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 too overly dramatic and lacking in music "quality" for me. And it didn't help when they were featured in an Anthony Michael Hall flm!) 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 sets of words, "deathly thin" and, more important, "cheek bones"] and my friend was, dare I sound gay (in the fashion of "Interview With The Vampire"), 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, they 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 ("How Soon Is Now"). 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"
First off, it sounds kind of silly. But the way he sings it, the way he sells it, my god, he sounds so real, so convinced that you know that he went thought that. The same damn thing that you've gone through. It was a point of contact. Forever emblazoned on my mine. 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 ever 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, while I had nothing.
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 situations in these songs by these bands. I used to cut myself. I'd meditate, call storms, and perform strange rituals (one with "the" goth friend I had on Lamas eve (eve of May 1st) which left him in awe of me, partially for cutting my left palm over and over with a dull manchette to get a good amount of blood flowing. And partially for the actual real deal sensation of a dark and cold being passing through the drainage ditch and through us.) My gods how I miss those pagan days. I wonder if I can call them back again?
At that time I was 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 abruptly ending your existence for so much silliness.
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 actual 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 crowd 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 come's since you, duh, knows so much about Goth music, duh, and you hang out with people in the, duh, Goth scene that you don't dress Goth?, huh?"
One time I got in a real burn on someonewho asked me that, which was quickly ignored as all truly good burns are (who want's to dwell?), I gave him 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 Smiths 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 a popular 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;
I had my solemn dignity and personal fashion that was more Gothic than any of you posers. Yes, sometimes those at the top of the top, the crème de la crème were the biggest posers of them all.
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, soc's, or jock crowd. Had your own kinds of "jocks" and "geeks." And I was beneath you because I didn't wear... oh ye god's and little fishes, because I didn't. fucking. wear. Eyeliner...
Piss of to the lot of you!
