There must be some obscure cosmic law about blows to ideologies coming in twos, as this is exactly what occurred to me last week when I was emotionally raped by Morrissey’s self-interested, publicity-hungry, compound adjective-saturated rant about sub-species to Simon Armitage, and then aurally raped by the equally self-interested, patronising and rather barren early Smiths offering ‘Meat is Murder’ which I’d checked out through a dubious combination of personal obligation and morbid curiosity (Rape rape rape rape rape rape rape – Guardian readers know what I’m talking about it).
Most people probably perceived the Morrissey/Armitage faceoff as a car crash days before it even took place, but maybe someone had decided to set the editor of G2 up for a fall – or indeed perhaps the editor wanted to watch from afar as sparks flied and all eyes turned reluctantly away from the tabloid centrefolds and onto the Guardian’s front page. Either way, the interview between M and A was by all accounts an absolute train wreck –for M at the very least – which barely succeeded in stretching beyond the usual sycophantic drivel of starry-eyed journalists (or poets in this case) being pissed on by their teenage idols. Enough of these pithy, corpulent sentences, goddamnit.
Morrissey is obsessed by animal rights – the cynic inside wants me to draw his attention to the wealth of crises and orgies of suffering which strike his own species, but I guess even fluffy cuddly little balls of cells also need some kind of spokesperson. There is an impressive backlog of Morrissey interviews carried out by celebrities and straight, respectable (ha ha) journalists alike which all contain the hallmarks of a bitter, anxious attitude towards the future, and this one was no different. People are used to Morrissey moaning and lamenting the loss of his melancholy yet totally fictitious Golden Age of the North, but they’re not used to poet laureates getting the verbal equivalent of a kick in the head. How ironic that Morrissey’s disdain for eating animals alive does not include fellow northerners, the hardiest and most obstinate species of them all.
The second blow came in the form of what I believe is the second Smith’s album, following their impressive yet flawed eponymous debut (not my words – except eponymous, because it’s a great word), aptly entitled ‘Meat Is Murder.’ The meat in question seemed to take on many forms throughout the album: initially it was the trembling, angst-ridden Manchester schoolboys, quivering with homesickness and fear of pseudo-homosexual punishment from their captors, ahem, teachers. Then it was the unrequited teenage lover, reduced to meat in the broil and beer-soaked hedonism of the local fair, pining and whining after one of many worthless whores, greater victims to their own caprices than anything which bandy-legged Indy kids could unleash on them. Then, finally, it was the fluffy, adorable little animals themselves (mainly cows, I believe, due to the cacophony of anguished mooing in the background) in the final track. This was, I suppose, intended to shock and horrify middle-class, ignorant contemporary listeners about the horrors of meat but it simply came across as patronising and self-righteous. Especially that awful, awful chorus.
There’s something rather beastly about dragging up a dated album and beating it into the ground. Especially from the standpoint of a generation already desensitized (raped?) by propaganda such as ‘Meet Your Meat’ (do check it out, it’s rather flamboyant, considering the subject matter) and all those other shock-tactics docudramas out there. Anyway, it’s unlikely that this latest Morrissey bomb is going to do any harm to the legions of die-hard Smiths fans out there – in fact, I’ll bet it even caused a sales spike in copies of Meat is Murder. Oh, I’m such a pig.
No comments:
Post a Comment