'Sixteen, clumsy and shy' when I met 'The Smiths' for the second time.

My first meeting with ‘The Smiths’ was somewhere around the winter of 2002 when seeing the Charles Hawtrey ‘Greatest Hits’ cover in the Bargain Bin of Woolworths. After much thought and thinking Hawtrey was the frontman of the band, I never did purchase the album unbeknown to the effect that this band would have on me just less than a decade later.
This may come as a surprise to many that know me but I never listened to ‘The Smiths’ growing up due to the parents advice of them being ‘suicidal’ and ‘depressing.’At around the age of 15, I’d tackled ‘Joy Division’ and ‘Oasis’ and was most often seen in a green parka after being bought up on 'The Jam' and repeat viewings of 'Quadrophenia.'
But I still believed the view that I’d heard from many around me that ‘The Smiths ‘were mundane and depressing.’

It was more co-incidence that I fell into them after listening to John Cooper Clarke and reading ‘A Taste of Honey’ and ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.’ It was almost as if Morrissey was the George Best of gritty Northern realism but he was frequently waiting on the subs-bench. I think the first ‘Smiths’ song that I listened to was ‘Suffer Little Children’ after reading online about the backlash from the families of the Moors Murders victims and seeing the ‘Oh Manchester’ line as a Facebook status. In an ideal world, I would say that I fell instantly in love with them but this would be massively untrue. Nobody falls instantly in love with ‘The Smiths.’

In the early stages, Morrissey is almost like a temptress who you keep returning to but unsure until the fourth meeting why you actually are. For me, it’s his budding melancholy, his sense of anti-establishment, his Wildean prose and an ability to bring back the glamour of the British New Wave. I’d go as far as saying that the process of discovering your first band is as much a coming-of-age process as having your first pint, smoking your first cigarette or losing your virginity. In an article dedicating his love for Morrissey, Russell Brand adopted a similar approach in stating that turning ’15.. Puberty basically’ is when ‘The Smiths become incredibly relevant' (Brand 2010). Every Smiths song takes this new found world of experience to a greater degree than any other band from 'Oasis' to 'The Libertines' with the motif of their catalogue being focused around being 'sixteen, clumsy and shy’ is something which reaches into the weakest and most 'vulnerable of places... and glorifies it' (Brand 2010)..

For me as brilliant as the music side is, I return to ‘The Smiths’ weekly if not daily for Morrissey's lyrics. When asked why I love his lyrics to this degree, I’m often lost for words with a lump in the back of my throat, such as the case now. I’d go as far as saying why I adore his lyrics is like the British New Wave, them almost being Jacobean (a blend of comedy and tragedy). ‘Cemetery Gates’ in anybody else’s hands would be a morbid narrative of death and depression. But with Morrissey is somehow a battle between two teenagers of who can quote more Wilde and Yates. As controversial as this will be, I’d place Morrissey on the same steeple as the likes of Joyce, Wilde and Sillitoe. ‘Still Ill’ is as much for Manchester as ‘Dubliners’ is for Ireland, the underlying temptation in anything from ‘Reel Around the Fountain’ to ‘I Have Forgiven Jesus’ in his solo career could be suited to Wilde himself. Whilst every setting of every of Morrissey's anecdotes and every album cover belongs in a Barstow or Sillitoe novel.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to state that discovering ‘The Smiths’ has changed me. It’s almost like the line in Cameron Crowe’s ‘Almost Famous' in which the sister instructs her younger brother to listen to The Who’s ‘Tommy’ and he will ‘discover his entire future.’ I don’t think ‘The Queen is Dead’ showed me my entire future in a ‘Back to the Future’ sort of way but I do think discovering them changed me. Physically through  as embarrassing as this is to write, earlier this year taking a picture of Arthur Seaton (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning) into the barbers and replacing the curly mop for a short quiff. Whilst also mentally through Steven Patrick introducing me to Wilde, Yates and then through mutual friends being led to Orwell, Bronte, Burgess and the list goes on.  The fact that ‘The Smiths’ encouraged me to pick up a book again and that I’ve now applied to do ‘English Literature’ at university kind of documents their capacity to influence, which I like many will be eternally grateful.  

Now for one of the greatest songs ever made in my eyes;

'Do Me a Favour' and play this one.

1) Do I Wanna Know?

2) She's Thunderstorms

3) From the Ritz to the Rubble

4) Brianstorm

5) Teddy Picker

6) Crying Lightning

7) Dancing Shoes

8) Dangerous Animals

9) Pretty Visitors

10) Only Ones who Know

11) Do Me a Favour

12) 505

13) I Bet that you look Good on the Dancefloor

14) Cigarette Smoker Fiona

15) Fake Tales of San Francisco

16) Space Invaders

17) R U Mine?

18) Fluorescent Adolescent

19) Black Treacle

20) Mad Sounds

21) A Certain Romance

Encore

22) Too Much to Ask

23) Mardy Bum

24) When the Sun Goes Down

25) Secret Door

'Girls' - a symbol of post-feminism or Carrie and Samantha's hipster sibling?

Lena Dunham seems to have taken the Orson Welles approach with her HBO success ‘Girls’ (2012) by her writing, directing and producing it. Whether it’s as revolutionary as ‘Citizen Kane’ (1941) depends on your viewpoint. But it can’t be dismissed that it’s created a wide discussion upon subjects such as it’s all white cast and questioning whether it really is a symbol of post-feminism.

Many have suggested that ‘Girls’ acts as a spiritual successor to previous HBO series ‘Sex and the City’ (1998) with an additional degree of realism. Although as groundbreaking as the aforementioned was, it did conform to many typical roles. Whether it’s the women looking like they’ve just stepped off Sunset Boulevard or their only desires being to partake in lavish displays of conspicuous consumption. In ‘Girls’, Dunham makes no secret of repeating the construction of a group of women discovering America with the ‘Sex and the City’ poster looming over Shoshanna’s apartment like some form of deistic presence. Although Dunham has taken this construction and added fairly modern twists. From the witty post-feminist dialogue of Hannah questioning whether Marnie’s ‘sick of eating her boyfriend out’ due to him being the weaker of the two or the physical appearance of Hannah being strikingly different to other frontwomen of American comedy such as Deschanel of ‘New Girl.’ Whilst discussing this feminist viewpoint, it also wouldn’t be outrageous to claim that Dunham resembles directors such as Almodovar in her representation of men. The men of ‘Girls’ are a far cry from Mr Big of ‘SATC’ through often being either perverse, laughable or villainous by an obsession with their own sexual gratifications. Whether it’s the character of Adam who uses Hannah as a scapegoat for his own kinky and sadomasochistic desires or Chris O’Dowd’s character later in the series who attempts to orchestrate a threesome with Marnie and Jessa but fails miserably.

Although these symbols of independence are also the place which ‘Girls’ falters such as through Jessa being described as having the face of ‘Bridget Bardot’ but rather than hold the glamour of Bardot is more inclined towards a fictional Cara Develigne. Her frequency to state how ‘coke made [her] shit her pants’ and allow Jagger or Schubert to easily roll off her tongue with a playlist of Francoise Hardy and Jacques DuTronc often comes across as being irritating rather than independent.

It is also far from implicit that ‘Girls’ is very much filmed through a Woody Allen and Wes Anderson filtered lens. The most obvious comparison being with ‘Annie Hall’ (1977) through the New York landscape and Hannah’s rants in the show almost being similar to that of Alvy Singer’s cinema scene. Both seeing themselves as witty, charismatic and an individual from society. Whilst the explicit and uncomfortable depiction of sex could be suggested as being very much influenced by Allen’s style. ‘Girls’ also shares the other obvious comparisons through Hannah’s instience that she’s the ‘voice of a generation’ ticking the boxes of everything from Anderson’s ‘Rushmore’ (1998) to Chbosky’s ‘Perks of Being a Wallflower’ (1999). This seems to sound like a complaint but its more complimenting Dunham on bringing a quirky Juno-esque style to the usual manufactured humour of American sitcoms.

Ultimately, it’s evident that ‘Girls’ is something, which is entertaining, intriguing and interesting. Although on the matter of it being post-feminist, it falls similar to that of a ‘Destiny’s Child’ track. The material communicates ideas of female empowerment but the physical appearance often falters this with a line in the opening episode stating that it’s ‘like watching Clueless’ ringing very much true.