No Rock And Roll Fun

THE DRESS YOU SO FESTIVELY TRY: Spooky pop-related things, number one in a series: Yesterday evening, I'd been dancing round in the kitchen and I suddenly realised, while singing Meat is Murder out loud that the line "It's death for no reason, and death for no reason is murder" was fantastically inaccurate. Even although I'm vegetarian, I can see the reason for cattle slaughter - it's to make yummy burgers and pies, isn't it? - which would make it not murder. Equally, a lot of murder is incredibly motivated - to stop an uncle from changing a will, to stop Ruby taking her love to town, and so on. Anyway, a couple of hours later I'm picking up that day's Weekend Guardian, and there's pretty much the same opinion being expressed. Anyway, all of this is by way of an introduction to an article taking the not-quite-so-groundbreaking-as-it-likes-to-think angle of examining the band from their visuals rather than their lyrics - ironically in the same edition as a five-page lament for the lot of the meat packer, which Mozzer would probably appreciate. Some nice touches include the observation that Morrissey is one of the few true indie stars whose face adorns tshirts, but it all comes unstuck, as all Morrissey retroshots do, on the issue of Nationalism/Naziism. Apparently, the National Front Disco and the Finsbury BNP Rally were alright, because there was grown-up thinking going on behind them, and it only got out of control because Moobo never explained where he was coming from. Not quite true, as he did attempt to wriggle off the hook with statements such as "England for the English is in quotes" (and how do you know that when it's sung anyway); unsatisfying in the context of a man smart enough to know that people will bellow along with any chorus, however ironically counterpoising the verse, if it seems pleasing enough to their ears to do so. This was a trap the Manics fell into with "We only want to get drunk" a few years later...
That piece in full - Most bands would try and keep quiet about having a deaf fanbase...