Paint a Vulgar Picture

Did I think about calling this post “Bigmouth Strikes Again”?

You bet your ass I did.

Too easy.

That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore

I was a huge Smiths fan, beginning in the late Eighties, which admittedly made me a little late to the party. My initiation — courtesy of my friends Martere and Frazer — was the song “Panic,” released in 1986. The first time I heard it, it already sounded like a classic that had been burned into my memory, the lyrics at once surprising and yet inevitable, as if they were something I’d known my whole life:

So burn down the disco
And hang the blessed DJ
Because the music that they constantly play
Says nothing to me about my life

I instantly went batty on the band, the same way millions of others did. Over the next several years I devoured everything they ever recorded. Soon tired of pestering DJs at crowded clubs (and I’m sure they feeling was mutual), my friends and I had business cards made up that said, simply, PLEASE PLAY THE SMITHS.

I remained a fanatic as the band broke up and Morrissey embarked on a solo career that has now lasted about seven times longer than the group’s. (It takes nothing away from him as a lyricist, singer…