Dear Friends,
I hit a bit of a wall last night and got in bed around 7:15PM. I think it was a good plan. Because of this, though, I don’t have a lot to say today. Maybe that’s a good thing.
Yesterday afternoon I could hear something in Rhondi’s voice that made me so sad. The little, incremental improvements that had happened over the weekend for Doug have not kept up the pace we have all been hoping for and I think we are all realizing that this is going to be one hell of a fight.
Rhondi sounded so sad and so lost. I hated hearing it. I also hated hearing the defeat in her voice. She’s been willing Doug to come back and come back strong and yesterday just didn’t seem like a day where that will was working, I think.
Hopefully today will be better. It kind of has to be. I need it to be, that’s for sure.
*****
This was the second album by The Smiths that I purchased. At first, I had a cassette recording of Hatful of Hollow thanks to my friend, Jerry, because he had the money to buy all the records and then he would share them with me. I was really lucky to have a friend like him.
Jerry was the first person I was good friends with who got a car, as well. He was the youngest of with several much older siblings, so he was spoiled a bit. Tall, lanky, and for the most part, a really good friend, Jerry and I discovered a lot of music together as we tried to figure out what would make us cool in those first couple of years of high school.
We would hit the record stores in the Northwest Valley whenever I wasn’t grounded. There was a Zia on west Indian School, too, that we hit a few times here and there. A lot of the time we would go to the Wherehouse Records on 43rd Ave and Thunderbird, but their selection was iffy, at best, for cool stuff.
There has always been something about The Smiths that I have just loved. Musicianship and songwriting come to mind right away when I think of them now. They were all really fucking good at what they did. My appreciation for Johnny Marr, for example, has only grown over the years and when I think about the way Andy Rourke could play the bass, I just get jealous chills.
Obviously, Morrissey and Mike Joyce were no slouches, either, but when I think of The Smiths now, it is all about Marr and Rourke. There is some level of separating the art from the artist when it comes to the singer, but I don’t want to get into that now.
I will say that I still know just about every word from Hatful of Hollow. As I have mentioned a few times in this space over the last few years, I would listen to The Smiths on the way to gigs back in the day to get my voice warmed up. I always have to sing along when I hear them, and I used to be able to do a decent Morrissey impersonation.
Hatful of Hollow is not a studio album. It was a collection of singles and B-sides and some tracks from the John Peel show. I remember being a little bummed out when I discovered this, but I guess it doesn’t really make any difference. I had it in all the available formats, but I loaned my cassette of it to a girl during Sophomore year and never got it back. Dumb Tom…sucker for the ladies.
The record also reminds me of my friend, Bill, because he had hipped me to how great the song “What Difference Does It Make?” and how great it is. If I had to choose one song by The Smiths to listen to for the rest of my life, it might be that one. Marr sounds so great on it.
I’m also partial to “Handsome Devil” and “This Charming Man” from the A side. Hell, “William, It Was Really Nothing” is a favorite, too. I feel bad excluding the others, including “How Soon Is Now?” but I have heard that song so much over the years that I’ve developed a little callous for it.
“How Soon Is Now?” is still great, but it doesn’t move me the way it once did. I can remember being so stoked and so petrified when they would play it at the teen dance clubs. It’s not the easiest song in the world to dance to, you know?
On the B side, “Accept Yourself,” “Reel Around the Fountain,” and “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I want” are definitely my top three. The latter of which has always been a huge favorite. It’s just the right kind of sad.
The Smiths did maudlin as well as any English band ever. They may have kind of invented sad-core. That has to be a thing. I mean, they were totally emo, and everyone loved them for it.
I promised myself I wasn’t going to brag about seeing them live here and guess what, I didn’t.
Oh, wait.
*****
See you tomorrow.
Some of those birds look like planes. Weird stuff, AI.
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