"What difference does it make? Jackie Kay on her Morrissey-backed survey of real-life Smiths" - The

What difference does it make? Jackie Kay on her Morrissey-backed survey of real-life Smiths - The Guardian
by Jackie Kay

What’s it like to have Britain’s most common surname? To find out, poet Jackie Kay went on a quest round Salford – and met a bedridden tarantula-keeper and a woman kidnapped by her own husband

Excerpt:

Morrissey once told an interviewer that he chose to call his band the Smiths “because it was the most ordinary name”. It was “time that the ordinary folk of the world showed their faces,” he reasoned. More than 30 years later the singer has given his blessing to a special project celebrating people with the surname Smith in his old stomping ground.

...The Lowry had to approach Morrissey and Marr to get permission for their music to be used in the installation. They agreed, Kay thinks, because it echoes Morrissey’s original intentions. “I think in this project there is the germ of the original idea, which was to project the ordinary and the extraordinary together, to see them as both one and the same thing, the somebody and the nobody.”

30 Days of the Smiths is at the Lowry, Salford, 7-8 May.

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There is a bronze bust of Jackie Kay(amongst other famous Scottish writers) right outside my office window in Edinburgh.
 
There was an article about this on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning. The soundscape artist was allowed to use only 10 seconds of 3 Smiths tunes. They were chosen apparently by DJ Mark Radcliffe : This Charming Man, What Difference Does it Make? and Panic. They played a section of the 'soundscaped' bit and to be honest it could have been anything. Apparently the excerpt had been cleared for broadcast by legal folk for the BBC.
 
Stop saying BBC radio 4 and words like edinburgh and go start your own Brit/Euro, South American, Serb, Canadian, Kazakistainstain, Transylvanian, etc website about Morrissey or a real brit singer like Tom Jones, Susan Boyle, or some group like Kajagoogoo. Morrissey said he will never tour your country again or set foot in your country and saying he wouldn't be caught dead in your country can be taken literally since he has his plot at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Go home and don't forget your New York Yankees Baseball Cap.
 
Stop saying BBC radio 4 and words like edinburgh and go start your own Brit/Euro, South American, Serb, Canadian, Kazakistainstain, Transylvanian, etc website about Morrissey or a real brit singer like Tom Jones, Susan Boyle, or some group like Kajagoogoo. Morrissey said he will never tour your country again or set foot in your country and saying he wouldn't be caught dead in your country can be taken literally since he has his plot at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Go home and don't forget your New York Yankees Baseball Cap.

Do they have a mental hospital in LA? Your admittance is long overdue. I would go for the voluntary check-in if I were in your shoes.
 
i'm a terrible man, i know, but the phrase "get a job" popped into my bonce upon reading this.

And you really lost me at 'soundscape artist' and 'DJ Mark Radcliffe'....
 

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