ASK/PANIC: I will take a break from grading.
The Smiths are one of those bands for me: in the period (roughly from 8th grade to 11th grade) when my musical allegiances were up for grabs, they staked a claim. Other bands in this category: R.E.M. (first and foremost), The Rolling Stones, Patti Smith Group (I listened to Oasis, but they have fallen off since; I listened to Sleater-Kinney, but didn't really appreciate them until recently). These bands being early and formative, they get forgiven a number of faults. In order: the three bad records they made after Bill Berry left the band; pretty much everything they've done since 1981; and songs like "Citizen Ship," where the earnestness of the politics outweighs the musical merit, and not in a good way.
The Smiths are a perfect band to like when you are in the 15-17 age range, encountering the possibility of love and dealing with your own feelings of alienation (I'd suspect the correlation between liking The Smiths and attending grad school is very, very high). "How Soon Is Now?" "What Difference Does It Make?" or "The Boy With the Thorn in His Side" are all songs for you (whoever the 'you' is), because they are--to some extent--about you. Perhaps it's better to say they give a language to articulate a new set of feelings at the moment that language is most needed.
I am not 15-to-17 anymore, and am fast approaching the point where the high end of that range was a decade ago. I am tied to them at this point, so jettisoning is not an option (but please do not ask when the last time I listened to Strangeways Here We Come was). How does one best approach them?
Well, Johnny Marr (their guitar player) was a man of enormous musical gifts, and it shows in the strength of their songs, especially the epic ones (e.g. "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out"). But I think their great strength is as a pop band that focused on the slightly absurd:
Thus "Panic", ending with the chorus of children.
Thus also "Ask", containing one of my favorite lyrics: "spending warm summer days indoors/writing frightening verse to a bucktoothed girl in Luxembourg."
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
2 comments:
Hear, hear. Another great lyric from "Ask": "If it's not love, then it's the bomb, the bomb, the bomb that will bring us together."
Perhaps the apex of silly fun in a Smiths song, though, has to be "Shoplifters of the World" (not nearly as good musically as the two you mentioned, but hands down sillier). "Girlfriend in a Coma" is not too bad either.
"Shoplifters" is surprisingly fun to play on guitar, though I tend to think it's at least somewhat serious, because of the bridge; I'd also put "Cemetry Gates" on that list, though I feel like it might get its own post at some point.
"Girlfriend in a Coma" has always struck me as too gimmicky, and it's responsible for one of the worst books I've ever read (_Girlfriend in a Coma_ by Douglas Coupland). It's an unfair bias against the song, but I have it all the same.
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