About 25 years ago, on June 16, 1986, the third album from The Smiths - the greatest British band of the 1980s (Pixies are the American equivalent) - was released in England. It was called The Queen Is Dead. And it is without doubt (still, evermore) one of the finest popular music albums ever released. The thrumming, drumming insistence of the first (title) track is deliriously potent, with its great lament: "life is very long when you're lonely". 'Frankly, Mr. Shankly' is still the best monologue of a mediocre talent put to music, and is Morrissey's riposte to Larkin's 'Mr. Bleaney'; and ends with the wonderful "give us money." In the middle, come two of the great Smith moments - 'Cemetery Gates' ("Wilde is on my mine") - which I loved - and then the extraordinarily weird 'Bigmouth Strikes Again" ("sweetness I was only joking when I said/ by rights you should be bludgeoned in your bed"), invigorating, nasty, brilliant; I was taken out of a Montreal disco on a stretcher, after dislocating my kneecap dancing to this song. At track nine is 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out' ("to die by your side, well the pleasure, the privilege is mine"), with its darkened underpass - whose strange fear summed up all the passion and pathos of adolescent longing. Stamped throughout with melancholy-witty pop genius, this is frankly one of the best British things of the last century. A pleasure that won't ever go out.
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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