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Very sad. An incredible musician, if you listen to some of his intricate basslines on some of the early Smiths tricks, they are incredible.
Case in point: last 90 seconds of "Barbarism Begins at Home": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zNwZomsONA
The main bass riff of Barbarism Begins at Home is unbelievably catchy, too. Those ghost notes!

Marr gets much-deserved credit for his guitar work, but I firmly maintain that some of the Smiths' best tracks basically are their basslines, and Barbarism is a standout example. What a terrible loss....

"The Queen Is Dead" is another one.

I love Marr's more atmospheric work on this track, but Andy Rourke's riff is what's carrying the song.

Fantastic bassline.

Yeah. Bigmouth strikes again also fits that category.
:( Holy shit... gone far too young. Andy was one of the greatest bassists of the 80s, no question.

(Do you think we can offer up Morrissey's soul in exchange for bringing Andy back?)

Does he still have one?
Fair point—and even if he does, we might have to fudge the Blue Book value a bit.

   >> (Do you think we can offer up Morrissey's soul in exchange for bringing Andy back?)
-What would the market value of Morrissey's soul be? Heck, even Satan rejected it!

This was very sad news indeed, The Smiths basically was the soundtrack to my teens (Which were after they had split, but I had a few older acquaintances who strongly urged me to check them out despite the albums being very, very old - almost ten years!)

Think I'll put on 'Meat is Murder' now.

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Hold on, Morrissey has a soul?

I’ve had the misfortune of seeing Morrissey play a few times and my god, what a twat.

He is indeed a right knob, but that hasn't stopped me from enjoying the few shows of his that I've gone to.

Assuming one accepts the basic premise of his music (melodical moping), he has an amazing catalogue of songs and a lovely voice to deliver them with.

I’m with you - the man has an amazing voice and I love his style. I would love to be a huge Morrissey fan. Unfortunately, they keep his mic turned up between songs.
I was surprised to see the BBC report that he’d lost his battle with cancer as I’d thought BBC retired the term.

Here is BBC reporting on the unusefulness of the term https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47002578

Here is a Wikipedia page on the topic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_metaphors_in_cancer

> Calling a person's cancer diagnosis a "war" or a "battle" and saying they had "lost their battle" or "lost their fight" when they died, were other unpopular descriptions, according to the poll carried out by YouGov.

I am responding to the weakly linked poll, which I didn't read because there wasn't actually a link provided (that's why it is weak). YouGov is not a complete URL. Did you mean YouGov.io? Or perhaps YouGov.porn? Would we have better luck with YouGov.com, or will that lead us to a similarly questionable site?

Response: Um, okay. I'll be sure to not to mention such words when I refer to my girlfriend who is "having so much fun" with uterus cancer.

> I'll be sure to not to mention such words when I refer to my girlfriend who is "having so much fun" with uterus cancer.

The issue is around bellicose metaphors in oncology. While some people respond to that language, many do not. In particular, in some studies it increases feelings of guilt regarding the transition from active to palliative care in situations where the malignancy is not responding to active treatment or where the patient doesn’t want to accept the adverse effects of treatment, as in “Oh, you’re giving up?”

But surely there are choices of language that are neither war-like nor cynical.

Across the board, we should "retire" the war-esque (i.e., violence normalizing) language. There's got to be better ways to communicate such things without promoting the species' worst habit.
If the modern western world needs more of something, it's definitely euphemism
The use of "lost the war with cancer" here is also a bit of a euphemism for "died from cancer".
To be fair, going from "lost his battle with cancer" to something else is at worst breaking even in terms of the western world's euphemism count.
True. But the war-based ones are far too normalized. What's next, The War on Violence? Or how about The War on War?

Words create worlds.

> The issue is around bellicose metaphors in oncology.

Translation: You seem to be claiming that "the issue" is about hostile rhetoric regarding the study and treatment of tumors.

> While some people respond to that language, many do not.

I'm not understanding what you are trying to say here. Do we not all respond to hostile rhetoric in unique ways? When you say that someone "does not respond", surely you mean something else?

> In particular, in some studies it increases feelings of guilt regarding the transition from active to palliative care in situations where the malignancy is not responding to active treatment or where the patient doesn’t want to accept the adverse effects of treatment, as in “Oh, you’re giving up?”

When you say that "in some studies it increases feelings of guilt", what is the "it" that you are referring to exactly?

>I'm not understanding what you are trying to say here. Do we not all respond to hostile rhetoric in unique ways? When you say that someone "does not respond", surely you mean something else?

"to respond" in the clinical world and what she or he is referring to here means having a positive reaction to treatment: https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-term...

I have stage 4 lung cancer. I'm not "battling" cancer. It's not a "battle." It's stage 4. Cancer will eventually win. At best I am "prolonging the inevitable." I am not "courageously fighting."

The metaphor I prefer to use, that is not original to me, is that I got on the wrong fucking bus, and now we're headed somewhere I never asked to go, and there's no getting off. I am scared shitless, doing whatever I can to slow the bus down. There's nothing courageous about taking the next chemo, wishing not to die.

I'm sorry about your fate and I wish you all the best.

Have you looked at trying psilocybin? It seems to be very effective at lessening fear of death in end of life situations.

TBH Fear of death isn't really the issue for me (well, maybe a little, but I've done high-dose ketamine treatments twice). Right now it's the fear of living - of doing this same thing for the next 10, 15, 20 years.

Chemo every 3 weeks, all the quarterly CT scans and the waiting for the results that will tell me if the current regimen is working or not (current one is "working" in that nothing's growing...but nothing's shrinking either). All the MRIs which will tell me if anything has metastasized in my brain, and waiting patiently for -those- results (we caught one last fall and radiated it out). The never quite feeling like I have enough energy to do "normal" things like mow the lawn. Being the dad who has to take a nap every day while my kids slowly grow up. All the worry about what happens when this chemo medication stops working (they all do after some time), will I have enough warning that it's not working or will things double in size before they can find out. All the people who get you alone and then it's "but seriously, how are -YOU-?" The well meaning people who say "well attitude is half the battle!" (hint - it's not). The overall feeling of complete helplessness, like there's nothing I can do that's going to influence how this goes, when it decides it's going to go sideways. Knowing that they'll never do surgery on me because the numbers say in the time I'd need to recuperate, something somewhere else inside of me that didn't show up on a scan would have time to grow.

Does any of that feel like a battle? Like I'm courageously fighting?

(I apologize, this isn't exactly what you asked about, and I'm not writing an angry response here to anything you wrote, I promise).

I grew up with a cancer-having parent and don't resent my mother for her ever-increasing weakness. I'm glad she was around and hope I can deal with something serious as well as she did.
Much strength to you, that really sucks and you have articulated a lot of latent fears for me.
Thanks for this, it takes courage, skill, and honest reflection to give such a clear picture of what you are going through. And yes, to me it looks like you are courageously fighting.
As an outsider, it doesn't look like a fierce battle but a war of attrition to your will power. From one father to another, I wish you all the strength to carry on. Bon courage, mon ami.
> I have stage 4 lung cancer. I'm not "battling" cancer. It's not a "battle." It's stage 4. Cancer will eventually win.

Personal feelings aside, your body is literally fighting an alien immortal invader. what chemo tries to do is to kill the cancerous cells. That's were the "battle" metaphor comes from.

It's not a game of chess.

Anyway, depending on the type of cancer, stage 4 survival rates are improving year over year. It's something we are getting better and better at treating, because we are collectively not surrendering to a death sentence without putting up a fight against the things that try to kill us to try'n literally kill them before they do it.

Now, I come from a family of people who mostly worked in healthcare, cancer might be a sensitive topic, I can understand that, but nobody gets annoyed if we say that someone is battling COVID or fighting for their life after an accident that put them in a coma.

It's a battle, literally, not because the patients are heroes or warriors or something like that, but because it is literally what's happening inside our bodies when they stop functioning normally.

Take what I'll say next in the most charitable way possible, please. I am not native English speaker and I might make mistakes and miss a lot of the nuances I want to convey.

Not dying is always a victory, no matter the reason your life is in danger. Death will eventually win, but that's no reason to give up.

I wish you all the best.

At least it'll give Morrissey a reason to be depressed.
rtfl!!! sarcastic !!!
I spent an evening with Andy Rourke a few years ago. He was DJing a small bar and I was looking after him.

Man, he really didn’t think much of Morrissey!

He was a lovely man.

I assume he was a legit Man City supporter, because all those members of Oasis & Stone roses seem to be? Maybe they take the field at the final to "Panic (Hang the DJ)" ;)
I don't think there are any Man U supporters in Manchester
Thats just not true. In fact until very recently Unitedwere by far the more popular team in this city, the meme came about as they have so many fans from outside the city as well.

Also, to the poster who mentioned Stone Roses, No, they are united fans.

In fact until Oasis the only celebrity city fans were bernard manning and curly watts from corrie

Definitely not the case. In Salford, Cheshire, South Manchester etc you'd really struggle to find anyone who was a city fan. Source: I lived in Ashton-under-lyne from 1990-1995 or so. I personally knew literally hundreds of United fans (and this is before their really dominant era). During that time I knew literally 1 person who was a city fan and everyone would relentlessly take the piss out of him for it.
How do you personally know hundreds of people well enough to know about which football team they're supporters of?
Its really not difficult at all. Especially in Manchester.
May Keats and Yeats be on his side…
He died from pancreatic cancer.

Anytime, I read someone dying from this particular cancer, I think of Randy Pausch and the Last Lecture.

https://youtu.be/ji5_MqicxSo

HN discussion from 2008:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=256623

It’s really a shame no progress has been made in treating this cancer in the last 16 years.

Very sad.

On a more positive note, my spirits are lifted seeing people talk about his bass playing prowess. I didn't think anyone listened to anything pre 2010 anymore, let alone noticed bass playing.

I'm old enough to remember when "The Smiths" album was released and hit the underground club scene in the city where I grew up.

"How Soon Is Now" was a smash hit with the ecstacy crowd and was the track that compelled me to go right out and buy the record. I can't count how many times I listened to that album for the lyrics, but moreso for the music. To that point, Andy Rourke's bass lines were prominent in the mix of every song, and a core component to The Smith's "sound". As much as Johnny Marr's rhythm and lead guitar in my opinion.

And as important as Peter Hook's bass playing or Ian Curtis' off key vocals were to Joy Division's sound.

RIP young brother

This is terrible :( and on a somewhat unrelated note, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame sucks for not having inducted them already... though the rest of the band probably wouldn't have gotten back together to play for the ceremony. The Smiths deserve more respect (especially Andy Rourke's bass playing)
> the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame sucks for not having inducted them already

The Rock and Roll Hall of fame sucks in general - they have inducted a ton of pop, rap, and country stars but have kept out some of the legends of rock, especially in hard rock, punk, and heavy metal. The actual museum is also a bit boring too IMO; it needs more experiences with actual music.