Paul Morley Showing Off ... The Smiths cover band The Smyths

Paul Morley delves into the murky world of tribute acts with The Smyths I am continually fascinated by tribute bands because they can be such an appalling and depressing prospect, great pop music turned into butchered vaudeville, a scruffy mess of wigs, riffs and sham intensity, the reduction of ambition to a kind of shrivelled-up copy cattiness, nothing more than a daft punning name, and yet also at the same time strangely moving, with an heroic dedication to the object of their homage. They ca...

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