Author Lars Iyer extols roles of Morrissey & co. for Manchester culture in My Weil playlist for The Quietus (September 2, 2023)

A philosopher-novelist called Lars Iyer has a new book out that's set in Manchester, called My Weil.

The publisher describes the novel as 'a scathingly funny look at a group of quirky graduate students majoring in Disaster Studies who are forced to reconsider their cynicism when they confront a new student who, remarkably, has the same name as the 20th Century Catholic mystic philosopher Simone Weil …'

The writer has just put together a playlist for The Quietus, which is really a lot more that that, providing cultural commentary and astute insights into what drives Mancunian music-makers, along with the perfect selection of songs. Morrissey serves as one of the key figures for these vivid layered vignettes.

Madchester, famous throughout the world for its nightlife, its indie-dance, its ecstasy-fuelled hedonism, seemed an absolute break from the city’s musical past. Where was the ambition? The sense of mission? Smith, Curtis, Morrissey and others were intense autodictats – ‘anti-intellectual intellectuals’ as Simon Reynolds called them, reading Nietzsche, Philip K. Dick (Smith and Curtis), Wilde, third-wave feminism (Morrissey), using literary fiction and philosophy as prompts for their lyrics. Graduates of local universities like Pete Shelley, Howard Devoto, Linder Sterling and Dick Witts wanted to channel what they learned about artistic modernism, about critical theory, into popular song. Wasn’t the intellectual and artistic ferment of New Wave, when Manchester was the capital of post-punk, what Madchester was leaving behind?...

...“These are desperate times,” said Morrissey in an interview. “But I don’t think we should join in with the desperation. We should conquer it.” That’s what he does on The Smiths’s fourth single, the title of which is a take on Sandie Shaw’s ‘I Wonder if He’s Missing Me Now’.

“I was looking for a job, and then I found a job, and heaven knows I’m miserable now / I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour but heaven knows I’m miserable now”: neither work nor leisure will please our narrator. Nor romance (“What she asked of me at the end of the day / Caligula would have blushed”).

What’s left is singing about being miserable, dreaming up variations on being miserable, affirming gloomery itself as a paradoxically joyful way of being. Morrissey takes refuge in the comedy of misery, thereby transmuting it, revaluating its value.

And on Top of the Pops in an outsize pink Evans blouse, a crystal necklace round his neck and a great bush of gladioli in his back pocket: Morrissey performs this misery, enjoying it, sharing it, offering himself up as a figure of ridicule or embarrassment (‘Heaven Knows’ was pathetically easy to parody by Smiths sceptics.)

On the Top of the Pops stage, mic-less, thin and swirling Morrissey is both playful and arch and sincere, non-miserable and miserable. This is how The Smiths sang back at that 80s aspirational culture with which so many of us felt at odds, showing how voluntary joblessness, voluntary invalidism, voluntary celibacy could be a way of living...
Click to expand...

Ludus, Pete Shelley, Nico, Joy Division, New Order, The Happy Mondays, and The Passage are the other acts selected.

See the full article at https://thequietus.com/articles/33361-lars-iyer-my-weil-playlist

Lars Iyer

 

[Malarkey]

It's lovely to see appreciation of his talent starting to slip back in.

 

[goinghome]

It's lovely to see appreciation of his talent starting to slip back in.

Little by little

Though it only went underground for a while, I think.

I've ordered that book. I like the writing. The Quietus article is jam-packed with detail. When did Morrissey state Nice's Desertshore as his favourite album of all time? Lars Iyer really knows his music.

I looked up the band Passage. I hadn't heard of them before. John Peel used the same song on BBC radio, describing their music as one of the most impressive releases of the year, and superb.



In 1979 Paul Morley named Passage in his pick of the top three bands from Manchester. They disbanded in 1983, after releasing a few albums. Good overview here that starts, 'an intense and cerebral group...'

 

[DaveC]

Good overview here that starts, 'an intense and cerebral group...'

and goes on to include: 'As we were spineless about singing we once auditioned a bunch of hopefuls, including a certain Steve Morrissey, who we thought a bit too glum for the likes of us.'

 

[ZOOM FROM GLOOM]

and goes on to include: 'As we were spineless about singing we once auditioned a bunch of hopefuls, including a certain Steve Morrissey, who we thought a bit too glum for the likes of us.'

talk about ‘burying the lede’! @goinghome! Lol.

 

[Famous when dead]

@Famous when dead again forgive my poor memory, but has this been mentioned before anywhere? Morrissey trying out as frontman for the band The Passage?

Briefly, the band also gained a glamorous co-vocalist, Lizzy Johnson - an odd development, given that Witts' vocal delivery had formed a large part of Pindrop's unique appeal. However, as Witts explains: 'As we were spineless about singing we once auditioned a bunch of hopefuls, including a certain Steve Morrissey, who we thought a bit too glum for the likes of us. But this explains gorgeous Lizzy Johnson's presence on Devils and Angels.'

The Passage | Biography | LTM Recordings

Manchester new wave group The Passage were fronted by Dick Witts and recorded for Object Music and Cherry Red

www.ltmrecordings.com

Regards,
FWD.

 

[Lars Iyer]

Richard Witts from The Passage wrote an excellent book on Nico and a more academic book, still excellent, on The Velvet Underground.

Morrissey named Desertshore as his favourite album in the brochure for the Meat is Murder tour, early 1985.

 

[Famous when dead]

.


Yeah. That’s the link goinghome posted.

I was just wondering if it was ever mentioned in any Smiths books, etc or even on solo before? I did use search, but nothing. This is really surprising & interesting news, I think.

Sorry, that's the stock internet source quoted everywhere.
Regards,
FWD.

 

[j*e*t]

Richard Witts from The Passage wrote an excellent book on Nico and a more academic book, still excellent, on The Velvet Underground.

Morrissey named Desertshore as his favourite album in the brochure for the Meat is Murder tour, early 1985.

Also joint favourite in Countdown magazine (Australia):

Countdown Magazine (Australia) Profile - Morrissey-solo Wiki

releases.morrissey-solo.com

 

[j*e*t]

Sorry, should have put that as a link.
https://releases.morrissey-solo.com/wiki/Countdown_Magazine_(Australia)_Profile

 

[goinghome]

Richard Witts from The Passage wrote an excellent book on Nico and a more academic book, still excellent, on The Velvet Underground.

Morrissey named Desertshore as his favourite album in the brochure for the Meat is Murder tour, early 1985.

Sorry, should have put that as a link.
https://releases.morrissey-solo.com/wiki/Countdown_Magazine_(Australia)_Profile

Thanks so much, big-noses who know!

From the little I've heard of Passage, that first phrase about the band being 'incisive and cerebral' seems accurate. To keep that hyper-aware non-compromising groove going could be challenging, and it's no surprise the singer took an academic projects too. I wonder if these spotlighted acts make it into scenes in the novel? Time will reveal all

 

[goinghome]

I have got my hands on Lars Iyer's book, My Weil, and am finding it companionable and mentally homeopathic. Mancunian musicians, including Morrissey, get a paragraph each on this couple of pages.

 

[goinghome]

Another Morrissey mention in the unique open-eyed My Weil!

 

[goinghome]

On Moz striking, as supposed in Iyer's book, one of David Graeber's last articles, appearing in The Big Issue at the end of 2020, concludes that far more people will have to stop working as we know it, if problems are to be solved.

It's not like Morrissey doesn't work as such. Just not at a bullshit job. He's been lucky in the sense that his choices to pursue unconventional activities he's good at and passionate about brought him rewards. Otherwise, work is a four-letter word?