The final statement:

FRANKLY VULGAR FINAL STATEMENT

Dear Everyone,

The site is now permanently closed. I thank you all for a great 16 months of the largest and longest ever running public archive of Morrissey and Smiths MP3's.

The reason that the site is being shut down is that it became too popular. Lately, I had to rename all the files to the .3PM extension, just to get rid of excessive traffic caused by MP3 search engines. Unfortunately, that action may have backfired. Since the site became so fast, countless people decided to tell all their friends and post the site address on countless internet newsgroups.

Ironically, the site's popularity is the impetus for it being shut down. But of course there is an isolated reason that I am choosing to shut the site down now. It is because an unmentioned person has contacted me, claiming to be close to Morrissey's management. I have confirmed this to be true, and believe that it is more worthwhile to close the site on a good note, rather than to have it forcefully taken down with casualties.

Please accept my apologies.

Yours truly,
The operator of Frankly Vulgar

The BBC's got a story on Johnny Marr turning down the vacant spot in Oasis:

Why Johnny Marr knocked back Oasis

Who would be mad enough to turn down the job as guitarist with Oasis? Well one legendary axeman turned down Noel and Liam, because their new guitarist Gem, wasn't their first choice. Apparently, despite Noel's denials, the band did approach former Smiths and Electronic guitarist Johnny Marr but got knocked back.

Bernard Sumner, frontman of Electronic, revealed all to Radio 1: "We’ve known Noel for a long time, he’s a good friend. He did approach Johnny, I believe, to be a guitarist in Oasis. But Johnny’s working on stuff of his own, solo projects and I think he wants to pursue that and finish that really. I think the timing was just bad. He can’t play guitar good enough!" he said.

I've just added an interview I did with Johnny Rogan on Christmas Eve 1994, to my website Indie Schmindie. It was originally included in my Smiths fanzine.

There is an affectionate and almost poignant poem in today's Independent (Oct. 29). Written by Martin Newell, it is featured in the regular Friday music pages.

Entitled "Upon Morrissey's Return To England", it is a worth seeing item for chroniclers of Moz-lore:

UPON MORRISSEY'S RETURN TO ENGLAND
By Martin Newell
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Stir your sleeping suicidal stumps boys.
The Elvis of the bedsit heart is back
And coughing on the landing of his forties
Is perfectly entitled to his plaque

A bicycle left leaning in the ginnel
A jacket hanging limply on a chair
The cemetry gates locked up for ages
And Stephen Patrick Morrissey not there.

He had a bit of trouble with the in-laws
Someone got upset and took a train,
A ruction with the pop-press over image
And up he goes before the beak again.

Keats and Yeats support here notwithstanding
A Union Jack as evidence as well.
On the po-faced critics come like coppers
Handcuffs at the Cadogan Hotel
Harsher yet, the words a judge would utter:
"Truculent" and "devious" for two
Knives out for the Oscar Wilde of Stratford?
Come now ladies, this will never do.

Somewhere in the north , a decade earlier
A man who sang his songs in black and white
Floated from a thousand upstairs windows
While Rickenbackers twinkled in the night
Hearing-aids and spectacles went high street
Students copied everything he wrote
The Cupa-Soups congealed on their dressers
As love lay bleeding in an Oxfam coat.

A brace of brilliant albums in the archives
A wealth of wit you wouldn't find today
This is what we do in brave new Britain
Kick the awkward talent out the way.

Put the kettle on the Belling, our kid
Get the Keats out, video The Knack
Pay the taxi, help him with his suitcase
Better let the lodgers know he's back.


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* The reference to Stratford is Newell's chosen word. Whether this was meant to be Stretford, we'll never know.