The Smiths: Rubber Ring

Track of the Week - 22 April 2018

Yes, I know Morrissey is a tool now but this song is excellent and appropriate so...

I may have told you that over the last few months my family have been clearing the attic at my mum and dad's house. It would seem that the elderly gentleman of our acquaintance had hoarding tendencies.

Some of the stuff he kept may have been up there in case he could make a few bob out of it, some he didn't know what do with and some (work gloves, jam jars, egg boxes) he thought might have come in useful at some point.

This week we pulled out an old inner tube that looked like it had come off a lorry.  We laughed and despaired at the same time but the mystery of why he might have kept it was solved the next day.

My mum and I were visiting the elderly gentleman of our acquaintance with his younger brother. When we relayed the story he said that the inner tube was most likely from a bus (my grandfather on that side was a bus driver) and that it was his rubber ring. The family lived in Margate and my uncle had happy memories of bowling the tube from his house to the beach.

He didn't want it back though.

The Smiths' Rubber Ring* appears on the b-side of the 12' version of The Boy with the Thorn in His Side which reached number 23 in 1985 it segues into a song called Asleep (not added here) and (in my opinion) is one of the best eight minutes the group put together.

The singer understands that the songs "That made you cry, and the songs that saved your life" are "so easily outgrown", even though "they were the only ones who ever stood by you."

"Do you love me like you used to?" asks the singer. No we don't Morrissey - but I can't stop loving songs like this.




* A lyric from the song ("hear my voice in your head and think of me kindly") is my Twitter bio at the moment.