"The songs that saved your life..."

   After all these years I still love vinyl records and the recent ones issued by Morrissey and The Smiths are hard to resist if just for the covers alone. I bought The Queen is Dead 12" (right) recently at a record fair. If I'm not mistaken that cover shot is from Passolini's The Gospel According to St Matthew, a film which had an impact on me when I first saw it at the age of about eighteen. Unlike some of the post-Smiths releases, this one and the Albert Finney were chosen by Stephen Patrick himself, and show all the signs because they just look like Smiths covers.

    I wonder what Finney thinks of being the cover star of The Boy With the Thorn in His Side (left). Presumably he didn't take umbrage the way Terence Stamp did over adorning the front of What Difference Does it Make? I never understood quite what he objected to about that.

   Few of Morrissey's later songs have the same resonance as the ones he did with The Smiths for those of us who were around at the time. How could they have? These were "the songs that saved your life." Even so, I do have a fondness for some of his recent offerings including It's Hard to Walk Tall When You're Small and The World is Full of Crashing Bores. It's noticeable that the forthcoming compilation This is Morrissey is mostly comprised of songs from the earlier part of his solo career with the evocative Every Day is Like Sunday a highlight. The new single (left) has the added attraction of a cover version of Rose Garden on the B-side.

   Morrissey still seems to be able to get people's backs up merely by having his own ideas. As he said recently "The most offensive thing you can do in modern Britain is to have an opinion and talk clearly." There are few if any real individualists these days in any sphere of life, let alone in the realm of pop music which is so anodyne. Long may he continue to infuriate and enthrall in equal measure.