Oh how I do love this song. Though I love "Ask" , "Girlfriend In A Coma" , "Ask", etc.....

Just listening to:


What are some of your favouriter songs, albums or performances by this incredible group?
Anyone here ever be lucky enough to see them live?

I can listen to that song over and over again. And I have been all week.

This is as good as it gets from the Smiths. Johnny Marr's guitar hear just grabs you and holds you through the whole song. Fucking brilliant.

Chico1 said:

Have this CD in my player as I type. My favorite is "Girlfriend In A Coma".

Sweetness, sweetness I was only joking
When I said I'd like to smash every tooth
In your head

Oh ... sweetness, sweetness, I was only joking
When I said by rights you should be
Bludgeoned in your bed


And now I know how Joan of Arc felt
Now I know how Joan of Arc felt
As the flames rose to her roman nose
And her Walkman started to melt
Oh ...


Bigmouth, la ... bigmouth, la ...
Bigmouth strikes again
And I've got no right to take my place
With the Human race


Oh, bigmouth, la ... bigmouth, la
Bigmouth strikes again
And I've got no right to take my place
With the Human race


And now I know how Joan of Arc felt
Now I know how Joan of Arc felt
As the flames rose to her roman nose
And her hearing aid started to melt


Bigmouth, la ... bigmouth, la ...
Bigmouth strikes again
And I've got no right to take my place
With the Human race
Oh ...


Bigmouth, oh ... bigmouth, la ...
Bigmouth strikes again
And I've got no right to take my place
With the Human race
Oh ...


Bigmouth, oh ... bigmouth, la ...
Bigmouth strikes again
And I've got no right to take my place
With the Human race
Oh ...


Bigmouth, oh ... bigmouth, la ...
Bigmouth strikes again
And I've got no right to take my place
With the Human race
Oh ...

heaven knows im miserable now

there is a light that never goes out

teh boy with the thorn in his side

reel around the fountain

girl afraid

death of a disco dancer

last night i dreampt that somebody loved me

need i go on?? i love the smiths these are just the ones off the top of my head!

although ;sad2: i never got to see them live.....not even morrissey

i think endo may have seen morissey though

OH!!! AND i want the one i cant have!!!


[This message was edited Fri Aug 27 8:04:30 2004 by violett]

Chico1 said:

That was my other sig.

I love that track, but for me the best has to be I Know Its Over or Handsome Devil

roughly my top 10:

1. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
2. This Night Has Opened My Eyes
3. Ask
4. Shoplifters Of The World
5. Asleep
6. Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now
7. Unlovable
8. William, It Was Really Nothing
9. Panic
10. Barbarism Begins At Home

or something like that.

violett said:

I've been luck enough to see him live 3 times. At the Your Arsenal tour, I even got on stage!!!


anywho, back to the Smiths...off the top of my head here are some faves:

-Bigmouth Strikes Again
-Hand In Glove
-The Hand That Rocks The Cradle
-I Know It's Over
-The Boy With The Thorn In His Side
-This Night Has Opened My Eyes
-William It Was Really Nothing
-Ask
-Russholme Ruffians
-Asleep

violett said:

oh yeah! and "What She Said"

What she said :
"I smoke 'cos I'm hoping for an
Early death
AND I NEED TO CLING TO SOMETHING !"



good stuff!

"Reel Around The Fountain", "I know It's Over" and "Panic"

endorphin74 said:

:swoon:

How Soon is Now?
Golden Lights
ASK
Shoplifters of the World,
Heaven Knows I'm miserable Now,
Please Please Please let me get what I want,
EVERY DAMNED SONG on Meat is Murder

Shit, I could go all night.

Chico1 said:

Yeah, I saw them live six times - including their last show at Brixton Academy in 1986, which was great. In fact, I never saw a bad Smiths show, but then I always saw them in London where they tended to raise their game. A good friend of mine becamed a fan when he saw them play their first London gig in 1982.

Favourite album: Strangeways Here We Come

Favourite songs:

The Queen Is Dead
Reel Around the Fountain
Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others
Sweet & Tender Hooligan
Is It Really So Strange?
Jeane
The Headmaster's Ritual
That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore
Panic
Shoplifters
Paint A Vulgar Picture
Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me
Death Of A Disco Dancer
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
How Soon Is Now
This Charming Man

Fave track "The Queen Is Dead". I saw them live 3 times... probably the best time was at The G-Mex, Manchester, 1986. They were supporting New Order in a festival to celebrate the 10th anniversary of punk. Saw Morrissey twice on the Kill Uncle tour. Boring! Never seen him live since.

endorphin74 said:

SHUT UP!!!



But really though, you suck ass.

I'm just a little jealous over here.

Co-sign all of the above!

I love The Smiths, Love Morrissey. I've been a fan since 1984.

pacey68 said:

wow! awesome! u lucky U

minneapolisgenius said:

oh kitty, don't be bitter!

Shapeshifter said:

k, call me 'dumb-ass'

that is my all time fave Smiths song and I forgot it on my list- in fact looking at my list I forgot ALL about Strangeways....

endorphin74 said:

The Smiths..sooo many great songs

A few of my favs:

Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before,

The Boy With the Thorn in His Side,

Bigmouth Strikes Again,

I Know It's Over,

Sheila Take a Bow,

Ask,

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.

This is probably a bizarre choice, but my favourite Smiths track has always been Cemetery Gates. I always thought that song was a perfect gem, and it just got lost as it was tucked away at the end of side one on the Queen is Dead.

I also feel that Half a Person is overlooked as well - I think it's one of their best melodies.

During my typically English, angsty adolescence at university when being miserable and self-indulgent came as natural as breathing at times, there was a sense that The Smiths, and Morrissey’s words in particular, not only gave succour to my growing sense of alienation but actually gave it a certain validity. As if there was something noble or righteous in finding yourself locked away in uncertainty, in my bedroom utterly folded in on myself. Christ, perhaps without the songs giving me a reason to wear my fatalism like a fucking medal I would‘ve just knuckled down and got on with getting on in life. Perhaps, perhaps not. Anyway...

Ironically, I went to Salford University and I remember one time being in one of the university bars, with half a pint left, listening to the jukebox as torrential rain turns the world outside the windscreen a wavering, wet blur. Fairly typical Manchester weather. It’s then that I really took notice of - The Smiths. 'William It Was Really Nothing' was playing, 'the rain falls hard on a humdrum town / this town has dragged you down'. It’s one of the few times a song has made me stop what I was doing and just listened to it.

Ostensibly The Smith's music is fairly conventional, some jangly guitars - slightly sprightly for a downbeat song, interestingly - and no rough stuff, but it's Morrissey's voice that really captures the essence of the music. All mannered croon and barely in tune. At the end it’s crying out in a keening wail, “Williahh-aah-ahhm”. Never really dates does it?

What's great is that their music sounds today, as it almost certainly did back in the early eighties. The moment when Manchester bedsit misfit Morrissey made a break for freedom, the moment that dreamy loser Morrissey willed himself into being, darted from the shadows of the enclosed grey Manchester streets, and miraculously made good his escape, for the good life is out there somewhere'. Morrissey made his voice heard. And, so it goes, many were ready to listen.

I remember the 1st time I heard I Know It's Over. To hear my tightly tangled, confused and unhappy heart being given a voice and sung back to me, and saying what I couldn’t even begin to articulate, was startling but at the same time delightful but at the same time it changed me and challenged me and woke me up. All I knew was that I needed as much of this music in my life as possible.So personal, so singular and so idiosyncratic is their sound that a (world) wide appeal was surely to be unlikely. And yet... here we sit.

The songs. Morrissey is in some senses straightforward (and in other senses, bent forward), the songs on The Smiths and The Queen is Dead scored repeated direct hits on me. Unlike the band’s protegees like Belle & Sebastian and so on, The Smiths were never actually the shyly mumbling, shivering, apologetic type. Quite the contrary, bolstered by fear and fury Morrissey’s songs heralded a frustration unbuttoned.

Listen to how the ideas tumble over each other in these early songs, it’s like someone who’s been holding their breath their whole life, finally breathing out, but what I found completely staggering was the display of vulnerability. In ‘You’ve Got Everything Now’ he sings 'no, I’ve never had a job / because I’m too shy', admitting to being too shy to get a job just seemed an unusual, strangely endearing and brave. (It’s also probably worth noting that the song was written during a time of mass unemployment in Great Britain, and for Morrissey to claim he was jobless due, not to crushing Conservative policies that all the other contemporary politicised bands were moaning about, but his own feebleness - later in the song, he also says he hadn’t had a job because he never wanted one - was a perverse way of damning the Tory government and retaining some personal pride: you didn’t break me, he seems to say, because I never took part, my ruin is my own doing. Morrissey refuses to be a victim to anyone but himself.

The theme of disappointment is central to many of Morrissey’s songs, he is not quite the pessimistic conspiracy theorist like Thom Yorke of Radiohead, more the bruised idealist, the naive romantic like Oscar Wilde who sees his hopes dashed, his dreams crashed, his happiness snatched, as his future beyond the 'old grey school' turns out to be a false dawn. Life: The Big Let-Down, is what ’The Smiths', if anything, is about - though not in defeatist acceptance of the fact, instead in sharp defiance of it, the songs struggle and thrash against society’s chains, trying to make a space, to mark their own place in a falling, failing world.

Morrissey, with his anti-rockist vocals, his threadbare glam anti-fashion, his preening and his posing. A pop snob, an odd sod, Morrissey’s also a funny bugger. The charge of him being merely miserable, though, I don’t think has gone away, which is ridiculous. Okay, calling The Smiths’ fourth, and biggest, hit single ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now‘ didn’t do him any favours, but (and aside from the fact that it was a self-mocking play on the title of a Sandie Shaw song, ‘Heaven Knows I’m Missing Him Now’) I think it is worth pointing out that the title isn’t ‘Heaven Knows I Am Miserable’, it’s: ‘..I’m Miserable Now’: how compliancy to society’s regime diminishes the spirit, is the point of the song - and I feel that! Apparantly Morrissey wrote 'Hang the DJ' after listening to a Radio 1 DJ read out a newsflash about the Chernobyl disaster and then straight after launch into 'Wake me up before you go go' by 'Wham'(For all too young it's a crappy pop song with lines like 'take me dancing tonight')

But Morrissey made me laugh. Smiths defenders will always point out the humour embedded within the songs, and they’re right to do so, but the humour is just another manifestation of Morrissey’s hurt and anger, it’s a useful - and powerful - tool to hammer out his point. This is why, to me, a line like 'In my life / Oh why do I smile / at people who I’d much rather / kick in the eye?' is typical of The Smiths’ acid humour: it comes from great despair.

With The Smiths having split up way before I discovered them, I was in the curious position of finding the band through my own back with the little help of my friend Joel who's like a Morrissey and Smith fanatic as I am to Prince. They weren’t of my time so I had to go digging, so The Smiths, therefore, felt like my treasure.

I don’t need them now really. I'm a happy and content person! I’m a fan, but I’ve moved on, you have to move on. The Smiths can become a suffocating comfort blanket for those desperate enough and I was at times. I’m grateful to have had them take up space in my life.
Morrissey‘s voice still echoes in my ears from time to time though: Don’t forget the songs that made you cry / and the songs that saved your life / yes, you’re older now / and you’re a clever swine / but they were the only ones that ever stood by you.

JD!!!!

That's quite the write-up there!

endorphin74 said:

Nice post JD. You put it into words that I never could have. Although for me it didn't go so deep/hit so close to home, but they are still one of my all-time favorite bands. Brilliant, brilliant lyrics.

And I didn't know that about the inspiration for "Panic". That song IS one that echoed my feelings.

Burn down the disco
Hang the blessed DJ
Because the music that they constantly play
IT SAYS NOTHING TO ME ABOUT MY LIFE
Hang the blessed DJ
Because the music they constantly play....