When the Heavens Smile upon You There's No Need to Smile Back

Historically speaking Maggie Thatcher set the stage while Morrissey filled the bleak blank page. For a youth culture who had missed its Summer of ‘69 the Smiths generously offered the rapturous Spring of 1983. In the existential wake of Punk, awash amidst a wasteland of Synth Pop and unemployment lines, from the solitude of erudite bedroom walls emerged Morrissey––the most fully realized, cultivated and conscious Personality in Pop history. A self-taught student of the power of media and music to shape a meaningful life experience, Morrissey willed into existence a “harsh romanticism” and shy sensuality ne’er before seen or heard. Beads, billowing shirts, cuffed jeans, NHS specs, decadent quiff, vegetarian diet, workman’s boots, and gladioli flung in all directions like spiritual, phallic, floral weapons against the dismantling of England’s prized welfare state (and really all vulgar interpretations of human life).


For protection and salvation the brazen Bard armed the Smiths and their uniquely devout following with an arsenal of enriching cultural references to rival even T.S. Eliot’s footnotes: Oscar Wilde, James Dean, Elvis, Shelagh Delaney, Elizabeth Smart, 60s Girl Groups, the New York Dolls, kitchen-sink dramas, obscure film stars, pressing current events and public figures (this list could go on forever), etc…Morrissey’s velvet croon cut like a knife and soothed like lovers’ arms. (And thankfully, it still does). A Critic’s discerning eye and wit, a Poet’s immaculate heart and sensuous love of Language, and a Comedian’s timing, crafted lyrics both subversive and sublime––leaping and languishing against Johnny Marr’s driven, dreamy, jangly guitars. Despite the acrimonious split that would break them in 1987, and the later actions of litigious secondary band members, the Smiths seduced and awakened a niche in the Pop unconscious for unrivaled emotional honesty, intelligence, self-awareness, sorrow and passionate love.

Kristeen Young: Rock Mythology in the New Millennium

Interview by Samantha Skinazi. Reprinted with Permission of Perfect Sound Forever (http://www.furious.com/perfect).

Imagine a pop song inspired by Dorothy Parker's book of poems, Enough Rope, and written about Morrissey. Or a songwriter who likes her romance with edges and insults, crafting beautiful, heart-wrenching songs that re-interpret the sappy love narrative for time immemorial. Telling me with a smile, "I want to be in love so much that when they're gone, I want to kill myself."

Imagine a Midwestern Christian Fundamentalist adoptive mother angered by your voice as you, a small child played with friends. Telling you who always loved singing, "Kris, your voice cuts like a knife."

Then think high art, high drama and sensory bliss as realized by a St. Louis born and bred, half-Apache self-proclaimed "Rude Girl" who plays the keyboard orgasmically, and still loves bubblegum and Sour Patch Kids. Imagine by her side, a sensitive and sensual, sweat-soaked rebel with a cause drummer called "Baby" Jeff White who bows his head gently, sometimes shedding a tear as he pummels the hell out of his Ludwig drum kit.



Envision haute couture creations so imaginative that they might startle Zandra Rhodes. So glamorous that they'd turn Yves Saint Laurent's head. All drawn from a palette of elements so disparate even Marcel Duchamp might blush (bunches of artificial grapes, 4-inch stiletto transparent boots, first-aid tape, gold-lamé bikini tops, decadent billowing collars, clothespins...).

How about never being "supported by anything but other artists"? And what if those artists were Tony Visconti, David Bowie and Morrissey? Imagine going from ten years in "the trenches" of the music world playing only "the smallest" rock clubs, to opening over one hundred shows worldwide for a legendary artist you feel "practically formed [you]," at venues like the Hollywood Bowl, Teatro Romano di Ostia Antica and Manchester's G-Mex Arena.

And then imagine that at the 116th show (which happens to be in Manhattan, your home for the last 7 years) a crass off-the-cuff remark, probably intended to rile up a stiff audience, misses its mark by country miles, and lands you off the tour.

Well, it's the stuff on which Rock and Roll mythology and folklore is built. It's also the ongoing story of KRISTEENYOUNG. An epic "post-punk piano/drums pop opera" duo, stealthily injecting a sharpshot of iconoclasm into the heart of the mainstream music industry.

And she is Kristeen Young. Work of art, force of nature, mystical misfit, songstress extraordinaire.

I meet with Miss Young on a sunny October afternoon in West Hollywood, a day before the final night of an eight-night residency with Morrissey at the Palladium. Facing a busy boulevard in an open-air café, she wears a high-neck gossamer blouse under a fitted checkered jacket with a round collar. Looking glamorous even in early afternoon, Kristeen orders a cappuccino. The waitress brings her a macchiato instead -- a situation she remedies by ordering another cappuccino and combining the two. An hour later, while sipping a cafe mocha (her third attempt at getting what she wants), she confides, "Unless I'm drinking vodka or coffee, I don't talk." Kristeen laughs, explaining that she always has a shot of vodka before she goes on stage. Otherwise she won't say a word. With an utterly charming schoolgirl giggle, she quickly adds: "But I don't drink any other time. When I'm not touring, I don't touch alcohol."

Could Kristeen Young, who recently came on stage in Los Angeles saying, "I'll be your dominatrix for the evening," be shy and self-conscious?

When I ask her if she thinks of her music as harsh, she replies, "Yeah at times, very much. Brash. I mean I think there are pretty moments, but there's also a lot of brash."

KRISTEENYOUNG the band, expresses Kristeen Young the woman's compelling fusion of icy finger-in-your-face, punk bravado for the space age future with a soft, sensuous emotionality evocative of childlike innocence for another and more wholesome world.



I suggest to Kristeen that not so far underneath her signature brashness she cares deeply about what the audience thinks. Looking into the distance with her huge flying saucer eyes of translucent green, she mostly agrees, "I always care about it." As she shifts her delicate but cutting gaze directly at me, she is careful to add: "But it's not ever going to make me stop doing what I'm doing. Ultimately I don't care. So I care; but I don't. I'm still going to do what I do. Does that make any sense? Like I might cry about it tonight, but tomorrow I'm going to do the same thing. [Laughs] I'm not going to change it."

And so her answer to my next question certainly surprises me. I ask Kristeen if what I recently read is true –– that she always wanted a mainstream hit song. I almost drop my iced tea when she laughs politely, responding with much enthusiasm: "Yeah, I always wanted to be like, you know, Madonna. And then people would say: 'Well you don't want to be like Britney Spears.' And I'm like: 'Yes I do!' And I want to say, 'I think I am like that.' You know like I don't have a proper vision of what I am, actually."

What may at first seem like a conundrum reminds me of Alan Watts explaining Zen philosophy as "an eye that sees, but does not see itself" or "a sword that cuts, but does not cut itself." The distinct oracular power of Kristeen Young may precisely be as the auteur rock savante who knows, but does not know herself.

And beyond that, throughout our interview, Kristeen repeatedly and purposefully chips away at the conventional, dualistic cultural argument that pits pop music against cutting-edge music, and low art versus high art.

For instance, I ask Kristeen, beautiful as she is, and with such an exquisite and mesmerizing voice, what stops her from putting on a conventionally sexy dress and singing pretty love songs. I imagine that she might embark on a diatribe against such pedestrian forms of expression. Instead, she wryly delivers a profoundly simple (and funny) response: "Very low self-esteem. [We both laugh.] I have no confidence in myself whatsoever. So I always overdo."

Similarly, I mention that her outfits remind me of modern art canvases. Her reply, "I don't think that that's a goal. I mean I just make stuff that I like." She explains that her clothes are the only real visual she can offer because an opening band can't have a stage show. Kristeen pauses, thoughtfully extending this to a general philosophy of living. She says slowly: "Which has always been my motto. If I have a motto [laughs]. I do the best with what I have. I make the most out of what I have. That's what I try to do. That's really all the clothes are about."

We tend to assume someone so daringly original tries to be different. But our discussion keeps coming back to the fact that as far back as grade school, even with "everyday behavior," Kristeen Young "was always trying to fit in." She muses, as though still unraveling the knot: "I've always been rubbing off edges, and trying to figure out what it is that everybody else does naturally... What's the difference? I'm a human being. I'm made of the same thing. I don't know. It invades every aspect of my life."

In the end, it's Kristeen who poses the overwhelming question of our moment. She asks, "When did 'different' get to be such a bad word?... It's just not healthy in any way." On a similar note, she speaks passionately about her active involvement in the 2004 campaign to remove George Bush from office. I ask her where she thinks the counter-culture's hiding these days. Deeply concerned, she says: "There's just such a feeling of apathy, and just this embracing of blandness. It puzzles me. Maybe that's the new generation's statement, but I'm too old to understand." She continues, "It's like they need -- [pause] some sort of bravery, or heart, or just to care about something." Kristeen expresses her unequivocal belief in the purity of youth, thoughtfully adding that she feels, "it's someone else making the decision [for them]." If given the option, kids "will always like colorful things; they'll always like something that's different. Sometimes they're just not given the options, and they pick the best of the options that they're given."

If you've become accustomed to just choosing from available options, relegating art to the museum and pop music to mind-numbing blather, the revelatory experience of KRISTEENYOUNG may unsettle and astonish you. It may also, in these shockingly apathetic times, give you back some of the bravery that is your birthright. The same bravery that allows Kristeen to say -- after ten exceptional years mostly under the radar -- "Maybe it can be an inspiration, just my whole experience. That I do what I want, and I'm not going to really change just to be part of the system or whatever. Ultimately... as trite as it sounds... I can be nobody but just me."

And thank the Pop heavens for that.



All of KRISTEENYOUNG's albums can be purchased at iTunes or Amazon. And they are currently recording a new album with legendary producer Tony Visconti. Take your protein pills and travel to myspace.com/kristeenyoung for more info.

A Defence of Poetry: Because We Must

Article:"Bigmouth Strikes Again"
Available at: http://www.newstatesman.com/200801310035
Published: 31 January 2008
Journalist: Jude Rogers

My response:

Ms. Rogers, I hope you will forgive me the familiarity of stating that I know your type. You are the sort of Morrissey fan who still laments Marr’s absence, the kind who only starts bopping her head about when Morrissey sings songs from his Smiths catalogue.

Well no one I know, or like, comes to a Morrissey concert chasing the mercurial memory of Morrissey wearing beads and glasses, whilst waving gladioli like spiritual weapons against Thatcher’s sterile vision of a revitalized England.

Please don’t misunderstand me. The 24-year-old slightly awkward Adonis does make for a lovely memory; a triumphant memory of the jaw-dropping birth of the most unlikely, and the most perfect, Pop vision of all time. Only, the Classical Age of Morrissey has yet to go into decline. As for the Classical Era of journalistic writing about him, and art and music in general, well that perhaps is the story that you tell too well. Too well.

I am baffled by Rogers’ assertion that Morrissey has “spun a web of mystery around his sexuality and political beliefs for the past 25 years.” In terms of Morrissey’s sexuality, there is no mysterious web to get caught in, but rather a philosophical treatise that quite openly refuses entrapment within the snares of “umbrella sexuality.” Morrissey has made his position perfectly clear from the outset, by expressing that he doesn’t believe people are hetero-, homo-, or bi-, but rather that people are simply sexual, with no need for prefixes that prepackage identity. Morrissey does not participate in the language or ideas of the clinical sexual taxonomy of the late Victorian period.

In terms of his political beliefs, again, I fail to find his positions shrouded in mystery. Morrissey has written songs like “Margaret on the Guillotine,” “The Queen Is Dead,” “Irish Blood, English Heart,” and voiced innumerable political commentary over the years, including dissenting statements about Tony Blair, issuing a public statement urging US voters not to vote for George Bush in 2004, as well as repeatedly mentioning Barack Obama as his preferred candidate for the current US primary elections. Beyond such explicit political statements and positions Morrissey has continuously expressed his conviction that practically everything is political: eating habits, sexual labels, vapid pop stars on Top of the Pops, etc…

The racism issue, well the best way to discredit an Anglo male is to say that he is racist. This slanderous label has been slung at Morrissey since the beginning, in repeated campaigns aimed at reducing his moral credibility. To address this properly I am currently at work on an essay entitled “We Hate It When Our Friends Remain Successful: And If They’re Northern and Named Morrissey, Well That Makes It Even Worse.”

Also I would be remiss if I did not add that Rogers paints quite a vulgar picture of the breathtaking song “Life Is a Pigsty.” While indeed a journalist bears the unique burden of deciding where to begin and end quote, Rogers’ omission of the song’s preceding line succeeds perfectly in omitting both sense and tone. In the line she omits, Morrissey asks: “Can you please stop time?” The gentle tone of the lyric is framed within the profundity of its request by the dramatic deafening gong that follows immediately. Then come the lines quoted by Rogers, and before Morrissey deftly (not effetely, thank you) takes to the ground, the other lyric omitted: “And even now in the final hour of my life I’m falling in love –– again…”

I realize I have almost written another article in response to this article. I do not respond as a fan, or fanatic, who cannot hear her hero thoughtfully or intelligently criticized. As a cultural critic I live and breathe for imaginative and well-written Criticism. I am though so very tired of these chronically clichéd attitudes towards Morrissey and what seem to me to be the Press’ willful and loaded habit of misreading his work and his meaning.

If I am defensive of Morrissey, which I certainly am, I defend him with the same passion, rigor and purpose with which one must protect her favorite novel, or poet, or painting from fundamental misinterpretations and misrepresentations.

Morrissey at the Palladium: The First and Last of the Famous Intellectual Sex Symbols

Saturday (Closing Night)
13 October 2007

KRISTEENYOUNG at the Palladium: In the Year 2050, You'll Understand (Maybe...)

Saturday (Closing Night)
13 October 2007


Set List:
Stop Thinking/You Must Love Me/9/Everybody Wants Me To Cry/This Is the Dawn of My D-Day/Lies/Halfway Across the Atlantic Ocean/(But It's All Just) Imagined/Depression Contest

Morrissey at the Palladium: Some Stages Are More Like Operating Tables Than Others

Friday (Night VII)
12 October 2007

Morrissey set the record to right tonight, explaining after the second song: “You think this is a stage; this is an operating table. I am the slab, and here is the nature of the struggle. And off we go.”

As far as I’m concerned Morrissey stands in the line of fully realized Western male personalities: Socrates, Jesus, Wilde…Morrissey. All four were both lionized and persecuted by their respective Ages for articulating and expressing the ways by which their particular historical moments fell short and faltered from the path of realizing the grand and pressing potential of the human spirit.

A priest, or monk, takes a vow of self-abnegation, effacing the self into a universal and impersonal representative of the Holy. Morrissey, working in the Western performative tradition of Personality as Art, takes a vow of public self-realization—celebrating the self into a particular and personal example of the Holy.

Morrissey began tonight’s celebration with this query for his audience: “It’s approximately 9:15 in the evening; do you know where your parents are?” From there, looking radiantly dapper in a white embroidered dress shirt, he dove into a playful evening, infused as always with the transformative power that is Morrissey’s operating table.

After “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before,” Morrissey walked over to the drum kit and pointed to each printed word, as he read aloud slowly for anyone who had not yet noticed the prominent new motto: “Some of us is turning nasty.” He then complimented the audience for our tenacity exclaiming with a modicum of pride, “You brave daredevil people!”

Before “Irish Blood, English Heart,” Morrissey half-joked: “As you all know I began life with no advantages and it’s all been downhill since then, as exemplified in this next tune…” And after an incendiary performance of the incendiary track, he said quite tenderly (and truthfully given the Moz Angeles audience): “For some of you, of course it will be Mexican Blood, American hearts. Or it could be Mexican blood, Mexican hearts.”

In “The National Front Disco,” Morrissey also sings about nationalism. The song certainly never was mere justification, or foolish romanticization of British skinhead youth culture in the 1980s. The racism slander campaign orchestrated by the British press against Morrissey in the early ‘90s, though hurtful, harmful, and vile—always did strike me as utterly transparent, and painfully ill conceived.

When Morrissey lovingly sings:

“There’s a country
You don’t live there
But one day you would like to—”

I hear him singing about the desire most of us have to live in a country of which we feel proud, to which we feel devoted and bound, and by which we feel represented and loved. (And yes, when these very basic human needs remain unmet, young people do, have, and will, turn somewhere to meet them). Those lines evoke in me feelings I can only imagine national anthems elicit for others. For me, it is a patriotism to a country of the future, a mythical country of the imagination—ruled maybe by “world poets,” instead of world bullies and bureaucrats.

And just before my favorite World Poet set his teeth into the encore of a smooth and seamless set, in an exaggerated tone, he hilariously exclaimed: “And if you don’t come tomorrow night—I’m gonna whoop your ass!!!!”

As usual “First of the Gang to Die,” devolved or evolved, (depending on your perspective), into a raucous raging surge to get up on the operating table. As Morrissey was kneeling at the edge of the "table" to shake a fan’s hand he was almost pulled off. Once he caught his balance, he continued to shake this person’s hand, and attempt to pull them up. Security eventually got the better of the situation, and Morrissey, impressed by the effort, said: “Brave man.”

And perhaps, too perfect a set seems boring to Morrissey—as he raised his arms straight out in front of him like a sleepwalker, trudging out of view, jokingly comatosed, for the final exit of his Palladium residency's penultimate night.

I realized another fitting metaphor for Morrissey’s stage is to say that it is also a bridge. For me it has been, and he has been, a bridge between two worlds: the ideal and the worldly; the sacred and the mundane; a way of connecting who I want to be with who I’m made to feel I should be, or the way I'd love to live with the way I do live.

As for my own personal transformation, Morrissey has made me feel strong for the very reasons the culture around me has told me I am weak—(and this remains for me the defining characteristic of the truly Subversive). With songs like “Is It Really So Strange?” “My Love Life,” ”Speedway,” "Now My Heart Is Full," “Tomorrow,” “Life Is a Pigsty,” and “The National Front Disco,” I can confidently shout from any rooftop that the Heart is not a manageable economy, and that some lights must be left to burn no matter what the cost.

The presence and gift of Morrissey in my life (coupled with two days on Zoloft) snatched me from the nether-worldian grips of a ten-year depression. Now—years later, I admit sometimes I slip. But, like Pan and his flute, Morrissey and his voice lure me lovingly back to the shores of sanity. And the operating table that is the stage on which he stands, fills that empty page at the bottom of my heart—every single time.
Amen.



Set list:
The Imperfect List
Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before/You Have Killed Me/I Just Want To See the Boy Happy/Tomorrow/Irish Blood, English Heart/Disappointed/Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself?/The National Front Disco/Girlfriend in a Coma/Sister I’m a Poet/The World Is Full of Crashing Bores/I Like You/ Death of a Disco Dancer/Billy Budd/Jack the Ripper/Please, Please, Please Let me Get What (Have Who) I Want/Ganglord/Let Me Kiss You/Stretch Out and Wait/Dear God, Please Help Me/ How Soon Is Now?//First of the Gang to Die

The Boys in white work shirts with black bowties, and yellow pants!

Other asides not included in Review:
“Now as you know I’ve been on this earth for 32 years and if there’s one thing I’ve learned and you only have to look at the American music Press…the world is full of crashing bores.”
And upon the conclusion of the song of the same name : "The world is full of crashing bores. Is that debatable?"

“Since we have taken up residency at the Hollywood Palladium, since we have, 12 members of staff have killed themselves. It’s worth noting.”

"Thank you for listening for so long with both ears."

"Is there a future?"

Audience Q and A:
Morrissey: “Are you well?”
Audience Member: “I’m nasty.”

Another Audience Member: “Morrissey what are you hearing up there you’re not liking? Because it sounds great out here.”
Morrissey: “I know you’re trying to be encouraging, but that kind of stuff only works with children or ponies.”

Morrissey: "Can you bear more?"
Audience cheers...
Morrissey: "Prove it!"

During "Stretch Out and Wait"
Morrissey: "And is there any point in ever having children?"
Audience: "NO!"
Morrissey: "Very good!"

KRISTEENYOUNG at the Palladium: Never Let a Drummer Tie Your Collar

Night VII (Friday)
12 October 2007

Kristeen Young wore her heart on her collar tonight. Her singular charm and enthusiasm rubbed the edges off her roughest detractors. She landed behind her post in high spirits. Playfully teasing the by now resident audience, she said with alluring smile: “It’s us again, lucky you.”

During “Stop Thinking,” Kristeen and Jeff began coaxing the audience out of the stodgy comfort zone into all-enveloping sensory bliss. Lunging from behind her keyboard, battering the keys, and re-balancing her five-pound ruffle collar, Young even had the lights nodding “yes,” as she sang:

“Let it go…all the reasons for ‘no,’
and stop thinking (ya, ya, ya, ya, ya).”

“You Must Love Me” evoked a playground ethic of love that was anything but childish. Kristeen wrestled with the muses (and her maladjusted collar,) as she evoked beauty itself out of the sinews of heartache:

“Push me on the playground
I will take you down.
Pull my ponytail
You’ll be the one to wail.”

And when, with eyes pressed shut, face whirling in emotion, and voice in full and phenomenal force, Kristeen sang: “I cannot resist—” she gave me pause to wonder if I had ever felt anything truly in my life.

After "You Must Love Me," masterfully juggling seriousness with humor, Young explained: “My collar’s falling, because I let the drummer tie it. Never let a drummer tie your collar.”

Rising above her falling collar she took to center stage for “Touch Tongues.” The song was delivered in the tone and rhythm of a spirited sermon. Kristeen joked afterwards, “I’m sorry we’re from Missouri, so some songs have to be inspired by church”

As she and Jeff began the opening of “You Ruined Everything,” the audience cheered in recognition of the song. In a strangely precious moment, Kristeen raised her hands up to her head, and squealed like a shy child.

After struggling to keep her collar from falling all throughout “This Is the Dawn of My D-Day,” Kristeen suddenly relieved herself of its weight. As she wriggled out of the center-piece of her outfit, tossing it over her shoulder, she said triumphantly: “Next time I’ll tie it myself.”

In one fantastic and dramatic instant, she went from looking like an alternate universe's memory of stealth 40s glamour to Audrey Hepburn at her simplest and sweetest.

A rowdy member of the audience couldn't contain his enthusiasm as he yelled," Show us your ----!" In top form Young replied, “I don’t know what you just said, but I really feel like smacking you.” And following a glorious performance of "Mixed Kids," she aimed her cool fire in his direction again, saying with a smile: “There’s one person right there. I really can’t see you. But I imagine you wearing a wife beater with spaghetti stains all over it, but maybe that’s just my fantasy.”

Kristeen’s eyes, voice, skin, style, snear, and manner, and Jeff’s rhythm, shoulders, gaze, sweat, and swagger reveal something still wild—something that, even come commercial success, will hopefully never be tamed. As we continue to eradicate all pristine and open spaces, every remnant of wilderness, literal and metaphorical, becomes increasingly sacred and vital to our future. And so it is with KRISTEENYOUNG.

Set List:
Stop Thinking/You Must Love Me/Touch Tongues/Everybody Wants Me to Cry/You Ruined Everything/This Is the Dawn of My Day/Mixed Kids/Halfway Across the Atlantic Ocean/Kill the Father