... no problem with Morrissey singing Smiths songs (though as a side note, I think he has been doing too many in his sets these days - I'd rather have Suedehead or The More You Ignore Me The Closer I Get than Work Is A Four Letter Word).

However, I've mostly enjoyed his playing of "whichever" of The Smiths songs he's chosen to serve up when I've been to see him (in spite of occasional puffing and sagging - his and mine).

There Is A Light That Never Goes Out and I Know It's Over were actual welcome additions to the setlist on the last solo tour (I went to three gigs - York, Grimsby and Leeds).

In the context of those Morrissey concerts, those songs came to mean something else, something beyond the legend of the band, somehow something new. They transcended The Smiths, and there was a real communal middle-aged pathos and tragic romance involved. I would imagine that most in attendance felt the same way - that those songs are now perfectly parked in that reflective mid-life mood.

So - I have absolutely no desire for that melancholy passing-of-time-and-all-of-its-crimes spell that was cast to be broken in what would be a grasping and wildly vulgar - and ultimately doomed - fashion.

The reality is that reforming The Smiths would see the songs overshadowed by the hype, and a band desperately fighting what would be a losing battle - to live up to unrealistic expectations.

That would not suit their legacy. The Smiths bloody WON. In the end, that seemed to be the point. Getting back together would dangerously rewrite the context of all that went before.

This is also why, despite affection for the Stone Roses, I have no interest in next year's exhumed-carcass public viewing exercise.

.....who actually sold enough singles to have Top Ten hits and had No. 1s around the world!
Anyway, I like those two songs, they were better than anything else around that time.