The Morning Benders cover The Smiths

GiganticIn doing my cursory research for this week’s selection, I found myself far more interested in the original song than the cover – or more specifically, the video circulating online for the cover.

“I Won’t Share You” was a rather fitting closing track to the final Smiths record, Strangeways, Here We Come, a stripped down number centered around Morrissey’s vocals and Marr’s strummed acoustic 12-string, but it would have made a rather odd single. And despite the fact that I could not find any evidencet hat it was ever actually released as a single, a video – with the rather official-looking “© 1987 Rough Trade” on the opening frame and a rather Smiths-y aesthetic – very much existed. What gives?

A little further digging turned up Passions Just Like Mine, a Smiths trainspotter fansite with a videos page that had the following note:

“I Won’t Share You”
A previously uncirculated video for “I Won’t Share You” was leaked on the internet at the end of 2008. It is credited to Derek Jarman, from 1987 but was supposedly put together in the early 1990s for a multimedia exhibition organised by Rough Trade which would have raised money for the Terrance Higgins Trust. The planning ended when Rough Trade went into liquidation. The video was therefore only half finished, it would have had band footage over-layed (like the “Ask” and “Panic” videos).

Yay internet! As for the cover, its origins are far less esoteric – a couple years ago The Morning Benders, via their blog, gave away (and are still giving away) an album’s worth of covers entitled The Bedroom Covers – probably a hint as to the environment where they were recorded – and this Smiths cover, which finds Chris Chu getting in touch with his inner crooner, was one of the selections and while they probably didn’t know it at the time, it would be a somewhat prophetic move as the band would sign to The Smiths’ label Rough Trade for the release of this year’s Big Echo.

The Morning Benders are in town for three performances next week – two dates opening for The Black Keys at the Kool Haus on August 3 and 4, and a free acoustic show outside of The Big Chill ice cream in Little Italy on August 4 at 5:30PM. The Smiths are and will ever remain broken up.

MP3: The Morning Benders – “I Won’t Share You”
Video: The Smiths – “I Won’t Share You”