when I saw the smiths in 1985, they were touring to promote meat is murder, which at the time seemed like a piece of shit album compared with their previous ones. watching the show convinced me it was a lot better than I thought, and I wasn’t even one of the moz disciples crawling onstage to get a holy hug from his highness. I’m just saying, it didn’t seem like a great album then, so why does it seem so great now? even strangeways seems pretty awesome now. well, if you’re reading chickfactor then you probably know who joe pernice is: he wrote one of those 33 1/3 books about meat is murder. you know the series, right? I feel like I know every one of the writers in the continuum series personally: velvet crush sticksman ric menck, who was interviewed in chickfactor 1, wrote about the byrds. j niimi of ashtray boy and aden wrote on REM. LD wrote about 69 love songs. cf contributors elisabeth vincentelli, douglas wolk and franklin bruno have penned their tomes. anyway, back to joe pernice. he now has signed a book deal. if it’s anywhere near as good as his tunes, we should all read it.