Mild Mannered Army: "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Southpaw Grammar at Thirty" (January 3, 2025)

Thewlis said:
Lol, I did the same thing for Utrecht. Still regret it a little bit, cause never got to see Bowie anymore.
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#me2.
Typical 90s die-hard behaviour :)+ I was scared of Trent Reznor and all the nasty stories about NIN recording in the basement of the house where Sharon Tate was murdered.
 
I
Thewlis said:
Lol, I did the same thing for Utrecht. Still regret it a little bit, cause never got to see Bowie anymore.
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I saw Morrissey and Bowie at one of the Wembley Arena shows. Neither were great. Morrissey just didn't seem to be enjoying it. And obviously he later left the tour. Bowie did Bowie by numbers. It was good, but nothing spectacular. Not helped by being a dreadful venue. It all felt very corporate and packaged. I can imagine Morrissey hating it.
 
brody said:
You Should Have Been Nice To Me absolutely should have remained in the tracklist
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I like the track itself but I feel it doesn't fit the mood or sound of Southpaw Grammar. Thematically, it makes an unhappy-ending bookend for "I'd Love To." But, sonically, it points backward to Vauxhall while the B-sides on "Boxers" point forward to Southpaw. Best case scenario, this was the opportunity to lift "Nobody Loves Us" onto the album proper and replace it on "Dagenham Dave" with a completed version of "You Should Have Been Nice To Me."

The track listing of the single could have made for a quite amusing if wholly unintentional verse:

Dagenham Dave
You Must Please Remember
You Should Have Been Nice To Me

🙂
 
I also bought tickets for Bowie/Morrissey in Helsinki, but I didn't sell them when Moz cancelled. After M. leaving the tour Bowie promised that he would do longer gigs, but that really meant only 2--3 extra songs, if I remember correctly. Anyway, I loved the concert. I loved 1. Outside which to me was a true return to form, so the rather obscure setlist didn't disappoint me.
 
Outside was a really daring concept album. In 1995, it was still important for albums that they contain catchy/strong singles to push the record sales. And it was the time, when you clearly had to buy the CD singles as well, when you admired an artist. Strangers when we meet and Hallo Soaceboy were great, The heart's filthy lesson was disturbing. The documentaries about the innovative creation of the record were shown on TV. I also associate all that with the Southpaw era and of course I regret never having seen Bowie live.

Will we ever learn about:
In Control of Dame Dominance
If it really exists and if it is indeed linked to the "Outside Southpaw" experience?
 
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gashonthenail said:
It was certainly a dark, brooding and 'gloomy' album for the mid 90s. When everyone else was partying and doing drugs. Moz just did his own thing. Maybe he foresaw the 'come down' that was inevitable. Pulp's This Is Hardcore came in 1998, which I think was very much the end of the 'Britpop' era.
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This is Hardcore is a fantastic album, their best. Hardcore is a great melancholic comedown album, If it signalled the end of britpop (stupid name), even better.
 
Thewlis said:
Still, Alma Matters is one of his most treasured songs, to this day. What lets Southpaw Grammar down is its lack of a hit song. Apart from its shortness of only 8 songs.

It was criminal to let Nobody Loves Us pass by, too.
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I think Reader Meet Author could've been a hit single.
 
DagenhamDan said:
This is Hardcore is a fantastic album, their best. Hardcore is a great melancholic comedown album, If it signalled the end of britpop (stupid name), even better.
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The first five tracks are great, but then Pulp got the yips. The latter half is full of more typical Pulp but with mediocre songs: I'm a Man, Sylvia, Glory Days... It's like they thought that right, enough angst now, let's do some more commercial stuff to fill the album. The deluxe reissue of the album has several more electronic and superior songs (b-sides and unreleased), which were part of the original This Is Hardcore but then left out. So for me Different Class remains Pulp's best album, despite being the populist choice.
 
Eldritch said:
The first five tracks are great, but then Pulp got the yips. The latter half is full of more typical Pulp but with mediocre songs: I'm a Man, Sylvia, Glory Days... It's like they thought that right, enough angst now, let's do some more commercial stuff to fill the album. The deluxe reissue of the album has several more electronic and superior songs (b-sides and unreleased), which were part of the original This Is Hardcore but then left out. So for me Different Class remains Pulp's best album, despite being the populist choice.
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There are plenty of great tracks past the first five songs: TV Movie, A Little Soul, I'm a Man, Glory Days and the Day After the Revolution are all solid. Only Seductive Barry and Sylvia for me are the ones to swap out.
 
I think it's also interesting how it played out with Parlophone issuing "Sunny" in the wake of Southpaw. Clearly, they assumed Morrissey was going to have a steadier chart showing a la Your Arsenal or Vauxhall and I so it was a bit of an obvious cash-in.

What's odd is that M had already previewed "Sunny" live *and* on Jools Holland around a month before it was finally released. He even announced it as their "new single" on the Wembley radio recording - whereas "The Boy Racer" was released as a single first later in November. Add this to him leaving the Bowie tour and suddenly popping up apropos of nothing for live dates in Japan. It truly was an upside-down time.
 
DagenhamDan said:
Agreed Marred, but what do I know, I'm in a very small club that loves Dagenham Dave.
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Nah, love it too! & the video rocks! I’ve mentioned this before, but the repetition of him singing Dagenham Dave always makes me think of Marc Bolan’s repetition in this song …





watching this just now, I wonder if M had any input about clothing the actors wore, because with her red hair and blue dress made me think of Bowie in his blue suit for the 1973 Mick Rock shot promo for ‘Life on Mars?’
 
Multi said:
There are plenty of great tracks past the first five songs: TV Movie, A Little Soul, I'm a Man, Glory Days and the Day After the Revolution are all solid. Only Seductive Barry and Sylvia for me are the ones to swap out.
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Well, we'll have to disagree with that one. Last year I read Jane Savidge's pretty good book about This Is Hardcore in the 33 1/3 series and listened to that album a lot. If I had my way with the album, it would go like this:

1. The Fear
2. Dishes
3. Party Hard
4. Help the Aged
5. This Is Hardcore
6. A Little Soul
7. It's a Dirty World
8. Ladies' Man
9. The Professional
10. Like a Friend
11. Cocaine Socialism
12. It's a Dirty World

So this would not be totally off-topic: How did Parlophone own Sunny and the b-sides? I know they had been recorded under the previous contract, but wouldn't they still belong to the artist when they were unreleased? And if Morrissey had re-recorded them for RCA, surely then they at least would have been eligible for Southpaw Grammar or the singles?
 

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