The American Smiths

Last week I played Kill Uncle at the ofice where it was softly playing in the background and I was asked 5 times: these are REM aren't they? NO FUCK OFF!!! (OK Kill Uncle is Morrissey at his worst maybe but that does not mean you can mistake it for that awful artyfarty pretentious crap)

VOYAGER is not PET SHop boys, it's MOMUS, you morons!! (who?)

Also note that this comparison doesn't necessarily posit "Smiths" = "REM" but rather "Smiths' career" = "REM from Murmur through Document," to keep the time frames proper. Could a case possibly be made for REM post-Document equating to Moz solo? Bona Drag = Out of Time, Kill Uncle = Automatic for the People, Your Arsenal = Monster?

(If we're jumping time-frames the best I can say is that being a circa 87 Smiths fan in America would equate, in America in 2002, to being a fan of some combination of Belle and Sebastian and Radiohead.)

Well sort of... the only flaw would be this: to be an American version of a UK band, do you have to be treatedin the US the way the British band was in the UK??? If the criteria is that strict, then the argument maybe doesn;t hold up: the Strokes are simply treated the same way in the UK as Suede were.

As for your other two bands -- well, sorta. But I haven't heard of this Belle and Sebastian group, who are they again?

I completely buy into the Weezer=Smiths equation. Their music, at one point, meant a lot to me, and I know it still means a lot to many people. I wouldn't underestimate peoples' devotion to the Cult of Cuomo.

"This ain't no party/ This ain't no disco/ This ain't no fooling around". The thing is, you have to work out whether or not the "Wartime" of the title is a time and place that disco was an escape from, or a place that disco ventured to. The actual liner notes basically say "Hey, disco's now called dance, it's great, but it's disposable", which isn't exactly a full blown defence. It's definitely a song you can analyse for ages, and not just inside another thread.

I have to possibly revamp my Weezer judgment a bit if only because I just saw a brilliant e-mail handle: "Motley84 = Weezer02"

Guns n Roses have nothing in common with The Smiths. Morrissey and co. were the finest band that ever existed and their fan base is dedicated beyond comparison and the influence of The Smiths is huge. Plus, and most importantly, what was being said and the way it was being said was new, unique and utterly brilliant.

I don't think REM come close to The Smiths either. I don't think there can be an American Smiths or a British Smiths.

I guess The Strokes are sorta like Menswear or Elastica. Spotty posh kids with some a few corking tunes, but God knows how long they'll last. I think they'll be around for a while due to their richass parents though.

If we're talking place-in-culture I think the mostly-awful Klosterman book nevertheless pegs something: G'n'R and the Smiths both related to their audiences in a particular and similar sort of way, but what they were relating and to whom were, at the time, almost diametrically opposed.

(How would we separate the outsiderism of both Axl and Moz? Axl's was the outsiderism of being inside, of being typical and thus anonymous, and it was the outsiderism of entry, of proving worth and breaking from anonymity by "taking over." Moz's outsiderism was the outsiderism of difference, an outsiderism that theoretically linked all the different into a viable and separate community.)

The difference is enormous and the two have nothing in common. Guns n Roses = bad stadium band, largely seen as a joke.

The Smiths = most important British band of the past 20 years.

Maybe you need to be American to see something in common, but as a British (Scottish) person at the time of the early 90s I can ASSURE you the kids who liked Guns n Roses were denying all knowledge of having any such CD in their collection as they hit puberty and, yes, discovered Nirvana.

Maybe they were welcome in the American music climate at the time, but we had The Stone Roses, Morrissey and The Happy Mondays to brigthen up the charts back then.

I will say this as well - The Manics are not best suited to be compared to Guns n Roses either. A far better band that changed lives and kicked ass on stage. When they were good at least, but that's another thread surely!?!?

Your brother scares me.

the simpsons

We have a winner!

Sorry but this is the funniest thing I've ever read. Are you American by any chance?

Nor am I actually slagging of yanks, although I did have the experience of living with three culturally/ socially inept ones (2 from Texas) a short while ago. That was in England, actually, and they were seen as twats. Although that isn't neccessarily cos they are American.

Point is - Americans do tend to like really crap stadium rock. Some Brits lap it up as well. Just America seems more guity.

That other thread is indeed really funny - I imagine the chap who wrote that is a handsome, sexy and highly intelligent individual.

Ha ha apparently we share a brother (mine was the treasurer, and he embezzeled a bunch of money to pay for private parties and satellite pirating equipment), though I'd never think of trying to turn him onto anything "weird" except drugs. I took him to this britpop club once and he was baffled by the fact that the girl he was hitting on the whole time turned out to be a lesbian. I think if I were a few years younger, I might have been into the bhangra/hip hop scene too, but I think I just preceded it.

And Axl was hardly androgynous. He looked like a walking thug.

And The Smiths never recorded National Front Disco, it was Morrissey solo and Morrissey solo vs The Smiths is a whole other issue.

a WALKING thug you say?

"I can't believe anyone thinks that Guns n Roses even produced one good song" translates, in objective critical terms, to "I am so mindlessly and carelessly convinced that Guns n Roses are undeserving of my attention that I'm unable to actually listen to 'Sweet Child of Mine'" -- to which, by my count, we can add "Welcome to the Jungle," "It's So Easy," "Don't Cry," and "You Could be Mine," and that's coming from a person with little-to-no familiarity with their proper album tracks. (Here's a fellow I went to high school with discussing "Sweet Child of Mine" on AMG.)

"I'm glad that they are seen as a joke." -- please navigate the AMG (or actually read the thread you're posting to for once) for evidence of the massive falsehood of that statement.

And on and on: "The Smiths inspired lifes [sic] with their lyrics," as did Axl, for better or worse (and as did Cobain, even when he was accidentally inspiring rapes -- is this really an effective route to judging music?). Or they "wrote some of the most amazing ... tunes ever," which reads fine as a declarative statement but it's very convincing as an argument -- I think we all already know you enjoy the Smiths.

Your guilt-by-association with regard to Michael Jackson and Elton John and money and popular-film would be a lot more convincing if your argument for every band you like didn't at some point include "oh, they were important" and "the bands you like are obscure and no one cares about them" -- you need to either sort out your appeals to popularity/relevance or just admit that only middling- popular Britpop gets through the gates of your musical universe. (Were you not just hours ago taunting Julio that Skullflower would sell out if given half a chance?)

No, what bothers me most here is this: "They were/ are/ always will be a joke. Except to some Americans who 'still dig them cos they wrre, like, cool and stuff'," especially after your pointing out that I've never set foot in the UK based on my having a better understanding of the UK indie industry than you -- your caricatures are so far off the mark that it often seems like you just imagine various bands' fan-bases. Seriously, navigate that AMG entry in full and you'll work out precisely what the current US music- fan reaction to GnR is: that much as a lot of us indie-inclined folk were politically obliged to slag them at the time, it becomes clearer and clearer in retrospect that they were an intially-spectacular band, and that even their long decline into bloated, mysterious ridiculousness was a marvelous and occasionally brilliant thing to observe. Few of us want to actually admit that they were "cool" -- we're just forced at the moment to concede that they did indeed Have It for a little while. And for the millions upon millions of people who never had to "concede" that because they were with it from the beginning -- well, your typical dumb appeals to one band being "important and influential" and another being "irrelevant" aren't going to work here: GnR's influence was, for better or worse, far more massive in human terms than the Smiths' ever was. In fact one could make a good case that a lot of the credit given to Nirvana for ushering in the big rock flip-over of the early 90s belongs to GnR, the first step of a three-step walk: people who thinks GnR have everything to do with 80s hair-metal and nothing to do with 90s grunge need to either work on their mental categorization or figure out something good to say about Shannon Hoon.

As for Axl looking like "a walking thug" have you any idea what the word "thug" actually means? I say that not only because most of them are able to walk but because if you stripped off the attitude and the cultural associations and just went by visual inspection, you'd probably conclude that Moz could take Axl in a fight.

(And have you honestly never noticed how often Axl looks entirely like a woman? And not in the hair-metal sense but in an honest-to-god feminine sense?)

I ask because precisely what a lot of people were getting out them -- there at the tail end of the hair-metal moment -- was a band who honestly didn't seem to be selling, and band who had some bizarre over-inflated image of something they seemed to mean and didn't care much about whether that made sense or not. (And it didn't make sense, but trying to parse it was intensely captivating to a whole lot of people.)

Number 2: Even my current music taste does not evolve around what you want to be able to slag me off over (i.e. Britpop) and I have probaby attended more gigs in my time that you have. Gosh, I even recall seeing the likes of The Beastie Boys live at one time. Though heaven forbid I should like anything that isn't rooted in 1995 chart indie world right?

Number 3: I happen to hate Guns n Roses. I'm glad that the Americans are into them and still believe they had something to say. If I could be assed I'd post a link to another music forum I post on where someone made the mistake of mentioning Guns n Roses to a bunch of Stone Roses/ Smiths fans and was eaten alive. Point is?

Number 4: Yes they are a joke. I have yet to speak to anyone over here who takes them seriously and my friends are not into the same music I am either. One of my mates still loves them and he's going to see them live later this year in Leeds, but he also loves The Foo Fighters, Soundgarden, The Lemonheads, Weezer etc

Number 5: Morrissey wouldn't fight anyone. He's got too much class.

Number 6: Guns n Roses are everything that's wrong with stadium rock - no class, no meaning, no point except sex, groupies and $$$$. I want to see a band I can at least, even slightly, identify with. Guns n Roses plain stink. The Americans loved them. Well great. The Americans also bought into Bush and The Cranberries and made a star out of Eddie Veder. Now what do you want me to add to that?

Maybe I should point out that your best bands of recent years have been discovered by us first (The White Stripes, The Strokes and Mercury Rev come to mind).

The Lighthouse Family, Craig David, Moloko, Ocean Colour Scene, Coldplay, Toploader and the motherfucking STEREOPHONICS for one.

I really don't know what it is about you in particular that makes me want to tear out my eyeballs and spent all day desperately trying to drag you screaming out of your own idiocy but I really must make myself stop it. Especially since you're consistently too dim to have even the most rudimentary comprehension of what I'm actually arguing with you about anyway.

Sorry, everyone for acting embarrassingly like Julio and even bothering to engage over this one.

You are American.

I'm not trying to be outwardly nasty, but I lived with three of you while doing my masters last year (I'm finishing it right now which should indicate to you I'm not dim) and it shocked me that in the States you can get a degree simply by playing football or wrestling another half naked guy. And the Americans I lived with about shat themselves when they found out they actually had to 'like, write essays and stuff'.

My fave comment by an American ever is when one of me beloved flatmates (I moved out when my brain couldn't take any more) came back from a visit to Scotland and said (quite seriously): 'You know what I hated about Scotland? That you guys have so much history up there'.

I'm glad you feel like ripping out your eyeballs when you speak to me, that means I make you think and that is what all Americans need more of, don't you think? I'm also gald that you can call me dim, when - with all seriousness, you DID try and make a link between Guns n Roses and The Smiths.

Try that at my uni bar pal. See where it gets you.

Just curious.

more of us shd wear union jack tea-cosies on our heads in my opinion

Listen - funny story, I lived with this total ugly Texas henk and she was sooo thick. She sat down to the news one day and said:

"These guys in Afghanastan are so dumb. I mean, if someone was going to bomb England I'd just get ona train and go elsewhere."

She said this with a straight face. How the hell does that get a degree let alone become accepted for a masters??? OK, so I know the answer ($$$$) but it's a sham.

I used to invite my friends from Scotland and London to my house at this point just to meet them because words would just not do the Americans justice. You HAD to meet them. They had the social skills of a retarded hyeena.

Now,a s to GNR = Smiths, Morrisey articulated the inner angst whilst Axl projected the outer angsts of many a suburban queer confused white boy in the big city, disguised in lyrics on impersonality - listen to Estranged, or (if you can) ignoring the homophobic racist shtick of One in A Million, listen to the imploring, the attempts at reaching out slashed down by rejection (bad verbage I know). As to the band itself, not being familiar with the Smiths chronology of death, I can only say that I imagine the relationship between AXl-Slash and Morrisey-Marr to be similar - Axl appears with Elton, Morrisey with Siouxe (yes?), whilst Slash appears with wacko Jacko and Marr with Oasis or Primal Scream or whoever those tossers are.

Guns n Roses sound nothing like The Smiths, they look nothing like The Smiths, the lyrics are not even comparable (Morrissey being great, Axl being slightly less than great or even passable) and they appealed to different types of people. Plus one was a stadium rock outfit who were in it for the money the drugs and the groupies. One was an indie group that changed people's lives and changed the course of British music.

Now do you understand? The two have nothing in common. And I repeat: they didn't even sound alike. AND whether you like it or not, The Smiths are still seen as great, brilliant etc, Gunsn Roses are seen as crap, a joke band etc.

So the two have even left different legacies.

If you still like Guns n Roses in the year 2002 you must be American in which case aren't you better off attending Counting Crows concerts and nuking third world countries or building McDonald's in developing nations than debating this thread?

Q.: How the hell does that get a degree let alone become accepted for a masters?

A.: Evidently she goes to the UK, and applies for the same masters program as you.

"I will say this as well - The Manics are not best suited to be compared to Guns n Roses either. A far better band that changed lives and kicked ass on stage."

But That Bloke Out Of Manic Street Preachers admitted himself that he wanted his band to be a mix of Guns 'N' Roses and Public Enemy!!

No.

P.S. Yes you're right - the Manics did actually want to be a UK Guns n Roses/ Public Enemy. They were far too good to be the former in my humble opinion.

P.P.S Funny yank story no.987 - I switched on Brass Eye one night and was killing myself laughing when one of the Americans got up and left, having neither laughed nor been offended. 'You know I don't think I get this type of humour' she said in her vacant Texan growl.

I think that having read the thread there seems to be far more of a connection than I would've thought abt before but I have never given much thought to Guns and roses (its just time and place, I guess).

Both bands are something you grow out of but you'll always remember the happy memories they gave you. In terms of sound it's different and the same. I definetely get the stones' comparison to both and lyrically they did appeal to adolescents, just like every other band who had some degree of success. Guns n'Roses are surely more in the minds of other bands because they were huge. The smiths had a few chart hits in the UK but were a cult following.

Nirvana's seuccess of course, is due to the use of the power chord. they were a heavy metal band with diff. lyrical themes (though maybe not so far from the Roses). grunge is what you get when you splice punk w/heavy metal.

Its amazing to think Calum has a degree. He is acting like some bad comedian out of the 1970s (Bernard Manning comes to mind). No wonder Mark E Smith hates students. Like nabisco, i thought he must have been 13 or so. It boggles the mind.

''Sorry, everyone for acting embarrassingly like Julio and even bothering to engage over this one.''

Oh, come off it Nabisco...the way ILM is constructed, you can get into arguments that just snowball. You have argued at quite a lenght too and so have quite a few on the Sleeper thread. But yes, it is time to stop and get back into more constructive, thought-provoking discussions.

On the website Smith & Wesson, I could find only superficial similarites.
1. Controversial lyrics: not uncommon (great for publicity as well)
Now if they had controversial lyrics for the *same* reason,then
I would've been more impressed. But as it is, Moz's controversial lyrics are not nearly as controversial as "faggots, niggers, hating immigrants" of GNR's.
2. Bands featuring "one-named" members. Common as well.
3. Neither singers used their real name. Typically it's the singer who is "one-named" in which case obviously he would not be using his real name. Name-changing is quite common.
4. Both lead guitarists are from the UK, and neither used their real name. Here we go with the name thing again. Is it that big of a deal to mention it 3 times? It is interesting that both were from the UK however..
5. Members of both bands declare their supremacy. Quite common as well.

In the end, these parallels don't really stand out much.

The only major parallels I see between the two are the following:
1. Both GNR and The Smiths served to creating a huge buzz in their respective music worlds with continued fascination to this day.
2. Both bands seemed to have arrived at a musically dreary period and helped rejuvenate the music scene.
3. Both bands thrived on controversy.
4. Axel on quest for

the strokes' first impressions of earth = what "guns 'n' roses as the american version of the smiths" really sounds like? use your illusion I + strangeways?

(I still stand by my Weezer comparison as being apt for late nineties/early this decade time. Now, not so much.)

Bright Eyes is a much better place to start. But unforunately there is no American version of the Smiths. There couldn't be.

Plus one was a stadium rock outfit who were in it for the money the drugs and the groupies.

And some members of the Smiths weren't?

i am not american, and i am still horny over the september reelease date for chinese democracy

-- Queen I am neither Buffy nor the Messiah G (effexxo...) (webmail), June 29th, 2002 2:00 AM.

So axl ended up being less racist than morrissey

has morrissey ever came out with anything as bad "one in a million"? i mean he's obv a racist but come on.

Bengali in Platforms is probably an obvious one.

I think bengali is kinda worse in a way

haha previous ilm discussion of "bengali in platforms" is sort of weird

It's more smug and paternal and super condescending

And because axl is so emotional and scattershot and troubled than moz, I'm more inclined to believe he was channeling his ugly feelings from when he first moved to l.a., where miz again and again has said out of line shit and always seems really calculating and manipulative in how he presents it

i don't know that morrissey is not troubled, but i guess his persona is lot less volatile than axl's, yeah

nice Morrissey quote:

"Did you see the thing on the news about their treatment of animals and animal welfare?" he said. "Absolutely horrific. You can't help but feel that the Chinese are a subspecies."

I think if we're looking for proof or racism, we might have something definitive hidden away in that sentence.

Blue Oyster Cult.

in a better world, perhaps

there was the whole "wrapping himself in a Union Jack in front of a large crowd of skinheads" incident to add to Moz's record too.

'Skinheads' or Morrissey fans?

it was a Madness concert in the early 90s, in Finsbury Park. The way the NME painted it, there were a lot of NF types there.

Right. Far be it for me to defend Morrissey (there's a first time for everything) but it's hardly his fault if some other band's fans contain a few fascists.

Suggs from Madness was like best friends with the dude from Skrewdriver right? I thought Madness had a lot of ties to WP skinhead stuff under the surface

xp But to then wrap oneself in the flag, in the full knowledge of the type of audience you're in front of, seems ill-advised at best, and extremely dodgy at worst.

Suggs from Madness was like best friends with the dude from Skrewdriver right? I thought Madness had a lot of ties to WP skinhead stuff under the surface

Well, there was a rumour that he'd been friends with a guy from Skrewdriver, not the main guy, but who knows? And a lot of Madness' early fans were skinheads so, given that scene at the time, it's likely there were a few wrong 'uns among them.

i'm not gonna post stuff from skrewdriver bio sites, but anyway i found a bunch of wiki stuff that said suggs worked as a roadie for skrewdriver and when suggs moved out to his own house the ian main dude took his old room and lived with sugg's mom in her house for a while

(i guess that was "stuff" i meant links)

Wow.

"Sorry to bother you, Mrs McPherson, but do you think could you turn down that recording of Hitler's address to the Reichstag please? I can't hear what Shaw Taylor's saying on Police 5."

"Oh sorry love, that's the lodger, what's he like? He does love 'is Adolf, bless 'im!"

By the way, from Shaw Taylor's wiki page:

Taylor was a boyhood friend of the writer Anthony Burgess, who published his novella A Clockwork Orange in 1962, the same year Police 5 was first broadcast. The novella's central character - Alexander the Large - was said to be loosely based on Taylor, who was interested in violent crime from a very early age and also had a rare gift for the English language, as demonstrated by his "Keep 'em peeled" catchphrase.

... this is surely bollocks? Taylor is from Hackney and Burgess was a Manc for starters.

If it hadn't already been done to death, I'd have launched a Smiths website. But too many already. So I decided instead to launch a website around the music of two other great songwriters - Cathal Coughlan and Sean O'Hagan. On https://coughlanohagan.com/, I think I'm building up something worthwhile. Hope you enjoy it.

I'd think American Music Club might fit the bill. Arch self deprecating lyricist over classic melodic rock though there's a lot more country in it alongside Nick Drake and stuff.
Singer even came out of the closet later but is thankfully not a rabid patriot or xenophobe.