I was a massively huge fan of The Smiths from the moment I walked into a Tower Records store in Spring 1984.*

It was the year of my graduation and I was quickly approaching a time when I really needed to figure out what I was going to do with my life. College wasn't really a possibility because there was no way I could afford it. The job market in my area was awful thanks to Reaganomics driving wages lower and lower. I was disillusioned with the politics of the day and life in general. I was despondent about the future. It was, after all, George Orwell's year of doom. It was 1984.

And The Smiths were making music about all of it.

It was as if Morrissey was crooning each track just for me, all while being accompanied by Johnny Marr's bouncy guitar riffs. The Smiths was picking up the social sensibilities of the Punk Movement I had loved, then packaged it for the masses.

I was gutted when The Smiths broke up in 1987. Four albums and done? It really didn't seem fair. Johnny Marr teamed up with Barnard Sumner to form the band Electronic in 1988 and started releasing music the next year (and we got three albums out of the collaboration, all of which were great).

As for Morrissey? He went on to release four amazing albumns... Viva Hate, Kill Uncle, Your Arsenal, and Vauxhall and I... followed by scads more that just didn't hit for me. By 1995 I was done buying his new music, but replayed his old stuff often.

A regret was never managing to see The Smiths in concert.

After a cancelation and a reschedule I couldn't attend, I thought that a Morrissey concert wasn't in the cards, but finally flew to see him in Tampa in 2014. The concert was darn good, but wouldn't have been a Morrissey concert without some drama. He thought the crowd wasn't into it, so he cut his set short and bailed. Which, I ain't going to lie, actually made it feel more special.

Over the years Morrissey has become more and more unhinged, and I can't relate to him at all. I wouldn't want to. Then this morning I read this article about it, and found out I'm not the only one.

About the only joy I get out of anything past his old music is him being skewered on The Simpsons like this...

And definitely this imitator named "Quilloughby" which is actually the best Morrissey non-song in decades...

The fact that Quilloughby is voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch is just the icing on the cake.

And on that note, I guess I'll be listening to The Smiths for the rest of the day.

* I want to say it was the Bellevue location, but it could have been the Seattle Center location because I don't know if Bellevue was open at the time. Back in the day I would bounce between both stores looking for those precious British import maxi-singles from Depeche Mode and The Thompson Twins. The Bellevue location was my favorite because they seemed to get more of what I was looking for. I was reminded of this when I saw a video of the old Tower Records Bellevue being torn down...

Oh how I loved Tower Records back in the day. Shopping for music on a computer just can't compare to walking down those jam-packed aisles of albums and discovering some magical release that you didn't even know existed. I really miss that, and am sad that younger generations are missing out on what a cool experience it is.