Morrissey Was Wrong. There Isn't a Light that Never Goes Out.

For a very long time I was a closet Morrissey fan. See, I was this blue eye shadow wearing, big hair, heavy metal loving chick. I didn't want anyone to know that sandwiched between my Scorpions and White Snake albums there was a The Smiths album hoping it wouldn't be discovered.



As I got older I realized that there's a lot of music out there and it's OK to like more than one kind. I started to openly embrace my other music interests, even if they seemed in conflict with each other. Just as it was OK for Judas Priest to do a really fantastic cover of Joan Baez's Diamonds and Rust, it was OK for me to put Freddy Fender, Ozzy Osbourne and  Siousxie and the Banshees on one mix tape.

Anyhow, there's a guy who comes into my office every few months. He works for my company but doesn't work out of my office. He comes in for meetings and such. He's a pretty nice guy, but that's beside the point. I mention him because he looks very very much like Morrissey; hair and everything.

I told him one day that I thought he looked like Morrissey and he had no idea who I was talking about. It puzzled me. This guy is only maybe 5 years older than me. He seems like in his younger days he was kind of hip. I explained to him who Morrissey was and he looked at me like I had lobsters crawling out of my ears.

So this Morrissey look-a-like is in the office today. I asked my coworker, who is about 15 years older than me if he thought this guy looked like Morrissey. He didn't know because he had no idea who Morrissey was. Another co-worker came up. He's about 15 years younger than me. He had no idea. I asked another co-worker who looks about my age. She had no idea either.  Who are these people that they don't know who Morrissey is?

Their response was "oh I don't listen to that kind of music." That argument didn't hold water with me. I have no knowledge of Jay Z's music. I couldn't identify a Dave Matthews song if I heard it. I can't even tell you anything about Blake Sheldon's music. But I know that they are performers. I know that they play music. It seems logical to me that someone in my age bracket should at least know of the existence of Morrissey.

The only person in my office I've found (actually, he found me) who knows who Morrissey is, and who is a bigger fan than I am, is this guy I used to work with. He still works here but my job and his job don't cross paths anymore. When we worked together he would put Morrissey and The Smiths lyrics as the subject lines in his emails. For example, when he would want to know when I would have a particular piece of information available for him to look at he would put "how soon is now" in the subject line. (Ironically, he doesn't think this guy looks very much like Morrissey, though but I think it's because they don't act alike, and he's just confused.)

Anyhow, I'm really bothered by this. Bothered enough to type furiously.