PRECIOUS THINGS
How My Smiths and Moz Collection Began
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The list of dates
from my notebook detailing when I bought my Smiths albums for the first time
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It all began on 16th September 1988, which is a date that is forever etched in my mind. I’d already been mesmerised by the beautiful Everyday Is Like Sunday back in May/June of Nineteen Eighty Hate as a 15 year old teen fresh out of high school, but hadn’t yet been brave enough to purchase the single or any other Moz records available at that point.
Then,
on 5th September of the same year, by which time I’d turned 16, Rank by The Smiths was released. My Youth Training Scheme was well under way by
now and I was on placement at my local council’s Education Department, so
I had a miniscule disposable income burning the smallest of holes in my
pocket. I deliberated for a few days,
and then on the 16th took the plunge and bought the album that would
alter the course of my entire life (the brown
cassette version of course, as this was my format of choice, not to mention
the most affordable!). When I got home
from work, I sat at the family dining room table, put on my Walkman, inserted
the tape, and hit play.
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My original Rank
cassette, brown edition, bought at age
16 on 16th September 1988
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Talk
about my tiny little mind being completely and utterly blown! I literally transformed
irreversibly before my very own eyes as a person as each wondrous number played, starting
with the sheer brutal force of The Queen
Is Dead, through the nuclear paranoid majesty of Panic and taking in the delightful romp of Rusholme Ruffians, as well as the proper in your face fire and ire
of London to name but a few
highlights, and by the time it came to the fantastic climax of the epic Bigmouth Strikes Again, I was
forevermore a changed child! I became a
Smiths and Mozzer devotee on the spot, so beginning a lifelong love affair
which is nearing 30 years in duration at the time of writing this here piece, and
would spend the next few weeks fervently buying all of The Smiths’ albums. I still hadn’t “come out” to my folks as a
fan as it were, as being an iddy biddy black girl, I knew they’d find it hard
to understand my new-found passion for a group of second generation Irish
lads. But come out I did, and boy am I
glad! I’ve always had a penchant for
pretty little white boys of the Indie variety in particular, which is why I
married one down the line! Hee hee!
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A cheeky
alternative design for Rank featuring Yours Truly as a bairn, courtesy of Andy
“Tony Merchison” Barnett
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So
then, now that I was a disciple of the Church of Smiths and His Very Mozzerness
and had purchased all of the group’s albums, at the very beginning of 1989 my
collection began in earnest. I tracked
down all of Morrisey’s singles and Viva
Hate, and The Smiths’ singles on vinyl.
Down the years, I have also acquired many t-shirts, badges, CDs, tapes, postcards, bootleg videos, DVDs, books,
bags, posters, tour programmes, ticket stubs from Moz gigs I've been to and all manner of wonderful
items. I was even on TV back in 2016 on
the BBC Four series People’s History of Pop, such is the
level of degree of my devotion to the cause!
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A somewhat heftier
me on BBC Four’s People’s History of Pop Series, 2016
I
used to have a fabulous list which I painstakingly compiled and maintained of
ALL my precious things, which I referred to as “The Catalogue”. This was issued, as it were, to some
friends and many of the record shops I used to frequent at the time in my
native Huddersfield and beloved Mancunia.
Unfortunately, I have long since carelessly mislaid my own copy which
includes many CDs I lost in a house move some years ago and had to replace when
I could face it over a decade after the incident, going off memory and some
diaries I kept in the 1990s. So, my dearly
departed catalogue now serves as a “List
of the Lost”, in that it is a lost list of possessions I have lost! Now there’s a tongue twister for you! Ironically, I’m fairly certain I know that
one of the recipients it was regularly sent to back in the day was none other
than Mozzer himself! If you’re reading
this Moz, could you do a girl from the Hudd(ersfield) a favour, and bung me a
copy in the post? Or better yet, could
you drop by with it in person? There’s a brew in it for ya, with cashew milk of
course!
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