Boy for my Birthday - Dale Hibbert Q&A

It's been 24 hours, if anyone has questions....fire away. I will do my best to answer them. I suppose the main question is "why now" ? It's been a long time. I once had a friend, who found a singer, for six months we rehearsed, talked, examined possibilities. The friend convinced me to leave the band I was with, and join him. We were kids, to be fair, but...

It's a sweet, innocent, charming recording and one that I am fond of.
Anyhow, this means a lot more to some people than it does me, it's out there because it brings joy to people.
We change as we age, if you can make people happy then do it, that's "why now". It was set to premiere on my birthday because anticipation is exquisite, we now live in an "on demand" society, I prefer the old ways.

If anyone is old enough to remember the excitement of Thursday evenings, or the countdown on Sundays, cassette recorder at the ready, fingers hovering above play+(red)record, you will remember the old ways.


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Wasn't there supposedly another early song on the same "I Want A Boy" cassette - "A Matter Of Opinion"? Is this something Dale had/the collector has?
 
Wasn't there supposedly another early song on the same "I Want A Boy" cassette - "A Matter Of Opinion"? Is this something Dale had/the collector has?
(The following is a mixture of archive and external information knocked together)

Yes, that information was via Simon Goddard and circulated in 2002:

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http://web.archive.org/web/20020803235050/http://www.nme.com/news/101823.htm

The print version of the NME added:
"...while the lyrics are typical Morrissey and quite cynical. The opening line is - "Sit by the fire with your books and pretend that you're active"

But they never played it live and there's just the one copy on a rehearsal tape. It's been kept quiet for nearly 20 years so from a fan's perspective this is sensational news."

...Simon Goddard's The Smiths - Songs That Saved Your Life will be published in November by Reynolds & Hearn"

A Yahoo article at the time added:

"Author Simon Goddard told NME he'd found enough rare material amongst Joyce's tapes to make up a Beatles Anthology-style box set...

...easily the most mind-blowing was the discovery of a never-before-mentioned Morrissey/Marr song from 1982 called A Matter Of Opinion.

"Musically, it's very much in the same R 'n' B vein as What Difference Does It Make? while the lyrics are typical Morrissey and quite cynical."

It's not yet known whether the track will be released."

Finally, Goddard's full write up from Songs That Saved Your Life:

"‘A Matter Of Opinion’ (Morrissey/Marr)
Recorded December 1982, 70 Portland Street, Manchester
Informal rehearsal recording
The Smiths spent the rest of December honing their ever-expanding repertoire in the new permanent rehearsal home that Joe Moss, now the band’s official manager, had recently provided; the upstairs of his Portland Street Crazy Face Clothing Co warehouse where they spent their intensive incubation period over the winter months. By Christmas, four more songs were ready to add to their live set: ‘These Things Take Time’, ‘What Do You See In Him?’ (rewritten in the new year as ‘Wonderful Woman’), ‘Jeane’ and the rarest Smiths song of all, ‘A Matter Of Opinion’.
As the only original Morrissey/Marr composition after the recruitment of Andy Rourke never to be released or played in concert, ‘A Matter Of Opinion’ would avoid detection from biographers and fans for the best part of 20 years. Thankfully, one lone practice tape survives, captured on a domestic ghetto blaster that remained permanently to hand at Crazy Face and retained by Mike Joyce. Modelled in the same twanging R&B vein as other early Marr rockers ‘Handsome Devil’ and ‘What Difference Does It Make?’, just as ‘The Hand That Rocks The Cradle’ was a generous steal from Patti Smith’s ‘Kimberly’, so ‘A Matter Of Opinion’ owed its existence to Buffalo Springfield’s ‘Mr Soul’, written by Neil Young, driven by an identical riff. (That Marr borrowed from Young is mildly ironic since, as Young admitted, ‘Mr Soul’ was itself a deliberate steal from The Rolling Stones’ ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’.)
Given the circumstances and quality of the recording, deciphering Morrissey’s words is not easy. The first of its monotone verses appears to sneer at politicised intellectuals (‘sit by the fire with your books and pretend that you’re active’), while the second (and repeated third) already pitches him on the outside of pedestrian society, looking in at ‘the boys on the factory floor’, each cycle ending in the caustic pay-off, ‘oh, it’s all a matter of opinion’. The most uncharacteristic passage comes after the second chorus where Marr draws out a squealing one note guitar solo and Morrissey shrieks staccato cries of what sounds like ‘Any!’. At the time, Joyce interpreted the same short, sharp vocal hollers as ‘Ollie!’, in reference to their friend Ollie May who would later form part of The Smiths’ road crew.
A potential crowd pleaser, and no more impudent a carbon copy of ‘Mr Soul’ than ‘Panic’ would be of T. Rex’s ‘Metal Guru’, ‘A Matter Of Opinion’ would be discarded by the new year. In their decision to jettison the song, it seems The Smiths were already showing a commendably ruthless ambition to up the ante of their own creative capabilities, rather than lapse into safe rock parody.
‘It didn’t sound like us,’ confirms Marr. ‘It wasn’t that we were bothered about copying a tune, but it was too blatant, almost so blatant that if it had worked I wouldn’t have had a problem with it. For me, at that time, it was such a cool association to do a Buffalo Springfield tune, but it just didn’t have our heart or spirit in it. Besides, it’s never satisfying to just lift a riff lock, stock and barrel.’"


So, in with Mike's tapes and a fraction bit later than Boy For My...
Regards,
FWD.
 
Do you happen to know what this person is going to do with the tapes?

Waiting for some label to step up and offer big bucks for them?

Don’t know if Dale broke ‘contract’ promising to not make copies, but glad he had the heart to share them with everyone.

I don’t really think Dale sharing it devalues the price. Especially if Dale’s
are just copies and the quality isn’t as good as the originals, your friend or a label can still clean them up and remix and still make a profit, whenever that will happen, if ever, who knows?



I wonder what Morrissey thinks of it? he probably hasn’t heard it since.

No, when I talked to him about it, he didn't seem to have any plans of doing anything with the tapes.
I have encouraged him to do so. We'll see.
He's not on this forum and he's a very private person, let's hope the Decibel-demo's will someday resurface in all their glory.
 
Yes, I am aware of the gentlemen who won the reel to reel. I meet him back in the 90's in London at a Morrissey show. The point is still interesting that the sale said that copies would not be made. Obviously, copies were made and then shared the other day. I am sure our Belgian friend can't be pleased or was an agreement made? Just curious since I personally bid for the reel to reel myself. I also think that this would only enhance the value of the tapes. They will go for much more than what he paid for them at auction. I was keenly aware of that fact then.

I don't think he's losing any sleep over it, but needless to say he's not pleased with it either. But as I've pointed out, the mixes of Suffer and Hand that Dale uploaded are inferior and in no way comparable to the mixes the present owner made himself in a recording studio in Belgium and which I was lucky enough to hear. He transferred everything to digital at the time since the original tapes had to be 'baked', so new mixes can still be made in the future.
 
best thing for anybody who is shy is to get a job in retail,you meet people all day and its amazing how your confidence grows and before you know it you can tackle anything,worked for me a long time ago.

good point... for me it was teaching... no choice but to get over it when you have 30 twelve year olds staring at you
 
Do you happen to know what this person is going to do with the tapes?

Waiting for some label to step up and offer big bucks for them?

Don’t know if Dale broke ‘contract’ promising to not make copies, but glad he had the heart to share them with everyone.

I don’t really think Dale sharing it devalues the price. Especially if Dale’s
are just copies and the quality isn’t as good as the originals, your friend or a label can still clean them up and remix and still make a profit, whenever that will happen, if ever, who knows?



I wonder what Morrissey thinks of it? he probably hasn’t heard it since.
Melvis f***ing hates it. Not because it’s absolute rubbish but, because he won’t make a schilling off of it.
 
good point... for me it was teaching... no choice but to get over it when you have 30 twelve year olds staring at you
Becoming mature has the same effect but I never could understand people who are able to work at checkouts in stores with all that stress and people and the millions of codes and numbers and all the other things people ask about.

Vivianne, mothers friend, was a mental wreck but worked at the checkout at a grocery store and loved it which totally went against how she felt otherwise in life.

I believe some people prefer a job where they have this work zone that is theirs to control. I heard a funny story about Pilla from an old colleague of hers and Pilla was very territorial and demanded that she was left alone doing the job herself cause she hated people running about.
 
Great to hear this in full after so long, Dale. Thanks for sharing. Best wishes.
 
Hi Dale. Uncleskinny/Peter here. Not logged in as abroad at the mo.

Congrats on following through on This, and a pox on anyone dissing its release. Any Smiths Scholar will welcome hearing it.

By the way, so you still sell those coffee bag cushions in Kava? My wife and I bought a few last year, but rarely been back to Tod.

Have a jolly Xmas,

Peter/Uncleskinny
That poor, poor woman.
 
 
For those saying things along the lines of "back in my day, it was just called being shy", I was called shy my entire life too, but then I was diagnosed with asperger's at age 19. It's more than just being "shy". Heaven knows my life would be easier if it were just "being shy". But Moz does have certain aspie characteristics.
 
For those saying things along the lines of "back in my day, it was just called being shy", I was called shy my entire life too, but then I was diagnosed with asperger's at age 19. It's more than just being "shy". Heaven knows my life would be easier if it were just "being shy". But Moz does have certain aspie characteristics.

He definitely does. But this is something that would be more obvious to people who know/knew him and interacted with him directly.

One more thing that is very obvious on the surface and in my opinion, confirmed in his autobio, is Morrissey's cluster B personality. He is definitely a Narcissist.
 

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