My dream date with Morrissey
by Annie Seikonia

When I first heard Morrissey was coming to the State Theatre, I couldn't believe my ears. It seemed too incredible to be true. Imagine a place where you can be free to be exactly who you are -- however weird, dysfunctional, unlovable or alienated. This is the world represented by Morrissey. I don't particularly like rock concerts, and there are few people I would venture forth to see. "The Moz," as he is known to his sycophantically loyal fan base, is one of them.

I first heard of the Smiths as a student living in my first apartment. My roommate drove an old van with a bumper sticker that said, "Meat is Murder." He was a hip guy, and I used to borrow his cassettes. The best ones were compilations of great bands I'd never heard of with names like Teardrop Explodes, Mission of Burma and the Smiths. I wound up buying "Meat Is Murder" by the Smiths and felt myself falling hard as I listened to songs like "The Headmaster's Ritual." My appreciation of them coincided with a dishwashing gig for slave wages and a full-throttle immersion in the local art and music scene. Their subversive music fit in perfectly with my burgeoning weltanschuung, perhaps best summed up in some long-enduring Portland graffiti lifted from the movie "Down By Law": "It's a sad and beautiful world."

Having decided Joy Division was the greatest band of the '70s, I quickly concluded the Smiths were the greatest band of the '80s. The height of Smiths apotheosis could be reached dancing at one of Kris Clark's legendary pre-Zootz dance parties at the Portland Club to "How Soon Is Now," that utterly narcissistic, self-pitying paean to wallflowerism. This song of epic disillusionment somehow coincided with the phenomenon of androgynous men dancing in skirts (gasp!) and the Iron John movement of men getting "in touch" with their feminine sides.

I lost track of Morrissey after the Smiths broke up, though I started paying attention again when the Moz came out with "Viva Hate" in '88. Filled with uncompromising tracks like "I Don't Mind If You Forget Me" and "Dial-A-Cliché," it showed the driving energy behind the Smiths was back. Many a gray day I walked the streets listening to "Every Day Is Like Sunday," a song that seemed to epitomize the strange, rootless loneliness of Portland provincialism. I felt a deep connection to Morrissey's Manchester, England, roots, having grown up myself in a postindustrial mill town.

As I grew older, Morrissey grew older with me, echoing my disillusionments like a world-weary confidant. The '90s were filled with turbulent personal relationships and psychological meltdowns. I spent a lot of time listening to his "Vauxhall and I," released in 1994. The lyrics from the song "Speedway" seemed to describe just about every couple I knew at the time: "In my own sick way/ I'll always stay true to you." When I recently pulled out my old Morrissey tapes, I was surprised to discover just how frank, funny and timeless "Vauxhall and I" remains. It's easily one of the gems of pop music history.

I loved seeing Morrissey in concert. You either get the appeal of his English camp filtered through painful self-consciousness or you don't. Music critics often miss the point, as did the Portland Press Herald's Steve Greenlee, who wrote a dour review that dissed Morrissey for only playing five Smith songs on the grounds that "those were the ones whose lyrics the crowd knew and could sing." Morrissey, who looked every bit his 40 years, performed with theatrical verve, quipping cheekily with the small but enthusiastic audience while playing his "desolate moper" reputation to the hilt. His cultish charm and legendary habit of pulling fans onstage were intoxicating. His well-documented eccentricities (vegetarian, ambiguous sexuality, renowned celibacy) often eclipse the fact that he's a great singer. The fact that he verged on self-parody at times was also part of the complicated magic -- aging New York Doll groupie meets Frank Sinatra on the threshold of hyperbolic anguish.

When, drenched in bloodred lights, he launched into the antiestablishment epic "Meat is Murder," I felt three worlds coalesce and merge: the nostalgic Portland of my youth; the perfectly communicated yet unknowable world of Morrissey himself; and finally, the world of the hypersensitive nerdy eccentrics who are so attracted to his persona. Though not normally attracted to celebrities, I've long had fantasies of "my dream date with Morrissey" in which we drink coffee or tea, wander along the waterfront, argue literature and poetry, and go our separate ways. The beautiful satisfaction of this fantasy is that -- in true Morrissey style -- it will never be fulfilled, but will remain forever intact and mixed up in some cerebral, vaguely erotic province of a frustrated romantic longing as near yet as untouchable as the Portland sky at twilight. Sigh.

CBW