More fallout from yesterday’s sniping. In the most recent news, Morrissey’s lawyers this morning issued an ultimatum to the NME, imploring them to apologise for this before 1pm today or else face legal proceedings.
The deadline passed without comment from the publication or its Editor Conor McNicholas and so presumably they will soon be in receipt of a red letter at NME towers.
Second on the agenda; predictable nonsense from Love Music Hate Racism who have today insisted that Morrissey’s comments could incite “racist attacks”.
“While much of what he says during the interview is contradictory, there is much which unambiguously echoes racist ideas; utterly mistaken and dangerous ideas which feed fascist parties like the BNP,” a spokesman told Music Week.
“There is no doubt that Morrissey is - as usual - being deliberately provocative in the interview, in a magazine which famously questioned if Morrissey was racist in 1992.
“But for someone in a position of influence who should know better, there should be no room for irony or playing games when spouting words that could give confidence to racists and ultimately lead to racist attacks.”
Not convinced that the cross-over between Morrissey fans and racist thugs is particularly significant, but I suppose it’s what LMHR do; and they support a good cause so they must be right, about everything, forever. Fascists.
More music in the last part of this transmission – lost in our reporting, at least, of yesterday’s point/counter-point is the news that Morrissey has signed with Polydor/Decca and is planning releases for the new year. All six nights at the Roundhouse in London, reported here, have also sold out, but two more have just been announced - details below:
January
30 Doncaster The Dome
February
1 Sunderland Empire
Got news? Email us at newsdesk@drownedinsound.com for back slaps and a credit...
the best thing that could come out of this
was the nme being sued out of existence, and morrissey retiring.
^
Love Music Hate Racism may well do alot of good work
but that is a ridiculously stupid statement to release on the matter
Conor, actually
Begged them (quite literally) to back him up. He's been on the phone a lot and is wearing his normal University challenge outfit & some Incontinent pants. Nice.
"Incontinent pants"
I got a pair of those
LMHR are a shower of twats.
A lot of people love music, almost everyone hates racism.
We don't need a bunch of simple minded reactionaries who found their public/third sector non-jobs in the back of the Guardian to tell us this.
The very idea that a bunch of fey Morrissey loving indie boys or Skrewdriver loving Combat 18 types are going to carry out racist attacks as a result of this is ludicrous.
The race relations industry have a knack for patronising people. The underlying message being that 'You're all a rabble of hate filled savages with primitive intellects, thank god we're here to set you straight!'
More gems from LMHR
'In the current NME interview he is asked directly if he supports LMHR and says “Yes .. I find racism very silly, almost to silly to discuss” - the families of racist murder victims like Anthony Walker might take issue with the idea that racism is “silly”'
WTF? Is it me or is that just an incredibly twisted way of misinterpreting a statement?
Then there's this:
'David Bowie - a Morrissey hero - flirted with fascism in the late 1970s but recanted and later gave money to an Anti Nazi League music carnival'
Well, he likes Bowie, that settles it then.
Anti Nazi League
Are they like the Human League?
**realises joke made in a thread containing sensitive issues**
>
I don't know about the rights and wrongs of this and I can't comment on the accuracy of the journalism, but at least it is the NME taking a RISK, which is something they haven't done for a very long time. Obviously it would be completely wrong to publish stuff that is untrue, but for the last decade they seem to have been in a coma-like state, too scared to report on anything remotely challenging.
I'm not saying they should brand popstars as racist every week, but it is encouraging to see that they've been writing about something other that hair gel and skinny jeans.
NME have taken a RISK
but they taken an interview out of context. I hope the publication crashes and burns...But that'll never happen. :(
hmmm
i can't imagine racist thugs sitting around listening to Bona Drag and hanging on Moz's every word. i'm not sure where this image comes from of Morrissey being some hero for the tattoed bulldog brigade, i think he probably started it himself actually. the average morrissey fan i've met is hardly likely to take stuff like this as gospel, and definitely won't be running around with bicycle chains.
ultimately, he's been quite foolish, but the LMHR statement is just as idiotic as anything in the original interview, probably moreso.
Mozzer seems to have fallen into the trap
of a certain type of ex-patriot, which is to pine for an idealised version of their mother country which no longer exists (if it ever existed in the first place.)
This is just standard grumpy old man, modern life is rubbish stuff rather than anything particularly sinister. He may be devious and truculent, with a tour and record deal to promote; but this is as silly a turn of events as the teddybear incident.
It appears that...
... all Morrissey-related threads on the NME boards are being removed. A late attempt at saving face, perhaps?
They should probably have a word
with the kid on their forum who uses a Nazi eagle emblazoned with the legend 'WHITE POWER' as an avatar too.
...
I think it just shows that they are bracing themselves for a messy legal situation.
everyone knows that...
A: Morrissey wrote some cracking tunes about 200 years ago
B: Morrissey is a twat
So who cares what an old has-been says in an interview with some gossip rag?!
All NME have acheived
with this load of gash, is given LMHR's good natured aims a bad rep and proved themselves to be none too clever concerning any political, social or musical issues.
So not much has changed really
erm...
"So who cares what an old has-been says in an interview with some gossip rag?!"
people will care, because people still love him, has-been...open your ears and listen to good music of today - where do they get their inspiration? Ok, they might have been tunes from 20 or so years ago, but he's still releasing amazing music now and will contiue to do so - tickets are sold out for all London gigs, so people are still listening - no matter what format it might arrive in
Nah
IF he actually said those things, then he deserves some stick.
I'm not going as far as saying he is a 'racist', but then is a random country eck going "all the jobs in the local-city-I've-never-been-to are being denied to locals and given to immigrants"? There's a fair argument to say so...
Morrissey doesn't have the luxury of claiming ignorance like these types (which I might add make up most of the small town populations I've experienced). Just because he's oldish doesn't let him off the hook. He should know better at the end of the day.
Ha!
you live in the country don't you? I'll bet your friends voice the same sentiments don't they?
Oh, at the end of the day - it's night.
he lives in holloway, luv.
I read the article on the train home today
and i must say it is utterly bizare.
Morrissey actually comes across really well in the interview, and genreally torughout. it is only when the NME start to twist his ideas that he could in anyway appear racist. It is abusrd.
I think this will turn out to be the stupidest decision the NME ever ever ever ever make.
i actually think the entire thing is a total disgrace and actually illustrates the very sorry state that the NME and popular music has reached.
It all makes me quite sad.
and i think Morrissey is obviously quite hurt by it. 'irish blood english heart' even talks about disliking racists and things. i think.
^bang. on.
the.money
My thoughts exactly!
According to:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7118412.stm
Morrissey is definitely suing.
Wht Havisham said
Its so odd. Moz seems to come across well, he is pointing things out, and the NME shits itself with teenage indie boy excitement and tries to make a point out of it to seel some magazines (no doubt very successfully).
However I hope he sues them to the point of collapse and, maybe someone legal can help me here, can he sue the editor individually?
That would be ace.
According to the BBC article...
He's suing the NME AND Conor. I don't know if that means seperately, but I'd presume so.
Yes!
Take that pathetic little boy down Moz.
For me
..the smiths are overrated and shit anyway.
Just a personal preference of course.
you can stop that, right there
and now.
^ Worst first post EVER?
.
Hang the DJ
Mr Jonze probably did sensationalise it and he probably won't feel ashamed, the dust is kicked up now and he is probably sniggering. I hope Morrisey recorded the interview.
To be fair..........
Tim Jonze contacted Morrissey's manager and informed him that the NME had rewritten much of his interview in order to spin it into a 'Shock! Horror! RACISM!!!' piece.
Not wabting anything to do with the hatchet job he insisted that his name be disassociated from it.
That's why if you look at the NME this week you'll see 'Interview: Tim Jonze, Words: NME' and I have NEVER seen them do that before.
Jonze is the only member of the NME camp who emerges untarnished from this episode.
ive heard things about tim jonze before
he actually seems alright. One of my friends (Gen, she posts on here still i think and she writes fantastic reviews from time to time) i believe she said something along the lines of "your magazine is shit" and all this and he was all like "Yeah, im just there for the money" and stuff like that.
Tim Jonze seems to have changed his tune a bit now
He's gone from saying the article published was 'unrecognisable' to saying they bare 'some similarities'
I think you're all missing the main point here
He's playing at the Sunderland Empire? Is he Tommy Steele or something now?
Love Music, Hate Racism?
How about Love music, Hate Economic Exploitation? I hope there campaigning for foreign workers employment rights?
I see less ethnic diversity at the indie disco than I did 10 years ago. Everything is more seperated. A campaign bringing everyone together might be better.
Well, Unite Against Fascism
Who are part of /run some LMHR events are largely co-ordinated by the Socialist Workers Party.
Make what you like of it.
Which is the more potent element?
A sad old lag having his last shot at being controversial
Or a sad old mag, getting the shit kicked out of it by Kerrang!, having its lost shot at being controverisal?
I hope the NME goes down the drain, disgusting rag.
Interestingly,
Love Music Hate Racism have removed their comments about Morrissey from the news section on their site - www.lovemusichateracism.com - it now just says "A further statement from LMHR on the Morrissey article in this week's NME will appear here shortly." They're probably, quite sensibly, waiting to see what the outcome of the NME legal action is - after all, they don't have a nice huge corporation like IPC to swallow up their legal costs - although as something of a (nominal) supporter, I doubt Moz would actually ever launch legal action against the Anti Nazi League. Or, you'd hope, any other charity.
The ANL, LMHR and Unite Against Fascism consistenly manage to infuriate me with their knee-jerk idiocy. Whilst I'm 100% behind what they stand for, their approach to it is often rooted so firmly in the 1980s it makes me want to vomit.
To be fair, I imagine that the conversation between LMHR and Conor McNicholas (who, lest we forget, had barely deigned to acknowledge the existence of LMHR for the entire first 5 years of its existence, despite the ongoing support of NME-approved types like the Libertines, Babyshambles, 80s Matchbox, Doves and a fair few others) went something to the value of Conor saying "Back me up or we'll never write about you again".
I wonder if UAF will picket Morrissey gigs with megaphones and placards, like they did with that ballerina?
'Cause that really made everyone think they weren't mental, didn't it?
I look forward to forcing my way through
a crowd of earnest, placard toting middle class radicals clad in ironic army surplus clothing outside the Roundhouse on Jan 25!
Depressingly,
I wouldn't bank against it...
sausage roll...
morrissey once got someone sacked from their job at a venue for eating a sausage roll because he had a gig on that night and had banned all consumption of meat on the premises.
this is a FACT.
if it isn't maybe DiS will get sued too :)
Look at the whole picture
Sorry, can someone take me through why the LMHR quote above is "knee-jerk idiocy" or "predictable nonsense"?
It says Morrissey is contradictory, which reading the interview is fair enough.
When Morrissey says "England has been thrown away" and "the gates are flooded", it doesn't seem that unreasonable to put forward the idea that he "echoes racist ideas". It doesn't say he is a racist or is deliberately supporting them, just that this is the kind of language that racists and xenophobes use to justify themselves.
And won't racists who feel more justified, become more confident? And isn't it possible that the minority of racists who are drawn into the BNP will, being more confident, be more inclined to hit an "ethnic" (as they so charmingly put it)? Sadly, looking at the rise of racist attacks in Barking & Dagenham since the BNP targeted it, this doesn't seem so far-fetched.
Words never exist in isolation. You not only have to look at the context in which they are spoken but also the context in which they are heard. Personally I think Morrissey needs to think about how his words will be used. And then make it abundantly clear to everyone - not only those following the minutiae of this debate - that "racism is silly" and should be opposed from London to the seaside towns they forgot to close down.