Marc writes:

This Fall, Three Rivers Press/Random House will publish "How Soon is Never?", a novel by Spin writer and Smiths obsessed playwright Marc Spitz ("Shyness Is Nice"). The book is a fictional account of two fans who try to reunite the band. Spitz has done extensive research to prepare for this weird bit of fan fiction, and has interviewed three of the four ex-Smiths (excluding Morrissey). This, of course, is not for any lack of trying. If any Morrissey-solo readers have any solid, or at least unusual leads on the best way to secure an in-person interview with him, please e-mail MS at [email protected]. Thanks everyone.
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Related items:

• "Shyness Is Nice" - a play named for a Smiths lyric - June 19, 2001
• Spin at KROQ with Richard Blade - Oct. 8, 1999

Nobby Stiles writes:

Touring his latest album 'England, Half English' Billy Bragg is interviewed in Manchester's 'City Life' magazine...

Pressed on the points raised by the lyrics on the album Bragg goes on to mention the dangers of raising the 'Englishness' debate without fully explaining yourself.

"Part of the problem - perhaps we could call it the 'Morrissey problem' - is that if you're going to use symbols, you have to put them in context. Now, Morrissey famously used pictures of skinheads and the Union Jack and wrote 'Bengali in Flares' but never explained what he was talking about. There's a danger there because people can think the worse."
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• Related item: Billy Bragg "England, Half English" on forthcoming lp contains reference to Morrissey - Feb. 8, 2001

holo writes:

I just got this article from Billboard.com

Counting Crows Content In 'Candy' Land - Mar. 15

In the article the Counting Crows are talking about their new upcoming album HARD CANDY, and mentioned that they are scheduled to cover "ASK"......

"In addition to the material for "Hard Candy," Counting Crows also cut an album's worth of covers, which may be pulled together for a bonus disc or used on the Web. Some will be used as B-sides on European singles. Among the tracks that were scheduled to be recorded are "Someday I Will Treat You Good" (Sparklehorse), "Amie" (Pure Prairie League), and "Ask" (the Smiths)."

The Counting Crows did an interesting cover of the Psychedelic Furs' "The Ghost In You" a couple of years ago, so I am interested in hearing what they will do with "ASK".

Andrew writes: The March 17, 2002 issue of the New York Times Magazine (Endpaper, Pg 84) has a listing of songs that Beck had on his iPod on February 27, 2002. He was enjoying "Death of a Disco Dancer" on that particular day.
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Dan sends the link:

Beck's 198-Track Mind - New York Times (Mar. 17, 2002)

Out of the 8,000 songs Beck has downloaded onto his hard drive, he's got a rotating mix of hundreds on his iPod that he updates daily. This is what Beck was listening to on Feb. 27, 2002.

I figure he must have another ipod filled with only morrissey songs...

An anonymous person writes:

A rather dodgy bunch of American punish rockers currently on tour in the UK called Rival Schools had to choose their favourite 10 songs to be included on a compilation tape, for NME.

One of their songs they chose was 'I Know It's Over' by The Smiths. They said something like it's impossible not to moved by this song and that the Smiths appealed to the miserable and dyfunctional. He also claimed that the Smiths were very emo.

Underneath was a nice picture of the band.

Geert writes:

Belgian radioshow Pili Pili compiled votes for a best song top-100 from Belgian artists.

There's A Light That Never Goes Out reached a surprising 16th place.
As a comment on this song is written that :

In ‘There Is A Light ...’, he(Morrissey) refers to the suicide-scenario's from the movie ‘The Killing Of Sister George’ and the novel ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ of Alan Sillitoe. There are also some musical citation in this song. The staccato brigde is the same as ‘There She Goes’ from The Velvet Underground and Marvin Gayes ‘Hitchhike’ in the The Rolling Stones's version.

After 3 years of running from my DSL line at home, the server has finally been moved to a real hosting location, in downtown LA. This is personally a great relief for me - I no longer have to worry about the connection or power going down as these are all guaranteed. The move on Sat. March 16 went extremely smoothly, please let me know if you encounter any problems at all. The connection may seem faster to some as the bandwidth is much greater and the ISP is on a couple of major backbones (more details on the facility). Let me know if you see any differences there also.

I know I may sound like a broken record at this point, but again, thanks to all who have expressed their support for the site and especially to those individuals who contributed to the site fund. Because of the extra funds I am able to make this move to improved speed and reliability without worry.