ABSTRACT
After London, Manchester has long been Britain's Number Two Pop City. But in the post-punk era the city's musical output was synonymous with the un-pop hue of gray: the Buzzcocks' melodic but monochrome punk ditties, the Fall's baleful intransigence, Joy Division's angst rock, New Order's doubt-wracked disco. Dedicated to their own out-of-time sixties notion of pop, the Smiths defined themselves against contemporary, dance-oriented chart fodder. "Panic" was an anthem for disenfranchised discophobes, Morrissey railing "burn down the disco/hang the blessed DJ." The crime? Playing mere good-times music that said "nothing," lyrically, about real life.
