New Deadbeat Bohemians Post: Morrissey and Siouxsie

The 1994 collaboration between Morrissey and Siouxsie—a cover of the love song "Interlude" by Timi Yoru—did not lead to a second Big Bang the way it should have done. The universe didn't turn inside out and collapse in on itself in a chugging and churning seizure of morbid irony. This should have happened but it didn't. Do you even remember that the two singers ever recorded together? Nope, you don't.

Morrissey contacted Siouxsie about collaborating on a song while she was living in France with her husband, drummer, and sinewy sex pixie-stud Budgie. He had always been a big fan of Siouxsie and her Banshees. In 1994 he told the UK's Q magazine, "If you study modern groups, those who gain press coverage and chart action, none of them are as good as Siouxsie and the Banshees at full pelt. That's not dusty nostalgia, that's fact."

[NOTE: Deadbeat Bohemians is no more; I've expanded this essay and posted it over at The Nervous Breakdown here. ]

Deadbeat Bohemians Post: PJ Harvey

Folks, I'm now music blogging at a collective called Deadbeat Bohemians because why the fuck not? Now you can learn all about the songs I love without having to go through the inconvenience of asking me. Here's a teaser for my latest post.

BUT WHAT DID HE SAY, PJ?: "YOU SAID SOMETHING" BY PJ HARVEY

Most great pop songs leave you wanting to know more about the story taking place within their allotted three minutes. About how things came to be, where things went after the outro, what the singer was doing during the guitar solo, that kind of thing. Did Gary Numan ever get out of his car? Did the Michael Jackson character in “Billie Jean” secretly think that, yeah, the kid probably was his son? Did Cyndi Lauper’s fun-loving party girl in “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” ever calm the fuck down?

The answers to these questions can’t be known, but they are peripheral to our enjoyment of the song anyway, so though they are fun to ponder, they are ultimately not important. But some songs pose questions that are so central to the song’s appeal that ignoring them is not an option. Such is the case in PJ Harvey’s song “You Said Something” from her 2000 album Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, in which a teasingly undelivered piece of information ensures that a pivotal moment in the relationship between the two main characters remains frustratingly, wonderfully mysterious.

Continue reading here.