Best Albums - Meat is Murder / The Queen is Dead - The Smiths

It's hard for me to write about Meat is Murder. There is some music in life that holds such a personal grip on you that it's just hard to look at it objectively. There are many songs like that for me and very few albums, this is one such album. I think the thing that first struck me about this album was the sound. It has such a hollow and dirty sound to it. There isn't much pretty about this album, and that fits in perfectly with the first song and the first lyrics.

Belligerent ghouls
Run manchester schools
Spineless swines
Cemented minds

Sir leads the troops
Jealous of youth
Same old suit since 1962

He does the military two-step
Down the nape of my neck

From that opening salvo I was pretty much hooked and really the album never lets up. It has a few moments that don't fit the album, "How Soon is Now" and "Meat is Murder," but otherwise it is all just youthful frustration and anger a wonderful thing to listen to when you are an angry youthful 18 year old. I could go and on about the lyrics to this album. This is Morrissey at his blunt brilliance.

On the day that your mentality
Decides to try to catch up with your biology
Come round ...
  -from I Want the One I Can't Have

What she said :
"How come someone hasn't noticed
That I'm dead
And decided to bury me ?
God knows, I'm ready !"
  -from What She Said

I'd like to drop my trousers to the world
I am a man of means of slender means
  -from Nowhere Fast

The album is just bliss if you're an angry, frustrated 18 year old. Listening to the album now some 23 years later it can instantly take me back to how I felt the first time I heard this record. Like I said it's hard to look at this album objectively, but it is almost pure brilliance.

The Queen is Dead is no doubt their masterpiece. How they blended the rawness and anger of the second album with the smoothness and wit of their first album shows impressive growth. If you are ever going to listen to one Smiths album this should be it. They really brought out the rhythm section which gives the album a much denser sound and smooths out Morrissey's singing and allows the lyrics a different stage where they really stand out. Morrissey is still blunt but in a more poetic way and is much more reflective in his thoughts than simply angry. This new layered sound also allows them to create songs like "I Know It's Over." The song has a tenderness to it that could never have been achieved on their second album and a realness of emotion that could have never been achieved on their first album. Where Meat is Murder is youthful and angry, this album is that same person but a few years removed, now more reflective on his own anger and all the frustrations brought on by his life and the world around.


Meat is Murder
1. The Headmaster Ritual
2. Rusholme Ruffians
3. I Want the One I Can't Have
4. What She Said
5. That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore
6. How Soon Is Now?
7. Nowhere Fast
8. Well I Wonder
9. Barbarism Begins at Home
10. Meat is Murder




The Queen is Dead
1. The Queen is Dead
2. Frankly, Mr. Shankly
3. I Know It's Over
4. Never Had No One Ever
5. Cemetry Gates
6. Bigmouth Strikes Again
7. The Boy With the Thorn in His Side
8. Vicar In a Tutu
9. There is a Light That Never Goes Out
10. Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others

Chilean Music

I'm trying to learn a bit about Chilean music, here's who I'm listening to.

Sur Pacifico http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czBMWOVG3ns

Los Prisioneros http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbXVSavQ2LA

Los Tres http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdK3d_X_03I

Joe Vasconcellos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epKVC3YFwp0

Los Bunkers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rug6yH7Dccw

La Ley http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTGH0Hgc7_A

Bitman & Roban http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVSqqDe7fGA

Violeta Parra http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsEEwHBr2K4

Kudai http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EfBs7LbogA

Lesbos in Love http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGB0HLt1MdY

Los Miserables http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l3OAAZHPps

Gepe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-ml4m7c-BI

Illapu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pD1losD8yQ

Inti Illimani http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAY0_psa6Fk

Amango http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGEjIgh4qJ0

Gondwana http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf6JafXiDXI

Sinergia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBxllb_ZxfE

Scan2PDF

Found some great free software this weekend that scans and saves to PDF. Easy to use, compresses the files very nicely and best of all it's free. Check it out it's called Scan2PDF.

Let's Run

My latest run mix

1. Gold - Spandau Ballet
2. Save A Prayer (US Single Version) - Duran Duran
3. This Is Your Life - The Killers
4. Everything - A Cursive Memory
5. Size Of Your Life - The Promise Ring
6. Adia - Sarah McLachlan
7. 100 Round The Bends - Missy Higgins
8. A Thousand Miles - Vanessa Carlton
9. Ironic - Alanis Morissette
10. Don't Speak - No Doubt
11. Someday - Sugar Ray
12. Everything To Everyone - Everclear
13. Video Killed The Radio Star - Presidents of the United States of America
14. Break My Body - Pixies
15. In Bloom - Nirvana
16. Debaser - Pixies
17. This Is A Call - Foo Fighters
18. Everything I Need - The Wallflowers
19. Feels Like Summer Again - The Wallflowers