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.

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.