S
sweetness
Guest
"Annoyed that I missed Morrissey on Top Of The Pops. Apparently he wore a Jobriath t-shirt. Still haven't bought his album yet, out of my ludricous anti-following-the-crowd snobbery. I tend to shy away from Joining In with something everyone else does, equating it with eschewing the popular people at school and preferring to chat to the person in the corner with no friends. All very well, but applying that analogy to buying records or seeing films is just ridiculous. I still haven't seen Shaun Of The Dead or read the last Harry Potter for (mostly) the same reason. Why not? I approve of them, after all. Sometimes my own Robin Hood-like philosophy is my own enemy - why rush to follow the crowd and give to the PR-rich when others are starving, the voice in my head tells me. It's true that Morrissey doesn't NEED me to buy his album, but so what? That doesn't mean I won't enjoy it. Besides, I'm entirely happy for Mr M's impressive comeback into blanket popularity, even if his new album's reviews are more mixed than I predicted.
But the voice won out, and I instead bought the last Delgados album, on sale at £1.99. Partly because I genuinely love their recent material (especially "Come In From The Cold"), and so it's a bargain, but mostly, if I'm honest, for the feeling that they deserve my purchase power more than Morrissey. How patronising can one get? What skewed criteria. Today I will snap out of this madness and buy the Moz album. I'm additionally galvanised by reading this Guardian article on What To Think About Morrissey. Fair enough monitoring what the press are saying, but the implication is that one doesn't need to find out for oneself and make one's own mind up. There's a character in Whit Stillman's film Metropolitan who doesn't read novels, just reviews and literary criticism. That way he gets a clear idea of what the author intended, and an opinion to produce at dinner parties. All without having to read the actual novel. In one later scene, however, a copy of "Mansfield Park" is at his bedside. He's been shown the error of his ways.
There's nothing wrong with appearing to follow the crowd, as long as one stands out from it."
his livejournal
But the voice won out, and I instead bought the last Delgados album, on sale at £1.99. Partly because I genuinely love their recent material (especially "Come In From The Cold"), and so it's a bargain, but mostly, if I'm honest, for the feeling that they deserve my purchase power more than Morrissey. How patronising can one get? What skewed criteria. Today I will snap out of this madness and buy the Moz album. I'm additionally galvanised by reading this Guardian article on What To Think About Morrissey. Fair enough monitoring what the press are saying, but the implication is that one doesn't need to find out for oneself and make one's own mind up. There's a character in Whit Stillman's film Metropolitan who doesn't read novels, just reviews and literary criticism. That way he gets a clear idea of what the author intended, and an opinion to produce at dinner parties. All without having to read the actual novel. In one later scene, however, a copy of "Mansfield Park" is at his bedside. He's been shown the error of his ways.
There's nothing wrong with appearing to follow the crowd, as long as one stands out from it."
his livejournal
