Hello errybody and welcome back to the
Nobody Loves Us Countdown.
I'm counting down my 20 favorite Morrissey Non-Singles each weekday
until his Ocotober 29th
concert right here in MPLS.
Here's how the list
looks so far:
20. One Day Goodbye
Will Be Farewell
19. Driving Your
Girlfriend Home
18. Munich Air
Disaster 1958
17. Seasick, Yet
Still Docked
16. I Don't Mind If
You Forget Me
15. Sister I'm A
Poet
Obviously you can scroll down to see those posts and read my thoughts
on each of the songs.
Which brings us to #14:
#14: On The
Streets I Ran (Morrissey/Tobias)
Key line: "A working-class face glares back at me from the glass and lurches..."
(Watch that video to hear the song and pick up a little bit of Spanish. Or, as they call it, Espanol)
First off, let me apologize for going back to the well of Death/Manchester for the 3rd time in 6 posts. I didn't draw it up this way, but the 13 songs ahead of "On The Streets I Ran" definitely couldn't have been listed above it. That's just how it go. Write your own list.
While Morrissey touched on the subject of his own mortality on You Are The Quarry (and dug into it significantly on that album's b-sides), the specter of The End hung heavy over the entirety of Ringleader Of The Tormentors. Nearly every song on the album alludes to death in some capacity. Not coincidentally, this is also Mozzer's more sexually-forward album. The fact that he embraced both of these subjects as he surpassed 50 says quite a bit about the man. But that's a different post.
"On The Streets I Ran" is probably the best of the non-singles off Ringleader. At the very least, it goes down smoother than the pomposity of "Life Is A Pigsty," "I Will See You In Far-Off Places," and "At Last I Am Born." While those are all thrilling songs in their own right, they require a certain focus from the listener, an acceptance that by listening you are sharing the song's burdens with Mozzer himself. "On The Streets I Ran" is merely a catchy, melodic, curiously-morbid toss-off in the best way possible.
Opening with the line, "A working-class face glares back at me from the glass and lurches..." Morrissey sets the stage immediately for a tune regarding his youth, his fame, and how the two have come and gone over the last couple decades. Of course, he immediately follows that line up with an apology. "Forgive me, on the streets I ran, turned sickness into popular song."
As I've mentioned before, it seems that Morrissey's goal of being a celebrated icon is focused squarely on his hometown of Manchester. In another apologetic moment, Morrissey tries to justify his departure from his hometown by singing, "All these streets can do is claim to know the real you, and warn, 'if you don't leave you will kill or be killed.'" Since his Manchester days, of course, Mozzer went from home to London to Los Angeles to Rome to Paris. Also, at one point, I think he killed a horse. I may not have my facts straight on that one, though. "Oh, dear god, when will I be where I should be?" he asks with a twinge of panic and fear, perhaps thinking that, even at his age and stature, he's still doomed to follow the paths set on the streets of his youth to, "kill or be killed."
This realization sends Mozzer searching for answers, leading him, oddly, to a palm-reader who delivers the very blunt diagnosis that, "one Thursday you will be dead" only reinforces this fear, causing Mozzer to plea with the lord to take everybody else before taking him. Even, oddly, "people from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania," which seems like a strange thing to say since most Pittsburghers are already dead on the inside.
