Morrissey's Best?

[Perry Vale]

Indeed, 'Interesting Drug' was a bigger "hit" than five of the other tracks contained.

[Si Hunt]

I really like "Alma Matters", but it never seems to be included on these compilations. I think this collection demonstrates that you can't sum up at artist from chart positions; a colourful and eclectic mix of the different era's creates a more satisfying collection.

Si.

[Perry Vale]

It seems there's a two-disc version coming of this as well, maybe it'll have the other EMI hits? Doubt it'll have Dagenham Dave though.

[Si Hunt]

A DVD of videos would be nice!

It'll never happen though!

Si.

[Perry Vale]

It'll probably end up being a bonus 'live' disc.

[Perry Vale]

Sigh......

It'll probably end up being a bonus 'live' disc.

A special, limited edition run of CDs will feature a “Live At The Hollywood Bowl” bonus CD, featuring eight tracks recorded live in California on June 8th 2007.

Whoop-de-doo.

[Perry Vale]

Got a copy of this today, never heard it before but my god, isn't Redondo Beach awful?!

[Si Hunt]

I'm just going to download the new songs. That way it'll only cost me £1.40p instead of twelve quid.

Si.

[Carol Baynes]

What a poor compilation, and with only one track from the '90s. As most people have said, thre were more popular and worthy tracks not included. It'll be worth a listen, but I'm not inspired to buy it. I'll stick with what I already own I think.

[Milky Tears]

He was looking good on Later last night... apart from the old man troosers. Even did 'Last of the Famous International Playboys'.

[Si Hunt]

Bought the new track. It's not very good is it?

Si.

[Perry Vale]

I've heard it at least three times now, and can't remember anything about it. Not even what it's called!

[Si Hunt]

I've been listening to it to. I can remember it, it's just a bit aimless and tiresome. When he's not very witty, all you've got left is moaning.

Si.

[Si Hunt]

Lucky purchasers of "Greatest Hits" get to see Mozzer's stencilled buttocks inside:

THE MOJO OFFICE is still reeling after opening our CD copy of Morrissey’s Greatest Hits album to find this photograph (left). And just in case there was any doubt as to the ownership of the derrière in question, the sleevenote credits the pic thus: “Morrissey’s arse photographed by Jake Walters”.

Morrissey’s buttocks – curiously hairless in comparison to what’s “going on” above and below – appear to be of a mid-’90s vintage. This would coincide with the known period of his association with Jake Walters, his companion/PA around the time of the Vauxhall & I album. The standard of calligraphy is impressive, but the office is agreed that we wouldn’t have enjoyed doing the apostrophe.

The Mozular bottom joins a veritable pantheon of rock star private bits that have graced record covers. We think particularly of Keith Moon’s Both Sides Of the Moon album, but if you go “round the front” there are other examples. John Lennon was unembarrassed to display his manhood on the cover of the Two Virgins album and Adam Clayton’s “little Adam” can be viewed on the sleeve of U2’s Achtung Baby LP.

[Perry Vale]

He was looking good on Later last night... apart from the old man troosers. Even did 'Last of the Famous International Playboys'.

The new song (Somebody's Smashing My Skull ???) sounded quite good actually, his best for a while.

[Carol Baynes]

If the following is true, it's a sad state of affairs at the NME.

Morrissey speaks! (taken from an on line fanzine)


MORRISSEY CONDEMNS RACISM

On Friday of last week I issued writs against the NME (New Musical Express) and its editor Conor McNicholas as I believe they have deliberately tried to characterise me as a racist in a recent interview I gave them in order to boost their dwindling circulation.

I abhor racism and oppression or cruelty of any kind and will not let this pass without being absolutely clear and emphatic with regard to what my position is.

Racism is beyond common sense and I believe it has no place in our society.

To anyone who has shown or felt any interest in my music in recent times, you know my feelings on the subject and I am writing this to apologize unreservedly for granting an interview to the NME. I had no reason whatsoever to assume that they could be anything other than devious, truculent and unreliable. In the event, they have proven to be all three.

The NME have, in the past, offered me their "Godlike Genius Award" and I had politely refused. With the Tim Jonze interview, the Award was offered once again, this time with the added request that I headline their forthcoming awards concert at the O2 Arena, and once again I declined it. This is nothing personal against the NME, although the distressing article would suggest the editor took it as such. My own view is that award ceremonies in pop music are dreadful to witness and are simply a way of the industry warning the artist "see how much you need us" - and, yes, the "new" NME is very much integrated into the industry, whereas, deep in the magazine's empirical history, the New Musical Express was a propelling force that answered to no one. It led the way by the quality of its writers - Paul Morley, Julie Burchill, Paul du Noyer, Charles Shaar Murray, Nick Kent, Ian Penman, Miles - who would write more words than the articles demanded, and whose views saved some of us, and who pulled us all away from the electrifying boredom of everything and anything that represented the industry. As a consequence the chanting believers of the NME could not bear to miss a single issue; the torrential fluency of its writers left almost no space between words, and the NME became a culture in itself, whereas Melody Maker or Sounds just didn't. Into the 90s, the NME's discernment and polish became faded nobility, and there it died - but better dead than worn away. The wit imitated by the 90s understudies of Morley and Burchill assumed nastiness to be greatness, and were thus rewarded. But nastiness isn't wit and no writers from the 90s NME survive. Even with sarcasm, irony and innuendo there is an art, of sorts. Now deep in the bosom of time, it is the greatness of the NME's history on which the "new" NME assumes its relevance.

It is on the backs of writers such as Morley, Burchill, Kent and Shaar Murray that the "new" NME hitches its mule-cart, assuming equal relevance. But the stalled views of the "new" NME sag, and readers have been driven away by a magazine with no insides. The narrow cast of repeated subjects sets off the agony, a mesmerizing mess of very brief and dispassionate articles unable to make thought evolve; a marooned editor who holds the divine right to censor any views that clash with his own.

The editorial treatment given to my present interview with the "new" NME is the latest variation on an old theme, but like a pre-dawn rampage, the effects of the interview have been meticulously considered with obvious intentions. It is true that the magazine is ailing badly in the market place, but Conor doesn't understand how the relentless stream of "cheers mate, got pissed last night, ha ha" interviews that clutter every single issue of the "new" NME are simply not interesting to those of us who have no trouble standing upright. Strangely enough, my own name is the only one featured in the "new" NME that links their present with the NME's distant past, therefore a Morrissey interview is an ideal opportunity with which to play the editorial naughtiness game.

This, regrettably, is what has taken place with this most recent interview, which, it need hardly be said, bears no relation in print to the fleshly conversation that took place.

I do not mean to be rude to Tim Jonze, but when I first caught sight of him I assumed that someone had brought their child along to the interview. The runny nose told the whole story. Conor had assured that Tim was their best writer. Talking behind his hands in an endless fidget, Tim accepted every answer I gave him with a schoolgirl giggle, and repeatedly asked me if I was shocked at how little he actually knew about music. I told him that, yes, I was shocked. It was difficult for me to believe that the best writer from the "new" NME had never heard of the song 'Drive-in Saturday'; I explained that it was by David Bowie, and Tim replied "Oh, I don't know anything about David Bowie." I wondered how it could be so - how the quality of music journalism in England could have fallen so low that the prime "new" NME writer knew nothing of David Bowie, an artist to whom most relevant British artists are indebted, and one who single-handedly changed British culture - musically and otherwise.

Tim's line of questioning advanced with: "What about politics, then ... the state of the world?" - which, I was forced to assume, was a well-thought-out question. It was from here that the issue of immigration - but not racism - arose.

Me: If you walk down Knightsbridge you'll be hard-pressed to hear anyone speaking English.

Tim: I don't think that's true. You're beginning to sound like my parents.

Me: Well, when did you last walk down Knightsbridge?

Tim: Ummm....
Knightsbridge ....is that where Harrods is?

So, Tim was prepared to attack and argue the point without even being clear about where Knightsbridge actually is! The "new" NME strikes again. Oh dear, I thought, not again.

I chose to mention Knightsbridge because it had always struck me as one of the most stiffly British spots in London. I am sorry Tim, but you are not yet ready to interview anyone responsibly.

When my comments are printed in the "new" NME they are butchered, re-designed, re-ordered, chopped, snipped and split in order to make me seem racist and unreasonable. Tim had told me about his friend who did not like the 1988 song Bengali In Platforms because the friend had thought the song attacked him on a personal level. I explained to Tim that the song was not about his friend. In print, the "new" NME do not explain this, but attempt to multiply the horror of Tim's friend by attributing "these people" and "those people" quotes to me - terms I would never use, but are useful to the "new" NME in their Morrissey-is-racist campaign because these terms are only used by people who are cold and indifferent and Thatcherite. 

All of the people I spoke to Tim about in the interview who are heroes to me and who are Middle-Eastern or of other ethnic backgrounds were of no interest to either Tim or Conor. Clearly, Tim had been briefed and his agenda was to cook up a sensational story that would give life to the "new" NME as a must-read national if not global shock-horror story. Recalling how Tim asked me to sign some CD covers, I do not blame him entirely. If Conor can provoke bureaucratic outrage with this Morrissey interview, then he can whip up support for his righteous position as the morally-bound and armoured editor of his protected readership - even though, by re-modelling my interview into a multiple horror, Conor has accidentally exposed himself as deceitful, malicious, intolerant and Morrissey-ist - all the ist's and ism's that he claims to oppose. Uniquely deprived of wisdom, Conor would be repulsed by my vast collection of World Cinema films, by my adoration of James Baldwin, my love of Middle-Eastern tunings, Kazem al-Saher, Lior Ashkenazi, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and he would be repulsed to recall a quote as printed in his magazine in or around August of this year wherein I said that my ambition was to play concerts in Iran.

My heart sank as Tim Jonze let slip the tell-all editorial directive behind this interview: "It's Conor's view that Morrissey thinks black people are OK ...but he wouldn't want one living next door to him." It was then that I realized the full extent of the setup, and I felt like Bob Hoskins in the final frame of The Long Good Friday as he sits in the back of the wrong getaway car realizing the extent of the conspiratorial slime that now trapped him.

During the interview Tim asked if I would support the "Love Music Hate Racism" campaign that the NME had just written about and my immediate response was a yes as I had shown my support previously by going to one of their first benefit gigs a few years ago and had met some of their organizers as well as having signed their statement. Following the interview I asked my manager to get in touch with the NME and to pledge my further support to the campaign as I wanted there to be no ambiguity on where I stood on the subject. This was done in a clear and direct email to Conor McNicholas on the 5th of November, which went ignored and last week we found out that it had never even been presented to anyone at the campaign as that would obviously not have suited what we now know to be the NME's agenda. I am pleased to say that we have now had direct dialogue with "Love Music Hate Racism" and all of our UK tour advertising in 2008 will carry their logo and we will also be providing space in the venues for them to voice and spread their important message, which I endorse.

Continued in next post.

[Carol Baynes]

Who's to say what you should or shouldn't do? The IPC have appointed Conor as the editor of the "new" NME, and there he remains, ready to drag the IPC into expensive legal battles such as the one they now face with me due to Conor's personal need to misstate, misreport, misquote, misinterpret, falsify, and incite the bloodthirsty. Here is proof that the "new" NME will twist and pervert the views of any singer or musician who'd dare step into the interview ring. To such artists, I wish them well, but I would advise you to bring your lawyer along to the interview.

My own place, now and forevermore, shall not be with the "new" NME - and how wrong my face even looks on its
 cover. Of this, I am eternally grateful.

MORRISSEY.

[Perry Vale]

I recently managed to persuade my work to get an NME subscription.....and I wish I hadn't. Morrissey's dead right, it's a pile of sh*te.

[Captain Tancredi]

I've never bought an NME, but I can remember my cousin buying one when we were out one day (in Kensington, ironically, in view of the Knightsbridge comments) when she would have been about 14 and me about 11-12 (which would make it not quite 25 years ago, I think). I was astonished that she was allowed to read (and seemed to enjoy reading) a magazine which had effing and blinding in it.

[Carol Baynes]

I've never bought an NME, but I can remember my cousin buying one when we were out one day (in Kensington, ironically, in view of the Knightsbridge comments) when she would have been about 14 and me about 11-12 (which would make it not quite 25 years ago, I think). I was astonished that she was allowed to read (and seemed to enjoy reading) a magazine which had effing and blinding in it.

That would have been back in the day when critics called it the "New Morrissey Express", due the paper's lauding devotion to Mozzer and The Smiths.

[Si Hunt]

The Greatest Hits has fallen 27 places on its second week in the album charts!

Si.

[Si Hunt]

The other new song off that rubbish "Greatest Hits" album - "All You Need Is Me" - is coming out as a single. I don't remember it being very good.

Si.

[Perry Vale]

Yes, with new tracks (as usual) spread across a cd single & two 7"'s.....