Inspired by; First Time Hearing The Smiths, And It's Not A Boy Band?! "How Soon Is Now" Graces My Ears!
I'm not a huge "Smiths" fan. That doesn't mean I don't think they're good, in fact I think they're legendary, it's just that at that time I was double obsessed with Bauhaus and Skinny Puppy (never was much of a Cure fan. I always thought their "hit" songs sounded like commercial jingles for soap or cleaning agents. And Siouxsie Sioux was a bit to overly dramatic and lacking in music quality for me.) Anyway, I had two prep school friends who were really into The Smiths, and at that time I just didn't get it. Looking back it's because I just didn't give them a chance. I had always dismissed them as a silly flavour of the weak band ("Vicar in a Tutu" and all that).
It wasn't until I heard this song one night on a drive with my best friend and two goth girls who had no interest in either one of us (possibly gay? I was considered "hot" in the goth boi world [two words, "deathly thin" and two more important words, "cheek bones"] and my friend was, dare I sound gay, very beautiful. So, I think these girls must have been gay to have absolute "zero" interest in us driving alone at night to their empty house where I fell asleep very uncomfortably on their floor. [Funnily enough, one of them was in my History Class when she was a Senior and I was a Junior and I was about a hairs breadth from being her prom date, hehe.])
So, anyway, that had the Smiths dubbed on cassette and were singing to it furiously and dramatically in the car, once again me "not getting it" and then I heard this song. And that was the first time I took The Smiths seriously because of this one simple but tragic verse:
"There's a club if you'd like to go
You could meet somebody who really loves you"
"So you go and you stand on your own
And you leave on your own
And you go home and you cry
And you want to die"
IMO, easily some of the greatest lyrics in any song I've ever heard of theirs. And to take it further, one of the greatest set of lyrics I've every heard. It just summed up my teenage life in those few lines. I mean, everyone has felt lonely and unwanted. But all the kids I knew in the "goth" scene were at least in a "social group" and had girl friends, boy friends or both and I had nothing.
"Just me and my best friend. I'm taking a ride with my best friend." --Depeche Mode
But I was kind of the unknown poster boy for the actual social situation often lamented by Gothic Crooners. However much the goth kids played up their "sublime despair." Aside from the parental problems [quite common in these kids] I was the one who was closer to the very definition of the social AND mental situation of these songs by these bands [continually suicidal to the point of so much of an obsession with suicide that I studied it and wrote papers on it and came to realize how absolutely fucking stupid it is, and there's nothing "Gothically Romantic" about ending your existence. I always loved the quote [sorry, don't know who said it]: "suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem."]
So, when I heard these girls sing this verse with such joy and happiness I thought, "what the fucking actual fuck." Did they not hear what he was saying? Did they not program it? Was I the only one who could be confused as the person in the lyrics? Ah, I learned later on, fuck 'em. Bunch a kids who couldn't make it in the pop crowd so they made their own pop crowed but called it the "goth" crowd but it still had all the top kids, middle kids, lower kids. You have to dress this way, have your hair this way, and above all, every boy had to wear eyeliner.
"How comes since you know so much about Goth music and you hang out with people in the Goth scene that you don't dress Goth?"
One time when I got in a real burn on someone which was quickly ignored, I gave a simple answer to that one, "because 'my' parents love me. And it would cause them great distress to see me in eyeliner." I actually said that to one kid, he kind of deflated like a balloon, but then tried to think about it, perhaps philosophically, and just gave up and started talking about drilling a 13 year old girl [sicko] although it should be noted he was barely 16 and couldn't drive, so they were actually only around 2 years apart. Either way, "contributing to the delinquency of a minor" was a federal Penn type offence where I lived.
Anywho, just to piss all the Smith fan's off, I always much preferred the 1990's cover by the guy from the Psychedelic Furs with his 90's band "Love Spit Love" to the original. It just sounded so much more tragic. Morrisey's vocals were too on spot and on que and sounded exactly like they "should" sound, which was like vanilla, or fluffy chocolate icing. "Love Spit Love" was kind of loose and wild like a Rolling Stones song (following the bass player as opposed to the drummer.)
"When you say "it's gonna happen now"
Well, when exactly do you mean?
See I've already waited too long
And all my hope is gone."
Fuck all you 80's goth kids, you couldn't tell "Kick in the Eye" from the Cure. Couldn't tell "Dancing at the Funeral Party" from Bauhaus. Had absolutely no clue what the name of Skinny Puppy song that was playing was, much less the album. You had your black Jeanie pants and your liquid eyeliner and your teased up hair and I had my solemn dignity that was more Gothic than any of those posers. I actually read the Gothic vampire stories and books. I actually went places, alone, quite often, haunting, and reveled in my solitary existence. While you all just hung together just like any preppie crowd. Had your own kinds of "jocks" and "geeks." Piss of to the lot.
