Comments on: GEORGE MICHAEL – “A Different Corner”

By: Billy Smart

Billy Smart — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 18:18:41 +0000

Ultra-rare clip of George Michael and Morrissey together!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCZkVrpYupY&feature=related

By: Hofmeister Bear

Hofmeister Bear — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 01:07:40 +0000

The guitarist Issac Guillory (Al Stewart, Elkie Brooks and err Barbara Dickson) blamed the previously mentioned Chernobyl-influenced rainstorms which lashed Wales for the cancer which killed him in 2000.

By: LondonLee

LondonLee — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:37:20 +0000

Looking forward to Alicia Keys’ triple concept album!

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:43:37 +0000

This is now the most commented on FT post of 2009. Well done all!

By: lonepilgrim

lonepilgrim — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:32:52 +0000

re 131 bizarrely there was a picture in one of the antique roadshow music mags recently of Keith Emerson all smiles with John Lydon

blimey, this thread has got off topic…er George Michael what was with the mullet and where had it gone by the time of the next Wham video?

By: Mark M

Mark M — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:08:39 +0000

Re 114 etc, in this month’s Mojo, Alicia Keys says that YouTube clips of Keith Emerson circa 1971 are her favourite musical discovery of the year.

By: Steve Mannion

Steve Mannion — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 14:34:42 +0000

I’d mistakenly thought ‘Faith’ had been his big comeback single after this and am a bit baffled that ‘I Want Your Sex’ actually preceded it (tho I do vaguely recall the controversy surrounding it that Summer), because it seems that ‘Faith’ would’ve stood a much better chance of being Michael’s third consecutive #1 and put him up there with Gerry and Frankie on that record (Wham! efforts notwithstanding).

Would say the two singles after those are actually stronger (‘One More Try’ is not one I remembered at all when I saw its title but as soon as I heard it I was ‘oh its THAT one’) which also seems unusual.

By: Erithian

Erithian — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:24:44 +0000

Rosie – so you survived being rained on in the days of fallout, which is good. Then you moved just down the road from Sellafield, which is pushing your luck a bit!

Back to poor old George Michael, since about two of the last hundred posts have been about him and this record – a beautiful piece of music, a fine vocal and yes, sadly underrated. It seems to have fallen into the void that Marcello often refers to where there’s only room for one song of any given type by any given artist on oldies radio – and since this isn’t “Careless Whisper” (and maybe because of its sparse production) this one loses out. Certainly one of the more unjustly obscure 80s number ones.

Anyway, back to the Smiths, the rest of you. I didn’t follow them avidly at the time aside from enjoying their singles (my girlfriend and I used to sing at each other in mocking Morrissey tones “but I’m still fond of yeeeewwww, whoa-hooooo”) and I’ve come to enjoy their albums since, but I’ll leave this discussion to the experts. (Tom, someone should compile a guide to the unlikely tangents we go off on…)

By: Jimmy the Swede

Jimmy the Swede — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:24:51 +0000

I actually had a package trip planned to what was still called the Soviet Union when Chernobyl came along and knackered it. I think my lost holiday was probably fairly low down on the list of that terrible disaster’s victims.

By: rosie

rosie — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:48:10 +0000

For the record, this was number one when Chernobyl went critical: perhaps the single most significant event of the 1980s.

Me, I was travelling around Wales at the time. It rained. And rained, and rained, and rained. There was, allegedly, lots of fallout in the rain, enough to make the local sheep suspect for many years afterwards.

I’m doomed, doomed I tell you! Although 26 years on I show no ill-effects that can’t be accounted for by aging.

By: anto

anto — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:24:16 +0000

Hi Lena. Your comment about Johnny Marr makes a lot of sense.
I think a lot of people who don’t generally go in for ” gutiar heroes ” admire Johnny Marr. In The Smiths he always seemed to be expressing himself through the gutiar whereas too many other gutiarists are merely expressing what their gutiar/amp/fx pedals are capable of.

By: Lena

Lena — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:10:49 +0000

I also have to add that The Queen Is Dead remains (for me) their best album; Strangeways Here We Come I always associate with my father's deterioration and eventual death. I watched him go and I watched The Smiths go and it was a very sad time indeed. But I feel I'm getting ahead of myself here - "Panic" was THE song of the year and I got the NME with him on the cover and nothing else, of course!

By: Lena

Lena — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:13:38 +0000

When I began to realize the mixture of voices in the UK music media I was charmed and baffled and a little overwhelmed – I could barely understand how so many people could exist in what my guts told me was a very small space and have such different opinions. That The Smiths were great was pretty much agreed upon by everyone (save the Soulboys, who must have at least admired Morrissey’s flair for clothes) and beyond that it was out-and-out head-desking despair – the indie crowd vs. the goths vs. those who enjoyed strangeness (not long after I began reading the UK media I discovered The Fall) and those who solidly believed that if it was popular it was good, and vice versa. What kept me reading was the sheer enthusiasm I could find from various writers, and a depth of feeling unimaginable at, say, Rolling Stone.

By the way, I went all the way to Toronto to get the first Smiths album on cassette and stayed faithfully with them as they negotiated their highwire way through the decade. And Johnny Marr remains one of my favorite guitarists; to me he seemed androgynous on the guitar, if that makes any sense.

By: Lena

Lena — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:59:36 +0000

I now feel a bit less strange for having loved New Pop and then being totally taken (hmm, interesting verb, but the only accurate one) by The Smiths; once I went to the WHSmith at the mall just to look at a picture of them in Newsweek in '85 in total awe. A year later I began to really pay attention to the UK music papers (I was already buying Star Hits, the US version of Smash Hits) when I could find it.)

By: AndyPandy

AndyPandy — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:27:51 +0000

Interesting,I never realised that!

By: Mark M

Mark M — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:25:06 +0000

Re 120 You may find that if you read the word Sukrat backwards you’ll discover something…

Also: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/old-ft/essays/2002/07/tarkus1/

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/old-ft/nylpm/2005/10/tarkus-watch/

By: AndyPandy

AndyPandy — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:15:02 +0000

re 114/115: I picked ELP because aren’t they still supposed to be pretty much irredeemable unlike most other groups that the punks were supposedly rebelling against which have since been rehabilitated.

By: LondonLee

LondonLee — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:15:39 +0000

I hate to say it, but Robert Elms’ ‘Hard Times’ piece in The Face opened up a lot of music to me as well. And, yes, I wore old ripped 501s with a studded belt for a while too.

By: lonepilgrim

lonepilgrim — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:05:04 +0000

this thread has been a revelation for me – I realise I’ve never much been overwhelmed with enthusiasm for jangly indie bands (although if you’d asked me at the time I think I would have thought i did – if that makes any sense) and when I do I like ‘em it’s usually with a girl singer. I bought ‘This Charming Man’ as a single but I preferred Sandie Shaw’s version of ‘Hand in Glove’ – the only Smiths album I owned was ‘Hatful of Hollow’ on vinyl and I’ve never bothered replacing it or adding to it.
I think the reason may be the bands/singers personas remind me too much of myself – I prefer my pop stars larger than life – and I prefer pop music to sound exotic, syncopated and/or more intense than real life. There was a leaden sense of kitchen sink realism about The Smiths which just doesn’t excite me.

Like Lee my musical tastes were shaped by The Face at the time – particularly David Toop who was a champion for Prince, Luther Vandross and Hip-Hop and a wide range of other stuff.

By: Glue Factory

Glue Factory — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:23:41 +0000

Re:114 – although, given that in ’78 Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s latest album would have been Love Beach, maybe not some many merits to discuss.

By: Mark M

Mark M — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:50:36 +0000

Re 114/5: but while I’m at it – the reason Che Guevara was an idiot is that he failed to realise that almost all revolutions are made possible by large and temporary coalitions of people who for a brief potent moment believe (almost certainly mistakenly) that they have a common goal.

By: Mark M

Mark M — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:45:29 +0000

Re 114: I’m not sure whether that last bit is a joke, but I’m sure lørd sükråt wötsît would tell you that there were lots of punks dying to lovingly discuss ELP if they thought they could get away with it. Anyway, plenty of time to talk about rave in three/four years’ Popular time.

By: Andy Pandy

Andy Pandy — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:02:24 +0000

that really surprises me as there was such a feeling of antipathy to contemporary guitar music back then on the dance scene (and possibly because of what was seen as their whining self-pity the Smiths were held as its nadir). Of course this antipathy was only true to a certain extent as for swathes of the acid/house then rave scene the “rock world” existed almost in another musical universe which aside from the already touched upon kneejerk dislike of the Smiths very rarely imipnged on each other.

And the idea of loads of Smiths fans on the M25 at South Mimms in 1989 waiting for “the phone call” sounds as surreal as a group of 1976 punks waiting in the queue at the 100 club discussing the “finer merits” of Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s latest album.

By: Mark M

Mark M — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:10:22 +0000

Re 112… Possibly – I’d need to see the maths on an act needed for a top ten hit in spring 88 versus spring 86 to know more. Incidentally, almost all the Smiths fans I knew at school took to rave in a big way…

By: AndyPandy

AndyPandy — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:39:53 +0000

Mark M at 69: yes but even as early as 1988/89 fragmentation of the music scene was already effecting the charts and sales were beginning to fall enough that (an often transitory) fanbase/this month’s music press hype alone could put something in the Top 10.

I’ve just about heard of the Primitives but never knowingly heard one of their songs and I doubt a large part of this fragmentation ie the vast majority of those who were by 1988/89 buying house records/diehard soulboys knew anything about such bands unlike the Smiths who as Lee implies had by the mid-80s become part of the general pop consciousness (which was just about to disappear forever)enough to at least be known by soul/funk/mainstream pop/whatever else fans (even if it was because they were loathed so much by many such people).