Melissa Mora Hidalgo - Mozlandia: Morrissey Fans in the Borderlands

for my Baby Dear
and now my heart is full

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FIRST AND FOREMOST, THANK YOU, MORRISSEY, AND thank you, Morrissey and Smiths fans everywhere. This book exists because of you.

It also exists because a lot of people gave their time, love, energy, and resources during all phases of this project. Thank you to David Kerekes at Headpress for believing in this project and publishing this book. And dood, thank you, Jen Otter Bickerdike, for being the best.

In many ways, this book is borne out of my early exposure to music, especially the kind my mom and dad listened to. In Los Angeles in the late 1970s and 1980s, it was KRTH-101 oldies rock and soul from the 1950s and 1960s for my mama. She loves cumbias, disco, and Eric Burdon & The Animals. My dad loves jazz, blues, and the classic rock of seventies bands like Steely Dan, The Who, and Jethro Tull. He took me to my first concert ever: Olivia Newton-John in 1982. I was eight and in the depths of my first girl-crush. My mom was supposed to take me, but she was about to give birth to my little sister, so my dad did his fatherly duty and took his tomboy daughter to see Sandra Dee herself. He was a good sport. He did not like Olivia or her music, but he liked all kinds of jazz, and lucky for both of us, a smooth jazz artist called Tom Scott was Olivias supporting act that night. Thank goodness for Tom Scott.

Growing up, I heard a lot of music my parents both liked, which meant it was played at home and in the car and turned up loud. Everything from Mark Anthonys Nuyo-Rican salsa, eighties-era Madonna and Michael Jackson songs, and of course, brown-eyed soul by Santana, Tierra, and Los Lobos, the local heroes from East LA. I also had a cool To, may he rest in peace, who collected albums, deejayed parties, and made me the best mixtapes of the coolest music. At the tender young ages of eight, nine, ten years old, I heard bands and musicians like Prince, Missing Persons, Thompson Twins, Human League, the B-52s, Falco, and ABC for the first time. From my grandparents on both sides, I learned to appreciate, and eventually love, what I only knew as Mexican music, whether cumbias, conjunto, or corridos. Singers like Vicente Fernndez, Javier Solis, Juan Gabriel, Linda Ronstadt, and Paquita la del Barrio remind me of my paternal and materal grandparents from both sides of the border. With love, I thank my mom, dad, To and Ta, and all of my grandparents for these formative musical moments that influenced my love of music, especially, and inevitably, Morrisseys.

I am forever grateful to my sisters, Melinda Hidalgo Carrillo and Monica Hidalgo, and Alexis de la Rocha. They are my co-writers in a sense. We have endless shared experiences of countless Morrissey concerts, tribute band shows, MorrisseyOke nights, and other fan events, particularly since the mid-2000s. We all knew what it was like to grow up Chicana/Latina in the late 1980s and early 1990s in suburban Whittier/ La Habra, on the border of Los Angeles and Orange counties, and we all took to Morrissey and Smiths music, and so many other alternative British bands, during these formative years. Little did we know then that Alexis would be hosting the most popular Morrissey singalong night in all of Moz Angeles, or that Monica, Melinda and I would form Sheilas Take A Bow, our all-female Ode to Morrissey and The Smiths. Their Moz memories, stories, and insights as fans and musicians are all over this book. I thank them from the bottom of my butchsister heart for their love, energy, and commitment to this world of Morrissey.

Tambin, I thank the menfolk in my life. My compadre, Nathan Carrillo, and my Brotha B, Brandon Mitsunaga, took many pictures, videos, and notes at various shows and events; they lent their eyes, ears, thoughts, time, and labor to this project in their own sweet ways. I thank them for sharing their music history smarts with me. Thanks to Nate for teaching me about local punk and music scenes and for telling me about the Gun Club and Kid Congo. Special thanks to Brotha B for going with me to lots of tribute band shows, for taking me to see Morrissey at the Gibson Amphitheatre in 2009, and for pretty much coming up with the title of this book.

Over the years, I have hung out with good people who have provided stimulating conversations about their connections to Morrissey and the Smiths. Some are big fans, others just love the songs. All of them have shared space with me at various Moz events throughout LA. They have many stories and insights about Moz and Smiths fandom on both sides of the US-Mexican border. Thank you to Neph Vsquez, JoAnna Mixpe Ley, Laura Luna, and Luie Garca for walking with me and talking with me about Morrissey, Mexicans, and Los Angeles. All of you left your marks on this work in important ways.

I thank my big extended family, especially my aunties, uncles, cousins, and friends like Pat Walker and Isela Reza, who supported me in key ways while I worked on this book. I am grateful for the company, beer, wine, scotch, food, conversation, space to work, and thoughts to mull over, even if some of them had never heard of Morrissey before.

My heartfelt gratitude and much love go to the fierce artists in my life who inspire me to follow my creative spirit and keep on writing. Adelina Anthony and Sharon Bridgforth, my Pa, thank you. Thank you, too, to Karla Legaspy and Marisa Becerra, dear friends and Xicana visionaries who dare to bring our stories to the stage and screen.

I have traversed many Morrissey and Smiths fan communities from the Midlands of England to the Borderlands of California and Texas. Moz Angeles is my home base, so I thank the fans in LA first, especially those I have met at Moz events like MorrisseyOke at Eastside Luv; Smiths and Morrissey night at Part Time Punks; Morrissey concert after parties at the Grand Star; tribute nights at Sage, Mals Bar, Spikes, and the New Wave Bar; the Smiths and Morrissey Convention at The Avalon; Rosie Bojangless Sing Your Life Sundaze dance parties at Footsies; and countless other Morrissey Smiths themed events that put Moz Angeles on the map. Special thanks to Clover Dean, Clever Swine, Hapie-ssey, Liz H., Mozz Liz, MozKrew East LA, Juliet Romeo Girl Wong, Anita Balandra, and Chato for your passionate fandom and personal touches on this project.

I was fortunate to be able to attend the 2015 Moz Army Meet in Manchester, England. I met so many of the fans I knew only as Breakfast Champions on Twitter. It was a wonderful and unforgettable time. Thank you to all the lovely fans and online friends I met at the Star and Garter that night, especially Donna Bishop, Denis Carroll, Maria Stewart, and the Donevan sisters. Thank you to all of the Moz Army, and very special thanks to its founder, Julie Hamill, for her time and contributions to our world of Morrissey. Big thanks to Dickie Felton of Liverpool, another great Moz fan and man about town, for his time, generosity, and books about Morrissey fans. I also thank Craig Gill, drummer of Inspiral Carpets and organizer of the great Manchester Music Tours. Thank you, too, to the Salford Lads Club.

I thank the many other fans I met on my travels in 2014 and 2015 around New York, the UK, Spain, and France, and who all shared their Smiths Morrissey love stories with me. In particular, I thank Marina Garca-Vsquez, co-founder of Mex in the City, an arts and culture collective based in New York City, and host of Mex Moz, an occasional Morrissey Smiths dance party and fan celebration in NYC.

I have one foot in this lovely, lively world of Morrissey and Smiths fandom that spans space and time; I have another foot in the world of formal scholarly pursuits and academe. This project benefits from, and emerges in, the spaces of my life where these two worlds converge and diverge. I value the support of faculty colleagues, scholars, and allies in the fields of liteature, politics, media studies, sociology, cultural studies, musicology, and Chicana/o-Latina/o studies. In particular, I thank Drs. Nigel Boyle, Alexandra Juhasz, Adrian Pantoja, Micaela Daz-Snchez, Frank Galarte, Alexandro J. Gradilla, and Erualdo Gonzlez for their insightful contributions and collegial support at formative stages of this project. My biggest thanks go to Drs. Eoin Devereux, Martin J. Power, Aileen Dillane at the University of Limerick. Their 2011 book,