This was stolen off the AOL Morrissey Message Center. See ya in London...

Subject: Moz @ Dragon Fly
Date: Thu, 10 June 1999 07:53 PM EDT
From: RBPELLSR

Just wanted to inform all the Moz fans that I was talking to El Vez (The Mexican Elvis) and he told me that Moz was at his show on Monday at the Dragon Fly in LA.... afterwards Moz came up to him and told him what a fan he was of El Vez....Moz personally invited him to open for him at a concert he is having in London in a couple of months.

Leon

Recently, I bought a book called "The REM Companion - Two Decades Of Commentary" by John Platt, a book that contains old articles and interviews about REM. And in one of the interviews, done by Bucketfull Of Brains in 1987, guitarist Peter Buck talks about the Smiths:

BOB: I saw you play in LA last year, in Universal City - that was great, I loved that place!

P.B.: I saw the Smiths there, it was a really good show. I'll use this space to correct something: people used to ask me if I was influenced by Johnny Marr and that used to piss me off so much that I said really nasty things about the Smiths - but I do like the Smiths. When I cam over to England people asked "Are you influenced by the Smiths?" and I was like "Fuck you! I've had two records out before the Smiths even started." So I always said nasty things about the Smiths, but I like them a lot, it took me a while to understand that - the first record I didn't really dig at all, from "Meat Is Murder" every record there's thre or four songs that are just mindblowing great. "How Soon Is Now?" is one of the greatest songs ever and I just heard "Sheila Take A Bow" - it wasn't a single or a hit in America, I heard it on a compilation - that's a great song, reminds me of T.Rex. I'm sorry they broke up before I got the chance to admit that I like 'em!

Perhaps someone has already noticed this. I was flipping through a book I've had for ages called "Raising Hell: The Rebel in the Movies" by a London journalist named Terrence Pettigrew. I had never noticed it before but, the title of Chapter Ten is...The Malady Lingers On. Opposite is, a photo of Steve McQueen taken from The Great Escape. The book was published in 1986.

Did Morrissey take the title of his video compilation from the book? While I don't know if the phrase "The Malady Lingers On" has a history preceding this, but it looks as though Morrissey must have borrowed the title from this book.