Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want

The Smiths

As a certain forthcoming tribute album will amply demonstrate, British bands all but owned the 80's. They were plentiful and inescapable worldwide, largely due to the new international phenomenon of Music Television; which functioned, for all purposes, as a 24-hour promotional channel for the major record labels. But any time there has been a saturation of the Pop market with any new thing, there must, and will be, a backlash to some degree. Which leads us, maybe not directly but inevitably, to The Smiths.

I know that The Smiths are now revered as one of the most important bands of their time. But it's never been made clear to me exactly why The Smiths were so important until very recently. Now, before some of you get all up in a lather about this, please consider that, along with other moody British indie bands of the time like Echo and The Bunnymen, The Cure, or Joy Division, perhaps they just didn't resonate with me for whatever reason, and that should be ok. Any given music either turns you on, or it doesn't. As memory serves, I was simply into other music at the time; music that I perceived as a little more positive, or dare I say, happier. Somehow, either actively or passively, I managed to dodge that whole post-punk movement.

I know I didn't relate to the melancholy romanticism, or the protracted sense of ennui I heard in Morrissey's lyrics. Nonetheless, I've felt that some of the music of The Smiths could be enjoyable enough, though only to a point, with no small thanks going to Johnny Marr and his atmospheric guitar work, which balanced Morrissey's carrying on. It's been said that the singer is the salesman of the song. Sorry, but at that time, I wasn't buying.

Perhaps Morrissey struck me as pretentious, but his lyrics and vocal stylings are also the kind of things that tap directly into female teenage angst, which is something that no male will ever understand completely. Come to think of it, that may be the key to their lasting appeal, right there. Well, that and the fact that The Smiths and their brethren appealed greatly to the punks and the goth kids who needed something that was not "Born In The USA" or Huey Lewis or Duran Duran to relate to. As the 80's faded into the 90's, many of those alterna-kids started bands directly because of The Smiths' influence.

To their credit, The Smiths saw themselves primarily as a singles band. Even after Morrissey had been on his own as a solo act for some time, he'd put out several singles, but did not issue a proper album until "Viva Hate" in 1988. Now, that concept has genuine merit. It's something that I see independent artists like Marshall Crenshaw reverting to as a means of having more flexibility with their releases. Issuing singles and EP's allows them to strike as the mood suits, rather than waiting to finish writing and recording a dozen or more songs that complement each other enough to work together as an album. Never mind that it's also much cheaper to do things that way.

Today's featured song is the plaintive "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want", and it comes from the post-breakup compilation "Louder Than Bombs"; an album long used by fans to introduce those unfamiliar with the band. The song was first released as the B-side of "William, It Was Really Nothing" in 1984. The Smiths have become icons of their era, and so their catalog of 4 original releases is now far outweighed by collections of assorted hits and misses, b-sides, remixes, and other ephemera. Their fans are dedicated enough that they will buy nearly anything by the band, or its members, and honestly, isn't that the sort of devotion that any band would hope for?

The Dream Academy

One of the many British bands that appeared on the Pop charts during the mid- 80's was the trio known as The Dream Academy. With a sound as synth-laden as any of their contemporaries, The Dream Academy also were smart enough to keep an ear on other musical developments of the time.

Following the success of their singles "Life In A Northern Town" and "The Love Parade", the band were keen to record a song by The Smiths. According to notes by Nick Laird-Clowes, they wanted to do their version of "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want" in order to "show people at the time who were calling them 'miserablists' what great songwriters they really were". The Dream Academy booked a studio with David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, worked out an arrangement, and recorded the song in a day. Gilmour played bass, programmed the Linn Drum, and produced the track with Laird-Clowes. The single peaked at #83 on the UK Singles Chart. The instrumental version of the song is the better known recording, since it was used in the film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (during the Art Institute scene), along with another Dream Academy song, "The Edge Of Forever". The song was also featured in the John Hughes film, "Pretty In Pink", which took its title from a Psychedelic Furs tune. It appeared again in the prom scene of the Drew Barrymore film "Never Been Kissed", but was not included on the soundtrack CD, for some reason or another. Here's the vocal version.

"Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want" has been covered by several other notable artists, including The Decemberists, The Halo Benders, Franz Ferdinand, OK Go, Deftones, Amanda Palmer, She & Him, Muse, Third Eye Blind, Josh Rouse, and even Hootie & The Blowfish! The song has become one of the most well-known songs of The Smiths' oeuvre, despite it being a B-Side, and is often performed by Morrissey at his concerts to this day.

You can find everything by The Smiths at Amazon, who will very definitely let you get what you want, and then some. You should also have excellent luck finding vinyl, singles, and other Smiths-related odds and ends at your local, well-curated, indie record shop.

The original albums by The Dream Academy are long out of print, but findable affordably, for the most part. Thankfully, there is a fine, recently released retrospective collection that's nicely remastered, reasonably priced, and comprehensive. I love anthologies like this that wrap up nearly all of a band's output in one tidy, chronological package.

With regard to that forthcoming tribute album I referred to at the top of this article, you need to head over to the Kickstarter page for "Here Comes The Reign Again: The Second British Invasion". All the info you need on the album is there. The project is 100% funded, so that's all done. A webpage where you can buy the album is in development, and we should have more information about that in a couple of weeks or so. Rest assured, we'll let you know.