Events

[DANCE PARTY] They’re both big whiners for sure. But with The Smiths vs. The Cure dance party coming up this Saturday at Buffalo Iron Works, we’ve  got a good excuse to revisit the “mope rock” kings (queens?) and see if we can discern a top contender for the biggest mope of all. In 1984, Morrissey called The Cure’s Robert Smith a “whingebag” in the defunct UK rock rag The Face. Collins Dictionary tells us a “whingebag” is someone who constantly complains about everything or anything. Oh, the irony. So began an ongoing feud and, to be quite frank, the Mozzer comes out looking like the bully. Five years later, in an oft-cited interview for the Brit magazine NME, he fired off that the Cure had added “a new dimension to the word crap,” to which Smith—his over-dyed, Einstein-inspired bird’s-nest achieving never-before matched, finger-in-socket heights—replied: “At least we’ve only added a new dimension in crap, not built a career out of it.” Combing through their respective writings, however, what’s clear is how differently they go about articulating their misery. Morrissey is a literal writer with a witty edge… he may mince across a stage, but he doesn’t often mince words. Robert Smith, on the other hand, is a much more impressionistic scribe. Reading through his body of lyrics is liable to leave you queasy, as if it’s all happening in an underwater dream state (the possibilities with his hair providing endless fun for the imagination). Smith tends to describe scenarios more symbolically, giving his work added romantic flair, but he’s also prone to sudden, childlike outbursts of enthusiasm and is given to  falling back on hackneyed metaphors about death… and kissing. A lot of kissing. Endless kissing. Finding parallels in their songwriting proves challenging, but here are some examples of how their respective approaches differ:

Disdain:
M: “I’ve come to wish you an unhappy birthday / Because you’re evil and you lie / And if you should die / I may feel slightly sad (but I won’t cry)”
R:  ”You’re just a waste of time / You’re just a babbling face / You’re just three sick holes that run like sores / You’re a fucking waste / You’re like a slug on the floor / Oh! you’re useless and ugly”

Death:
M: “Oh, Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head!”
R: “Time slips away / And the light begins to fade  / And everything is quiet now / Feeling is gone”

Playing Dress Up
M: “I say Charles don’t you ever crave / To appear on the front of the Daily Mail / Dressed in your mother’s bridal veil?”
R: “Dressing up to kiss / Dressing up to touch all this / I’m dressing up to dance all week
I’m dressing up to sleep / Dressing up to kiss / Dressing up to be all this”

Meat
M: “…and the flesh you so fancifully fry / Is not succulent, tasty or nice
It’s death for no reason / And death for no reason is murder”