Dagenham Dave

Since the early days Morrissey could be classified as a rather florid writer. He would tackle universal themes but couch them in in very ordinary settings, the mundane provided fertile ground for his acerbic critiques and woeful misadventures. Despite the every day setting it wouldn't stop him from deploying colourful turns of phrase or using unusual words and colloquialisms, (How many songs feature the word "tremulous" or celebrate an obscure slang employed by the Homosexual populace in the 60s called "polari"? These are from the Smiths song "Rushhome Ruffians" and solo song "Piccadilly Palare" respectively). The only problem is that sometimes this approach yields passable songs out of already dull starting points and without the more interesting writing devices the songs could very easily fail to catch fire.

"Dagenham Dave" is such a wasted opportunity. On a technical side there is nothing wrong with the song. It thunders along on a very typical musical backing, serviceable but nothing remarkable. Moz sings of a "Jack the lad" type man but fails to inject any real life into him with the line "Everybody loves him, I see why" particularly missing the mark. Care to fill us in a little more there Moz? There is a certain ambiguity to the song as the singer seems to be both in and awe and resentful to Dave. But the song has several niggles. The rhymes seem easy, the melody perfunctory, it all just feels a little old hat and especially after the more effective character studies essayed in "Vauxhall and I". I'm just not sure what makes this man worthy of a song or of our time.
Maybe it's the two word chorus that seems lazy, lacking any thematic or stylistic twist and it seems to pummel the listener into submission rather than charming them to sing along.

Now the really perverse thing is that I actually enjoy the song, despite how down on it I appear. It's just that while enjoyable, it's a bit ordinary. It's a song I have to justify any affection for, which I do have, but one might wonder why I'd even bother putting so much energy into defending it. There's more swagger to the delivery, a slightly saucy vocal from Moz pitched somewhere between respectful and mocking, and it exudes more confidence than anything describing the titular Dave. It continues the trend of Morrissey attempting to reconcile his outsider tendencies with some sort of fanciful notion of hyper stylized "normality". He seems to believe that he should be connecting to the everyday "lads" (maybe " the ordinary boys" even) that he once covertly ridiculed often in very subtle ways. The truth is though, there was never a time when Morrissey (with the underrated "Southpaw Grammar" and unfairly maligned "Maladjusted" albums) was so out of touch with the land of his birth. His attempts to escape the prevailing Brit pop culture led to what this writer believes was a severe lack of confidence and a mild case of identity crisis.

Easily the best moment of the song are the lyrics "He'd love to touch, but he's afraid that he might self-combust, I could say more...But you get the general idea..." The phrasing is perfect, another example of Morrissey imparting his cheeky asides through the usage of fairly commonplace language, but in this case, the withholding of information adds much to the affair. There's a gossipy feel, like he wants us to push for more detail, and this is a very every day type of social discussion. People love to hear bad things about others, especially regarding a "Lothario" which is what Dave, at the very least, appears to be. What will Karen, or Sharon say? I shudder to think. But putting in a not so veiled reference to premature ejaculation under the umbrella of the 3 minute pop song. Only Morrissey could get away with that.