What's Everyone Reading At The Moment?

Nope. Not triggered. You don’t know me. You don’t know my story. You are only making guesses and you are oh so wrong.
So all the info you provided yourself is something you deny now?

I've never experienced you as stressed out as you are now. I am here to make you move forward and this is like an intervention that you badly need.

Your lie about living in a mansion was harmless but also sadly in line with your constant need to paint your life as a great one when you have absolutely nothing of worth in your life. There are 14 year old girls with more of a life than you.
 
It makes perfect sense that Lanterns was triggered. Imagine what kind of life she leads. She comes from such darkness of bitterness it is not worth going into what shaped her and why but I think we can all see the wider picture before us.

For a pseudo intellectual like her it speaks volumes that she chooses to openly show how triggered she is by things related to TAT that she shares. Unable as she is to debate and win an argument she is destined to turn to infantile words of cursing instead of being able to truly defend herself.

These mentally challenged lefties from broken homes with broken toys will never find their way in life and never contribute to their country or the world. They are doomed to live in their hopelessness watching the happy successful and gorgeous people make the most of life.

No one can or ever will be able to live life away from life so in the end they are killing themselves and dying from all kinds of diseases triggered by a clouded hateful mind.

There is no need to feel sorry for them for they are a waste of space and time. The air they breathe wants to scream and land in other peoples lungs filled with joy and hope and good.

Imagine wasting a whole life on being a nobody wanted by no one. My heart almost bleeds for them if it wasn't for the fact they make me laugh.
 
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picked up jane austen's mansfield park this morning coz ive never been able to finish it though it was purchased in the mid-1990s. i can see what people adore in her, but as a non-native english speaker i must say that reading her books is of course delightful but also kinda time-consuming when having to consult the dictionary ever so often.

there is one passage in the first chapter whose brilliance i particularly savoured and which i find more topical than ever. in this chapter sir thomas bertram and his wife maria decide to adopt maria's younger, penniless and annually birthing sister's oldest daughter. lots of consideration goes into figuring out the benefits and possible downsides of such an arrangement...
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... i find sir bertram's level-headed class-consciousness very refreshing, and of course you have to protect your loved ones from the sickly influence of the anonymous and often brain-dead masses that are trying to compensate for their educational deficits and lack of fortune and connections with the vulgar display of psychopathic modes of behaviour that have sunk deeply into their flesh and blood having in a nonreflecting way become their second, if not first, nature.

let's see how quickly this will trigger a response from the anonymous guest puppet. lol!
 
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picked up jane austen's mansfield park this morning coz ive never been able to finish it though it was purchased in the mid-1990s. i can see what people adore in her, but as a non-native english speaker i must say that reading her books is of course delightful but also kinda time-consuming when having to consult the dictionary ever so often.

there is one passage in the first chapter whose brilliance i particularly savoured and which i find more topical than ever. in this chapter sir thomas bertram and his wife maria decide to adopt maria's younger, penniless and annually birthing sister's oldest daughter. lots of consideration goes into figuring out the benefits and possible downsides of such an arrangement...
View attachment 53490
... i find sir bertram's level-headed class-consciousness very refreshing, and of course you have to protect your loved ones from the sickly influence of the anonymous and often brain-dead masses that are trying to compensate for their educational deficits and lack of fortune and connections with the vulgar display of psychopathic modes of behaviour that have sunk deeply into their flesh and blood having in a nonreflecting way become their second, if not first, nature.
I think the reason you hate psychopaths as you call them is because you harbour the same urge in you. Every post from you over the years confirm it. You sit there in your attic bedsit and judge people who are just like you.

What have you ever done with your life?

Nuffink!

You're a study in failure on all levels. Too weak to ride a train and keep a job. "Oh the rain that flattens my hair oh oh these are the things that kills me".
 
Why feminism never goes well together with reality, from google translate:

I'm disappointed with the original feminist

Linda Shadow about Mary Wollstonecraft: Suicide for a Man! Aargh!
YESTERDAY 17:00
This is a cultural article that is part of Aftonbladet's opinion journalism.
eda5d7a7-757f-4890-a7fc-034eb4fd835c

CULTURE
Did you know that the old feminist icon Mary Wollstonecraft traveled around Scandinavia in the late 18th century? In addition, she had her one-year-old daughter Fanny , born outside of marriage in the midst of the French Revolution, which forced Wollstonecraft to flee back to England.

It sounds cool. What an adventurer! The book she wrote about her penalties in Sweden - where she thought the food was too salty and the bread inedible since the Swedes only bake once a year - became a bestseller that was translated into several languages and her natural inspiration inspired both Coleridge and Wordsworth .

“Oh Mary, Mary, I think lovingly, there you are! Still, after more than two hundred years, you are there, as brave, as angry, as ingenious, as quick-witted as then, in the late 18th-century Europe. "



History professor Yvonne Hirdman shows in her preface to the new issue of Mary Wollstonecrafts In Defense of Women's Rights the usual love for this feminist icon.

But I must admit that - when I started reading about Mary Wollstonecraft - I was extremely disappointed that this primordial feminist was so weak for men.

The trip to Scandinavia was not due to a longing for freedom and grand adventures. No, without Wollstonecraft offered to find a stolen ship full of silver (!), To win back daughter Fanny's father's heart (!!). Baffling yes, feminism well.

When the man after completing an assignment (she found the boat but the silver was stolen) still did not want her, she threw herself into the Thames! Suicide for a man's sake! Aargh! Besides, it wasn't the first time she tried to kill Fanny's dad, she had already been rescued from an overdose.



Is it just me who thinks this is awesome?

I am somewhat humbled when I read about Wollstonecrafts for the time very progressive ideas about a new kind of family. She suggests to Fanny's dad and his new girlfriend that the three of them can live together and that he can have sex with the girlfriend and some kind of intellectual relationship with her self. She could not accept being left and that her daughter would be robbed of her father just because he was so whimsical and fell in love with another. Say what you want about it, at least it is innovative.

Unfortunately, Fanny's dad - or girlfriend - didn't agree with this kind of different ideas.

The story ended neither happy nor feminist. A literary critic was baffled in Wollstonecraft's travelogue from Scandinavia, whereupon Wollstonecraft became so flattered that… she got along with the old man (!!!).

Then the funny ending came when she was only thirty-eight years old in a cot.

Poor Linda aged so badly when her thyroid died and she became multi ill from various disorders. I can only hope she chose to follow my advice.

https://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/a/qLEm8z/allt-jag-kan-har-per-hagman-lart-mig
 
Annica Englund's new luxury life with the NHL star in Canada
ANNICA ENGLUND Published November 24, 2019 at 6:00 pm
This is the influencer Annica Englund
640@60.jpg

Annica Englund became a famous face after her participation in "Big Brother" 2012.Photo: EXPRESSEN
Now Annica Englund has moved to Canada for love.Photo: SCREEN DUMP / INSTAGRAM / SCREEN DUMP / INSTAGRAM


As a 22-year-old, Annica Englund stepped into the "Big Brother" house and her life never became the same again.

Today she is one of Sweden's biggest influencers, investing in her music career - and has been living in Canada with an NHL star for a few months.

But the road to it has not been nail-biting.

- There are things that I wanted to change, says Annica.

Share article
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In 2012 Annica Englund, now 29, participated in the "Big Brother". She was then 22 years old and quickly became one of the most popular participants.

In connection with her participation, she started her blog, which she still runs today. It became the starting point for his career as an influencer.

Having been a well-known face in Sweden for many years and one of the country's biggest influencers, she has now taken her pick and pack and moved to Canada - for love.

Cohabitation with NHL star
But moving to the other side of the globe was not completely obvious at first. The first thought was that she would just go there and say hello.

- But after a whole summer together and when it was approaching that he was going to return to Canada it became quite obvious, Annica says.

Why she should move to Canada initially Annica Englund chose not to tell. After much speculation from followers, Annica Englund finally posted a picture from a hockey match on Instagram and wrote:

“So this is why I ended up in Canada ❤️ I was at my first NHL match yesterday. Admittedly a training game but yes, it was a bit sick ... Will be an exciting year this

But the name of her partner, who plays in the NHL team Calgary Flames, she has chosen not to join social media.

- Social media is my job. My relationship is my privacy. With my job, I have learned to keep what I really want to protect privately, says Annica Englund.

Been harder than she thought
One view that exists about those who live with a hockey player in the NHL is that the "hockey wives", as they are called, should socialize and get to know each other.

Annica describes it as a very special situation that few outsiders understand. At the same time, she believes that this means that she and the other girls quickly get close to each other.

- We all sit in the same boat. But it's kind of like starting in a new class or a new job. You get to know each other, find some people you click with and become good friends.

As a hockey player in the NHL, it can be very fast pucks - not just on the ice. The players can be sold to another team which in turn can mean a move to another city.

Having that knowledge, having recently undergone a major move, means Annica feels scary.

- I don't understand how others who have a shorter contract and live in a hotel do so. My partner has a longer contract and just bought a house here so right now it feels safe. But when that day comes, well then we have to deal with it then.

Namely, Sambon has signed a contract with the hockey team that spans several years, which has given him a salary hit of $ 4.85 million annually, corresponding to SEK 43 million.

Despite the new house, the move to Canada has been more difficult than expected by Annica Englund.

But it's not something she regrets.

- There are obviously mixed emotions, but it gets easier and easier with time.

"Can handle so much more"
Life in public has not always been a dance on roses, and there are things that Annica Englund would have liked to have undone.

- Some things I would have kept more private and some things I wouldn't even have done. But now that it is already online, I have to use it to not get others to do the same, says Annica.

Four years ago, Annica Englund said in her blog that she had long suffered from panic attacks and anxiety.

"I postpone my feelings when I remember that I myself exist and begin to feel how I feel when I break down, " she wrote.

When Annica Englund today thinks back to what it was like, she describes it as a dark time, but today it has made her appreciate life much more.

- I have realized that I can handle so much more than I previously thought, says Annica Englund.

In addition to starting therapy for her mental state, she also found something else that gave her happiness: the music.

In 2018 Annica Englund started investing heavily in her music career. This spring came the debut single. This summer she performed at two of Sweden's biggest music festivals, Lollapalooza and Summerburst.

- It's so fun. It went crazy fast. I am so grateful for all the help I got around and all the people who have supported me, says Annica Englund.

The move to Canada, however, has meant that it has become more difficult to work with the DJ career. But even so, she will continue to invest in the music career.

- I focus more on producing now and this spring when I come back to Sweden there will be more gigs, says Annica Englund.
 
Annica Englund's new luxury life with the NHL star in Canada
ANNICA ENGLUND Published November 24, 2019 at 6:00 pm
This is the influencer Annica Englund
640@60.jpg

Annica Englund became a famous face after her participation in "Big Brother" 2012.Photo: EXPRESSEN
Now Annica Englund has moved to Canada for love.Photo: SCREEN DUMP / INSTAGRAM / SCREEN DUMP / INSTAGRAM


As a 22-year-old, Annica Englund stepped into the "Big Brother" house and her life never became the same again.

Today she is one of Sweden's biggest influencers, investing in her music career - and has been living in Canada with an NHL star for a few months.

But the road to it has not been nail-biting.

- There are things that I wanted to change, says Annica.

Share article
FacebookTwitterE-mail
In 2012 Annica Englund, now 29, participated in the "Big Brother". She was then 22 years old and quickly became one of the most popular participants.

In connection with her participation, she started her blog, which she still runs today. It became the starting point for his career as an influencer.

Having been a well-known face in Sweden for many years and one of the country's biggest influencers, she has now taken her pick and pack and moved to Canada - for love.

Cohabitation with NHL star
But moving to the other side of the globe was not completely obvious at first. The first thought was that she would just go there and say hello.

- But after a whole summer together and when it was approaching that he was going to return to Canada it became quite obvious, Annica says.

Why she should move to Canada initially Annica Englund chose not to tell. After much speculation from followers, Annica Englund finally posted a picture from a hockey match on Instagram and wrote:

“So this is why I ended up in Canada ❤️ I was at my first NHL match yesterday. Admittedly a training game but yes, it was a bit sick ... Will be an exciting year this

But the name of her partner, who plays in the NHL team Calgary Flames, she has chosen not to join social media.

- Social media is my job. My relationship is my privacy. With my job, I have learned to keep what I really want to protect privately, says Annica Englund.

Been harder than she thought
One view that exists about those who live with a hockey player in the NHL is that the "hockey wives", as they are called, should socialize and get to know each other.

Annica describes it as a very special situation that few outsiders understand. At the same time, she believes that this means that she and the other girls quickly get close to each other.

- We all sit in the same boat. But it's kind of like starting in a new class or a new job. You get to know each other, find some people you click with and become good friends.

As a hockey player in the NHL, it can be very fast pucks - not just on the ice. The players can be sold to another team which in turn can mean a move to another city.

Having that knowledge, having recently undergone a major move, means Annica feels scary.

- I don't understand how others who have a shorter contract and live in a hotel do so. My partner has a longer contract and just bought a house here so right now it feels safe. But when that day comes, well then we have to deal with it then.

Namely, Sambon has signed a contract with the hockey team that spans several years, which has given him a salary hit of $ 4.85 million annually, corresponding to SEK 43 million.

Despite the new house, the move to Canada has been more difficult than expected by Annica Englund.

But it's not something she regrets.

- There are obviously mixed emotions, but it gets easier and easier with time.

"Can handle so much more"
Life in public has not always been a dance on roses, and there are things that Annica Englund would have liked to have undone.

- Some things I would have kept more private and some things I wouldn't even have done. But now that it is already online, I have to use it to not get others to do the same, says Annica.

Four years ago, Annica Englund said in her blog that she had long suffered from panic attacks and anxiety.

"I postpone my feelings when I remember that I myself exist and begin to feel how I feel when I break down, " she wrote.

When Annica Englund today thinks back to what it was like, she describes it as a dark time, but today it has made her appreciate life much more.

- I have realized that I can handle so much more than I previously thought, says Annica Englund.

In addition to starting therapy for her mental state, she also found something else that gave her happiness: the music.

In 2018 Annica Englund started investing heavily in her music career. This spring came the debut single. This summer she performed at two of Sweden's biggest music festivals, Lollapalooza and Summerburst.

- It's so fun. It went crazy fast. I am so grateful for all the help I got around and all the people who have supported me, says Annica Englund.

The move to Canada, however, has meant that it has become more difficult to work with the DJ career. But even so, she will continue to invest in the music career.

- I focus more on producing now and this spring when I come back to Sweden there will be more gigs, says Annica Englund.

The next female Avicii?



 
uschwitz, Chernobyl and black metal in Ukraine
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4
Travel articles. David Nilsson writes in a travelogue about how he, together with friends from Näste 6, visited from alleged death camps in Poland to national socialist black metal concerts in Ukraine.

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The journey started with members of fight group 601 and a sympathizer decided to drive down to Ukraine to attend the annual black metal festival Asgardsrei in Kiev. Once we were on our way down and passed through Poland and Ukraine, we also decided to visit Auschwitz 2 Birkenau, which was one of the world's most famous so-called "extermination camps". We also decided to take the opportunity to visit Chernobyl before the festival, when we were still in Ukraine.

On December 9 it was time to start going down, everything was packed and ready. We decided to drive through Sweden all in one day and that we would start from Luleå at 03:00 at night, and then go to a well-known face in Näste 3 where we would sleep over.

That said, we arrived at our Skåne companion around midnight. In the morning when we woke up we got freshly laid eggs from the farm's henhouse.

A good and hearty breakfast later so we were on the road again. But just before we started the car our host came and gave us homemade organic tee of mint. Remember this tea, because there will be a story of the latter.

The journey through the EU countries was not so much to write about, it was mostly country road and forest. Except when we came to Poland. Everyone in the car noted that it felt like some villages and towns in Poland seemed to burn their garbage in the chimney. Because it really smelled like the kid in some places in the country. In contrast, Norrland's forests appeared as a heavenly kingdom of fresh and good air, something that is rarely reflected on when it feels perfectly normal in their home.

Once inside Poland we had booked into a hostel in Wroclaw, where we had a good pub with good food right next to us.

"The Holocaust" up close
When we woke up the next day, it was time to head to the first destination of the trip: Auschwitz 2, Birkenau - to see what the world-famous "Holocaust camp" looks like.

READ MORE: "The Holocaust" is a scam!

Once outside the camp the mood and mood were good, but at the same time tense. There were a lot of buses on site with schoolchildren being locked in as if it were a slaughterhouse going high.


Once inside the camp, we noticed that everyone with guides had a number that everyone in that group shared. All "one" would with the # 1 group, all "two" with the # 2 group and so on. The highest number I could see was # 70 that a small group of 7-10 people had. Photo: Northern Front.

The first thing we saw when we came inside the walls was a large box where visitors could optionally donate money for Jewish purposes. As we passed the big box we saw a large map of Birkenau where all stations were said and where the so-called "mass gases" were alleged to have occurred.

The picture below represents a similar map, though at another location in the labor camp, when my first picture did not turn out so well:

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Map of alleged annihilation activities in Birkenau. Photo: Northern Front. Click for larger image.


This is a picture taken at the camps where Jews and non-Jews lived and had their sleeping space. A little further to the right was a family camp where only Jewish families resided. Photo: Northern Front.


Treatment plants. Photo: Northern Front.


The building on the left was a shower room where the workers were given new clothes and where clothes were washed. To the right are demolished housing. Photo: Northern Front.


Combs, clothes and various hygiene products inside a booth in the shower building. Photo: Northern Front.


Child being brought into the shower building by a guide. Photo: Northern Front.

When we had been inside the shower, we approached the "gas chambers". Now it was time, one of the highlights of the whole trip. Something you have been looking forward to for years.

As an activist in the Nordic resistance movement, there have been mass discussions with people in the city about the "Holocaust", as the victorious forces have driven a massive propaganda lie against the German people after the fall of the Third Reich. At last you could say that you were there yourself and show the pictures from the "death camp".

We could see the "gas chambers" in the distance and cross-reference with the map. We expected it to be like in Auschwitz 1 where there was still some form of building left, but all we could see were ruins. When we arrived, we could see with our own eyes how the victorious powers' propaganda lie fell into ruin (although of course this was already long overlooked).


A "gas chamber" - no trace of Berlin blue on the walls here! Photo: Northern Front.


Another so-called gas chamber. Photo: Northern Front.

To summarize the whole experience in Birkenau, I would say that you were very disappointed, while it was also what you could expect.

If one goes after what globalist sympathizers have said when talking to them on the street, the general opinion seems to be that they should in principle convert to their self-injurious consumerism, become an obedient goy again and leave the national struggle after a visit to these "death camps" ".

It is difficult to understand what is going on in their brains when it is obvious that they have only read one side of the story and how one cannot be curious enough to find out the other side of the matter.


Goodbye "death camp"! Photo: Northern Front.

I personally was strengthened in the belief I have after my stay, something that I had also considered. We left the work camp with the self-esteem and mood at the highest peak. Now it was time to go to Ukraine!

Smuggling tee to Ukraine
Do you remember the mint tea we got from a friend in Näste 3? It is now that it comes into the picture.

We arrived at the Polish-Ukrainian border at 20:00. Since nothing was in English, we went to one of the customs guards to ask in which file we would stand, and after much if and but we found the right end.

After waiting for about three hours in a multi-kilometer queue of trucks and cars standing idle, it was finally our turn to get our passports stamped so that we could drive into Ukraine. But not before our car would be searched.

We obviously didn't think of the tea we had in the center console of the car. The man who searched through our stay immediately grabbed the jar and asked something, probably what it was in it.

We tried to say it was tee, but he didn't understand a word of English. The mood became quite tense as we stood there trying to gesticulate and convey the message that it was just tee. But luckily one of my fellow travelers was able to speak a little Russian so we called here and asked him to explain to his crappy Russian that there was no drug we had with us. He laughed at us and walked into one of the nearby offices.

Worth pointing out is that it was full of guards carrying AK rifles on site, which made the atmosphere a little strange to us, especially when none of us really understood what anyone was saying.

But after about 30 minutes he came out again and we were finally able to continue into Ukraine, after which we all breathed and could sit and tended to the situation all the way to the Ukrainian capital Kiev.

Visiting the ghost town The
day after we landed in Kiev, it was time to head to Chernobyl and Pripyat for a guided tour of the ghost town. There was a photo ban at all military control stations so we can start with a collage followed by thoughts about the experience.


We started by visiting an abandoned kindergarten in Chernobyl. Photo: Northern Front.


Beds, toys and communist propaganda. Photo: Northern Front.


Of course, a ghostly doll was found on the ghost town's ghost day. Photo: Northern Front.

The first thoughts about our initial taste of this environment were that it was very beautiful, but at the same time very sad.

When you think of all lives lost and of all those who gave their lives to help with the remediation work, you go into a melancholy mood. We also passed a very nice monument on the way to Pripyat, which was erected to honor the firefighters who were the first to put out the fire in Reactor 4.

On site in Pripyat
After our visit to Chernobyl, it was time to go to the city of Pripyat, which is right next to the reactors, where the majority of all radioactive waste was found after the accident.


Abandoned apartments in Pripyat Photo: Nordfront.


The famous Ferris wheel that was to be inaugurated three days after the accident happened. Unfortunately, it never happened. Photo: Northern Front.


Gas-mask. Photo: Northern Front.


Gymnasium in Pripyat. Photo: Northern Front.

The sarcophagus
After walking around Pripyat, it was time to go to the nuclear power plant itself. In 2017, a new sarcophagus named New Safe Confinement (NSC) wascompleted by a French company that was assisted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to raise funds for the project.

Construction began in 2010 and was completed in 2017. The estimated cost of the project is $ 1.5 billion.


Sarcofafen New safe confinement (NSC). Photo: Northern Front.

The Russian woodpecker
When we saw most of Chernobyl and Pripyat, we were offered food in the nuclear power plant's cafeteria. But in order to get there, you had to - just like in many other places in the area - first go into a machine that measured the radiation that you had drawn. If you had too much radiation you could not enter.

Fortunately, everyone in our group had to come in and eat the surprisingly good food that was served. Now the next and final stop was left: DUGA radar station.

DUGA was a radar station right next to Chernobyl used by the Soviet between 1976 and 1989. The station was designed to detect ballistic missiles and the radar could be heard on standard shortwave radios in Europe. Duga had a frequency of 10 Hz which caused the repetitive knocking sound to give it the nickname "The Russian woodpecker". If you want to hear how it sounded, you can do it here .


Duga radar. Photo: Northern Front.

It was a very cool experience to be in this historic place. Despite the tragic past of the place, it is still beautiful in a way to see how Mother Nature takes back what was once hers.

We were all very pleased with how the trip has gone so far and I would recommend everyone to go to Chernobyl / Pripyat to experience this in real life. But now the last milestone of our trip was left: Asgardsrei 2018.

Anti-Semitic black metal in Kiev
Asgardsrei is a festival held annually since 2015 in Kiev, although the festival has existed since 2012. However, the gigs were held in Moscow and not annually.

The music played on Asgardsrei is usually national socialist black metal, so-called NSBM, with a few exceptions. The festival has become a meeting place for national music lovers from all over the world.

During the course of the festival you got to meet a lot of people from different organizations and from several countries. We met, among others, people from Der Dritte Weg and Blood & Honor, but also some Finnish comrades, which of course is always fun.

The festival lasted for three days where more or less open national socialist bands such as Nokturnal Mortum, Peste Noire, Mablyth, Absurd and Goatmoon played live.


French Peste Noire played live to celebrate their pre-release album, which they just released. Photo: Northern Front.


French Baise Ma hache. Photo: Northern Front.


Russian Mabtth together with the singer from Peste Noire. Photo: Northern Front.

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Italian Frangar. Photo: Northern Front.

To sum up the festival and the journey, I would say it was world class. We got to meet a lot of national people on site and it was a brotherhood that you rarely get to know during “regular” festivals.

But if you want to play the devil's lawyer and say something negative about the festival, it must be that some people in the room consumed alcohol in copious amounts. It was also very difficult to get good and publishable pictures of the audience, as a large part of the visitors through the gigs saluted in a way that in Sweden is illegal. The latter can of course also be seen as a plus, especially when you are there.

However, it is not only the community of national that distinguishes Asgardsrei. I would also recommend this festival to anyone who just wants to experience world-class black metal.

In total, we traveled 690 miles during this trip, which began on December 9 and ended with our arrival on December 21.

Worth mentioning is that the tee incident was repeated when we were leaving Ukraine, but this time they searched the entire car and had drug dogs in place.

In the end, it was not very expensive either, given that we shared fuel and hotel costs. As a road trip, however, the trip was a bit long, so next year it will be instead to take the flight down to Kiev.

/ David Nilsson
 
“Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance. She is a veil, rather than a mirror.” Oscar Wilde
 
National law against the will of the people
Published November 25, 2019 at 11:20 pm
COLUMN. According to recent measurements , every third American believes that the country is facing a civil war within five years. In this analysis of the lawsuit against Donald Trump, lawyer and economist Dan Ahlmark notes that the responsibility for the situation lies largely with the US financial establishment - and its not particularly Democratic party establishment in the Democrats.

In fact, the implication of a public prosecution against Trump is that Democrats now do not accept a government ruled by conservative Republicans. A possible prosecution should be seen in the light of the many attempts, by the Democrats and their supporters in various public agencies, to construct the basis for alleged crimes committed by Trump.

The Ministry of Justice has made a survey of the ongoing coup attempt against the president and the introduction to it is published before Christmas. It describes some parts of what has happened (mainly illegal interception) and which can mainly be seen as an information basis for the report that is expected to come later from the same department.

The report is the special prosecutor John H. Durham's investigation of, among other things, the initiation of the coup attempt and it is likely to contain evidence for certain charges.

Justice Minister William Barr recently described in a number of Democrats' actions in such a way that they no longer act as a loyal opposition but "essentially consider themselves partisans in a war to cripple a legally elected government at all costs," which is alarming for the United States.

If the latest indictment against Trump, regarding Ukraine, hearings in the House of Representatives so far do not indicate that any crimes have been committed, but may not matter. It seems the Democrats see a public prosecution as the best way to hurt the president ahead of the 2020 election.

The seriousness of this approach is that it confirms that democracy in the United States is in clear danger.

What, then, makes you truly believe that we are now approaching a dividing line for US development? Well, after the 2016 presidential election, the economic and political establishment (comprising both Democrats and Republicans) in the United States has shown that they do not accept a radical president of Trump's kind.

He was chosen by the people mainly to change the deplorable economic development since the beginning of the two thousand and quickly showed that he - strangely enough - kept his election promises in that area. An attempt to accuse him of cooperating with Russia had already been made before the election, but received topicality after the election. It then became the basis for the attempt to set him apart.

The Mueller investigation failed, of course, to find any basis for such a deposition. It therefore concentrated early on bringing an indictment to obstruction of the investigation instead, but that too failed. I have previously described different phases of the coup in six articles on Nya Dagbladet .

The House of Representatives hearings now, regarding Trump's talks with the Ukrainian president, is just a new variant of his efforts to oust him. The reasons why this is seen as so vital are two. The first purpose is to hide various illegal actions taken by his opponents before the election. The second is to stop his politics after the election. The latter goal coincides with the interests of a significant portion of the financial establishment, which in November 2016 suddenly realized that their work had been in danger for decades.

The establishment's intense opposition to Trump is not caused by his attempt to impede mass immigration via Mexico, although cheap labor is in and of itself welcomed by US business owners. More important, however, is his goal - America First - to completely change the trade policy of recent decades.

Trump's policy is a general attack on the establishment's attempt to hold, among other things, multilateral trade agreements such as the TPP and TTIP, the United States in the post-war trade policy that prevailed. This has led to very large trade deficits for the United States, while the states of the American Midwest have been depleted by relocating industries to other countries.

In particular, the 1994 Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico (NAFTA) has proved to be a disaster. Deep unemployment and stagnant wages during the first decades of the century were reality in many occupational categories that are not highly educated and live in coastal states. This led to the election results in 2016.

At the same time, the transformation of the US economy over the last few decades has brought great benefits and profits for the multinational corporations and banks. The financial establishment has therefore struggled hard to maintain its positions, regardless of the consequences for the rest of the country.

Trump's attempt to gradually achieve equivalent tariffs on his trade partners through bilateral agreements and, in addition, to promote American production is considered unacceptable by the multinational corporations and many foreign governments. The amounts that will be squeezed into the electoral movement in 2020 are therefore likely to be huge, as the establishment must simply win.

The difference in politics means thousands of billions of dollars in changed trade exchanges and major changes in many multinational companies' sales figures and internal structure.

The Democrats, of course, know what their supporters in the intelligence organizations, the FBI and the Justice Department, have been trying to do against Trump. Even with that knowledge, however, one continues to pursue the task of dismissing his president. This simply means that you will not accept the election result in 2016. And that in turn means that you will not now accept future democratic elections if they involve major system changes that go against their interests.

The radicalization of the Democratic Party has gone so far that democracy means less than the party's ability to exercise power and lead the United States on the path of a kind of big corporate-friendly socialism.

Given the importance of the United States to the world, this is a huge change. It can mean a revolution of international politics and enable a purely political globalism to be implemented. The question of whether China or the United States is the leading power in the world in the future is also immediately raised.

Democratic victory in the 2020 presidential election - given the presidential candidates' reported platforms - probably means such a radicalization of American politics that even if one does not directly attack the Constitution's other supplement (the right to possess weapons), the risk of major internal unrest is greatly increased. A major survey from November 21 shows that every third American believes the country is facing a civil war within a five-year period.

Only the unfair media situation in the United States, where 90-95 percent of media houses are constantly critical of Trump, as well as the discrimination of conservatives on social media, would in this case give losers arguments that the election was not legitimate. Rumors of major contributions to Democrats by foreign governments through foreign companies and likely electoral fraud and votes by illegal immigrants are intensifying the confrontation. Enforcing a completely different fiscal, trade and economic policy in that environment, which in turn has serious consequences for unemployment and growth, can be the igniting spark.

Dan Ahlmark is a lawyer and economist. Since 1980 he has been a consultant with a focus on business development and competition strategy. He has a background as a consultant in Swedish industry and has done research at EFI / HHS. Last year he released the book Wake Up! Time to die! Libertarianism and the civil welfare state at Realia
 
ELIN GRELSSON ALMESTAD
Without this record, I would not have survived
Published Dec 7, 2019 at 7am
640@60.jpg

Elin Grelsson Almestad.Photo: MATILDA RAHM / ATLAS
640@60.jpg

The cover of Kent's "Hagnesta Hill".


20 years ago Kent released the record "Hagnesta Hill" which became the soundtrack of the panda culture.

Elin Grelsson Almestad returns to the teen who needed a reason to live.

This is a cultural article, where writers can express personal opinions and make judgments about artistic works.

Share article
FacebookTwitterE-mail
207.png

ELIN GRELSSON ALMESTAD
READ MORE: Chronicles by
Elin Grelsson Almestad

ESSAY. It is just after nine in the morning and it is still dark, yet it takes a while for the sun to rise. I have taken the rural bus in from my home town several hours ago, as it is the only bus that takes me into town all day. Driven around the cold and then slid down the sloping Main Square on slippery boots and mum's old duffel to the Skiv Corner. It stings my eyes after another sleepless night and I have to keep myself from rubbing off the black robe. Soon, they unlock the doors. Just a few minutes left now.

***

I have returned to you. I had to come back to this particular morning, December 6, 1999. There you stand, you once were me. It's been twenty years since Kent's classic record "Hagnesta Hill" was released and I'm trying to understand why I need to return to that day. Why there are ages that do not let go. Periods of life that define us for a long time, or maybe all the time, ahead. And right here I have so often come back. Until 1999 and waiting for a new millennium.

640@60.jpg

Elin Grelsson Almestad 1999.Photo: PRIVAT
***

Now the staff will come and open the doors. I go straight to the counter and ask for Kent's new one. Trying to sound world swan and nonchalant on voice. The guy at the checkout smiles, hands me a CD while I pick up banknotes from the wallet and pay. The cover with the black-haired girl looking straight into the camera, straight at me. I go out, stop in the cold, dark square and fumble up the envelope, insert the disc into the portable CD player. Insert the headphone cord, put on the headphones and press play.

640@60.jpg

The cover of Hagnesta Hill.
It is the last days of a millennium and the world is waiting for the future. You are sixteen years old and are mostly waiting for something to make you stand out. The internet has just broken through. You go to the library and queue to the public computers for 15 minutes of free surf, at home the modem howls every time you connect and before eighteen o'clock in the evening it is much more expensive. The telephone bill has become soaring. You get hotmail address and account at skunk.nu, a community where you meet others who share your interests and thoughts.

Suddenly the world grows, from the isolated village in the forest where you grew up. You talk to other young people from all over the country. Those who also love Kent, call themselves pandas, tiptoe their black hair and not really live. As lonely nodes in small towns and villages, you sit anonymously connected to one another and share text lines and emotions.

***

I find a lonely corner in the school library and sit there. Outside, the noise and noise are heard from the corridors, but here the world is quiet and protected. The cut ulcer scabs under the long sleeve sleeves. Let number ten, "The Protector " , I follow in the text. “I tried to be special, hunted, slim and glossy pale, but with spots I was born. I had almost forgotten. "

The world is waiting for the future, but you belong to a generation that already sees yourself as lost.
You don't know it yet, but it's a future classic for you and your friends that you listen to. It will be featured in an unwritten canon for teenage angst for this time, as well as Brother Daniel's songs. It will be part of the millennium's emo culture, which goes from po3p to American rock bands but with the same aesthetics and openness about anxiety, sadness and pain. "The Protector" is an anthem for self-hatred and fear of not being able to endure.

The greatness of "Hagnesta Hills" is right there. It peeled off desperate and anxious. Text lines such as:

"Please stop listening, forget all I said, I'm fine, you have to leave me alone and it doesn't matter if you hold me tight, because nobody will remember for a hundred years, stand out, I need you"

which expresses every needy, crying lonely and black feeling hidden inside a teenage body.

The world is waiting for the future, but you belong to a generation that already sees yourself as lost to it, marked by the 1990s crisis and cuts. You meet in communities and compare self-harm scar and how low BMI you can starve yourself down to. Anonymity makes it possible to say anything about how you feel.

At BUP you never meet each other's eyes but go to the county councils with slippers and handkerchiefs, the first generation of young people who are prescribed antidepressant drugs on a large scale. And there is "Hagnesta Hill", where there is the singing voice that expresses what is felt most at the bottom but which cannot be pronounced. Not to friends, to mom, not to BUP aunties, not to anyone: stand out with me, I need you.

***

I change the song, listen to "Revolt III". Against a carpet of driven guitars, Jocke Berg sings "as if I care" and I suddenly want to run out, rush in the corridors, tear the whole world to a standstill. Something is moving. The future must be won again.

640@60.jpg

Kent at the time of "Hagnesta Hill". From left: Martin Sköld, Markus Mustonen, Jocke Berg, Sami Sirviö and Harri Mänty.Photo: MAGNUS JÖNSSON
You read "Fittstim" and wish you dared to be part of the city's feminist gang that spreads HM's underwear advertising for the Christmas holidays, but content yourself with your own, silent guerrilla business where you take chewed chewing gum and sneak into the mid-edition of the magazine Slitz at Pressbyrån , then puts the magazine back into the shelf again.

You stop eating meat and attend lectures with Attac, follow news of big demonstrations and burned slaughter cars. When the Swedish Democrats demonstrate on the pedestrian street that fall, the school shuts down because all students want to be in place to counter-demonstrate. The world will change, the future will be another. You are so many who are part of it, and who have not yet participated in Gothenburg 2001, September 11, the war on terrorism and the death of the global justice movement.

Greta Thunberg is as old as I was when 'Hagnesta Hill' was released.
I'll leave you there, in the school library with the music in your ears. I'm not going to say that everything will be better, either for you or the world. I think of those who are sixteen years today. Greta Thunberg is as old as I was when "Hagnesta Hill" was released. She and all the others who are also trying to win the future again, even though the outlook is so much worse than ours was.

At that time, the climate was an abstract threat that was mentioned at one time. Now it is a reality that is constantly accelerating. How are you 16 years old when the world is about to collapse before your eyes and nothing is done? When do scientists talk about civilization collapse and untenable conditions on our own planet? Maybe you have to be as brave and full of energy as Greta Thunberg and all other young protesters.

Still, I can't help but wish her and them a "Hagnesta Hill" for their generation. To be rubbish and least of all for a while, in the protection of headphones and vocals.

To hear someone else say the words: stand with me, I need you.



Elin Grelsson Almestad is a writer and co-worker on Expressen's cultural site.
 
ELIN GRELSSON ALMESTAD
Without this record, I would not have survived
Published Dec 7, 2019 at 7am
640@60.jpg

Elin Grelsson Almestad.Photo: MATILDA RAHM / ATLAS
640@60.jpg

The cover of Kent's "Hagnesta Hill".


20 years ago Kent released the record "Hagnesta Hill" which became the soundtrack of the panda culture.

Elin Grelsson Almestad returns to the teen who needed a reason to live.

This is a cultural article, where writers can express personal opinions and make judgments about artistic works.

Share article
FacebookTwitterE-mail
207.png

ELIN GRELSSON ALMESTAD
READ MORE: Chronicles by
Elin Grelsson Almestad

ESSAY. It is just after nine in the morning and it is still dark, yet it takes a while for the sun to rise. I have taken the rural bus in from my home town several hours ago, as it is the only bus that takes me into town all day. Driven around the cold and then slid down the sloping Main Square on slippery boots and mum's old duffel to the Skiv Corner. It stings my eyes after another sleepless night and I have to keep myself from rubbing off the black robe. Soon, they unlock the doors. Just a few minutes left now.

***

I have returned to you. I had to come back to this particular morning, December 6, 1999. There you stand, you once were me. It's been twenty years since Kent's classic record "Hagnesta Hill" was released and I'm trying to understand why I need to return to that day. Why there are ages that do not let go. Periods of life that define us for a long time, or maybe all the time, ahead. And right here I have so often come back. Until 1999 and waiting for a new millennium.

640@60.jpg

Elin Grelsson Almestad 1999.Photo: PRIVAT
***

Now the staff will come and open the doors. I go straight to the counter and ask for Kent's new one. Trying to sound world swan and nonchalant on voice. The guy at the checkout smiles, hands me a CD while I pick up banknotes from the wallet and pay. The cover with the black-haired girl looking straight into the camera, straight at me. I go out, stop in the cold, dark square and fumble up the envelope, insert the disc into the portable CD player. Insert the headphone cord, put on the headphones and press play.

640@60.jpg

The cover of Hagnesta Hill.
It is the last days of a millennium and the world is waiting for the future. You are sixteen years old and are mostly waiting for something to make you stand out. The internet has just broken through. You go to the library and queue to the public computers for 15 minutes of free surf, at home the modem howls every time you connect and before eighteen o'clock in the evening it is much more expensive. The telephone bill has become soaring. You get hotmail address and account at skunk.nu, a community where you meet others who share your interests and thoughts.

Suddenly the world grows, from the isolated village in the forest where you grew up. You talk to other young people from all over the country. Those who also love Kent, call themselves pandas, tiptoe their black hair and not really live. As lonely nodes in small towns and villages, you sit anonymously connected to one another and share text lines and emotions.

***

I find a lonely corner in the school library and sit there. Outside, the noise and noise are heard from the corridors, but here the world is quiet and protected. The cut ulcer scabs under the long sleeve sleeves. Let number ten, "The Protector " , I follow in the text. “I tried to be special, hunted, slim and glossy pale, but with spots I was born. I had almost forgotten. "

The world is waiting for the future, but you belong to a generation that already sees yourself as lost.
You don't know it yet, but it's a future classic for you and your friends that you listen to. It will be featured in an unwritten canon for teenage angst for this time, as well as Brother Daniel's songs. It will be part of the millennium's emo culture, which goes from po3p to American rock bands but with the same aesthetics and openness about anxiety, sadness and pain. "The Protector" is an anthem for self-hatred and fear of not being able to endure.

The greatness of "Hagnesta Hills" is right there. It peeled off desperate and anxious. Text lines such as:

"Please stop listening, forget all I said, I'm fine, you have to leave me alone and it doesn't matter if you hold me tight, because nobody will remember for a hundred years, stand out, I need you"

which expresses every needy, crying lonely and black feeling hidden inside a teenage body.

The world is waiting for the future, but you belong to a generation that already sees yourself as lost to it, marked by the 1990s crisis and cuts. You meet in communities and compare self-harm scar and how low BMI you can starve yourself down to. Anonymity makes it possible to say anything about how you feel.

At BUP you never meet each other's eyes but go to the county councils with slippers and handkerchiefs, the first generation of young people who are prescribed antidepressant drugs on a large scale. And there is "Hagnesta Hill", where there is the singing voice that expresses what is felt most at the bottom but which cannot be pronounced. Not to friends, to mom, not to BUP aunties, not to anyone: stand out with me, I need you.

***

I change the song, listen to "Revolt III". Against a carpet of driven guitars, Jocke Berg sings "as if I care" and I suddenly want to run out, rush in the corridors, tear the whole world to a standstill. Something is moving. The future must be won again.

640@60.jpg

Kent at the time of "Hagnesta Hill". From left: Martin Sköld, Markus Mustonen, Jocke Berg, Sami Sirviö and Harri Mänty.Photo: MAGNUS JÖNSSON
You read "Fittstim" and wish you dared to be part of the city's feminist gang that spreads HM's underwear advertising for the Christmas holidays, but content yourself with your own, silent guerrilla business where you take chewed chewing gum and sneak into the mid-edition of the magazine Slitz at Pressbyrån , then puts the magazine back into the shelf again.

You stop eating meat and attend lectures with Attac, follow news of big demonstrations and burned slaughter cars. When the Swedish Democrats demonstrate on the pedestrian street that fall, the school shuts down because all students want to be in place to counter-demonstrate. The world will change, the future will be another. You are so many who are part of it, and who have not yet participated in Gothenburg 2001, September 11, the war on terrorism and the death of the global justice movement.

Greta Thunberg is as old as I was when 'Hagnesta Hill' was released.
I'll leave you there, in the school library with the music in your ears. I'm not going to say that everything will be better, either for you or the world. I think of those who are sixteen years today. Greta Thunberg is as old as I was when "Hagnesta Hill" was released. She and all the others who are also trying to win the future again, even though the outlook is so much worse than ours was.

At that time, the climate was an abstract threat that was mentioned at one time. Now it is a reality that is constantly accelerating. How are you 16 years old when the world is about to collapse before your eyes and nothing is done? When do scientists talk about civilization collapse and untenable conditions on our own planet? Maybe you have to be as brave and full of energy as Greta Thunberg and all other young protesters.

Still, I can't help but wish her and them a "Hagnesta Hill" for their generation. To be rubbish and least of all for a while, in the protection of headphones and vocals.

To hear someone else say the words: stand with me, I need you.



Elin Grelsson Almestad is a writer and co-worker on Expressen's cultural site.

She confuses KENT with Broder Daniel a bit cause BD is the panda band number one. Great read but a shame that she had to throw in Greta there for good effect and to get the liking of the editor so they would publish it at all.
 
[POP # 3: 2] Morrissey
morrissey.jpg


In his own sick way, he is always faithful to us: Steven Patrick Morrissey of Salt Lake City November 1997. Interview: Andres Lokko.
ON AN AIRCRAFT just lifting from Los Angeles on the way to Salt Lake City, Utah, I sit down and jot down notes and questions in one block. A young man next to me peeks over my shoulder from time to time. Finally, he leans forward and asks:

- Are you writing about Morrissey? What a coincidence. I just finished filming a movie called November Spawned a Monster. After the Morrissey song.

He says it's about a sixteen-year-old black-clad girl who loves The Cure. She lives in a city like Salt Lake City and her parents are religious, all adults she comes into contact with at all are believers.

- And then it ends with her killing herself. Because she sees no other way out, the director says.

He presents himself as Mark Polish and is a filmmaker from San Francisco. He has previously made a film with his brother Michael where they play Siamese twins. The movie was called "Two Falls, Idaho" and I don't know where or why I heard about it, but somewhere it rings a bell.

Morrissey has often been called the last English pop star. He is not, because there has never been anyone like Morrissey either before or after. Everything that happened before The Smiths was a preparation for Morrissey and The Smiths.

Morrissey is the only artist in modern times who knew from the first moment exactly why he is here and what he wants to say.

It only needed two singles for us to understand it.

Some say that his own records have never been or will be as good as The Smiths. That's not really true. The Smiths' singles and "The Queen Is Dead" are fantastic - and "Strangeway's Here We Come" have always been the obvious choice of pop theorists - but Morrissey's solo discs, which have been six, contain at least as many great moments as the ones he co-produced with Johnny Marr in The Smiths. Morrissey will never develop as an artist, he will never do anything but continue to deliver his intelligent poems in more or less brilliant contexts.

Demanding Morrissey's artistic development is like demanding an action comedy by Ingmar Bergman.

His solo discs will not recover until after his death. Thats how it is. One day, his collected works will occupy a central place in the nineteenth century literature, so be sure. For them, not many, the singers and lyricists who have changed the written word within the context of pop music. Many artists have been called language pipes for a generation, hardly anyone has lived up to it.

I can only think of two: Bob Dylan. And so Morrissey.

In recent years, his records have increasingly begun to resemble Bond films. They are rolled out like that every two years as a granite monument over a bygone era when everything was a bit simpler, when everything was black and white or just black and white and not as fragmented as today.

In Morrissey's case, it is mostly because The Smiths meant so much to us who were there. So the difference between Bob Dylan and Morrissey is not that big.

Rock music has only become so old that those who stood at the forefront when Dylan shocked the folk music puritan with an electric band are still left on the periphery and do not intend to allow anyone to claim that an English fool like Morrissey has ever been near "Desolation Row". But then it must be so. It's their loss.

The first times The Smiths played on Top Of The Pops - Morrissey spinning on a catch of daffodils with three pearl necklaces under the unbuttoned shirt against a tan chalky chest, in black eyeglasses from the National Health Service - was, initially, a purely visual revolution. The combination of boring everyday details and desperate substitutes for glamorous accessories is happening, and it took time to really understand where he wanted to take us, which is why he chose to introduce himself to the world's TV cameras just like that. But after a while, after a few more singles and a few texts that made almost all other contemporary pop songs look stupid, the puzzle pieces fell into place.

In another of The Smith's early appearances on English TV, Morrissey snapped up button after button in his shirt to show that he had written marry me over his chest with a ballpoint pen .

Shortly afterwards he stood there again - the pearl necklace hung from a pour in his Levi's, on the stroke of his checkered secondhand jacket he wore an exaggerated silly gold brooch, and then he had a hearing aid in one ear. And at the end of it - I think it was "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" - he turned his back on the crowd and showed off a whole damn birch that he knotted down one back pocket.

* * * * *

The playwright Shelagh Delaney graced the covers of the single "Girlfriend in a Coma" and the collection album "Louder Than Bombs". Her debut work, the play "A Taste of Honey" was the main reason Morrissey started writing at all. Another Smiths cover showed actress Billie Whitelaw stretched out in a bed from the filming of Delaney's "Charlie Bubbles".

Morrissey has never been academic, never pretentious as sometimes Elvis Costello. He just built his own world of music, film and literature, which was completed when he released his first single with The Smiths at the age of 24. Those who understood him on the spot then must have tired him some time since then, I have.

He has been almost frighteningly productive since The Smith's split. But when I first heard "Vauxhall and I", which I most certainly played more often than "The Queen Is Dead", it was time to punch holes in the myth that "The Queen Is Dead" is such a perfect record that whether Morrissey or Marr, together or individually, could do anything better.

In a way, it's true. "The Queen Is Dead" is one of their "Sergeant Pepper", an immaculate holy cow. It came at a time when it was needed more than anything else. It didn't "Vauxhall and I", not in my life anyway. But it was an equally good record. The Smiths meant so much to many of us who are now trying to draw rock history, so much so that Morrissey is never allowed to become as important as a solo artist.

Without Morrissey, it would have been long before I joined Alan Bennett, Joe Orton, Edith Sitwell, Shena McCay, Keith Waterhouse, Shelagh Delaney, David Storey, Alan Sillitoe or Oscar Wilde.

Morrissey was the first singer and pop star to make me realize that it wasn't me who was abnormal because I was just as fascinated by New York Dolls and Richard Allen's brutal skinhead books as Evelyn Waugh and Robert Tressell's "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists." It was everyone else who was idiots. And that was exactly what I needed to hear in order to survive another day in high school.

Morrissey's humor has often stood in his way. Just when he is starting to be taken seriously again, he releases "You're The One For Me, Fatty" or "Roy's Keen" and everyone, except the most devoted, shakes his head. After all, he has never been able to keep his fingers away from lousy puns and parodic sex claims - Penis mightier than the sword he wrote over a T-shirt sometime, he named an album for "Your Arsenal", a song for "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others" «And so on and so on.

There are many stories about Morrissey's teenage years in Manchester. Most tell of a young man who was most regarded as a village girl. His parents - Mom Morrissey was a librarian, Dad Morrissey caretaker - divorced when he was nineteen. And the only thing Morrissey has had to say about his father is that he considered his son a complete fruitcake.

Morrissey doesn't like phenomena or people; he hates them, despises them. And he never hesitates to say it and to rewrite it in text after text.

All his early attempts to express himself, first in book form and shortly later as a pop journalist, failed. Five times he applied for a job on New Musical Express, the same editor sent the same reimbursement letter every time. Who it was and what he thinks about it today I have no idea. And I don't know if you should be grateful for it or not. Had Morrissey become a music journalist, he probably would have done the same for journalism as he did for pop music.

In 1980 Morrissey sent a demotape to The Buzzcock's manager Richard Boon who in a number of biographies told how it contained only two songs. One was an early version of "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle". The seconds before it starts, Morrissey apologizes for singing so low, but explains that he is forced to lie down and sleep in the room next door.

The second song was a cover of a gospel, once recorded by Bessie Smith, aptly named "Wake Up, Johnny".

This was two years before Morrissey met Johnny. According to the myth, a man named Joe Moss, owner of the local Crazy Face store where Johnny Marr worked after school, brought them together. It was he who persuaded Marr to knock on Morrissey's home, which opened the door and promptly asked the guitarist to pick out a record he liked from Morrissey's record collection. Marr picked up The Marvelette's "Paper Boy" after a bit of browsing. That afternoon, Morrissey looked up a text he wrote about Ian Brady's and his secretary Myra Hindley's bestial murder - popularly called "The Moors murders" - at least three children and teenagers in Manchester.

Morrissey was seven years old when the murders took place and some of the victims had been tricked into their car on the street where the Morrissey family lived.

Marr immediately wrote a tune about the lyrics and the result, "Suffer Little Children", appeared on The Smith's first album which was released in February 1984. Three and a half years later the group split.

The Smiths existed for just over four years. Still, it feels like they were present throughout the eighties. Everything Morrissey has recorded since then has been compared to The Smiths. After the split, most people agreed that Morrissey would certainly write some brilliant text, but the general opinion was that Johnny Marr would one day record a solo album that would strike the world with amazement. I don't think there's anyone sitting around waiting for that plate anymore.

It has been ten years. And since then, all British guitar pop has been compared to The Smiths. In the British music press, the term "next Smiths" - sometimes followed by a question mark, sometimes by an exclamation point - is something that has never disappeared. It happens that younger writers in the weekly press are trying to update the term to "new Suede" or "new Stone Roses", but sooner or later they refer to The Smiths sooner or later.

The Smiths are resting like an unwavering rain cloud over anyone who even plays with the idea of starting a pop band in England.

Today, no one is protesting in the recording studio when Morrissey wants to do one or the other. Johnny Marr and Morrissey were friends, Marr had no problem with Morrissey being in the spotlight, but he never saw his role in The Smiths as subordinate to the Morrisseys.

In The Smiths, there was always a contradiction between the singer and the guitarist. Morrissey likes to talk about how his solo career has lasted much longer than The Smiths did, but one contributing reason for him always being in the shadow of his former band is that from "Viva Hate!" To "Maladjusted" he did just as well he himself wanted. Nobody protests, everyone does as he pleases, nods nicely and lets Morrissey do about the same record over and over.

There is no friction, it is as demanding it can be.

And Morrissey is an artist that demands so much of us listening. He still expects our complete devotion and blind admiration. That's what he sings about. In some ways.

* * * * *

When you see him on stage, his lyrics appear in a different light. Then they are not the almost pathetically repeated calls for help that they seem to be when you hear them on record. They suddenly become something bigger. During a Morrissey concert, you understand the logic of singing a gospel song on that very first 1980 demo cassette.

Nowhere on this earth are we-against-them feeling stronger than during a concert with Morrissey. There are words and phrases scattered throughout all of the albums and singles Morrissey recorded that you can't really make up for until you come to terms with them by themselves and actually want to scream them out loud along with all the other self-proclaimed misfits below the stage.

And maybe the effect gets even stronger when you first landed in Los Angeles, discovered that in the middle of November, thirty-two degrees in the shade, traveled along the Pacific toward Mexico to swing off at a small university town called Irvine where the closer to the concert venue you are will, along the endless rows of identical Edward Scissorhands villas begin to glimpse young people who look a little paler than people in California should. Pale young people who are either undressed in the grunge swamp or strolling around in the eighties spandex. Young people who just look pretty cool, albeit disproportionately often in glasses with black bakelite bows.

And so hordes of Latinos, obvious gang members, however many. Everyone headed to the Bren Events Center to see Morrissey.

A few years ago, Carmilla Floyd, who recently published the book "Respect" about the gang in Los Angeles, asked if I could possibly have an explanation as to why so many rock hard chicanos put Morrissey to their hearts. I thought it sounded a little absurd that anyone in California knew at all who Morrissey was, and even more so when it came to organized Latinos. But here they were, on pilgrimage from their districts to show respect for the human daffodil from a dull suburb of Manchester where it always rains. Half of them look like you expect California gangs to look like, the rest look like extras in a Stray Cats video. They are dressed for the teeth; rigid jeans for freshly capped boots, monogram bowling shirts, custom-made rockabilly jackets,

End of part 1
 
In the speakers, one of all the cassette tapes that Morrissey always fills with their favorite songs spins before the tours in order for the concerts to become a complete manifestation of Morrisseyism.

At Wembley in 1991, a gigantic photo of the author and poet Edith Sitwell hung behind Morrissey on the stage and in addition, her profile had been printed on a large part of the most devoted fanatics jerseys.

The day after the gig at Wembley, I was supposed to interview him, early in the morning I got a phone call apologizing to someone from his record label, saying that Morrissey had no desire to do any interviews that day.

Later it turned out that it was not really about desire. The idea was that he would give more interviews that day, the others were all with German journalists. After many over and over and just as many phone calls I got - assuming I didn't pass it on - I was told that it was the Germans he refused to meet, that Morrissey at that very day thought terribly bad about Germans and that I went out with just speed.

It took another year before I finally got to meet him.

He said very little at first, sat mostly and studied me with an ironic look when I flipped through my block of questions a little nervously. After a while I asked something about his favorite music and mentioned, if I remember correctly, "Third Finger, Left Hand" with Martha & The Vandellas and "Past, Present and Future" with The Shangri-Las. Songs he once listed as his favorite singles in any English music magazine. He asked if I had heard those songs. I had, I replied, without explaining that I probably never would have looked up that particular Shangri-Las single if he hadn't included them on that list. And he became a completely different person. I was suddenly worth talking to, his ironic smile turned into humility and he really made an effort to answer everything I wanted to know.

- I'm so good at names, but so bad on faces, he answers apologetically when I mention that we were seen once before six years ago.

Maybe we might as well have found a common ground in film or literature, but I don't think so. Morrissey is almost parodically synonymous with and completely obsessed with all British pop culture. He has repeatedly said that his ideal audience consists of skinheads in nail polish.

On the stage in Irvine, behind Morrissey and his band, no Victorian eccentric hangs, but a large photo of Mozzer himself, wet in the hair with bare torso in a swimming pool.

The crowd - especially all Latinos - roars in every phrase about Clapham Common, every jammy Stressford poet , cheap bed'n'breakfasts in Whalley Range, SW6, the traffic lights on Fulham Road, why do you smile when you think of Earl's Court? , tattooed boys from Birkenhead, Dagenham Dave, share some greased tea with me, every day is silent and gray and the rain falls hard on a humdrum town .

- You know, I've always wished I was born Mexican, Morrissey says. In addition to the occasional "oh, you're too kind", that's all he says during the gig.

And just then the joy knows no bounds.

When he pulls off his shirt and throws it out in the audience during the concert's usual final song, a brawl breaks out between two gangs that are not interrupted until the lights come on and a dozen armed police from the LAPD force them apart. The shirt has long been worn in small pieces.

When Morrissey plays the only song of the evening from his previous life as a singer in The Smiths, he chooses "London", one of their most obscure songs. Originally, it was hidden as an extra track on the twelve-inch version of "Shoplifters of the World". Much like everything else The Smiths recorded, it has appeared on a number of compilation albums much later.

That was another reason to love The Smiths - they never wrote any b-pages. We who followed them had to hear everything. Because it was not obvious that the strongest songs were necessarily first or those that were played on the radio. And "London" is one of the best songs they ever recorded. The second song on the same B-side, "Half a Person", is incidentally perhaps the very best. But if you ask me tomorrow, it will surely be someone else.

Both "Half a Person" and "London" are about the same thing. If one day you dare to get on the train down towards Euston Station. To finally get away from the gray little town for the adventure of the big city.

I don't know how many texts Morrissey has written about that particular trip, a journey that when the song was faded never got off.

* * * * *

One of Morrissey's favorite films is John Schlesinger's filming of Keith Waterhouse's novel "Billy Liar" from 1962.

The third song on the single I tweet about, "Shoplifters of the World", contains the lyrics line I tried living in the real world instead of a shell / But I was bored before I even started . That's exactly what Billy Liar does. And he does it in an era and environment that Morrissey has so tightly affixed to the cornea that nothing will ever be more important to him.

Just before The Beatles and Stones, before drug culture and hippies were even envisioned, just when London terribly wanted to be called "swinging" but still lacked coverage because stars like Adam Faith, Billy Fury and Alma Cogan did not possess the attractiveness of just one or two years later was personified by Lennon and McCartney.

Billy Liar is a mythomaniac, the perfect daydreamer. He just needs to close his eyes and he is elsewhere. In his dream world, he is king and one-ruler. Everything is so simple in his dreams, everyone does as he pleases. As soon as he opens his eyes, he is back at his job at the funeral home, but he does not leave the dreams under his eyelids but discovers that for a brief moment they can come true if he only believes in them himself. There he can rule his fantasy land, Ambrosia, and shoot his boss in the back. He can make his parents love him if he himself only believes in his dream of being offered a job in London as a screenwriter for a successful BBC comedian.

In the final minutes of the film, he is persuaded by a world-swan and incomprehensibly beautiful Julie Christie that it is the easiest thing in the world to realize her dreams. You just buy a ticket in the door, pack some necessary stuff in a bag and then you go to Euston Station.

Billy Liar, played by Tom Courtenay, packs his bag and buys his ticket. Suddenly he comes to buy a cup of tea, he runs off the train, gets two mugs from the nearest vending machine and when he turns around the train starts to roll. Julie Christie's abandoned, but almost motherly, indulgent smile, follows Billy's confused punishments.

He runs with the cardboard cups in his hand, but gives up, he discovers that his bag is already on display in the platform. He takes it by the hand and walks through his sad hometown, up the stairs to the house, home to mom and dad and to the daydreams of scriptwriting in London. The daydreams are easier. To the notes of his own national anthem for Ambrosisa in the head, he lights the lamp in the boys' room again.

Morrissey left Hulme and Manchester a long time ago. But his lyrics are still permeated by a hard-to-explain homage to a place he - or his protagonists - could not leave quickly enough, a contradictory nostalgia for a time in life that wasn't even something to have then.

* * * * *

Morrissey is in the middle of a US tour. Between two gigs (Morrissey's notorious airspace forces the tour company to travel by bus across the continent), the band rests in a ski resort that has not yet opened for the season, in Utah. It is a newly built tourist town called Park City, a few miles outside Salt Lake City. You just go straight up for the snow-covered mountains until it hits the ears so you are there.

I have a hard time imagining a more odd place to meet Morrissey. The hotel he lives in is also a giant half-timbered house with a pervasive Norwegian theme. But Morrissey seems to thrive. He strolls around in his Cox loafers, a velvet coat, far too short checkered slacks and a black tight mole skin shirt and studies the disappointed restaurant's meat-based menu.

On the plane here, I met a film director who just finished work on a movie called November Spawned a Monster.

- You are joking? Not? That was odd. But at the same time perfectly wonderful. It has happened a few times before, and a novel called "Girlfriend in a Coma" is due to be published here in the USA pretty soon. It's so indescribably flattering. That someone comes to mind at all.

You played in Irvine the day before yesterday…

- Yes, my God!

... how does it feel to sing the lyrics you sing and are greeted by full-fledged fanatics in Southern California?

- Very puzzling, honestly. I stand on the stage and see a sea of very young people, most of whom are Mexicans and the only thing I can think of is "how do you know me?", "How did you hear about me?". For my profile here in the US is really equal to nothing. It is not written about me here at all. So I'm very fascinated that people come and see me. It is a complete and insoluble mystery.

- But, on the other hand, that's the way it's always been. I am nothing that MTV has created, they have never wanted to know about me. And after the concert in Irvine, I received so many letters from fourteen-year-olds in the audience and I can't help but wonder how, how, how did this happen?

One explanation could be that a text such as "Everyday Is Like Sunday" is just as relevant in a climate where it is thirty degrees warm every day and where the sun always shines like under the rain clouds in northern England.

- That's perfectly true. I think it's a different kind of monotony, but of course monotony is there, too. Everyone is beautiful all the time and so that heat all year long ... I understand that some people find it absolutely unbearable. It's really Mamas And The Papas all the time. It really is. And if you like Mamas And The Papas then it is really great to live there and many people do. The world is full of people who do not want to know of crushing realism or world politics or starving countries.

You still seem, at the age of thirty-eight, to be obsessed with pop music.

- That's the only thing I am! That's really the only thing I am. I consist of pop music. It's the air I breathe.

In interviews you rarely talk about it.

- It is because they are always about exactly the same things. I always get the same questions, the same pitifully boring questions. And once they get into print, I'm really ashamed. For those who read these interviews, I have to think that I really just want to talk about the same things all the time. And I don't want to. But it is the journalist who asks the questions. It may sound cynical and you are probably sitting there thinking "sharpen yourself, it can't be true". But that's it. It never changes, believe me. I suppose I've had it said once and for all. I'll be quiet now.

Before each tour you record bands with favorite songs played in the speakers.

- Yes. And that's something I love to do. And on the one you heard yesterday there was even some psychedelia… British psychedelia.

Yes, I noticed.

- Fascinating, right? Although it was probably just a song really. Traffics »Hole in My Shoe«. I discovered pop music when I was very, very small. In other words, quite a long time ago. And throughout the sixties and seventies, I was really completely obsessed with pop music. And yes, I loved lots of soul music, a lot of reggae and I loved cheap English pop music and I still do. But I have no narrow, eccentric taste of music. I love rockabilly too. And Nina Simone's voice and Francoise Hardy's "You Just Have to Say the Word". And I love the cajun.

- The only thing I've never understood is heavy metal and progressive rock. But now that I have said it, I must admit that there was a track on that cassette last night that must probably be categorized as progressive rock. And it was…

Actually, I have no idea.

- ... yes, you didn't take it. It was a song called "Backstreet Luv" with Curved Air which was a hit in England in 1972. I think it was 1972 anyway. And I'm afraid I might change my mind about some progressive rock. Although you should probably only hear that music on single.

- But the best song I play daily is "Groovin '" with Mister Bloe. It's a mystery. I bought it when I was eleven years old and there was no photo of Mister Bloe on the cover and no one ever found out who he was. It was suspected that Mister Bloe was a Dutchman and he never made a fuss about "Groovin '". But it's a matchless record. I remember being fascinated by Mister Bloe while watching Top Of The Pops. When they counted down the list, each song was illustrated with a photo of the artist or band, but when they came to Mister Bloe it was just white. There were no pictures of him.

So you spend a lot of time at your record collection?

- Yes, I spend all my time with my records, CDs or whatever you want to call them. I remember I had a ridiculous American sticker when I was fifteen or sixteen where it said "music is your only friend". And I really think that is so. I can feel lonely, knocked down, but then I play some discs and immediately feel how slowly I lift off the floor and rise to the ceiling.

- It's extremely therapeutic. I mean, music can make so many people happy. That's why there were so many police officers present at the concert last night. The music rushes right up in the minds of the audience and it can cause young people to lose control. I have full understanding of that. In Japan, it is stronger than anywhere else. There it is not at all uncommon for the music to cause people to lose their reflection and to spontaneously throw themselves through glass windows. That in itself is a fantastic sight… but a rather painful one. Music can be the perfect drug. Music is better than drugs.

But where do you have your records? You move all the time.

- Yes, I do. If I really like a record, I buy it again and again. In fact, every time I see it. There are a number of LPs that I have bought more than twenty times at this time.

What was the last thing you heard that made you lift slowly to the ceiling?

- There is really nothing right now that I am obsessed with. There are groups I appreciate, but none of them are good enough for me to give them any attention. It is becoming increasingly difficult to get that blood flow to the brain of new music. Mostly because I am simply getting old. One becomes skeptical of newcomers.

I swore ten years ago to never mutter that I've heard it before but…

- But it's because you've heard it before! That is why I am so despairing about the British music press. Of course, new young writers are needed, but I cannot - I almost refuse - believe that their reference frames do not extend further back than until 1988.

- They've heard it before, but they think it's their job not to admit it. It makes me so confused. I can't understand how anyone might think that Suede would be innovative. I can't understand it for my life.

But you like them?

- I did it. A short while ago, about twelve years ago. They never managed to come up with a second idea, but their first idea was good.

What was your second idea?

- Ha, ha, ha ... I've had thousands, it's just that no one noticed them. They come and go all the time.

But Suede was the first band that really, you could argue, made an effort to try to steal your audience.

- And I think they also succeeded and they can happily get them. Here you go. If my audience is so unreliable, so inept, then they might as well leave me alone. But, yes, Suede tried and they really succeeded ... but it's okay. They are very happy to take over all those little girls from Essex called Lisa and spell my name with a s.

In recent years, those who were influenced by The Smiths and your lyrics have grown up and started their own successful bands that…

- I know who you mean! You don't even have to mention their name, thank you very much. At first I thought it was very flattering that today's harvest of British ministries refers to what I have done and done ... though it does not happen that often. We know they are there, we know who they are and above all they know it themselves. But my influence on pop music today is obviously toned down in the press.

End of part 2
 
You are one of very few who still think that the single is the best format to listen to music on.

- If I could really do just as I would myself, I would just release singles. Five a year or so. But you can't do that. The pop single is no longer there. And the singles lists, especially in England, are a joke. Everything is governed by advertising money, so everything that made singles lists so fun and important in the seventies is just a memory. There has to be a change. Today, you can buy yourself a first place on the singles list. You can place someone we have never heard of up there, but in real life they are not capable of filling a telephone booth.

How important is it to keep a certain mystique around your person?

- I do not know. It's an interesting question, people say there is some kind of mystery or myth about me and I have no idea where it comes from. Probably it's because I've never had any romance with a news reader and I've never been really, really popular. I've always been out on the flank and been someone that it's fun to point out or that you just love to hate. But that's why I've never had to deal with massive fame.

- None of the things you are expected to do if you record discs, even if you only get a bit of success - which is exactly what I have achieved - interests me the least.

- And somehow I get away with not doing those things. Most are not capable of failure. Some say they hate me, but they have a tremendous respect for not letting myself into the expected games. And that's flattering. Just when it comes to such people, they wish they could hate me just a little, a little more.

Part of the myth is that you rarely talk to the press. And I fly over half the globe to Salt Lake City when you finally say yes to an interview?

- Hmm… why are we in Salt Lake City really? It's weird. But it is very nice that people want to talk to me, because if you look at my record sales it is perfectly pathetic. I don't know why so many want to talk to me ... except here in the US, of course, nobody is interested ... and why would I be so interesting?

For those who buy your records after all, listen to them fairly carefully?

- It's true.

And that's what makes you interesting.

- I would hate to be in a seat where I sell millions of records among other artists selling millions of records, but nobody really listens. And the lists are full of them, there are as many as any. And, frankly, we know that nobody cares - I mean, really cares - about those records. But they are the music industry. They shit in words like credibility. Because there is no future in credibility, you cannot build a "career" on it, it does not sell multiplatina. But I prefer artists who are multi ... multimonotons.

What have you achieved in your communication with younger people?

- A lot. First of all, I have managed to keep my head above the surface of the water for all years, despite a rather awful relationship with an endless army of detractors and naughty critics. It also comes new all the time.

- I've done a lot of music that I really love. I have never produced music for a record label and I have never made music in the vain belief that someone out there will appreciate it. I have simply made music because it is this music that I want to be able to go into a record store and buy. And that's pretty unusual. I've never talked to anyone or my music. It is especially unusual among artists who have tried to collaborate with as many large record companies as I have done. As you know, record companies are very keen to get what they expect from their "employees". And I've come away with never having to defend what I wanted to do. At the risk of sounding like the Pope, I have done really well. And then I'm a not too shabby singer.

You really have become a better singer.

- It means you think I was terrible before ... but my voice has gotten better. That's because I matured as a man ... ha. I actually don't know why it sounds better. Maybe because I'm more relaxed nowadays. Over the years in The Smiths, I could never really relax in studio environments. I hurried there, did what needed to be done, and left as soon as I could. Then I sat at home, stiff as a stick, and hoped it could be listened to so I didn't have to do it again.

Are there any live artists you respect?

- No.

Why?

- In my opinion, all really interesting people are dead. Especially if we talk about pop music, it is a genre that is deprived of interesting personalities. The people that the music press picks up and actually have the stomach to even ask us to consider listening to and want to read about… my god… I would rather go and… pffft… throw arrow.

- Pop music is in such a desperate state that anyone who has it all, to say the least, is hailed as a modern Goethe. So if you want to become a pop star today, it's the easiest thing in the world. You definitely don't have to make the effort or know why you want to do it. You just need to ride on the right back at the right time. Most people who deal with pop music I would cross continents to avoid. I would cry if I ended up in the same room as them.

- Spontaneity is a word I always associate with pop music. But it does not exist, everything is a single long career with pension insurance included. The Smiths were a reaction to this fifteen years ago. Our record label Rough Trade was there too.

But nobody learned anything from it?

- No. It might have been different if we had also signed on for CBS. They might have asked us what we thought they would do with our ridiculous little stuff we called singles if there wasn't a finished album to boot. Then I had shot myself.

Would you like to live in another era?

- I do. I have long lived in a completely different era and have absolutely nothing to do with this planet.

How does it happen?

- I just have nothing to do with the human race. I have nothing to do with the pop industry, I have nothing to do with art galleries, TV, radio or even skiing.

But you like to swim.

- Have I ever mentioned that I like to swim? I thought it was the only secret I really managed to keep. I just stay away ... I just stay away ... so they can keep up with what they are doing now.

So what do you do in your own world?

- Oh, I do lots. For me it is not that difficult to stay away from English pop music. It is never, never, any other artist that comes to my concerts to say a few kind words. I always read those concert reviews of other artists' shows and there are always those who showed up backstage to have snacks with that or that artist. The only one who thanked me for a good concert was Tom Hanks.

Tom Hanks?

- Yes, it was shocking. How could Tom Hanks have heard of me at all, he is so normal. It made me so happy.

You want a normal audience?

- I think my audience is very normal ... maybe not normal by the way, because normal can sound as easy as an insult.

Do you take it as an insult?

- Of course. Only when I hear the word do I think of extremely boring clothes, of people who shop in the most grotesque shops and wear insanely thick wool socks in July. So I probably prefer to categorize my audience as… healthy. It's a better word than normal. There are so many old silly prejudices that the only people who like what I do are black-clad semi-Goths who drink gasoline. And that's not true. But I am almost surprised myself when I see what athletic audience I actually have. They don't seem to be depressed.

It's done. They will be happy when they meet you or go to one of your concerts and that is only when you see them.

- Well ... maybe, maybe there is a glimmer of truth in it. But I don't feel that way. I just think it's the same old attempt to hurt me, trying to categorize me with a "oh, we know Morrissey and everything he touches becomes depressing". That's not true.

But what kind of songs do you write?

- I only write very human songs. That's the only thing they are. Very human. Simple obvious songs that everyone should be able to take to their hearts. It's really that simple. I just heard Oasis's new single and the lyrics really went ... don't go away / say that you'll stay / forever and a day ... and I thought, he can't have sung those words. But he did, it's incomprehensible. And I came to think of a song from the seventies with Teach-In called "Ding-Dinge-Dong" that went sing a song every hour / when you're in the shower / maybe it's a big hit . And I can hear for my life no difference between "Ding-Dinge-Dong" and Oasis. If there is any, I hope I discover it sometime.

You seem to be very into clothes?

- I have them on me.

Come on.

- Okay, when I put them on I am usually inside them…. okay ... but would that be a crime? Yes, I appreciate everything that has style. As a joke, I once told a journalist that I only buy clothes at flea markets and I've had to eat that up. This coat I wear is as far from a flea market as you can get. Mrs Gucci has done it herself.

But your choice of clothing has a history that has followed the music and lyrics.

- Yes, it does. I have an alert brain and it is wide open to receive new ideas. And style and subcultures are extremely fascinating to someone like me. I'm not saying I've always had style myself, but I've always been fascinated by it. And in England it's easy to be.

Surely this is the only place where a pop culture exists?

- Of course! You said it! But my modesty forbids me to say it right there. So thank you for that.

- The cults that surrounded the music, especially in the working class, are so fascinating. Once they could be called youth cultures, but when there are those like me, it is no longer possible to categorize them as such. And I've got all that stuff served on a silver tray. I was born into a working-class family in Manchester at just the right moment and I was flooded with English pop culture just when it was conquering the whole world. And when the punk came, I slowly began to involve myself in music myself. So it was perfect. It would be a worse fate than death if I had been born in 1974. But I would have abhorred having come to the world in 1930 as well ... and, believe me, I have devoted much thought to that dilemma.

So you're not really born in the wrong era at all?

- As long as we're only talking about music, I'm probably not, no. But if we talk about the Spanish Civil War then I was definitely born at the wrong time and therefore they had no use whatsoever for me.

Are you updating your fascination for the subcultures? You've harvested mods, rockabillies and skinheads, most people know. Are you moving forward in history?

- When we reached the punk, I was more than old enough to take part in every important piece of the puzzle in place. In all of what reached Manchester ... but the music? How much of the music was really good or important? Possibly The Ramones first album. There is not much else one really remembers today. Buzzcocks maybe. And The Angelic Upstarts doesn't really belong here.

- The punk was a musical movement without a lot of music. And what would the next step be? Acid house? For me, acid house was also not so much about music, more about how a door was opened to the drug culture and how people discovered that they appreciated taking copious amounts of drugs. Which, in fact, the English never did before. And suddenly it was, in one way or another, a part of all people's everyday lives. That was, if you ask me, the only thing that the acid house era achieved. For the music was just ridiculous, just like the people who did it.

On "Maladjusted" you have sampled dialogue from a movie called "Cockleshell Heroes".

- Oh, it's just another one of those crispy old British movies that you've probably happened to see at four o'clock on a rainy Sunday afternoon on a channel that you would normally never dream of watching. It's actually not a very good movie, even though it was written by Bryan Forbes. It's just a cool war movie where everyone is a Marine and is happy all the time and all the commanders have stiff upper lip. They go to war, to Bourdeaux, and come back with an arm or a few legs smaller but are still just as jovial. It is one such robust old film that gives us a wonderful insight into wonderful old England.

How has your view of England changed now that you spend most of your time in other countries?

- My view of England is still loving. I love that country more than anything else. Still. England possesses an indescribable and unique nerve and a sharpness that generates such incredible creativity. Sure, the weather is horrible and, sure, the politicians are worthless idiots. But that is why there is always something to fight for and it is actually important for the artist's soul. There is always something to hate and kick on and there are no distracting and devastating distractions like sandy beaches or warm sun rays. You have to look at yourself in the mirror and do something dramatic. It is the only way to survive. So England is very good if you want to be creative.

How did you react to Princess Diana's death?

- It was so predictable. It was so expected - Grace Kelly, James Dean, blah-blah-blah, and so Princess Di… My God. She was just an incredibly boring woman. But the British once again bought the royal house's coup. I was expecting more from the English people. It is frightening that it is possible to brainwash an entire people to follow the slightest hint. My first thought was that this was the definitive proof that it would be a snap for England to march into war. It's so sad. I cannot think of a single interesting sentence that Princess Di expressed during her lifetime. Not a single one. And I'm not trying to provoke. She was an attractive woman who loved the life she lived and she died just as she lived. Sure, she went to the Third World now and then, but she did it in Chanel. And I can't remember Mother Theresa ever wearing a Chanel suit. Maybe I'm wrong, she maybe loved Chanel, what do I know? But that Diana and Mother Theresa died that week appeared to be a sign from a higher power that wanted to tell us something. Diana spent £ 25,000 a year on makeup. Does saint do it? Hardly. Did Mother Theresa spend £ 25,000 a year on makeup? If she did, she should have demanded the money back.

- But the biggest joke was not that the British wanted to explain Diana, the biggest joke was not that the media managed to trick an entire nation into an organized country grief for an unintelligent woman, the biggest joke was "Candle in the Wind" with Elton John.

Do you drink liquor now?

- Absolutely. Yes that's true. And perhaps the cheapest, most venerable beer and the most boring British stock you can imagine. And here in the US, the range of beers is fantastic, it's not just Budweiser Light and Corrs. But you have to make the effort if you want to find those really awful British beers, consisting of ninety-five percent polyester.

Would you like to join a band again or would it be too much Tin Machine?

- No, I would love to join a pop band as a singer. But would anyone allow it? Would anyone treat me to that joy? Probably not. The chances are that they will continue to refer to them as my records anyway. It would actually be fantastic and it's something that I often think about. Although the only thing I know for sure is that the band will never, never be The Undertones.

But the band you are touring with now should feel like a band. You have been playing together for a number of years now.

- Yes, it actually does. After all, they have been my band longer than The Smiths was a working unit. When I started playing with this band, many people pointed out that they were so young and that they couldn't play, but everyone thought they looked good. And they were probably right on all points. But now we are an excellent little combo.

Is your music something you grow from?

- I can not answer that.

Okay. There is a period in one's life when one is capable of creating an identity, usually one does so in the late teens, when one literally devours literature, film and music and hopefully that leads to the development of a composite person. Right then you need a helping hand and often pop stars help. Or something.

- Yes. But there are so few who manage to keep that flame burning. Of course, the music you discover during those years stays in one for the rest of your life. I'm not saying that the artists are the same, but the music definitely is. And it has something to do with the feeling of discovering something for the first time. It is impossible to compare with anything else in life. You hear all these new tapes that you hate and wonder how people can listen to this shit at all, but you have to remember that most people who buy these records buy their very first record.

- You really want to think that you are part of the books you read, the films you watch and the discs you hear. And all of a sudden you know all those fascinating writers and all the bands whose transsexual singers died of heroin overdoses. But you really just want to be interesting yourself. And it is through these books and everything else that you think you should become. It's romantic. But the people who ... I don't want to call them losers ... but those who weren't so careful about their choices at that age probably listened to Thin Lizzy.

How has your relationship with literature changed?

- Our relationship is still very deep. I want to keep reading and I buy an enormous amount of books, but discard most, especially contemporary novels. And is it something I want to read then it is just a good modern novel, but I never find any. And I really try, I probably hire five or six new novels a week. But I never read newspapers. And I've stopped reading music magazines.

Seriously?

- Yes, I quit. It was difficult, because they were such an important part of growing up. But they are so predictable that I just despair. I can tell you exactly what a magazine like Mojo will put on the cover of its February issue, same with Q. We won't talk about the weekly press. There are simply no music magazines to read anymore. And the United States has never been particularly good at pop journalism. Pop culture is still something that doesn't really exist here. Spin made a valiant attempt but failed in the end.

Have you made the same journey in the history of literature as you did with music, where you naturally move from point A to point B and so on?

- Yes, and unfortunately you have to choose books after the cover. I just read Boy George's autobiography and it's absurdly the first book in many years that I didn't want to end. The last chapters I read very carefully, I felt so good in their company and felt such a closeness to the people that I just wanted to stay between the covers. A brilliant book. In addition, I know several of the people who figure in the book and Boy George is an amazing storyteller.

Will you ever write an autobiography?

- In that case, I have to write about many people in my life in a way that I would prefer to avoid. So I must wait until most of them have passed away. Because you can't draw an intelligent picture of your own life without these people joining. So I'm waiting.

Do you write a diary?

- No, I've never kept a diary. Everything that is worth remembering I have in my head. Diaries are for people who have a criminally short memory. As I said before: I never forget a name, just faces. Now I lied again.

* * * * *

The interview with Billy Liar is over. The darkness has settled over Utah's foggy mountains as I sit in the car on a cold leather seat.

When I read this interview with Morrissey, I feel that I just wrote an article based on an interview that was terribly fun to do, and the article was at least as fun to write. But in the back of my head, the feeling that I'm always doing is always nagging: completely irresponsible, headstrong before, I don't even think that maybe I should talk about The Smiths with Morrissey.

Once I sit at the fireplace with Morrissey I just talk about exactly what I want to talk to him about. Just hearing him talk about just about anything is important. And I don't want to ask him about The Smiths, because I was there then. I read everything that could be read about them and I don't have to eat it with him. Going back to the records that meant so much ten or twelve years ago, discovering new details and maybe revising the opinions I had about them then is one thing, but letting him talk about The Smiths instead of himself - or what now the conversation is really about - just felt boring.

That interview is made by someone else. Our meeting became a conversation that, at least for me, meant that I got a little closer to the life of a man who only reveals details about himself between lines or in third person.

I'm just telling my story. You have to take it for what it is.

On the way to the Salt Lake City airport, I don't see a single double decker. But it's raining all the time.

MORRISSEY's sixth and latest solo album is called "Maladjusted".


Andres Lokko
 
You are one of very few who still think that the single is the best format to listen to music on.

- If I could really do just as I would myself, I would just release singles. Five a year or so. But you can't do that. The pop single is no longer there. And the singles lists, especially in England, are a joke. Everything is governed by advertising money, so everything that made singles lists so fun and important in the seventies is just a memory. There has to be a change. Today, you can buy yourself a first place on the singles list. You can place someone we have never heard of up there, but in real life they are not capable of filling a telephone booth.

How important is it to keep a certain mystique around your person?

- I do not know. It's an interesting question, people say there is some kind of mystery or myth about me and I have no idea where it comes from. Probably it's because I've never had any romance with a news reader and I've never been really, really popular. I've always been out on the flank and been someone that it's fun to point out or that you just love to hate. But that's why I've never had to deal with massive fame.

- None of the things you are expected to do if you record discs, even if you only get a bit of success - which is exactly what I have achieved - interests me the least.

- And somehow I get away with not doing those things. Most are not capable of failure. Some say they hate me, but they have a tremendous respect for not letting myself into the expected games. And that's flattering. Just when it comes to such people, they wish they could hate me just a little, a little more.

Part of the myth is that you rarely talk to the press. And I fly over half the globe to Salt Lake City when you finally say yes to an interview?

- Hmm… why are we in Salt Lake City really? It's weird. But it is very nice that people want to talk to me, because if you look at my record sales it is perfectly pathetic. I don't know why so many want to talk to me ... except here in the US, of course, nobody is interested ... and why would I be so interesting?

For those who buy your records after all, listen to them fairly carefully?

- It's true.

And that's what makes you interesting.

- I would hate to be in a seat where I sell millions of records among other artists selling millions of records, but nobody really listens. And the lists are full of them, there are as many as any. And, frankly, we know that nobody cares - I mean, really cares - about those records. But they are the music industry. They shit in words like credibility. Because there is no future in credibility, you cannot build a "career" on it, it does not sell multiplatina. But I prefer artists who are multi ... multimonotons.

What have you achieved in your communication with younger people?

- A lot. First of all, I have managed to keep my head above the surface of the water for all years, despite a rather awful relationship with an endless army of detractors and naughty critics. It also comes new all the time.

- I've done a lot of music that I really love. I have never produced music for a record label and I have never made music in the vain belief that someone out there will appreciate it. I have simply made music because it is this music that I want to be able to go into a record store and buy. And that's pretty unusual. I've never talked to anyone or my music. It is especially unusual among artists who have tried to collaborate with as many large record companies as I have done. As you know, record companies are very keen to get what they expect from their "employees". And I've come away with never having to defend what I wanted to do. At the risk of sounding like the Pope, I have done really well. And then I'm a not too shabby singer.

You really have become a better singer.

- It means you think I was terrible before ... but my voice has gotten better. That's because I matured as a man ... ha. I actually don't know why it sounds better. Maybe because I'm more relaxed nowadays. Over the years in The Smiths, I could never really relax in studio environments. I hurried there, did what needed to be done, and left as soon as I could. Then I sat at home, stiff as a stick, and hoped it could be listened to so I didn't have to do it again.

Are there any live artists you respect?

- No.

Why?

- In my opinion, all really interesting people are dead. Especially if we talk about pop music, it is a genre that is deprived of interesting personalities. The people that the music press picks up and actually have the stomach to even ask us to consider listening to and want to read about… my god… I would rather go and… pffft… throw arrow.

- Pop music is in such a desperate state that anyone who has it all, to say the least, is hailed as a modern Goethe. So if you want to become a pop star today, it's the easiest thing in the world. You definitely don't have to make the effort or know why you want to do it. You just need to ride on the right back at the right time. Most people who deal with pop music I would cross continents to avoid. I would cry if I ended up in the same room as them.

- Spontaneity is a word I always associate with pop music. But it does not exist, everything is a single long career with pension insurance included. The Smiths were a reaction to this fifteen years ago. Our record label Rough Trade was there too.

But nobody learned anything from it?

- No. It might have been different if we had also signed on for CBS. They might have asked us what we thought they would do with our ridiculous little stuff we called singles if there wasn't a finished album to boot. Then I had shot myself.

Would you like to live in another era?

- I do. I have long lived in a completely different era and have absolutely nothing to do with this planet.

How does it happen?

- I just have nothing to do with the human race. I have nothing to do with the pop industry, I have nothing to do with art galleries, TV, radio or even skiing.

But you like to swim.

- Have I ever mentioned that I like to swim? I thought it was the only secret I really managed to keep. I just stay away ... I just stay away ... so they can keep up with what they are doing now.

So what do you do in your own world?

- Oh, I do lots. For me it is not that difficult to stay away from English pop music. It is never, never, any other artist that comes to my concerts to say a few kind words. I always read those concert reviews of other artists' shows and there are always those who showed up backstage to have snacks with that or that artist. The only one who thanked me for a good concert was Tom Hanks.

Tom Hanks?

- Yes, it was shocking. How could Tom Hanks have heard of me at all, he is so normal. It made me so happy.

You want a normal audience?

- I think my audience is very normal ... maybe not normal by the way, because normal can sound as easy as an insult.

Do you take it as an insult?

- Of course. Only when I hear the word do I think of extremely boring clothes, of people who shop in the most grotesque shops and wear insanely thick wool socks in July. So I probably prefer to categorize my audience as… healthy. It's a better word than normal. There are so many old silly prejudices that the only people who like what I do are black-clad semi-Goths who drink gasoline. And that's not true. But I am almost surprised myself when I see what athletic audience I actually have. They don't seem to be depressed.

It's done. They will be happy when they meet you or go to one of your concerts and that is only when you see them.

- Well ... maybe, maybe there is a glimmer of truth in it. But I don't feel that way. I just think it's the same old attempt to hurt me, trying to categorize me with a "oh, we know Morrissey and everything he touches becomes depressing". That's not true.

But what kind of songs do you write?

- I only write very human songs. That's the only thing they are. Very human. Simple obvious songs that everyone should be able to take to their hearts. It's really that simple. I just heard Oasis's new single and the lyrics really went ... don't go away / say that you'll stay / forever and a day ... and I thought, he can't have sung those words. But he did, it's incomprehensible. And I came to think of a song from the seventies with Teach-In called "Ding-Dinge-Dong" that went sing a song every hour / when you're in the shower / maybe it's a big hit . And I can hear for my life no difference between "Ding-Dinge-Dong" and Oasis. If there is any, I hope I discover it sometime.

You seem to be very into clothes?

- I have them on me.

Come on.

- Okay, when I put them on I am usually inside them…. okay ... but would that be a crime? Yes, I appreciate everything that has style. As a joke, I once told a journalist that I only buy clothes at flea markets and I've had to eat that up. This coat I wear is as far from a flea market as you can get. Mrs Gucci has done it herself.

But your choice of clothing has a history that has followed the music and lyrics.

- Yes, it does. I have an alert brain and it is wide open to receive new ideas. And style and subcultures are extremely fascinating to someone like me. I'm not saying I've always had style myself, but I've always been fascinated by it. And in England it's easy to be.

Surely this is the only place where a pop culture exists?

- Of course! You said it! But my modesty forbids me to say it right there. So thank you for that.

- The cults that surrounded the music, especially in the working class, are so fascinating. Once they could be called youth cultures, but when there are those like me, it is no longer possible to categorize them as such. And I've got all that stuff served on a silver tray. I was born into a working-class family in Manchester at just the right moment and I was flooded with English pop culture just when it was conquering the whole world. And when the punk came, I slowly began to involve myself in music myself. So it was perfect. It would be a worse fate than death if I had been born in 1974. But I would have abhorred having come to the world in 1930 as well ... and, believe me, I have devoted much thought to that dilemma.

So you're not really born in the wrong era at all?

- As long as we're only talking about music, I'm probably not, no. But if we talk about the Spanish Civil War then I was definitely born at the wrong time and therefore they had no use whatsoever for me.

Are you updating your fascination for the subcultures? You've harvested mods, rockabillies and skinheads, most people know. Are you moving forward in history?

- When we reached the punk, I was more than old enough to take part in every important piece of the puzzle in place. In all of what reached Manchester ... but the music? How much of the music was really good or important? Possibly The Ramones first album. There is not much else one really remembers today. Buzzcocks maybe. And The Angelic Upstarts doesn't really belong here.

- The punk was a musical movement without a lot of music. And what would the next step be? Acid house? For me, acid house was also not so much about music, more about how a door was opened to the drug culture and how people discovered that they appreciated taking copious amounts of drugs. Which, in fact, the English never did before. And suddenly it was, in one way or another, a part of all people's everyday lives. That was, if you ask me, the only thing that the acid house era achieved. For the music was just ridiculous, just like the people who did it.

On "Maladjusted" you have sampled dialogue from a movie called "Cockleshell Heroes".

- Oh, it's just another one of those crispy old British movies that you've probably happened to see at four o'clock on a rainy Sunday afternoon on a channel that you would normally never dream of watching. It's actually not a very good movie, even though it was written by Bryan Forbes. It's just a cool war movie where everyone is a Marine and is happy all the time and all the commanders have stiff upper lip. They go to war, to Bourdeaux, and come back with an arm or a few legs smaller but are still just as jovial. It is one such robust old film that gives us a wonderful insight into wonderful old England.

How has your view of England changed now that you spend most of your time in other countries?

- My view of England is still loving. I love that country more than anything else. Still. England possesses an indescribable and unique nerve and a sharpness that generates such incredible creativity. Sure, the weather is horrible and, sure, the politicians are worthless idiots. But that is why there is always something to fight for and it is actually important for the artist's soul. There is always something to hate and kick on and there are no distracting and devastating distractions like sandy beaches or warm sun rays. You have to look at yourself in the mirror and do something dramatic. It is the only way to survive. So England is very good if you want to be creative.

How did you react to Princess Diana's death?

- It was so predictable. It was so expected - Grace Kelly, James Dean, blah-blah-blah, and so Princess Di… My God. She was just an incredibly boring woman. But the British once again bought the royal house's coup. I was expecting more from the English people. It is frightening that it is possible to brainwash an entire people to follow the slightest hint. My first thought was that this was the definitive proof that it would be a snap for England to march into war. It's so sad. I cannot think of a single interesting sentence that Princess Di expressed during her lifetime. Not a single one. And I'm not trying to provoke. She was an attractive woman who loved the life she lived and she died just as she lived. Sure, she went to the Third World now and then, but she did it in Chanel. And I can't remember Mother Theresa ever wearing a Chanel suit. Maybe I'm wrong, she maybe loved Chanel, what do I know? But that Diana and Mother Theresa died that week appeared to be a sign from a higher power that wanted to tell us something. Diana spent £ 25,000 a year on makeup. Does saint do it? Hardly. Did Mother Theresa spend £ 25,000 a year on makeup? If she did, she should have demanded the money back.

- But the biggest joke was not that the British wanted to explain Diana, the biggest joke was not that the media managed to trick an entire nation into an organized country grief for an unintelligent woman, the biggest joke was "Candle in the Wind" with Elton John.

Do you drink liquor now?

- Absolutely. Yes that's true. And perhaps the cheapest, most venerable beer and the most boring British stock you can imagine. And here in the US, the range of beers is fantastic, it's not just Budweiser Light and Corrs. But you have to make the effort if you want to find those really awful British beers, consisting of ninety-five percent polyester.

Would you like to join a band again or would it be too much Tin Machine?

- No, I would love to join a pop band as a singer. But would anyone allow it? Would anyone treat me to that joy? Probably not. The chances are that they will continue to refer to them as my records anyway. It would actually be fantastic and it's something that I often think about. Although the only thing I know for sure is that the band will never, never be The Undertones.

But the band you are touring with now should feel like a band. You have been playing together for a number of years now.

- Yes, it actually does. After all, they have been my band longer than The Smiths was a working unit. When I started playing with this band, many people pointed out that they were so young and that they couldn't play, but everyone thought they looked good. And they were probably right on all points. But now we are an excellent little combo.

Is your music something you grow from?

- I can not answer that.

Okay. There is a period in one's life when one is capable of creating an identity, usually one does so in the late teens, when one literally devours literature, film and music and hopefully that leads to the development of a composite person. Right then you need a helping hand and often pop stars help. Or something.

- Yes. But there are so few who manage to keep that flame burning. Of course, the music you discover during those years stays in one for the rest of your life. I'm not saying that the artists are the same, but the music definitely is. And it has something to do with the feeling of discovering something for the first time. It is impossible to compare with anything else in life. You hear all these new tapes that you hate and wonder how people can listen to this shit at all, but you have to remember that most people who buy these records buy their very first record.

- You really want to think that you are part of the books you read, the films you watch and the discs you hear. And all of a sudden you know all those fascinating writers and all the bands whose transsexual singers died of heroin overdoses. But you really just want to be interesting yourself. And it is through these books and everything else that you think you should become. It's romantic. But the people who ... I don't want to call them losers ... but those who weren't so careful about their choices at that age probably listened to Thin Lizzy.

How has your relationship with literature changed?

- Our relationship is still very deep. I want to keep reading and I buy an enormous amount of books, but discard most, especially contemporary novels. And is it something I want to read then it is just a good modern novel, but I never find any. And I really try, I probably hire five or six new novels a week. But I never read newspapers. And I've stopped reading music magazines.

Seriously?

- Yes, I quit. It was difficult, because they were such an important part of growing up. But they are so predictable that I just despair. I can tell you exactly what a magazine like Mojo will put on the cover of its February issue, same with Q. We won't talk about the weekly press. There are simply no music magazines to read anymore. And the United States has never been particularly good at pop journalism. Pop culture is still something that doesn't really exist here. Spin made a valiant attempt but failed in the end.

Have you made the same journey in the history of literature as you did with music, where you naturally move from point A to point B and so on?

- Yes, and unfortunately you have to choose books after the cover. I just read Boy George's autobiography and it's absurdly the first book in many years that I didn't want to end. The last chapters I read very carefully, I felt so good in their company and felt such a closeness to the people that I just wanted to stay between the covers. A brilliant book. In addition, I know several of the people who figure in the book and Boy George is an amazing storyteller.

Will you ever write an autobiography?

- In that case, I have to write about many people in my life in a way that I would prefer to avoid. So I must wait until most of them have passed away. Because you can't draw an intelligent picture of your own life without these people joining. So I'm waiting.

Do you write a diary?

- No, I've never kept a diary. Everything that is worth remembering I have in my head. Diaries are for people who have a criminally short memory. As I said before: I never forget a name, just faces. Now I lied again.

* * * * *

The interview with Billy Liar is over. The darkness has settled over Utah's foggy mountains as I sit in the car on a cold leather seat.

When I read this interview with Morrissey, I feel that I just wrote an article based on an interview that was terribly fun to do, and the article was at least as fun to write. But in the back of my head, the feeling that I'm always doing is always nagging: completely irresponsible, headstrong before, I don't even think that maybe I should talk about The Smiths with Morrissey.

Once I sit at the fireplace with Morrissey I just talk about exactly what I want to talk to him about. Just hearing him talk about just about anything is important. And I don't want to ask him about The Smiths, because I was there then. I read everything that could be read about them and I don't have to eat it with him. Going back to the records that meant so much ten or twelve years ago, discovering new details and maybe revising the opinions I had about them then is one thing, but letting him talk about The Smiths instead of himself - or what now the conversation is really about - just felt boring.

That interview is made by someone else. Our meeting became a conversation that, at least for me, meant that I got a little closer to the life of a man who only reveals details about himself between lines or in third person.

I'm just telling my story. You have to take it for what it is.

On the way to the Salt Lake City airport, I don't see a single double decker. But it's raining all the time.

MORRISSEY's sixth and latest solo album is called "Maladjusted".


Andres Lokko


Fun fact:

Andres Lokko who have estonian parents was born in Eskilstuna municipality in a town close to Eskilstuna and lived in the same house as KENT singer Joakim Berg who had his first apartment in that same building after leaving his parents home.

When Andres told Joakim about it Joakim said "are you even going to take that away from me".

Andres Lokko:

e2e05089-5eb4-416c-afdd-fb2d393f494a


Had his own indie show on MTV nordic.

Joakim Berg singer of KENT:

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You are one of very few who still think that the single is the best format to listen to music on.

- If I could really do just as I would myself, I would just release singles. Five a year or so. But you can't do that. The pop single is no longer there. And the singles lists, especially in England, are a joke. Everything is governed by advertising money, so everything that made singles lists so fun and important in the seventies is just a memory. There has to be a change. Today, you can buy yourself a first place on the singles list. You can place someone we have never heard of up there, but in real life they are not capable of filling a telephone booth.

How important is it to keep a certain mystique around your person?

- I do not know. It's an interesting question, people say there is some kind of mystery or myth about me and I have no idea where it comes from. Probably it's because I've never had any romance with a news reader and I've never been really, really popular. I've always been out on the flank and been someone that it's fun to point out or that you just love to hate. But that's why I've never had to deal with massive fame.

- None of the things you are expected to do if you record discs, even if you only get a bit of success - which is exactly what I have achieved - interests me the least.

- And somehow I get away with not doing those things. Most are not capable of failure. Some say they hate me, but they have a tremendous respect for not letting myself into the expected games. And that's flattering. Just when it comes to such people, they wish they could hate me just a little, a little more.

Part of the myth is that you rarely talk to the press. And I fly over half the globe to Salt Lake City when you finally say yes to an interview?

- Hmm… why are we in Salt Lake City really? It's weird. But it is very nice that people want to talk to me, because if you look at my record sales it is perfectly pathetic. I don't know why so many want to talk to me ... except here in the US, of course, nobody is interested ... and why would I be so interesting?

For those who buy your records after all, listen to them fairly carefully?

- It's true.

And that's what makes you interesting.

- I would hate to be in a seat where I sell millions of records among other artists selling millions of records, but nobody really listens. And the lists are full of them, there are as many as any. And, frankly, we know that nobody cares - I mean, really cares - about those records. But they are the music industry. They shit in words like credibility. Because there is no future in credibility, you cannot build a "career" on it, it does not sell multiplatina. But I prefer artists who are multi ... multimonotons.

What have you achieved in your communication with younger people?

- A lot. First of all, I have managed to keep my head above the surface of the water for all years, despite a rather awful relationship with an endless army of detractors and naughty critics. It also comes new all the time.

- I've done a lot of music that I really love. I have never produced music for a record label and I have never made music in the vain belief that someone out there will appreciate it. I have simply made music because it is this music that I want to be able to go into a record store and buy. And that's pretty unusual. I've never talked to anyone or my music. It is especially unusual among artists who have tried to collaborate with as many large record companies as I have done. As you know, record companies are very keen to get what they expect from their "employees". And I've come away with never having to defend what I wanted to do. At the risk of sounding like the Pope, I have done really well. And then I'm a not too shabby singer.

You really have become a better singer.

- It means you think I was terrible before ... but my voice has gotten better. That's because I matured as a man ... ha. I actually don't know why it sounds better. Maybe because I'm more relaxed nowadays. Over the years in The Smiths, I could never really relax in studio environments. I hurried there, did what needed to be done, and left as soon as I could. Then I sat at home, stiff as a stick, and hoped it could be listened to so I didn't have to do it again.

Are there any live artists you respect?

- No.

Why?

- In my opinion, all really interesting people are dead. Especially if we talk about pop music, it is a genre that is deprived of interesting personalities. The people that the music press picks up and actually have the stomach to even ask us to consider listening to and want to read about… my god… I would rather go and… pffft… throw arrow.

- Pop music is in such a desperate state that anyone who has it all, to say the least, is hailed as a modern Goethe. So if you want to become a pop star today, it's the easiest thing in the world. You definitely don't have to make the effort or know why you want to do it. You just need to ride on the right back at the right time. Most people who deal with pop music I would cross continents to avoid. I would cry if I ended up in the same room as them.

- Spontaneity is a word I always associate with pop music. But it does not exist, everything is a single long career with pension insurance included. The Smiths were a reaction to this fifteen years ago. Our record label Rough Trade was there too.

But nobody learned anything from it?

- No. It might have been different if we had also signed on for CBS. They might have asked us what we thought they would do with our ridiculous little stuff we called singles if there wasn't a finished album to boot. Then I had shot myself.

Would you like to live in another era?

- I do. I have long lived in a completely different era and have absolutely nothing to do with this planet.

How does it happen?

- I just have nothing to do with the human race. I have nothing to do with the pop industry, I have nothing to do with art galleries, TV, radio or even skiing.

But you like to swim.

- Have I ever mentioned that I like to swim? I thought it was the only secret I really managed to keep. I just stay away ... I just stay away ... so they can keep up with what they are doing now.

So what do you do in your own world?

- Oh, I do lots. For me it is not that difficult to stay away from English pop music. It is never, never, any other artist that comes to my concerts to say a few kind words. I always read those concert reviews of other artists' shows and there are always those who showed up backstage to have snacks with that or that artist. The only one who thanked me for a good concert was Tom Hanks.

Tom Hanks?

- Yes, it was shocking. How could Tom Hanks have heard of me at all, he is so normal. It made me so happy.

You want a normal audience?

- I think my audience is very normal ... maybe not normal by the way, because normal can sound as easy as an insult.

Do you take it as an insult?

- Of course. Only when I hear the word do I think of extremely boring clothes, of people who shop in the most grotesque shops and wear insanely thick wool socks in July. So I probably prefer to categorize my audience as… healthy. It's a better word than normal. There are so many old silly prejudices that the only people who like what I do are black-clad semi-Goths who drink gasoline. And that's not true. But I am almost surprised myself when I see what athletic audience I actually have. They don't seem to be depressed.

It's done. They will be happy when they meet you or go to one of your concerts and that is only when you see them.

- Well ... maybe, maybe there is a glimmer of truth in it. But I don't feel that way. I just think it's the same old attempt to hurt me, trying to categorize me with a "oh, we know Morrissey and everything he touches becomes depressing". That's not true.

But what kind of songs do you write?

- I only write very human songs. That's the only thing they are. Very human. Simple obvious songs that everyone should be able to take to their hearts. It's really that simple. I just heard Oasis's new single and the lyrics really went ... don't go away / say that you'll stay / forever and a day ... and I thought, he can't have sung those words. But he did, it's incomprehensible. And I came to think of a song from the seventies with Teach-In called "Ding-Dinge-Dong" that went sing a song every hour / when you're in the shower / maybe it's a big hit . And I can hear for my life no difference between "Ding-Dinge-Dong" and Oasis. If there is any, I hope I discover it sometime.

You seem to be very into clothes?

- I have them on me.

Come on.

- Okay, when I put them on I am usually inside them…. okay ... but would that be a crime? Yes, I appreciate everything that has style. As a joke, I once told a journalist that I only buy clothes at flea markets and I've had to eat that up. This coat I wear is as far from a flea market as you can get. Mrs Gucci has done it herself.

But your choice of clothing has a history that has followed the music and lyrics.

- Yes, it does. I have an alert brain and it is wide open to receive new ideas. And style and subcultures are extremely fascinating to someone like me. I'm not saying I've always had style myself, but I've always been fascinated by it. And in England it's easy to be.

Surely this is the only place where a pop culture exists?

- Of course! You said it! But my modesty forbids me to say it right there. So thank you for that.

- The cults that surrounded the music, especially in the working class, are so fascinating. Once they could be called youth cultures, but when there are those like me, it is no longer possible to categorize them as such. And I've got all that stuff served on a silver tray. I was born into a working-class family in Manchester at just the right moment and I was flooded with English pop culture just when it was conquering the whole world. And when the punk came, I slowly began to involve myself in music myself. So it was perfect. It would be a worse fate than death if I had been born in 1974. But I would have abhorred having come to the world in 1930 as well ... and, believe me, I have devoted much thought to that dilemma.

So you're not really born in the wrong era at all?

- As long as we're only talking about music, I'm probably not, no. But if we talk about the Spanish Civil War then I was definitely born at the wrong time and therefore they had no use whatsoever for me.

Are you updating your fascination for the subcultures? You've harvested mods, rockabillies and skinheads, most people know. Are you moving forward in history?

- When we reached the punk, I was more than old enough to take part in every important piece of the puzzle in place. In all of what reached Manchester ... but the music? How much of the music was really good or important? Possibly The Ramones first album. There is not much else one really remembers today. Buzzcocks maybe. And The Angelic Upstarts doesn't really belong here.

- The punk was a musical movement without a lot of music. And what would the next step be? Acid house? For me, acid house was also not so much about music, more about how a door was opened to the drug culture and how people discovered that they appreciated taking copious amounts of drugs. Which, in fact, the English never did before. And suddenly it was, in one way or another, a part of all people's everyday lives. That was, if you ask me, the only thing that the acid house era achieved. For the music was just ridiculous, just like the people who did it.

On "Maladjusted" you have sampled dialogue from a movie called "Cockleshell Heroes".

- Oh, it's just another one of those crispy old British movies that you've probably happened to see at four o'clock on a rainy Sunday afternoon on a channel that you would normally never dream of watching. It's actually not a very good movie, even though it was written by Bryan Forbes. It's just a cool war movie where everyone is a Marine and is happy all the time and all the commanders have stiff upper lip. They go to war, to Bourdeaux, and come back with an arm or a few legs smaller but are still just as jovial. It is one such robust old film that gives us a wonderful insight into wonderful old England.

How has your view of England changed now that you spend most of your time in other countries?

- My view of England is still loving. I love that country more than anything else. Still. England possesses an indescribable and unique nerve and a sharpness that generates such incredible creativity. Sure, the weather is horrible and, sure, the politicians are worthless idiots. But that is why there is always something to fight for and it is actually important for the artist's soul. There is always something to hate and kick on and there are no distracting and devastating distractions like sandy beaches or warm sun rays. You have to look at yourself in the mirror and do something dramatic. It is the only way to survive. So England is very good if you want to be creative.

How did you react to Princess Diana's death?

- It was so predictable. It was so expected - Grace Kelly, James Dean, blah-blah-blah, and so Princess Di… My God. She was just an incredibly boring woman. But the British once again bought the royal house's coup. I was expecting more from the English people. It is frightening that it is possible to brainwash an entire people to follow the slightest hint. My first thought was that this was the definitive proof that it would be a snap for England to march into war. It's so sad. I cannot think of a single interesting sentence that Princess Di expressed during her lifetime. Not a single one. And I'm not trying to provoke. She was an attractive woman who loved the life she lived and she died just as she lived. Sure, she went to the Third World now and then, but she did it in Chanel. And I can't remember Mother Theresa ever wearing a Chanel suit. Maybe I'm wrong, she maybe loved Chanel, what do I know? But that Diana and Mother Theresa died that week appeared to be a sign from a higher power that wanted to tell us something. Diana spent £ 25,000 a year on makeup. Does saint do it? Hardly. Did Mother Theresa spend £ 25,000 a year on makeup? If she did, she should have demanded the money back.

- But the biggest joke was not that the British wanted to explain Diana, the biggest joke was not that the media managed to trick an entire nation into an organized country grief for an unintelligent woman, the biggest joke was "Candle in the Wind" with Elton John.

Do you drink liquor now?

- Absolutely. Yes that's true. And perhaps the cheapest, most venerable beer and the most boring British stock you can imagine. And here in the US, the range of beers is fantastic, it's not just Budweiser Light and Corrs. But you have to make the effort if you want to find those really awful British beers, consisting of ninety-five percent polyester.

Would you like to join a band again or would it be too much Tin Machine?

- No, I would love to join a pop band as a singer. But would anyone allow it? Would anyone treat me to that joy? Probably not. The chances are that they will continue to refer to them as my records anyway. It would actually be fantastic and it's something that I often think about. Although the only thing I know for sure is that the band will never, never be The Undertones.

But the band you are touring with now should feel like a band. You have been playing together for a number of years now.

- Yes, it actually does. After all, they have been my band longer than The Smiths was a working unit. When I started playing with this band, many people pointed out that they were so young and that they couldn't play, but everyone thought they looked good. And they were probably right on all points. But now we are an excellent little combo.

Is your music something you grow from?

- I can not answer that.

Okay. There is a period in one's life when one is capable of creating an identity, usually one does so in the late teens, when one literally devours literature, film and music and hopefully that leads to the development of a composite person. Right then you need a helping hand and often pop stars help. Or something.

- Yes. But there are so few who manage to keep that flame burning. Of course, the music you discover during those years stays in one for the rest of your life. I'm not saying that the artists are the same, but the music definitely is. And it has something to do with the feeling of discovering something for the first time. It is impossible to compare with anything else in life. You hear all these new tapes that you hate and wonder how people can listen to this shit at all, but you have to remember that most people who buy these records buy their very first record.

- You really want to think that you are part of the books you read, the films you watch and the discs you hear. And all of a sudden you know all those fascinating writers and all the bands whose transsexual singers died of heroin overdoses. But you really just want to be interesting yourself. And it is through these books and everything else that you think you should become. It's romantic. But the people who ... I don't want to call them losers ... but those who weren't so careful about their choices at that age probably listened to Thin Lizzy.

How has your relationship with literature changed?

- Our relationship is still very deep. I want to keep reading and I buy an enormous amount of books, but discard most, especially contemporary novels. And is it something I want to read then it is just a good modern novel, but I never find any. And I really try, I probably hire five or six new novels a week. But I never read newspapers. And I've stopped reading music magazines.

Seriously?

- Yes, I quit. It was difficult, because they were such an important part of growing up. But they are so predictable that I just despair. I can tell you exactly what a magazine like Mojo will put on the cover of its February issue, same with Q. We won't talk about the weekly press. There are simply no music magazines to read anymore. And the United States has never been particularly good at pop journalism. Pop culture is still something that doesn't really exist here. Spin made a valiant attempt but failed in the end.

Have you made the same journey in the history of literature as you did with music, where you naturally move from point A to point B and so on?

- Yes, and unfortunately you have to choose books after the cover. I just read Boy George's autobiography and it's absurdly the first book in many years that I didn't want to end. The last chapters I read very carefully, I felt so good in their company and felt such a closeness to the people that I just wanted to stay between the covers. A brilliant book. In addition, I know several of the people who figure in the book and Boy George is an amazing storyteller.

Will you ever write an autobiography?

- In that case, I have to write about many people in my life in a way that I would prefer to avoid. So I must wait until most of them have passed away. Because you can't draw an intelligent picture of your own life without these people joining. So I'm waiting.

Do you write a diary?

- No, I've never kept a diary. Everything that is worth remembering I have in my head. Diaries are for people who have a criminally short memory. As I said before: I never forget a name, just faces. Now I lied again.

* * * * *

The interview with Billy Liar is over. The darkness has settled over Utah's foggy mountains as I sit in the car on a cold leather seat.

When I read this interview with Morrissey, I feel that I just wrote an article based on an interview that was terribly fun to do, and the article was at least as fun to write. But in the back of my head, the feeling that I'm always doing is always nagging: completely irresponsible, headstrong before, I don't even think that maybe I should talk about The Smiths with Morrissey.

Once I sit at the fireplace with Morrissey I just talk about exactly what I want to talk to him about. Just hearing him talk about just about anything is important. And I don't want to ask him about The Smiths, because I was there then. I read everything that could be read about them and I don't have to eat it with him. Going back to the records that meant so much ten or twelve years ago, discovering new details and maybe revising the opinions I had about them then is one thing, but letting him talk about The Smiths instead of himself - or what now the conversation is really about - just felt boring.

That interview is made by someone else. Our meeting became a conversation that, at least for me, meant that I got a little closer to the life of a man who only reveals details about himself between lines or in third person.

I'm just telling my story. You have to take it for what it is.

On the way to the Salt Lake City airport, I don't see a single double decker. But it's raining all the time.

MORRISSEY's sixth and latest solo album is called "Maladjusted".


Andres Lokko

If there are german Moz fans then read the interview and realise he hates you all. He had a day when he simply refused to speak to any germans. I have heard this is something that still is a part of him.
 
JOHAN HAKELIUS
People are tired of being cursed and disappointed
Published 14 Dec 2019 at 06.57
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WORKED - THEN. Michael Douglas plays William Foster in the feature film "Falling down" from 1993.Photo: PHOTO: WARNER / TV4
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IN TIME. Joaquin Phoenix in "Joker" from 2019.Photo: NIKO TAVERNISE / AP


The great thing about "Falling down", the movie from -93 with Michael Douglas, is that it really has a positive message. In some ways.

This is a chronicle. Analysis and positions are the writer's.

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JOHAN HAKELIUS
READ MORE: chronicles by
Johan Hakelius

You know the story: square white man, an official in the defense industry, gets a night out. He gets tired of the world, gets out of the car in the middle of the freeway in Los Angeles and begins to grasp things with baseball balls, buffers and a rocket gun.

There are mitigating circumstances that Hollywood has put in place for the audience to like Douglas. In one scene, it becomes clear that Douglas dislikes racism, homophobia and sexism. It is an important scene, because where you realize that Douglas, however square, sad and cismanial white he is, after all is a fair guy. This is important for the positive message.

A description of disintegration, which promotes cohesion.
"Falling Down" is based on understanding Douglas. They are also tormented by the frail, dysfunctional and egotistical society he has had enough of. But the film is also based on feeling confident as part of the audience. Knowing that the audience shares one's own and Douglas's values: the world should be decent and friendly. The film is thus a description of disintegration, which promotes cohesion.

The film is simply based on the audience agreeing on what should be normal.

Or built on. Movies change over time.

The election in the UK yesterday shows how times have changed. It was a clear result, but not so much a peaceful solution. Elections were used to determine how the political compromise between all citizens would be shaped. They were a kind of temporary endpoint. Now choices are rather the starting point for conflicts. The election of Trump, the Brexit vote, our own recent parliamentary election: none of those elections put any conflict to rest. On the contrary. Instead, they urged people to raise their voice another snap. To pick up some more angry invective.

So it will be in England this time as well.

In the bottom, there is what is sometimes vaguely called the "culture war". What it is about is that we largely disagree about what is normal. The lines go between city and country. Between young and old. Between loyalists with the social summit and those who feel blown away and ignored by it. Between those who want to use the state to drive new values and those who want it to defend established values.

Today's movie is rather "Joker" with Joaquin Phoenix.
One and the other have completely different perceptions of what is reasonable and normal. So a movie like "Falling down" doesn't really work anymore. It only speaks to a group of viewers. The group that remains about where normality lay in 1994.

Today's movie is rather "Joker" with Joaquin Phoenix. When Phoenix glides around town and shoots people, it doesn't bottom out in a shared sense of what's normal. The only thing the audience can share is the anger, the breakdown of communication and the isolation. The only collective that unites people in the film is the violent mob.

Every week I talk to people who say they have had enough. They come from right and left. Climate activists, rural residents, Sweden Democrats and DN writers. They are on the verge of giving up. They do not stand with people. They have started avoiding the news. Some dream of becoming hermits. They are tired of constantly being cursed, frustrated and disappointed. They don't know what to do.

I don't know either. But we can't have it this way for any length of time.
 
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books wit no pitchers but not much more just fuck off literary ponces long live books more to life than books nerds n squares obscurer and obscurer shakespeare is smart
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