMPT TO STIR SHIT ABOUT MORRISSEY. Just a few honest observations...
It's a disappointing performance.
It's simply not that great of a song...a Green Day chord progression, if Green Day were on Demerol. God, why did he pick this as the song to play on TV?
Boz looks like an old clown, Sol and Jesse look like thugs. The drummer looks bored.
NO understatement from Morrissey anymore, it's GONE. The "gracias" made me cringe. His "I've just gotten back from a funeral" outfit and the band being dressed up in T-shirts of a singer who no-one, aside from Boz, probably even owns a record by is also a little sad.
Oh well...still a great feeling to see him on TV, for some reason.
THIS IS NOT AN ATTEMPT TO STIR SHIT ABOUT MORRISSEY. Just a few honest observations...
It's a disappointing performance.
It's simply not that great of a song...a Green Day chord progression, if Green Day were on Demerol. God, why did he pick this as the song to play on TV?
Boz looks like an old clown, Sol and Jesse look like thugs. The drummer looks bored.
NO understatement from Morrissey anymore, it's GONE. The "gracias" made me cringe. His "I've just gotten back from a funeral" outfit and the band being dressed up in T-shirts of a singer who no-one, aside from Boz, probably even owns a record by is also a little sad.
Oh well...still a great feeling to see him on TV, for some reason.
He should have played Scandinavia!! I really want to hear a good version of it!
"I'll eat the soil...."
Hey Skylarker, pardon me for stalking you across the threads but alot of the stuff you write resonates with my own feelings. A couple of months ago I started a thread (Is Morrissey in a musical rut). The above post would have fitted in nicely. You suggest a 'different musical backdrop'. Precisely! I feel he needs to collaborate with someone who could tell him to shut the f*** up. Like Lennon and McCartney, they were equals and so bought out the best in each other. Once they were alone and ruled the roost they became run of the mill.I would like to see Moz perform with an orchestra. His voice, I feel, would work so well with that backing.I don't know if I'd call it "sad"...just unfortunate. They are what they are...a solid bar band being led musically by a bored, fat, out-of-ideas rockabilly pastiche obsessive...granted, Boz wrote some phenomenal songs in his time, but those days are long gone. They came and went with youth rather than, I'm sorry to say, being borne of a genuinely artistic soul.
What's truly unfortunate, though, is that although Morrissey probably will reach a point where he simply can't do it anymore physically or intellectually, I actually do not think he is quite at that point now. Maybe not by a long shot...but there's no way to know, because he has holed himself with such a dearth of talent that although he is doing the best with what he's got, it simply amounts to little more than anemic pantomime.
I think he is at a point where if the context were different, if he changed things up a bit, challenged himself, found a different musical backdrop, he could still pull some astonishing art out of his ass. He is stagnated because, frankly, I think he was significantly damaged by his American exile years, culturally and inspirationally. He took a blow that did not immediately manifest itself (largely because he still had Alain, but also because many of those songs were already kicking around for awhile) but certainly by the time of the Refusal sessions, he was running on empty. He has committed some truly suicidal artistic moves.
There's a lot of bitching about Jesse on here, and most of it I agree with, but the main problem with Jesse is not that he can't play, but that he can't write. When Jesse plays Smiths songs or early Solo songs, they sound anywhere from roided up to pissed on, but they're still great songs. It's that essence, that original muse, that no degree of hamfistedness can ruin.
But the fact is, the guy just can't write a decent tune. Yet Morrissey loves him and looks to him for the furtherment of his career...as Alain rots away, as Street rots away, as Johnny rots away, as God knows who else amazing rots away.
You can take the most brilliant artist on earth, but if he sits in a room where he is looking out a window at the same sky, same field, no houses, no buildings, no people, no life, and he never lets himself leave...then eventually he will just deteriorate artistically. Granted, while he's in that little room he's safe...and for a while, maybe a long while, he can run on reserve but eventually he's going to die. The safety comes at the expense of inspiration.
Morrissey would rather make solid -albeit safe- rock music at this point rather than art. Whether this is because he's lost the plot, or because in his mind he sounds like the Dolls, or because he's proving a point... I don't know.
When you force yourself to subsist on bread and water, you can live for a long time, but you're gonna feel and look like shit. Musically, for God knows what reason, that's what he's doing to himself. He's forcing himself to subsist on the bare minimum of nourishment. The results are the last batch of songs...each bearing a distinct trace of a once truly great artistic mind. But, while Bland Morrissey is still better than a lot of stuff out there, he could still -even at this late date- be so much better.
But not for long.
Hey Skylarker, pardon me for stalking you across the threads but alot of the stuff you write resonates with my own feelings. A couple of months ago I started a thread (Is Morrissey in a musical rut). The above post would have fitted in nicely. You suggest a 'different musical backdrop'. Precisely! I feel he needs to collaborate with someone who could tell him to shut the f*** up. Like Lennon and McCartney, they were equals and so bought out the best in each other. Once they were alone and ruled the roost they became run of the mill.I would like to see Moz perform with an orchestra. His voice, I feel, would work so well with that backing.
Absolutely Viva!Because the conductor would tell him to "shut the f*** up"?
The stalking comment was not entirely serious.Ummm...I hardly think you are "stalking me across the threads." There are a limited number of threads/posts on here at any given time. Some will be worthy of interest, some will not, depending on who you ask. As there are is also a relatively limited amount of regular posters taking part, it's inevitable that they will bump into each other and cross paths in the course of exploring the different threads.
If you see that as stalking, OK. I see it as par for the course in a web forum. I don't imbue it with any kind of personal implication. While forum stalking does happen, 9 times out of 10 if someone perceives he is being "followed" across the forum, it is because he is a douchebag with an oversized ego who imagines things.
Regarding the rest of your post, thanks, but I am not saying anything that hasn't been said on here a million times already by many different people, especially since the Janice Long session this summer. I'm just re-iterating it because that point of view is relevant to this discussion.
Other than Crystal Geezer and mcrickson and a few other female members, I think you'd be very hard-pressed to find anyone here who, although they still like Morrissey, doesn't think he's way off his game.
Morrissey would rather make solid -albeit safe- rock music at this point rather than art. Whether this is because he's lost the plot, or because in his mind he sounds like the Dolls, or because he's proving a point... I don't know.
When I came to look at your reply I saw a post saying something like "neither is 87 percent of what I write" but then it disappeared. Was I dreaming? Did you post that?Try telling that to Rebecca Shaeffer.