So Much To Answer For

Greetings, dear readers. I have returned safe and sound from Manchester. My overall impression of Manchester was extremely positive. I had never traveled outside of London in the UK but Manchester is one world-class city. Great public transportation, extremely nice people, awful weather. Its everything one could dream of. I also want to send a huge thanks to my hosts Jeff and Chris for providing me with a great place to stay and helping to fulfill my high school dreams of a true Morrissey/Smiths pilgrimage.

This is The Ritz. The Smiths played their very first concert ever here back in 1983, the year I was born. The venue is still functioning (The Dandy Warhols were playing while I was in town) and it is right in the middle of the street when walking to Chris' place, so this was my first exposure to a Moz-related site in Manchester. I must also add that Manchester is a phenomenal place for shopping. Of note is Affleck's Palace a four-story-plus shopping complex with a variety of shops selling everything from pins and posters to vintage clothing to genuine antiques of all varieties. There is even a barbershop inside. It seems to be something of a mecca for the local indie-hood-rat-scenester-trash "community" and they were out in full force, dyed pink-and-black hair and Killers patches to spare. On the side of the building is this nice little piece of mosaic art:

There are two Vinyl Exchange record shops in Amsterdam, both truly impressive little establishments with an insane amount of used CDs and rare LPs stuffed into their modest real estate. I probably spent about fours hours of my entire time visiting Manchester just browsing through the shoppes, which I suppose is not all that strange for me. The first day of Morrissey/Smiths touring began with a trip to the Salford Lads Club, the site of the band picture on the Queen Is Dead LP. Here is the original and my re-creation:

Unfortunately, just a few feet from the club, Jeff tripped in the mud (it rained pretty much the entire time I was there) and hurt his knee pretty badly. Fortunately he is a trooper and stuck with the rest of the day's tour of Morrissey-related sites. Next up was a trip out to Stretford, where Morrissey's home when he and Johnny Marr first met to form the Smiths is located. On the way to his house, we stopped off at the "iron bridge" mentioned in the song "Still Ill." The bridge is decorated with lots of graffiti (including a huge message reading "Now My Heart Is Full" which is partially visible in the pictures below):

Finally, we arrived at Morrissey's former house, located in a modest brick building that looks like just all the other ones on the block, except the number for the address has been removed, presumably to detract sightseers. We snapped this picture quickly while a woman glared at us from inside the house (What did she expect? She lives in Morrissey's house!):

Our final journey was to the Southern Cemetery, where Morrissey would meet with Linder Sterling, as recounted in the classic "Cemetery Gates." The place is absolutely massive, and we walked through most of it, although it must be said this is the largest city cemetery I have ever been to, and it is quite impressive. Cemeteries are strange, quiet, and interesting places.

That concluded our day of Morrissey and Smiths sightseeing. There are many more relevant sites in and around Manchester, but I feel quite pleased I hit up the key ones. As Jeff and I discussed, The Smiths is primarily the music of youth, of late adolescence, and of alienation. Walking around Morrissey's old neighborhood, and just seeing the drearier, decrepit, side of the old Manchester put me back in the frame of mind of when I was sixteen or seventeen, first discovering this strange and wonderful music made twenty years ago in some far-off country. There is a draw to the music of The Smiths that transcends time, something inherent in sad, funny, honest lyrics, painting scenes of depressing, provincial towns and working-class people. It is a eulogy for an England that is ancient history, if it even existed at all. And yet, one cannot help but be drawn back, over and over, to those songs and those feelings, and to that place and that time. In a certain way, every serious Smiths fan is acquainted with Manchester - with the strange logic and architecture of an industrial Northern town seemingly on its last legs. There was something of a revival here as documented in the fabulous 24-Hour Party People, but now that Manchester is gone forever and so is the Hacienda:

The next day, we visited the Urbis museum in the City Centre for an exhibition of Mick Rock photography. Rock is a quite famous photographer who snapped the covers for Lou Reed's Transformer and Iggy Pop's Raw Power as well as extensive work with Queen, Syd Barrett, and Bowie, among others. The exhibition was rather straightforward, but the photos were quite phenomenal, and there were a couple of areas where one could listen to interviews between Rock and Reed or Bowie, which were quite hilarious drugged-out audio documents filled with non-sequiters and bizarre revelations (Bowie used to buy porn magazines for his then-wife Angie[???]).

Sadly, I was only in Manchester for three nights, so it was time for me to head out early Thursday morning. Apparently that date was the warmest October 27 in over 100 years and broke records all over the UK. Amsterdam was quite a pleasant place to return to, as that night I went and saw Animal Collective, but that story will have to wait...