You gave me something that I won't forget too soon

That Tower Records near GW is worthless. I go over there to pick up the Belle & Sebastian EP and the new Mull Historical Society on import and they have neither. But I did notice that Mojo has put out a special edition on the Smiths and Morrissey for sad suckers who'll spend $14 US on a compilation of reviews and articles.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm exactly that kind of a sad sucker.

Flipping through this expensive magazine that's mostly full of facts and events that I already knew about (though some I didn't: the album version of The Boy With The Thorn In His Side was originally just meant to be a demo!) has brought up some a few of my opinions and memories of the Smiths. Here, specifically because you didn't ask, they are:

I don't care what anyone says: Louder Than Bombs is the best Smiths album. It's a compilation album that (unlike Hatful of Hollow) doesn't sound like a compliation album. It works wholly as an album with a perfect beginning (a song about heading out on travels) and a perfect ending (a song about death) and every song in between segues perfectly from the song before and to the song after. And it's a compilation! It's a musical meant-to-be, and I'll always believe that it stomps all over Hatful of Hollow and The Queen Is Dead.

Kill Uncle is an extremely underrated album and I just flat-out don't understand why so many people trash Our Frank, as though it's unanimously understood that it's a horrible song. It's one of my favorite Morrissey songs, actually.

I remember the day that Kill Uncle came out. I was working at a Musicland at a mall in Anchorage, and I bought it that day. I looked at the liner notes of my new purchase, but in a bizarre decision, they only printed the credits for violin and keyboards on the outside of the sleeve, meaning that I thought the entire album was going to consist musically only of violin and synths. It made me pretty nervous about what to expect, and when I got home and heard Our Frank, with real drums and bass, I was completely relieved, and I loved it. Maybe it's a case of expecting the worst and being really pleased with something I would otherwise just think of as average, but I love that song, and I still feel somewhat relieved when I hear it.

I'll also never forget the very first time I heard the Smiths. Jason Miller, a friend of mine in high school, would hang out in the junior parking lot and hit up friends of his for rides home. One day, he managed to convince my sister to take him home, which she was clearly not happy about, but I was glad to have him in the car. In a really pushy act which I've been thankful for for years, he had my sister put in his cassette of The Queen Is Dead, and that title track completely blew me away. It was at a time in my life when I was itching to hear quirky, aggressive music, and even though Frankly Mr. Shankly sounded terrible to me that day, the title track was enough to make me go by the album and keep listening to it until Morrissey's voice grew on me. I don't even want to think about how long it would have been before I got into the Smiths if it wasn't for Jason being both a mooch and really pushy.