It was still early in the evening when Strangeways dropped us back into 1992 with a little “Glamorous Glue.” Up on the balcony at Avalon, the crowd sang along, “everyone lies/nobody minds/everyone lies” and the energy grew more dynamic as the song progressed. If you knew the song— and, certainly, everyone in this room did— you could anticipate what would happen once The Smiths/Morrissey tribute band reached the final verse.
“We look to Los Angeles—“
The crowd roared, nearly overpowering the second half of the sentence.
“— for the language we use.”
Down on the floor, right in front of the stage, people jump up and down, their arms waving in the air as they chant, “London is dead! London is dead!”
In this brief moment where L.A. pride and Morrissey-mania converge, I realize why I’ve always had a good time at The Smiths/Morrissey Convention. It’s a legit, local gathering made by and for fans that still happens in spite of all the forces that make it more difficult for subcultures to exist.
The Smiths/Morrissey Convention, which started back in 1997, doesn’t just exist, it still draws a pretty large crowd. And it does this with a lineup that includes DJs from the local indie club scene. Strangeways, one of the three tribute bands on this year’s roster, is from L.A. too. Plus, the host for the night is Richard Blade, an L.A. radio icon from the days when radio mattered, who championed The Smiths and Morrissey on KROQ.
(As an aside, I had a memory of hearing Richard Blade talking to Morrissey about “Ouija Board, Ouija Board” on KROQ that I wasn’t sure was real and recently found the recording on YouTube, complete with vintage Del Taco and Magic Mountain commercials.)
When I arrived, about an hour after the doors opened, there was a line outside Avalon. Inside, the lobby was crowded, particularly around the booth where Boz Boorer, the guitarist who spent decades working with Morrissey, was stationed.
In the main theater, where Larry G, from Underground, was DJing, the floor was more than half-full. By the time Strangeways hit the stage, it was almost completely full. Upstairs, in the club-within-the-club known as Bardot, there was another large crowd working their way through the MorrisseyOke catalog.
It’s not just the size of the crowd that’s impressive. It’s that this is a truly all-ages event. People bring young kids with them. Teenagers wear their Smiths and Moz t-shirts and sing along to the deep cuts. The grownups here could have first heard The Smiths in the ‘80s or Morrissey in the ‘90s or ‘00s. It doesn’t really matter. Some things can’t, and shouldn’t, be explained with generational memes.
Strangeways began with “Alsatian Cousin,” an album track from Viva Hate that I hadn’t heard in so long that I forgot the title. It opens and closes with the line, “Were you and he lovers?,” lyrics that immediately pop into my head even though I can’t remember the name of the song. When I first heard “Alsatian Cousin,” sometime back in middle school, it was so unlike anything that has reached my radar before that. It’s a story-within-a-song packed with drama and vivid details, but there’s no conclusion. It begins like the Monday episode of a soap opera and ends like the Friday cliffhanger.
On a screen above the stage, a series of Smiths-related clips play, including a snippet of Jean Marais as Orphée in Jean Cocteau’s film of the same name. It’s an image that’s also recognizable from the cover of “This Charming Man.” The movie is fantastic, but, truth be told, there’s a chance I might have never known to look for it were I not a Smiths fan.
When the band plays “Handsome Devil,” the image above is a still of Alain Delon, the famed French actor who died just a week earlier, in the movie L’Insoumis, which is the source material for the cover of The Queen Is Dead. The first time I ever heard the name Alain Delon was via that album cover, but I still haven’t seen the movie. It is, however, high on the Smiths-related film list that I’ve been meaning to watch.
Strangeways keeps playing and I keep thinking about all the reasons I love The Smiths. Who doesn’t relate to lines like, “I know that I’m the most inept that ever stepped,” in “These Things Take Time”? And how many songwriters drop “inept” and “wunderkind” in the same song?
The Smiths, as well as Morrissey’s solo work, are a gateway to decades of literature, film and music that wouldn’t have otherwise reached L.A. kids of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The Picture of Dorian Gray was never assigned reading for me. I picked it up at a mall bookstore in the Valley because I knew Morrissey was big on this Oscar Wilde guy. As an adult, I sought out the British films A Taste of Honey because of “Reel Around the Fountain” and The Leather Boys because of “Girlfriend in a Coma.”
The Smiths never dumbed things down for mass appeal and neither does the Smiths/Morrissey convention.
There’s a tendency to water down subcultures to basic bites that require the least amount of thought to be understood by the most amount of people. That doesn’t happen here. The DJs and bands don’t stick to the hits. The visuals connect to the same references that The Smiths and Morrissey used. You either get it or you don’t and if you are out on a Sunday night to hear nothing but The Smiths and Morrissey, you likely get it.
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Read her recently published work and check out her upcoming gigs.
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