The Smiths - are they overrated or not?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by antonkk, Mar 4, 2011.

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  1. BeardedSteven

    BeardedSteven Forum Resident

    Location:
    Southern Indiana
    :yikes:
     
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  2. DrBeatle

    DrBeatle The Rock and Roll Chemist

    Location:
    Midwest via Boston
    All I've ever read over the years about it is that some of the crew have claimed as much (with regards to Moz). The other 3 absolutely did sneak off to eat steaks with the road crew, in their own words in both Rogan's and Fletcher's books.
     
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  3. Driver 8

    Driver 8 Senior Member

    I went on to become an English major, but, at 16, was not up on Wilde, Keats, Yeats, etc. I was already a budding Anglophile, thanks to the Beatles and Stones, and more recently, the Jam - what was a "tube station" exactly, anyway? - but being exposed to the Smiths records took all of those interests to a different level. That was when I started buying imported copies of the English weekly music papers - at first I was so clueless that I thought that the "Indie" chart in the Melody Maker listed records that were popular in India, no joke, but I soon figured out what was up, and my initial encounter with the Sniths (and with R.E.M.) led me to discover a whole other world of music beyond the American classic rock I had grown up with.
     
  4. DrBeatle

    DrBeatle The Rock and Roll Chemist

    Location:
    Midwest via Boston
    Interesting story on your background. I'm coming from a similar angle as well...I grew up on classic rock of my parents' era but it was mostly British (Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Who, Zeppelin, Cream, Hendrix (yes, I consider him a British act), Hollies, etc) and we made many trips to England for vacations when I was growing up. I also grew up watching Monty Python and British sitcoms, which were all played endlessly on the Boston PBS channel. So I've been an Anglophile pretty much my whole life. When I first heavily got into the Smiths and Moz in the early 1990s when I was a teenager, I had a pretty good grounding in their influences which led me to delve deeper into it. Once Britpop (Suede, Blur, Oasis, Bluetones, Charlatans, Mansun, Ride, Stone Roses among my favorites) in the 1990s hit (which was very exciting but difficult for an American to follow in those pre-internet days!) it all made sense to me.
     
  5. veloso2

    veloso2 Forum Resident

    this group has changed my life! thanks to the french revue les inrockuptibles! i still got their first single! saw them live in 1984. and we were not so many in France.
     
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  6. BeardedSteven

    BeardedSteven Forum Resident

    Location:
    Southern Indiana
    Just imagine if Morrissey got royalties for all the Wilde, Keats, and Yeats books he was responsible for selling over the years. I definitely got into Oscar Wilde because of Moz. Gladiolas too! :biglaugh:
     
  7. Driver 8

    Driver 8 Senior Member

    I didn't get to England until '91, but have been many times since, as my mother has been married to a Brit for quite some time, although they live in France. I was never a Monty Python fan, but I do remember discovering The Prisoner and The Avengers via PBS re-runs around the same time that the Smiths hit the U.S. Obviously anything like that, or the relics of the original 60s British Invasion - Beatles, Stones, the Connery James Bond movies, etc. had a great appeal.

    But, absolutely, in the pre-Internet days, so much more work was involved in keeping up with anything foreign. Most nights nowadays I watch French TV, via the miracle of YouTube and the Internet - something that would have been next-to-impossible in the 80s, when I would have killed to have somehow been able to watch Top of the Pops. I suppose perhaps there were people who mailed VHS tapes across the Atlantic then, but, again, it took a lot of work to pursue such interests then. Subscribing to the Melody Maker, which I did for many years, wasn't cheap.
     
  8. Driver 8

    Driver 8 Senior Member

    How long has Les Inrocks been published? Since the 80s? 70s? 60s?
     
  9. DrBeatle

    DrBeatle The Rock and Roll Chemist

    Location:
    Midwest via Boston
    Absolutely! I used to come home from England with armloads of NME and Melody Makers, as well as all of the CDs I couldn't find here (or had to buy on import). And as you said, it was impossible to watch any of the TV shows, especially the music shows, pre-2000. When I started college in 1997 and had internet and email for the first time in my life, it opened up an ENTIRE new world for music collecting and following my favorite bands. I sometimes wish all of that had existed earlier, but in other ways I'm glad it didn't...it made waiting for those crumbs of info or hearing that new single for the first time that much more special and impactful.
     
  10. Driver 8

    Driver 8 Senior Member

    This is true. Each new Melody Maker was like the Dead Sea Scrolls, to be read cover to cover. You would read about so many bands, from the Shop Assistants (remember them?) to Lush to Blur, and buy their import records, unheard, solely because of the evangelism of the MM, which invariably portrayed them as the most important band ever. But, yes, the degree of difficulty involved in even getting the records did make them more special, as much as I am sort of philosophically opposed to that notion, it was true.
     
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  11. veloso2

    veloso2 Forum Resident

    first issue in 1986! before them i readed the nme! les inrockuptibles were great until they became a weekly issue. the old issues of les inrocks are cult mainly the interview of serge Gainsbourg! a must read for the fans.
     
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  12. Driver 8

    Driver 8 Senior Member

    Je le lis aujourd'hui quand je peux. :righton:
     
  13. Billy Infinity

    Billy Infinity Beloved aunt

    Location:
    US
    No one is "overrated". No one is "underrated". You either like an artist's work or you don't.
     
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  14. AFOS

    AFOS Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brisbane,Australia
    I discovered The Smiths through reading second hand copies of Smash Hits. In 80's suburban Australia The Smiths were virtually unknown. I was into poetry by the time I heard them (thanks to Dead Poets Society) so I loved that aspect of Moz's lyrics. I also remember buying loads of 45's from the UK via mail order - many of them I'd never heard. I remember buying "19" by Paul Hardcastle because it had been a number one hit in the UK. Ah those wonderful pre-internet days!
     
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  15. mooseman

    mooseman Forum Resident

    I also picked up on the Smiths and many other new bands from reading the NME. I was lucky to have a radio station that played many of these groups, WLIR & later 80's WDRE, long Island NY.
    I remember always looking forward to picking up a new 12" ep from the Smiths back in the day. I still have all my original 12" & lps from Rough Trade records & Sire.
    Those record cover's were so fascinating to me even if I didn't know who the cover star's were.
    Here are a few other bands that influenced me from the Smiths sound. Early 90s UK groups.

    The Mock Turtles
    The La's
    The Boo Radleys
    Pale Saints
    Saint Etienne
    Gene
    Cud - ep
    Suede
    Teenage Fan Club
    Lloyd Cole
    Happy Mondays
    Blur
    [​IMG]
     
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  16. éder

    éder Forum Resident

    Been reading through all of your comments on The Smiths and i totally agree with every post you ve written. Nothing i can add.
    They changed my life and johnny Marr is the reason i picked up a guitar when i was 12 years old- he is also the reason i put it down again for a while ! His guitar work was so difficult for a novice.. 20 odd years later i can now play just about every smiths song. I would recommend learning the smiths to any budding rhythm guitarist. Marr's sense of rhythm and timing is superb and he had a magic right hand. To think that he was only 23 when the smiths split up !
    I rate the smiths as one of the best bands of all time without doubt. Not overrated in the slightest
     
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  17. edised

    edised Forum Resident

    Agreed, loads of lengthy interviews and nice black and white pictures back in the day.
    Now it is just another weekly newspaper, that has kept the same name but it's a really different magazine!

    then:

    [​IMG]

    and now:
    [​IMG]
     
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