There’s a great piece (not online) in this month’s Spin (Red Hot Chili Peppers cover) on an astounding phenomenon: Morrissey’s fanbase has evidently shifted almost completely from weepy, sensitive white folks to young Latinos. I’ve got a few Smiths/Morrissey albums, but this was complete news to me, and I’m strangely fascinated by it — the thought of “Bigmouth Strikes Again” booming in the barrio is just too wonderful for words. I bet Spanish translations of Oscar Wilde are jumping off the shelf, too.
While the Spin piece isn’t online, its reporter (I think this guy) is referenced in this LA Weekly piece on a Morrissey convention in Los Angeles. Quote: “We order drinks and grab a table in the smoking lounge, where we sit and eavesdrop on a Spin reporter, nominally conducting interviews about ‘the Latino angle,’ but mainly just macking on the ladies.”
Spin, which went through a truly crappy period, actually has some terrific features nowadays, some of the best music journalism out there. If only you didn’t have to wade through 80 pages of Incubus and Korn to get to it.
8 thoughts on “morrissey’s latino fans, spin mag”
Comments are closed.
Josh, have you ever gotten the chance to go to a Morrissey show? If so, you might not have been so suprised. Both times I’ve been lucky enough to see him live, the concerts were chock-full o’ hispanics.
Saw him here in Dallas, and while there were many of the steroetypical gothic/ex-smiths fans, there were TONS of latinos. Then I saw him in San Antonio, and not only was it sold out, I’d estimate that 75-80% of the attendees were latino.
I do agree, however, that it’s a strange phenomena. =)
anna, any thoughts on an explanation for the phenomenon? it’s just that if someone asked me to make a list of acts over the last 20 years i’d expect to appeal disproportionately to a hispanic audience, morrissey would be, um, last on that list. i’m really, really curious why. (the spin article put forth a few ideas, but i wasn’t really buying any of them.)
you know, i’d have to completely agree with your assessment (sp?). i would -never- put any goth/dark/whatever band on a latino top ten.
the only thing that comes to mind is a puerto rican girl i knew in high school. one day we were smoking in the bathroom, as we little deviants were known to do, and i noticed she had cure lyrics scrawled all over one of her notebooks. i was taken aback, and asked her how in the heck she knew who the cure was (mind you, i was little miss mega-goth at the time). she told me that the depressing lyrics appealed to her because of her poor upbringing in puerto rico. she told me that when she listened to the cure (or the smiths, or sisters of mercy), it made her feel like someone else understood how hard her life was. the lyrics and music appealed to the depressed culture she came from. i wouldn’t neccessarily equate that with all hispanics, but it made sense to me at the time.
the latinos i knew in high school were mainly from the caribbean. they grew up poor, repressed, angry, sad, etc etc. so with that in mind, i can understand why she was attracted to that type of music. not sure how that would compare to morrissey’s fan base, but that’s what i was told many years ago.
i’d be interested to know what Spin hypothesized. admittedly, i haven’t picked up a copy of that rag in years. is it really beginning to improve? i sure hope so, as i find (like yourself) that there is a dearth of good music reporting “out there”…. =)
It also seems a strange turn of events given the discussions of Morrisey’s supposed skinhead sympathies in the British press a few years back.
My buddy Chuck Klosterman (former pop culture guy at the Akron Beacon Journal) wrote that piece. I’ll pass on to him that you enjoyed it. If you think that piece was good, you should have read his on-the-road with a Guns and Roses tribute band (NYT). Or his book, “Fargo Rock City”. OK, enough flacking for Chuck. sorry.
I thought it was Chuck. Be sure to ask him if the report of his “macking on the ladies” was accurate. And hell, get him commenting on crabwalk.com.
Josh, I think I’m the only one who doesn’t think this is strange. I grew up in Southern Ca., outside L.A., and lots of Latinos I knew totally digged Morrissey since at least the early 1990s. My older brother — a gangsta rap lovin’ guy — often wore his Smiths T-shirt to high school. It was the hip thing to do, especially if you paired it with Harley Davidson boots.
I believe Morrissey is a big fan of El Vez. I have a vague idea that they’ve toured together? In any case, maybe that is a link Morrissey has to the Latino community and that might have something to do with the new Latino fanbase. Dunno.