In tomorrow’s guide…

"Meeting is murder: Break out the gladioli as Grace Dent hunkers down for a weekend of devout worship with an army of Morrissey’s die-hard fans ."

Paddy Morosey

is there a colour picture of the bum and flowers?

are bloody awful

I can almost swear that deano is on that cover.

It's a pity Ms Dent focuses more on propagating the idea that not only are Smiths fans maudlin, self-obsessed mopers but these days are AGING and PORTLY maudlin, self- obsessed mopers rather than informing on the validity of the lectures given.
The whole symposium seems to have been treated with sniggers from the press and perhaps rightly so- it's hard to know without actually having been present. The Smiths music, well, Morrissey's lyrics, had such strong resonance for so many people I can easily imagine how properly researched lectures on the topic could build an interesting and revealing portrait of mid eighties English culture.

Quite.

Hey Everyone...I have a joke to share with everyone..lets see if any of you can get this right..ok heres the question.

"What does Moz say after he takes a crap?"

any guesses?

then what was that fight all about at the Star And Garter then? Not the behaviour of someone 'good and kind'.

I think all British (and Irish) children born henceforth should be issued a Morrissey CD at birth. He is truly a national treasure, 'ee is! eat 'im with a spoon.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/music/story/0,,1464880,00.html

Meeting is murder

Academics and fans gathered in Manchester this month to dissect the impact of the Smiths. Grace Dent hears tortured tales of dead dogs, bisexual love triangles and lonely youths

Saturday April 23, 2005
The Guardian

The Smiths outside the Salford Lads Club featured on the band's The Queen is Dead album, and (below) Kirsty Wardle a Morrissey fan. Photograph: Stephen Wright
 
Inside the registration hall, in a sea of greying quiffs, chunky glasses and blazers, a coffee morning for the chronically shy is in full swing. Today at the Manchester Institute for Popular Culture, an academic symposium on the music of the Smiths is underway. Cups and saucers clatter nervously in trembly hands as the 150 mild-mannered Morrissey-fixated academics are forced to mingle and munch ginger snaps. "I had this old battered VHS tape of the Smiths' 1987 South Bank Show special," one doctor of sociology confesses, "and it got to the stage where I couldn't function unless I watched it every day before school. In the end I could recite the whole show wordperfectly. Even Melvyn Bragg's links."

I nod furiously in empathy, remembering the solemn teenage day my brother taped over my own revered South Bank Show tape with Teen Wolf 2. As a Morrissey disciple, I was annihilated. It felt like he'd dried up with the Turin Shroud. In shadowy corners, academics avoid eye-contact, burying their faces in course hand-outs and lurking behind potted fronds, praying that don't have to make small talk about their papers sporting titles like Irish Blood, English Heart: Nationality, Subjectivity And The Smiths, or Hand In Glove: The Politics Of Gender In Smiths Sleeves.

Yet despite people's nerves, there's a genuine mood of excitement. For the 150 academics and superfans from all over Europe, America and Australia, this symposium, entitled Why Pamper Life's Complexities?, is the logical conclusion of 20 years of box-bedroom philosophising, arm-flailing, feigning enjoyment of Oscar Wilde and analysing the cryptic messages in the run-out grooves of Smiths 12-inches.

"The Smiths had such a lyrical complexity and richness," a doctor of history tells me, as we're chivvied into our first lecture. "No other band had such a cultural resonance or are more worthy of academic study." I agree with him totally. Although as we take our seats and TV crews and tabloid photographers surge around us, I've a sneaking suspicion that to the non-Smiths fan we probably look as intellectually valid as Trekkies at a Klingon Institute GM, or the jewelled-glove-waving buffoons camped outside Michael Jackson's courtroom.

Lectures begin with some emotive words from course co-organiser Dr Fergus Campbell, on the life-changing teen properties of finding the seven-inch of William It Was Really Nothing for 20p in a Woolworths bargain bin, before playing it endlessly in his Carlisle bedroom, "as the rain poured down on a humdrum town". This won't be the last time Moz's lyrics will pepper the lectures - it seems there's a one-liner to prove most theories. Yet just as the Morrissey love-in becomes dangerously cloying, author Dave Haslam takes the podium, arguing that Morrissey's musical standards nose-dived post-Marr due to his inability to move with the times. A deathly silence fills the room.

"I have issue with that!" fumes one academic, grabbing the roaming mic. "Morrissey isn't flawed. Francis Bacon refined the same concept throughout his life and he's considered genius. What about Picasso?"

"Ah," replies Haslam, "but Bacon refined his idea to perfection. This isn't the case."

A bitter debate ensues as academics wade in quoting Simon Frith, Simon Goddard and FR Leavis. Luckily, Haslam's time is up before he's egged, or forced at gunpoint to declare Vauxhall And I an all-killer, no-filler classic. Weirdly, a lot of the Moz devotees, after a lifetime's service, appear to have taken on many of his t

A lesson learned late in life....a quote to any journalist, particularly over a boozy dinner in Velvet, is never "off the record"!
 
full story is here http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/music/story/0,,1464880,00.html
 
My bit is below;
 
There's a lecture from a man who claims to be Moz's second cousin about "re-mapping Hulme using psychogeographics", followed by a rather inaudible talk from a woman with a geometric bob about the architectural influences on Morrissey's lyrics. As slides of bleak train tracks, wrought iron gates, graffiti-strewn railway bridges and bird-poo-splattered walls flash up on the screen, the academics scribble notes for an imaginary exam. "Oh God," groans Damian, 35, from Manchester, shuffling uncomfortably, "not the iron bridge."
Years ago, Damian organised Smiths conventions, the highlight being a coach trip around all of these sacred sights. Damian's nightmares are still clouded by images of the highly-strung, mainly Japanese female clientele deriding his map-reading skills. "Once, I took a wrong turning in a housing estate in Stretford and totally lost Moz's primary school. It was terrible. I drove round and round, getting more and more lost, with a coachload of Japanese women sobbing and screaming abuse. I tried to assuage them with an iron bridge in Salford, the one Morrissey talks about in Nowhere Fast. They all jumped off the bus and began hugging and kissing it, then wouldn't get back on. I decided to get a proper job soon after that."

There's only a few inaccuracies (!) which make it a much funnier, clever story than it actually was, so well done Grace.

I wasn't at that lecture
I'm 36
so, I wasn't there to shuffle uncomfortably, or say "not the iron bridge."
There were no Japanese girls
I wasn't driving a coach (I was the guide with the mic)
I've never used the word 'assuage', ever
The Iron Bridge is in Stretford
She turned a rather dull story into a funny one, which I'm quite happy about!

Damian Morgan

Lovely picture and quote of you.

Page 9.

Woof-woof

Dear Lord in Heaven Hugh.

Is this it?

The pinnacle of your time here on Earth...a clip at the end of a DVD where, frankly, you looked and sounded like someone on day-release and a mention in a weekend supplement?

People mock Westside and McFly fans for the same sort of behaviour.

In the immortal words of Alan Partridge;

"Sa-a-ad"

Meowwwwww!

I only come here on the oddest of occasions now...I cannot tell you how depressing it is to return to find someone, a jealous someone, having a dig at the lovely Hugh.

Hugh is a good and kind person.

The last time I encountered him was at the Edinburgh Corn Exchange gig where he waited around for a long time after the gig to help me find out where the aftershow "pleasantries" were being held...not because he thought I would "sort him out" but because he is a good bloke.

I am delighted that he has found a little recognition for his devotion...he is more deserving than the disgusting mess that is J***a Riley.

Well done Hugo!

The Playboy loves you.