Maladjusted.

Hey everyone! So I finally finished putting together The Smiths/Morrissey ask meme. Feel free to record your responses however you want- but video/audio is preferred! I’m hoping this will serve as a fun way to get to know everyone in our community a bit better! c: 

Instructions: read aloud and answer each question!

Background questions:

Introduce yourself! (name, username, age, etc)

How did you get into The Smiths/Morrissey?

How long have you been listening to The Smiths/Morrissey?

Do you own any Smiths/Morrissey merchandise?

Are you a vegan, a vegetarian, or neither? (No judgement- just wondering!)

The Smiths questions:

What is/are your favourite Smiths album(s)?

Top five Smiths songs?

Least favourite Smiths songs?

Any favourite lyrics?

Favourite Smiths member and why?

Morrissey or Johnny Marr?

Do you think a Smiths reunion would ever work out?

Have you ever seen a Smiths cover band? Describe!

Morrissey questions:

What is/are your favourite Morrissey album(s)?

Top five Morrissey songs?

Least favourite Morrissey songs?

Any favourite lyrics? 

How about any favourite music videos?

Have you ever seen Morrissey live? Describe!

On a scale of 1-10 how badly do you want to punch Morrissey in the face?

Randoms!

The Smiths or Morrissey solo? 

Oscar Wilde or James Dean?

Other favourite bands/musicians? 

Interests outside of The Smiths/Morrissey?

Via LA Times:

“After the concert was halted, the promoter said that Morrissey agonized about his mistake and whether he should go back out and talk to the crowd.

"He was visibly upset at what had happened,” he said. “It was his decision not to go back on stage because he feared that what was started could not be stopped.”

Immediately after Morrissey summoned the crowd forward, some people jumped on stage to hug him while others trapped below the platform began screaming. Officials escorted the singer and his band off the stage, turned on the house lights and ordered the crowd to back away from the stage.

An hour later, when Morrissey had not returned, officials ordered the crowd to disperse. Outside, angry fans knocked down a souvenir sales tent and stole concert T-shirts and posters, witnesses said.

The concert was the first rock event at Pauley in a decade. UCLA officials said they will investigate Friday’s incident before deciding whether to stage future rock shows.

In all, 22 people were treated and released at UCLA Medical Center for a variety of minor injuries, most of them cuts and bruises, a hospital spokeswoman said. Fire officials said 26 others were treated at the scene.

Seventeen-year-old concert-goer Joan Moriarty said in an interview Saturday that security guards shoved the audience out of the pavilion. On her way out, she said, she saw a campus police officer wearing a riot helmet repeatedly strike a young girl’s back and legs with a baton as she screamed on the ground.

A second police officer grabbed a camera from a photographer recording the incident, Moriarty said, and slammed the camera to the pavement, shattering its lens.

UCLA spokeswoman Billeci, who attended the concert, said she did not observe any violence nor did officers report any. Campus police officials could not be reached for comment.“

I’ve seen a few people argue that - Adam Sherwin of The Independent, for instance, who wrote:

‘Literary critics may have missed an elaborate metaphor at the heart of the book. For its four young heroes – Ezra, Nails, Harri, Justy – read Morrissey, Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce of The Smiths. The relay team is “four wheels of the one machine”, just like The Smiths in their pomp.

Their dazzling promise is destroyed by their encounter with an evil force – the devious record industry. Where The Smiths ended in court cases and acrimony, see how Morrissey revels in the painful destruction of his protagonists’ lives, leaving Ezra a martyred figure who acted in the interests of them all but is himself fated never to achieve true happiness.’

Aside from the fact that I think that Eliza is and is meant to be a more sympathetic character than Ezra (until she blames Noah Barbelo for his own assault, I would say the only sympathetic character), this theory just doesn’t stand up for me personally, because I don’t think any of them fit neatly with any of The Smiths.

If Ezra is Morrissey, why is he the most “heterosexually resolved” when Morrissey is the least, and why does he not know who Thatcher and Reagan are when Morrissey so passionately despises them (as Eliza does)?

Then, out of the remaining three (or four, if we include Dibbs), who are Johnny, Andy and Mike (and Craig?)?

We are frequently reminded that Nails and Justy are sexually isolated, but this was true only of Morrissey during the Smiths days (and at various times subsequently - I don’t know when exactly Andy and Mike got married, but they and Johnny were all married by the time of the court case).

I suppose it could be argued that Harri is meant to represent Andy in that he disappears from the group (though obviously under very different circumstances) and has to be replaced by a less preferable alternative, and there are similarities between the other boys’ drunken dialogue about him immediately following his funeral and the lyrics to Sunny, which lots of people speculate was written about Andy, but I don’t know that his personality matches up with Andy’s all that well, and while Morrissey didn’t particularly like Craig Gannon, I don’t think he hated him enough to want him kicked to the floor (and by who? Johnny or Mike? Johnny also seemed to get tired of him, but I’ve never read anything to suggest that he hated him). If there’s anyone Morrissey would want kicked to the floor it would be Mike, but that doesn’t fit in with the structure.

I would suggest that all of the characters contain elements of Morrissey himself and elements of originality rather than one being based on himself and the rest on other people in his life. That said, the “four wheels of the one machine” line is interesting, as is the fact that everything falls apart once one wheel falls off - which makes me think that Harri’s suicide is more likely inspired by Johnny leaving than there being any other, simpler relationship between the relay team and The Smiths - which makes this dialogue (which comes from Nails, not Ezra, but again, I think there is something of Morrissey in all of them, not just in Ezra) all the sadder:

“He’d walk across the field … towards me … with that strong stride and stupid with smiles, and I’d be happy just to hear whatever the hell would stream out of him on that day, on any day … that open face … that knowing grin … that grin I’d known all of my life … before we’d even met. I grew up on tales of his exploits, I knew his body like I knew my own.”

There are some parallels to be drawn with Late Night, Maudlin Street there.