Never mind all that, what about the proposed Smiths musical in the west end?

(I would see a Smiths musical in a HEARTBEAT.)

On the Smiths-tribute front: That emo Smiths tribute album I got that Ryko put out is horrible. Just horrible. It doesn't help that it sounds like the same band playing every song. Why do all emo singers have to sing like that?

Now you have put a thought up for me. Wire? I might well do that one.

easy script to learn though...

1st Student: "Yo"
2nd Student: "Yo. Yo!"
3rd and 4th student: "Yo! Yo?"
1st Student: "yo."

I don't know if the Smiths would really be suitable for such treatment.

http://yesmuseum.org/images/RickOnIce.JPG

That deaf, dumb and blind kid sure makes a mean (Swedish) meatball? That jolly, bearded Swedish fellow sure plays a mean mock glockenspiel on his keyboard?

http://www.lacunae.com/hatful.htm

Good Lord. I joked about this back in college, but my then-girlfriend agreed with me that it should only ever be called "It Happens A Lot 'Round Here".

The show's title: Handsome Devil On My Trail. The story: a troubled young Stephen Patrick Morrissey, hellbent on becoming a cinema star, goes down to the Mancunian crossroads to sell his soul to expedite said stardom. Instead of meeting Old Nick (Nick Lowe, who ends up appearing later in the show, with a leggy chorine Carlene Carter doing a high-kick dance number) he has a furtive encounter with a seedy old bluesman which convinces him to change plans and become a blues singer. Relevant lyric: "I thought that if you had an acoustic guitar that meant that you were a protest singer," but young Moz realizes that in fact a guitarslinger doesn't have to sing the protest, in fact it is his personal calling to sing the blues.

Early blues-type versions of bits and pieces of Smiths classics are tinkered and toyed with:

This is the last night of the fair, and the grease in the hair
Strum-strum-strum-strum-strum.
This IS the last night of the fair, and all that grease in the hair
Strum-strum-strummety-strum-strum
I went and told that big wheel operator, it's crucial someone so handsome should care.

I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour, but heaven knows I'm miserable now.
I was happy in that haze of the drunken hour, but Lord knows I've got the misery now
I've looked up and down the schoolyard, but those Rusholme Ruffians have taken my milkcow.

I haven't worked out all the details yet, but you can bet there is a boffo breakthrough moment when, with the help of his songwriting partner, he realizes that the strictures of the blues form have had him "pinned and mounted like a butterfly" for some time and now that he is free, he can put in as many bars as he wants, and sing whatever he wants as high as he wants, still delivering that blues feeling, but with a little Oscar Wilde wit thrown in to spice up the mix.