Gene's Martin Rossiter Interview, Comparisons With Morrissey - sabotagetimes.com

Martin Rossiter Interviewed By Jon Wilde For sabotagetimes.com

Excerpt -

Throughout your time with Gene, you were routinely compared with Morrissey. How much of a burden did that become?


I liked The Smiths a lot. From an early age, I’d always felt a sense of “otherness” and, to me, The Smiths were the musical manifestation of that otherness. I enjoyed the fact that Morrissey would use language in a way that was very different from any other singer of the time. Morrissey did cast a long shadow and became a kind of shadow that I could never quite get away from. I did get fed up with the comparisons because his name would keep coming up whenever Gene was written about. The comparisons came up because, like Morrissey, I sing in an English accent which is surprisingly rare when you think about it. Like Morrissey I sing with a vibrato. I suppose we both have an interest in the human condition. But, as far as I’m concerned, that’s where it ends.

Full Interview - http://www.sabotagetimes.com/music/...rviewed-pulp-and-blur-can-fck-off-to-butlins/

Nice interview, thanks.
Going to see him tomorrow night at the Deaf Institute and can't wait. :guitar:
 
I vividly remember Gene coming out at the time of Britpop and their USP being Martin's fey ways and love of early Smiths and how cool Moz was in the 80s. Remember this was when Moz was "box-office poison" and in a career low. Some would say Gene's promotion as the new Smiths was a little too cynical? Whilst I desperately wanted to like them ad an impressionable young pup but found their music dreary and derivative. Why try and bother imitating one of the great British bands?

Plus the drummer looked like an old time cottager.

Not much better than Menswear really
 
The reason Gene got compared to the Smiths was because of Martin Rossiter's appearance, lyrics, persona and singing style. It was a bit like Morrissey but minus the good bits.
The music they played was never that similar to the Smiths - very little guitar jangle going on. This new album does, however, sound a lot more promising than recent Morrissey songs.
 
Let me get this straight: a guy singing songs to piano accompaniment equals a rip off of an obscure Morrissey b-side.

I think there are centuries of music pre-dating I've Changed My Plea that attempt such a thing...
 
The Morrissey/Smiths comparisons were what initially drew me to Gene (so I must thank those journos for that at least), but it didn't take more than a couple of listens to the first singles to realize that comparison was thin at best, the need of the press to spin any band or performer as if they could never be better than second rate hybrids or one-trick rip-offs of those who came before. I won't say I couldn't hear the basis of the comparisons but as the band progressed from singles to album and strength to strength and so on, it was obvious that the Smiths comparisons were falling flat. Gene always stood on their own feet and deserved to be so much more than what lazy journalists attempted to attribute to them. They did enjoy a reasonably lengthy and successful career, so I guess it worked out.

Anyway, the new album is really quite delicate and beautiful, just Martin and his piano. It reminds me a bit of some of my favorite Gene b-sides, those quieter tunes like Drawn To The Deep End or Dolce & Gabbana Or Nowt that occupy the resting space on the b-sides to some really brilliant singles.

I imagine at the end of the day it must have been (and continues to be) just as grating for Mr Rossiter to have this come up in articles and interviews as it is for Morrissey to be constantly reminded of a band he was in over 20 years ago and grilled ad infinitum about their reformation.
 
I vividly remember Gene coming out at the time of Britpop and their USP being Martin's fey ways and love of early Smiths and how cool Moz was in the 80s. Remember this was when Moz was "box-office poison" and in a career low. Some would say Gene's promotion as the new Smiths was a little too cynical? Whilst I desperately wanted to like them ad an impressionable young pup but found their music dreary and derivative. Why try and bother imitating one of the great British bands?

Plus the drummer looked like an old time cottager.

Not much better than Menswear really

I agree, if you go to Martins and genes gigs its full of people with Morrissey related tshirts. Its just a joke.
Gene were by no means important-the sort of people who fall for this are people who never really *got* the smiths and Morrissey and feel Morrissey let them down.
Gene and martin were completely out classed by Pulp,Suede and the rest of them-OK songs but really, they were a bad joke. Gene and Martin are 100 times better than smoking popes though.
To compare him with even Jarvis and Brett is mad let alone Morrissey.
Martin does write his songs and music (he didn't write all the music on this album, on his own though) but big deal, so do lots of people musicians are common. Morrissey has always been more than that, thats what makes him special-FFS!
Martin is a local concern able but no magic. A Smiths Morrissey fanatic that tried and failed to rip the Morrissey persona off.
Martin and Jon Wilde happen to be massive Moz fans who have grown jealous of their hero-a bit like some solo people.
 
Let me get this straight: a guy singing songs to piano accompaniment equals a rip off of an obscure Morrissey b-side.

I think there are centuries of music pre-dating I've Changed My Plea that attempt such a thing...
Were you f'ing born stupid?
I said the idea. Yes its obscure but Martin would have known full well about it. He was a massive fan and collector. Although, Gene were nothing like The Smiths they based their career on them and look, they actually sounded like a Morrissey b side.
I actually. knew martin in the 90s. So know for a fact he was desperate to meet Moz and was based himself on him. Not that the Morrissey persona fitted him- He always looked like a wanna be Moz that missed the point by miles.
His wife even chose his clothing (and bought them), he really is clueless. Nice but clueless.
Don't trust the con.

All that said the album is worth buying and gene had some OK music..so I guess thats the main thing.
 
Interesting discussion on the Smiths/Gene fan schism, all these years later. My first impression back in the 90s was that they wanted to be the new Smiths, plain and simple. So did Suede, but they did it by resurrecting sounds that The Smiths loved (glam, in particular), rather than the sounds that The Smiths made. It's true that Gene did forge their own (little) identity, but they were never really going to transcend.

To paraphrase something Noel Gallagher once said about successful pop bands, which I truly agree with, is that there has to be a touch of the ridiculous mixed with the cool. Gene had none of that -- talented, but too earnest.
 
f*** me, this anonymous fella sure posts in this thread a lot for someone who doesn't really like Gene or, even, Rossiter's attempted output. Jog on fella, there's some of us who would like to discuss the topic at hand without your unwanted negativity. And don't fall back on the ol' "it's just my opinion!' garb, no one asked for it to start with.
 
I heard Rossiter's new album earlier. It was...OK. Am I the only person who finds downloading from Exystence these days a tortured, living hell?

This thread has made me listen to Olympian for the first time in God knows how long, though. It's still wonderful.
 
Thanks, Ben, for the defense. Anonymous needs to crack open a grammar text before revisiting!

I agree with King Leer, though, about what ultimately killed Gene off. Every great pop act needs a bit of the weird, or at least the silly, to transcend. It's what is so ho hum about the majority of indie guitar groups. Boring looks, boring tunes, boring lyrics, boring guitar sound...

Morrissey is, and always has been, an absolute weirdo. It remains much of his appeal.
 
i too liked gene and martin. the first gene album is one of those few albums for me, where practically every song stands out. the Olympian single in particular is just sublime. its a bit smithsy, but not. it also shows martin had a much wider vocal range than morrissey. the vocal bit at the end where he's singing 'you.. i wanted to be there with you..' is probably where he should have gone with the singing. morrissey wouldnt have made those notes.

i agree though that singing in the morrissey tone and writing sub-morrissey lyrics was too much, and they were never able to get away from that. its sad because there were some great songs (i'll never walk again, little child, all night, for the dead), the band didn't sound like the smiths, i think the guitar player had his own sound. the thing that held them back was the voice (which brought on the smiths comparisons). martin perhaps needed more influences thrown in the pot to shake off the vocal style. a shame. i still love listening to their albums. they all have greatness in there. but you can't sound too much like your influences to make it big.
 
Say Hello, Wave Goodbye is a terrific song.

A swift reappraisal of the new Rossiter album after a few more listens... It isn't "OK" as I said earlier. It's magnificent. I just ordered it on Amazon. A truly beautiful thing, and a strong contender for my album of the year. Some of it reminds me of Carter Burwell's True Grit soundtrack of a couple of years ago.

As for the Morrissey comparison these are false, in fact more false than they ever have been, sadly.

Morrissey doesn't write songs this haunting anymore. I only wish he did.
 
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I like the way Martin pretends ignorance of where the Morrissey comparisons came from in the first place. When Gene started, he was practically a Morrissey tribute act - the vocals, the mannerisms, the downbeat lyrics, the anti-royal lyrics (Do You Want to Hear It From Me), the Hatful of Hollow style single/B-side compilation 2nd album - even Moz said in an interview that he didn't think Gene sounded like the Smiths, so much as Martin sounded like him. People jumped on the Gene bandwagon at the time as the Smiths were long dead, and even Morrissey himself appeared to be in decline. There was a gap, and Gene filled it. Fair play to the band, and him, for moving on and finding their own identity, but when the band were at their most successful was the early Moz-aping period, so those compasions will always stick - even if they are no longer relevant.
 
I like the way Martin pretends ignorance of where the Morrissey comparisons came from in the first place. When Gene started, he was practically a Morrissey tribute act - the vocals, the mannerisms, the downbeat lyrics, the anti-royal lyrics (Do You Want to Hear It From Me), the Hatful of Hollow style single/B-side compilation 2nd album - even Moz said in an interview that he didn't think Gene sounded like the Smiths, so much as Martin sounded like him. People jumped on the Gene bandwagon at the time as the Smiths were long dead, and even Morrissey himself appeared to be in decline. There was a gap, and Gene filled it. Fair play to the band, and him, for moving on and finding their own identity, but when the band were at their most successful was the early Moz-aping period, so those compasions will always stick - even if they are no longer relevant.

I don't see how Martin sounds like Morrissey, sings like him, or mimics his mannerisms. And Gene doesn't look or sound like The Smiths. Who cares what the press said, or even what this band had to say back then about the comparisons? I think it is irrelevant now. Just watch and listen to this performance. It holds its own. And the lyrics to this beautiful love song... well... up there with the best of them.

 
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