The Smiths (1 Viewer)

[Lili Marlene]

Well, there you go then.

I kinda meant in the sense that it's incongruous to their regular output (Train) and it's got chicks singing on it (Hitsville)

I'll take back that WTF so.

although considering Sandinista! is about a third of their released output it's not that incongruous

Save it for the Clash thread though.

How about dem Smiths?

 

[Lili Marlene]

Here is a picture of Morrissey with Sparks

 

[Richie]

Ha! Two of my all-time favourite tunes.

Just consulting Wiki, I think there are a couple of b-sides, besides Jeanne, not covered on those comps....Work Is A Four Letter Word and I Keep Mine Hidden. Neither of which are their most exemplary work, imo.
Jeanne is deadly though. I first downloaded it from a fan-site in 1996. It took about a day and a half and the oul lad nearly had a seizure but he loved the Smiths too so it was grand in the end.

Jeane is from the sessions they did with Troy Tate.. if you can find a high-quality bootleg of that whole session (there are a lot of torrents and downloads around) plenty of people think it's a better representation of their early stuff than their actual first album. Wonderful Woman is another great song from that session that got relegated to B-side status.

 

[nlgbbbblth]

Go for edit

 

[nlgbbbblth]

Go for Hatful of Hollow first 'cause it's deadly.
This, The World Won't Listen and Louder Than Bombs cover most other things except

Accept Yourself (single version)
Ask (single version) ****
Barbarism Begins At Home (single edit) *
The Boy With The Thorn In His Side (single version) **
The Draize Train
Handsome Devil (live) *
How Soon Is Now? (single edit)
I Keep Mine Hidden
Jeane *
Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me (single edit) *
Meat Is Murder (live)
Money Changes Everything ***
Nowhere Fast (live)
Rusholme Ruffians (Peel session)
Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others (live)
This Charming Man (single version) *
This Charming Man (London)
This Charming Man (New York) *
This Charming Man (Instrumental)
This Charming Man (remix)
What Difference Does It Make? (single edit)
What's The World *
William It Was Really Nothing (Peel session)
Wonderful Woman *
Work Is A Four Letter Word
Work Is A Four Letter Word (single edit)

* Can be found on the deluxe 2CD version of The Sound Of The Smiths so you'll need that too.
** Appears on The World Won't Listen original LP or CD; not the remaster.
*** Appears on The World Won't Listen remaster; not the original LP or CD.
**** Find it on 2001's Very Best Of The Smiths

You'll need to buy the 12"s or CD singles to get the others.

SMITHS SOUND QUALITY
1 - Rough Trade CDs
2 - Rough Trade LPs
3 - Remastered CDs
4 - Remastered LPs
5 - Warner Brothers CDs
6 - Rough Trade 10"s

 

[therealjohnny]

I'll have to listen to this later; what's the interweb saying about it?

I'm guessing that originally linked to something else
I'm a bit confused

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

That's brilliant, thanks nlgbbbblth!

** Appears on The World Won't Listen original LP or CD; not the remaster.
*** Appears on The World Won't Listen remaster; not the original LP or CD.

Ugh, record collector frustration levels rising.

 

[Hector Grey]

I've come to the opinion that the good stuff the Smiths did was the aberration, not the bad stuff. They had so much awful shit. These days I can only listen to HOH.

I think I may not have come to this conclusion were Morrissey not such an extreme tool. I'll happily extrapolate at length. For money.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Smiths are one of my all-time favourites.
Morrissey is worth maybe a single per album but is a colossal fuckhead for whom we should wish death, if only to bring us silence.

 

[CinnamonBoy]

I've come to the opinion that the good stuff the Smiths did was the aberration, not the bad stuff. They had so much awful shit. These days I can only listen to HOH.

I think I may not have come to this conclusion were Morrissey not such an extreme tool. I'll happily extrapolate at length. For money.

That's insane. I'd be of the opinion that of the roughly 125 tunes they wrote, there simply isn't a bad one.

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

The first two albums are fairly patchy. Would have made two great EPs.

 

[Hector Grey]

That's insane. I'd be of the opinion that of the roughly 125 tunes they wrote, there simply isn't a bad one.

Yeah, some of them go beyond bad.

 

[CinnamonBoy]

Yeah, some of them go beyond bad.

What tunes do you not like? I'm no Smiths fascist, just interested.

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

I'd be of the opinion that of the roughly 125 tunes they wrote, there simply isn't a bad one.

I'm no Smiths fascist, just interested.

These things seem at odds with each other.

 

[CinnamonBoy]

These things seem at odds with each other.

Nah, I just find something worthy in all of their tunes. Even Golden Lights.
(I'm probably unfamiliar with the concept of someone just liking the Smiths, as opposed to the likes of me who are (or were) completely obsessed by them.)

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Nah, I just find something worthy in all of their tunes. Even Golden Lights.
(I'm probably unfamiliar with the concept of someone just liking the Smiths, as opposed to the likes of me who are (or were) completely obsessed by them.)

That's fair enough.

I'll take a Smiths obsessive a 100 times before a Morrissey one.

 

[Hector Grey]

What tunes do you not like? I'm no Smiths fascist, just interested.

Dearie me, how much time do we have.
There are levels of annoyance. There's some songs that seems mean, some that are nonsense, some that are frivilous. The entire first album is so poorly produced it's leaden, even the good songs struggle to shin (that's why HOH is so important.) Then there's the ones that are just fucking annoying, like The Boy With The Thorn..

People have said that TQID is their best album. Why? Is it because There is a Light... is on it? Because it also has Some Girls..(ugh..filler?) Frankly, Mister Shankly, Vicar in a Tutu which are all flimsy, to be kind, and the execrable Cemetery Gates which i'm blaming for a whole raft of mid-eighties tweedom.

When I was young, this stuff was important to me. I outgrew the Smiths, I suppose. There's still some great stuff in there, but I'd put it at less than 40% of their out put. Lots of it is relatively benign, but quite a bit is just shite. Rusholme Ruffians, it doesn't make me want to puke. It makes me want to fast forward. Meat is Murder is one of the most laughable things of all time. This shite ruins are perfectly good record.

Anyway, I could be here all day. Morissey is a terrible thing altogether, and himself and Marr's way of running the Smiths ship was a model of poor practice. When you listen to HOH you hear just how important Rourke and Joyce are, and yet they were treated as session musicians. But that's a whole nother argument. I mean, people still watch Polanski movies, and he's a cunt.

Basically what happened was when Autobiography came out (which I haven't read) the missus went on a Smiths binge and we listened to everything for the first time in a while, and I was struck by how much of it is utterly substance-less. Given that Morissey is such a pain in the bolix, that conclusion was a pretty easy, and satisfying, one to reach.

I'll leave it at that. I'm sure you've other stuff to be getting on with. One day we'll go through each song, song by song, and weigh up the relative merits. There are still some Smiths songs that I think are incredible. But probably less than there are U2 songs that are pretty awesome. Yeah, I went there. Sue me.

 

[CinnamonBoy]

I'll take a Smiths obsessive a 100 times before a Morrissey one.

Morrissey's patchiness has broken my heart

 

[7 - No tomorrow]

Morrissey's patchiness has broken my heart

The patchiness of his mental health?

Totally with you there.

 

[CinnamonBoy]

I'm sure you've other stuff to be getting on with. .

No actually, I'll collect my dole in the afternoon.

Some interesting points you make, and I abhor the production on the 1st album, which is why I listen to the Tate version or session versions. And TQID is great but Strangeways pisses all over it. An extraordinary album.

As regards frivolous tunes....sure there are but a heap of bands would give their right arms to have them as they almost all contain at least a killer riff, a clever lyric or a mind boggingly good bassline.

And for the record, the Boy With the Thorn in His Side is in my top 5. The guitar in it is just sublime. Great outro too.