English Bands Loved by People Who Had a Tough Time in High School: The Smiths vs. Sisters of Mercy

High school wasn't brutal torture for me.

Apart from the usual adolescent dramas and a really odd bit of Grade 11, I had a pretty good time. I went to a lot of park parties (the urban equivalent of bush parties, for those of you who didn't grow up in GTA), had a couple pretty decent teachers, managed to lose my virginity before heading off to university and had a decent supply of dope. On the other hand, I spent most of my high school career so stoned I didn't know where the fuck I was, so my memories may not be totally accurate.

That said, I did get my ass kicked a bunch of times over being "different" or "mouthy," did poorly with girls, had bad acne and greasy hair, spent the first half of my teens really skinny, then got really fat overnight. I figure that gives me as much claim to a harsh adolescence as any other middle-class white kid.

People who had a "hard time" in high school -- by which I mean most people who didn't play football but weren't gang bangers or huge ginos -- almost inevitably liked mopey English bands from the 1980s. Even when I went to school in the mid-to-late '90s, there was a strong contingent of cats who were moping around in mod-style army parkas, trying to look as disaffected as humanly possible while smoking Dunhills and John Player's Special, feeling like every word out of Morrissey's mouth was about them.

This is for them.

Before I get down to the heavy shit, I feel the need to explain my choice of bands. The Smiths are both the mopiest and Englishist of the mopey English bands. It would be hard to argue their presence here. The Sisters require a little explaining. The Cure would probably be The Smiths' natural opponents here. Morrissey and Robert Smith are one and one-a to depressed teens. And there may one day be a battle where The Smiths and The Cure go mano a mano, as much as that's possible for bands fronted by two supremely androgynous dudes. For this week, it had to be the Sisters for two reasons: one, my boy Shaan got hella excited when I mentioned the prospect of this battle and two, the video for "This Corrosion" is so above and beyond that it has to be recognized here.

The Main Event

In the Red Corner, from Hulme, Manchester, England, with disaffection factor of a sexual identity crisis, THE SMITHS!

Pretty much the entire world more or less knows the story of The Smiths. They were founded in 1982 by Steven Morrissey and Johnny Marr, they became tremendously popular in the UK and Ireland and developed an almost obsessive cult following in Canada and the US. In 1987 they broke up, in part because Marr got sick of Morrissey's obsession with '60s pop and in part because Morrissey has an ego so large he needs a fleet of tractor trailers -- or lorries, as they say in England -- to haul it around.

Here's some lesser known facts about Morrissey, which I gleaned from Wikipedia and True to You, an online Morrissey fanzine.

1) He was saved from bullying as a child because he was a pretty decent athlete, something I'm sure his hardcore fans have a hard time dealing with.

2) He was briefly the lead vocalist of Slaughter and the Dogs, which blows my mind.

3) He regularly wrote very opinionated letters to Melody Maker and New Musical Express before he was famous.

4) He's still not officially gay, which also blows my mind.

When I was in Grade 10 and 11, I loved the shit out of The Smiths. They were the only "soft sounding" band I would let interrupt a personal playlist that was dominated by Rancid, The Wu-Tang Clan and TSOL. I was impressed that there was a band who could take a song about going to the fair and make it depressing as shit. ("Rusholme Ruffians," for those of you who don't know.) The sad cow sounds in the background on "Meat is Murder" convinced me to try and go vegetarian. I failed, but at least I know the sweet tasteless taste of soy.

My absolute favourite Smiths album was, and still is, Strangeways, Here We Come. Strangeways was the only Smiths album that British music critics didn't like, and was produced when the tensions between Morrissey and Marr were at their highest. The band actually broke up before the album came out, and Morrissey apparently recorded most of the vocals in the booth by himself, after Marr et al had already laid down the instrumental tracks in another session.

This is the video for "Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before." This song was only released as a single outside of the British Isles. The label felt that releasing a single that references mass murder only a couple months after the Hungerford Massacre, one of the worst mass murders in modern British history was a bad move. On one hand, I sort of think the label pussied out on this one. On the other hand, you'd have to think sales would have been pretty soft given the timing. As a result, the footage for the "Stop Me" video was also used in the British video for "I Started Something I Couldn't Finish," which was released instead of "Stop Me."

A couple more observations here. One, how is Morrissey not openly 100% gay? His bike has a wicker basket for Christ sakes. Two, guys who rock the Morrissey look look like dorks. (I know, I tried to pull this off for a bit.) Girls who rock the Morrissey look are strangely attractive.


OK, now the opposition.

In the blue corner, from Leeds, England, with a disaffection factor of being hailed as the founding father(s) of modern goth music, The SIS-TERRRS of MERRRR-CY!

The Sisters of Mercy aren't so much a band as one guy, a rotating cast of other people, and a drum machine/musical version of Dr. Who's robot dog named Doktor Avalanche and the Chorus of Vengance.

The one guy is Andrew Eldritch, lead vocalist, drum programmer and allegedly a very difficult guy. I say allegedly because I've never met the man and I don't want to get sued. He could be very nice. However, the fact that every Sisters album had a different line-up, with Eldritch and the machine Avalanche being the only points of the continuity, indicates that he might be a little hard to get along with. His legions of former bandmates have also made loud, public statements to this effect.

The Sisters were formed in 1980 and went "on strike" in 1994 after Eldritch got in a fight with the band's label over money. The "band" -- read, Eldritch and whoever else was willing to hang out with him -- starting performing again in 1996, but have yet to release an album of new material.

The Sisters are important for two reasons. One, they're credit with influencing every goth band since. Eldritch hates being called goth. He claims he was pigeonholed after experimenting with goofy clothes for a couple weeks. While that may or may not be the case, I'm pretty sure that if it wasn't for The Sisters, we wouldn't have legions of black-clad bands with electronic drums and deep, monotonous vocals. That may or may not be a good thing, depending on where you stand. I also firmly believe that Eldritch's insistence that he's not a goth makes him the gothest dude of all time. If there's one thing goths and hipsters have in common, it's that the more you deny being one, the more likely it is that you are.

Two, they were involved in one of the ugliest legal battles in rock history. Two Sisters cast-offs -- original bassist Craig Adams and former Dead or Alive member Wayne Hussey -- started gigging as The Sisterhood in the mid-80s, playing songs that had been vetoed by Eldritch. Eldritch claimed the name was too close and responded with a resounding "fuck you." He started a side-project of his own, also called The Sisterhood, and sued the hell out of everything that moved. The two sides eventually settled when Hussey and Adams changed the name of their band to The Mission, who were also hugely influential in the goth-rock scene. Spike wore a Mission t-shirt in several episodes of Degrassi.

This is the video for "This Corrosion" off the album Floodland. This song came out at the peak of The Sisters commercial success. It's rumoured to be a sort of goth diss-track aimed at Hussey and Adams. If that's the case, goths are really horrible at insulting people, because the lyrics make almost no sense. The Eldritch and the Doktor were the only official members of the band for this album, but American bassist Patricia Morrison (formerly of The Bags and The Gun Club and a co-conspirator Eldritch's version of The Sisterhood) was brought on for live performances.

This is another video where I don't want to say too much about it because it's just so out of hand. Every time I watch it I feel like I'm watching someone try and stage Cats, Les Mis and a musical adaption of Mad Max on the same stage at the same time.



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