You're jumping to too many conclusions, Nick. People on here are starting to think that's the only exercise you ever get.

There is no attempt at revisionist history on my part, or on Morrissey's; the man was there; he documented what happened in the SG booklet. It's there for everyone to see.

Morrissey chooses to work with musicians that share his musical tastes and influences. Boz and Alain are his musical and generational peers, so their earlier musical influences like glam or prog-rock are more apparent in the work, rather than any attempt to sound current or trendy. Even the looping of the Shostakovich piece in Teachers had more to do with Syd Barret than Eddie Vedder. In Morrissey's mind, "grunge" was nothing more than a bunch of hippies playing punk; he admitted that much in the '95 Q interview.

You conveniently left out Teachers, the Operation, and Southpaw and dismissed it as "filler". Those songs were collaborative, deliberate, and essential to the theme and artistic success of Southpaw Grammar. The album was meant for the musicians to flex some musical muscle. If those three songs were “filler“, then at 28:10 minutes total, that's the longest recorded attempt at "filler" in the history of recorded music!

You consider Southpaw Grammar to be a failure. On a commercial and critical level it was; critics are and still too hung up on Morrissey’s work with the Smiths to appreciate the musical merits and neither UK or US record companies promoted the album because they had no intention of renewing Morrissey's contract.

On an artistic level, Morrissey achieved what he set out to do. He must have felt strongly enough of the merits of the album that he felt it deserved a second release. Morrissey is wise enough to know that to a different generation, it all sound new.