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I wouldn’t, for the life of me, have ever imagined this for my all-time favorite singer, Morrissey. Not so recently, in the first week of April, at Manchester Metropolitan University, in the UK, there was held an academic symposium on the Smiths, Morrissey’s former band in the 80’s. It was organized by Colin Coulter, from National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Fergus Campbell, from Newcastle University, and Sean Campbell, from Anglia Polytechnic University.

Take a look at the titles of the papers presented:
Subjectivity, Suicide and the Smiths by Kieran Cashell of the Limerick Institute of technology
The Smiths, Manchester and Identity; Refractory Poles: Manchester and London in the Smiths' Imagery by Gian Pietro Leonardi, of the University of Rome
Sing Me to Sleep: the Smiths and the Demise of English Rock by John Harris
The Theatres of Memory or Radical Chic? The Smiths and Early 1960s British Kitchen-Sink Cinema by Kari Kallioniemi, of the University of Turku, in Finland
The Smiths and Working Class Realist Aesthetics by Paulo Oliveira, of the University of Aveiro, in Portugal

After the presentations the academics adjourned to a The Smiths disco at the Star and Garter pub, to watch and listen to a band called The Smyths, who only played from The Smith’s repertoire. The lead singer sported a pair of horn-rim glasses with some plaster in the middle, an obvious nod to one of The Smith’s earliest videos seen on Top of the Pops. I can tell you that as I caught the news of The Smith’s symposium on DW TV, a German channel. (Why not a peep from the BBC?) Most of the attendees of the symposium were decked out in Smiths tee-shirts; some even combed their hair into quiffs.

If you don’t already know, the overriding theme in all of The Smiths’s songs is misery. Take at look at a bit of the lyrics from There Is A Light And It Never Goes Out:

And if a double-decker bus
Crashes into us
To die by your side
Is such a heavenly way to die
And if a ten-ton truck
Kills the both of us
To die by your side
Well, the pleasure - the privilege is mine

This may be a laugh for some people, but in the UK one time some manufacturer planned a full-page spread in the NME, a music weekly, which showed a pair of very, very old and very, very miserable-looking couple listening to The Smiths on its speakers. And for the majority of knife-wielding, gun-toting Latinos in Los Angeles, the Smiths is no laughing matter. In LA, where Morrissey now lives, resides his biggest fan base in the world. They are so crazy over and devoted to The Smiths and Morrissey that they even have The Smiths-only night clubs which only play The Smiths and nothing else. If you have never seen a concert of Morrissey’s, you wouldn’t believe some of the audience trying to get up the stage to hug and kiss him and his hand, and to proffer deep kowtows.

There is a revival of interest in not only The Smiths but Morrissey himself. He has been touring the UK to promote his latest CD You are the Quarry, and his label Sanctuary has just released a live set CD and a live performance DVD of his sold-out concert in Manchester.

I have always been a great fan, ever since I heard them in the 80s - and I really mean a great fan – hunting for tees, books, videos and DVDs all over London; in San Francisco managing to obtain import-only copy of rare B-sides collection CD and US-pressed DVD singles collection. When anyone calls me on my mobile, it sings out Every Day is like Sunday. Only the tune, of course, not the words. The actual words are :

Trudging slowly over wet sand
back to the bench
where your clothes were stolen
this is the coastal town
that they forgot to close down
Armageddon - come Armageddon!
Come Armageddon! Come!
Everyday is like Sunday
everyday is silent and grey
Hide on the promenade
scratch out a postcard
"how I dearly with I was not here"
in the seaside town
...that they forgot to bomb
Come! Come! Come - nuclear bomb!
Everyday is like Sunday
everyday is silent and grey
Trudging back over pebbles and sand
and a strange dust lands on your hands
(and on your face)
Everyday is like Sunday
"Win Yourself A Cheap Tray"
share some greased tea with me
everyday is silent and grey