[ May 3, 2024 ]
Tonight’s Friday night music open thread is a tribute to Morrissey who released his new album California Sun today. He’s been under attack for his pro-freedom views, opposition to jihad terror and sharia oppression. I urge everyone to download or, depending on your level of coolness, get the vinyl. I am a huge Morrissey fan and have been since my twenties.
Morrissey’s new album features 12 covers that span some of the greatest tunes of the ’60s and ’70s. Among them are songs by classic acts Joni Mitchell, Dionne Warwick and Bob Dylan. Petra Haden, LP, Ed Droste of Grizzly Bear, Ariel Engle of Broken Social Scene, Sameer Gadhia of Young The Giant, Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day and Lydia Night of The Regrettes also feature. Morrissey never does covers. So why these protest and love songs? Perhaps because these are his musical heroes or maybe because all of the songwriters took pro-human stances on the issues they’re singing about. So does Morrissey but the left elite are too far gone to see it.
Listen to the whole album here: https://morrissey.lnk.to/sonID
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For a guy who rarely records other artists’ work, Morrissey truly sinks his teeth into this past specific moment (loosely between 1964 and 1972) in much the same way Quentin Tarantino is looking to the same time period, and with a similar nod to Hollywood’s Hills. The time-traveling “California Son” brings weird brio, rich melodramatics and full-blooded vigor, all possibly commenting on the present, with a wink.
Roy Orbison, Jr. said in a statement that the he reminded him of his own father. “We love Morrissey! Morrissey’s hair, and melancholy and poetic lyrics always reminded me of my dad. His version of ‘It’s Over’ is great,” Orbison, Jr. said.
Morrissey has always worn his influences on his black-on-the-outside sleeves. For as much as he crowed about the New York Dolls and the Cramps in his youth, his music both with and without the Smiths has reflected more erudite lyricists with an overall lighter musical touch. For California Son, the Pope of Mope has picked 12 lilting tales of injustice and unrequited love by some of his favorite artists and re-orchestrated them for his voice, improving some and turning others into head scratchers.
The best here are the ones with adventurous arrangements. “Some Say I Got Devil” was originally an eerie, self-reflective folk number by Melanie, but producer Joe Chiccarelli has helped Moz turn it into a dramatic, almost Ennio Morricone–inflected expression of existential pain. Where Melanie sounded scared and disappointed, Morrissey sounds confidently resigned to a life of disappointment (no surprises there). Similarly, he and his band have beefed up Joni Mitchell’s arrangement of “Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow” — a hypnotic track off her underrated The Hissing of Summer Lawns LP — and Morrissey croons it like a modern easy-listening number, echoing Mitchell’s “you’re darn right” rejoinders with extra conviction.
Vareity:
How better to explain Moz’s lustrous Laura Nyro-written “Wedding Bell Blues,” its choir of carousels — sung in part by Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong — and its “Bill, I love you so / I always will” lyrics? Is Morrissey tipping his hat to the approval of same-sex marriage (in his 2013 book, “Autobiography,” he acknowledges sexual relationships with men and women), or just hewing toward camp, as the tune, like the entire album,is epically overproduced by Joe Chiccarelli?
A similar digital sheen is layered over the spaced-out chamber-glam of “Morning Starship” (from Pennsylvania glitter rocker Jobriath), a chintzy syn-brassy take on the insistently ascending AM radio staple “Lady Willpower” (Gary Puckett & the Union Gap!!), and a plush-ly purple “It’s Over” from Roy Orbison. Burt Bacharach’s Brazilian-inspired, two-octave “Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets” doesn’t have the same cosmopolitan poperatic sass for Moz as it did Dionne Warwick. Then again, little does.
These pop songs, classic or not (Jobriath all but died in obscurity), are given impactful, clarion-clear renditions from Morrissey either in a fit of pique or the throes of l’amour.
What wind up as more interesting then, in a lyrical, political sense, even when they don’t exactly work, is Morrissey’s choice of socially conscious tracks, especially when these anthems are pushed up against his own pointed (and not always popular) personal rhetoric.
Take his version of Bob Dylan’s “Only a Pawn in Their Game.” Written about the assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, and showing the author’s hand in solidarity with black America and the whole of the civil rights movement, the song has Dylan pointing fingers at rich, white bosses everywhere for creating a smoke screen with the assassination. Morrissey’s glossy, Celtic take is certainly ferocious, and even cutting, if not a bit cold and distant.
[political propaganda redacted]
Tim Hardin’s “Lenny’s Tune” is an ode to that late folk songwriter’s pal and controversial comic Lenny Bruce, and therefore speaks indirectly to the nature of censorship. Yet this interestingly haunting cover misses what it means to truly feel an absent friend’s loss. Thankfully, Morrissey pull together lyrical intent and his own vocal prowess up by the bootstraps for Phil Ochs’ “Days of Decisions.” Speaking to “the mobs of anger roamin’ the street / From the rooftops they are aimin’ at the police on the beat,” Moz and Ochs could be talking about last night’s news. Or tonight’s, or tomorrow’s.
Committing to kitschy ’60s bliss as much as that era’s real or imagined war zones allows Morrissey and “California Son” a chance to find a (literal) voice in a way he hasn’t in ages. It would just be an even greater feat if Morrissey could make more of its finer musical moments jibe with his personal vibes.
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18 Comments
4 years ago
To think of California music in the 1960’s and to ignore Jan and Dean or the Beach Boys doesn’t seem right.
4 years ago
Reply to
MuhamMUDTheFakeProphet
Gotta love all that classic old surfy stuff.
The sound of summer!
4 years ago
Reply to
MuhamMUDTheFakeProphet
Did you spend time in California M? Apart from my dads home state of Arizona, being someone who loves the sea and beaches Cali was always the place I wanted to be. Sun kissed sands gorgeous girls by the dozen plenty of sunshine and that surfy soundtrack to life there.
I know it’s far from modern reality but there must still be aspects of that idyllic Cali even now.
4 years ago
Reply to
Dave Glynn
I still live here. I never surfed but I used to body board. The sleepy beach towns of the 1960’s are long gone.
4 years ago
Reply to
MuhamMUDTheFakeProphet
Those once sleepy towns are still on my itinerary M. I’m going to look for the real America????????
(when I finally get my arse in gear)
4 years ago
Viva Morrissey!
The Mancunian libertine.
4 years ago
Nice Orbison-like sound of the Morrissey song, re-
minds me of him: “He has been called the Roy Or-
bison of the 1990s and is often also compared to
Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, and Duane Eddy.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Isaak
4 years ago
Reply to
Marc
Although, as an incorrigible optimist, I condemn the deeply whiny contents of such
songs, which are unworthy of a man in my eyes. I would never make something like
this my own, this is the preliminary stage to suicide. I consider being emotionally or
sexually dependent on other people to be cancerously self-damaging. You shouldn’t
cry after the past like a little child forever, but look into the future, because that’s all
people have, the past is over.
It often turns out later that the past was not as dazzling as one imagines it to be. The
longer you hold on to old fantasies and memories, the longer you ruin your chance
of actually being happy. The logic should only make sense to such singers of lard ba-
llads that the lost “partner” apparently did not feel and share happiness at all, other-
wise he would still be at his side. Actually an admission of blindness and stupidity.
Yesterday was the first time I dealt with the “criminal trial of the century” against O.J.
Simpson, there is so much negative energy in it. The (together with her Jewish ac-
quaintance) murdered woman was a half-German, born in Frankfurt, who repeatedly
ran back to the tyrant to be maltreated by him and finally murdered. My pity for her is
limited. Alan Dershowitz for example was an advocate of Simpson’s “innocence”.
4 years ago
Reply to
Marc
Orbison was a cry-baby “in front of the Lord” (disregarding his talent for composing). Constantly
dressed in black, with thick horn-rimmed glasses, personally persecuted by bad luck through separations and deaths. Is this a wonder for a fanatical pessimist who feels sorry for himself?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy
Some people prefer to self-destruct rather than to summon up the mental strength to cope with their
own conceited “misfortune”. They are weenies, without hold, position, principles, consistency and steadfastness in life, they are like leaves in the wind, expecting their “fate” from foreign powers.
4 years ago
Reply to
Marc
German jumps with two-year-old daughter from the 100m high rock, after she
“meditated” there for months after the separation from the Australian child father.
She was a “lovable being”, reads the article. “The child be-
longs to mother” was probably also there the fatal fallacy. The
lookout was the favourite place of the little girl named Tilly.
“An uncanny similar incident happened on April 18, 2002, when a woman
jumped off the same cliff and held her five-year-old son. The little boy mira-
culously survived the fall when his mother’s body absorbed most of the impact.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7058931/Mother-plunged-death-cliff-clutching-daughter-meditation-favourite-forest.htmlhttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7056743/Tragic-post-murder-suicide-mother-plunged-death-cliff.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7054083/Mother-jumped-holding-daughter-Robertson-Lookout-near-Wollongong.htmt
In former times the father was often present, who could intervene when the
situation required it. Today he can watch helplessly as the mothers either
mentally screw up their children over the years or even kill them prematurely.
4 years ago
Reply to
Marc
4 years ago
Reply to
Marc
By the way: Those who persuade children suffering from cancer that they
are “terminally ill”
will not only add to their credulity an immense pressure
of expectation
not to disappoint their parents, will also create a negative
expectation in them, which will additionally weaken their immune system.
4 years ago
This Muslim social intimidation story at a UK doctor’s office has been doing the rounds but we are now getting more details about what happened. From the article, appparently the lady had no qualms about raising her veil at the doctor’s request to better communicate with him about her child’s illness:
‘So, she sat down and said: ‘I’m here to speak about my daughter’, and of course it was muffled. I said at that point: ‘Would you be so kind as to remove the face veil, please?’ Just a direct, polite question. It’s not difficult to say.’
……
In any event, he says, after he had asked her to remove her veil, the woman did so readily without complaint, whereupon ‘communication was much better’. Diagnosing her daughter with a throat complaint — probably tonsilitis — Dr Wolverson prescribed penicillin and the seven-minute consultation ended.
Her husband (wearing traditional Muslim dress for males, which is the nightgown I am guessing) storms in later and, well, kicks up a storm about what the doctor did. If there is proof that this veil and hijab nonsense is patriarchal in nature, it is here (of course, obligatory Muslim taqqiya about the Doctor being adamant she remove her veil and the whole nine-yards is rolled into it to make it fit his narrative):
However, about half-an-hour later, Dr Wolverson claims her husband arrived at the clinic, and an angry scene developed.
After sitting near the consulting room and, according to Dr Wolverson, making ‘menacing eye-contact’ with the doctor, the man, who wore traditional Muslim clothes (the nightgown, I’m guessing) and appeared to be in his late 30s, demanded to see the supervisor. The man in charge — a British-Asian whom Dr Wolverson ranks among his ‘many’ Muslim friends — came and his complaint was logged. ‘Mother and father not happy with doctors’ (sic) attitude and approach towards mother,’ reads the GMC account.
‘Also not happy with doctor asking to remove the vail (sic). She felt she was victimised and racially discriminated. Mother said she try to convince doctor this is my religion and she does not want to remove it. Mother said doctor was adamant that he will not continue the consultation if she does not remove her vail, so mother removed vail as wanted daughter seen.”
……
Who would you believe? A Muslim for whom it is legal to lie to infidels or a GP whose Hippocratic oath prevents him from doing so?
It is hardwired in Muslim men that their women have to be covered and any attempt to remove it is considered sacrilegious which besmirches their honor. That is why there are so many such stories doing the rounds and to pass it off as free choice is disingenuous at best and outright lies at worst.
Article link:
4 years ago
Reply to
tonvar
The musselman is in general a scurvy infection on the world. A social virus for 1,400 years … in its own country as well as Civilized countries.
4 years ago
Nice…. don’t know Morrissey. Good to be exposed to new artists.
