wfgodot
Former Member
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2009
- Messages
- 30,166
- Reaction score
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I'd rather tell my The First Time I Heard the Smiths tale while Moz is gloriously alive -- and thus for many years to come hope so to be able to do; here it is.
Yes I'd heard of them but, in those pre-internet days, stuck in a record store-less town, in airwaves stll hostile to anything new (radio-wise we'd completely missed punk, and the unspeakable status quo was to reign grimly till Nirvana's put-paid arrival), I'd not chanced actually to hear that singular voice and that chiming guitar, to parse our those remarkable lyrics, to experience the old thrill of rock and roll renewal.
Till I found a couple of their LPs -- an import and a stateside release, iirc -- and of course bought them both immediately.
Segue to a garden party the next day, hosted by yrs trly -- or, rather, an outdoor bbq cookout on a plain city street in a plain midwestern town in a plain plains state, a clutch of college friends back from their lives and a further reckoning of we who had yet to get away and in escaping find our destiny.
Smiths platter laid onto the turntable from its freshly unwrapped sleeve, and
I am the son
and the heir
of a shyness
that was
criminally vulgar
I am the sun and air....
That sweet glorious ache that band made spilled upwards above and filled the neutral Kansas sky; friends paused in mid-beer to hear what can only be described as an event. Mission successful; again renewal: to quote the old VU chestnut from what seemed like centuries before, Lou's words with only a hint of accompanying hyperbole,
Oooh my life was saved by rock and roll, / Rock and roll.
Thanks Smiths; thanks SPM. Long may you run.
Yes I'd heard of them but, in those pre-internet days, stuck in a record store-less town, in airwaves stll hostile to anything new (radio-wise we'd completely missed punk, and the unspeakable status quo was to reign grimly till Nirvana's put-paid arrival), I'd not chanced actually to hear that singular voice and that chiming guitar, to parse our those remarkable lyrics, to experience the old thrill of rock and roll renewal.
Till I found a couple of their LPs -- an import and a stateside release, iirc -- and of course bought them both immediately.
Segue to a garden party the next day, hosted by yrs trly -- or, rather, an outdoor bbq cookout on a plain city street in a plain midwestern town in a plain plains state, a clutch of college friends back from their lives and a further reckoning of we who had yet to get away and in escaping find our destiny.
Smiths platter laid onto the turntable from its freshly unwrapped sleeve, and
I am the son
and the heir
of a shyness
that was
criminally vulgar
I am the sun and air....
That sweet glorious ache that band made spilled upwards above and filled the neutral Kansas sky; friends paused in mid-beer to hear what can only be described as an event. Mission successful; again renewal: to quote the old VU chestnut from what seemed like centuries before, Lou's words with only a hint of accompanying hyperbole,
Oooh my life was saved by rock and roll, / Rock and roll.
Thanks Smiths; thanks SPM. Long may you run.
