MARTIN Rossiter must have been pretty piqued when the music press continuously referred to him as "Morrissey Minor", because now he's ready to really hit back at his hollow detractors. Gene's latest single, Fighting Fit, shakes a defiant fist of fury in the air and dares the listener to make another lazy comparison. "Call us the Alias Smiths, eh? Take that, you bounder!" Ouch.
What the singer formerly nicknamed Rozzer might be forgetting, however, is just how horribly close his band came to being a mere Smiths tribute. Sure, their debut album, Olympian, was a confident swaggering debut which made a noble attempt to create epic pop, a heavenly slice of miserablism created by four charming men in suits, but it was so steeped in the influence of Morrissey and Marr that you'd have to be the laziest journalist in the world not to notice it.
Rossiter didn't help his case one whit when he attempted to out intellectualise Morrissey in interviews, and injected dangerous doses of Wildean wit into his lyrics. Okay, guitarist Steve Mason wanted to be more Paul Weller than Johnny Marr, but Martin's headstrong, highbrow persona won the day, and Gene's music found itself reeling around a somewhat fake looking fountain before coming to a stumbling halt somewhere near the cemetery gates.
Olympian, despite its naive notions of grandeur, failed to make much of a mark on Britpop's spotty skin, and Gene never won the big audience they so desperately needed to feed Rossiter's apparent desire for ironic immortality. Perhaps the public was put off by the constant allusions to The Smiths in every Gene review, or perhaps the world just wasn't ready for Rossiter's anti nowhere stance and his fighting, aspirational talk. In the populist pop atmosphere of 1996, there wasn't much room for thought provoking tunes like Sleep Well tonight and For The Dead - everybody just wanted to roll with it and never look back in anger. We were quite willing and able to sing along with Wonderwall, but we drew the line at committing our very souls to a pugilistic fop with a wartime haircut and a wily sense of wordplay.
So, while Gene waited impatiently in the wings, bands like The Bluetones and Kula Shaker grabbed the spotlight, playing to the galleries while Rozzer & Co. had to skulk around in the floppy fringes of stardom. But now, with the imminent release of their second album, Drawn To The Deep End, Gene are about to find out how deep is our love for smart, sensitive tunes and intelligent, insightful words. This time round, Gene are fighting fit and they're ready to knock those Smiths comparisons right into the middle of next week - or back into the middle of the 1980s where they belong.
They're going to have a bit of an uphill battle, however, because though Fighting Fit sounds nothing like The Smiths, it didn't quite manage to keep up with the Jones's in the current UK charts. Having finally laid the gladioli covered ghost of Morrissey to rest, Gene must now prove that they can cut the mustard without having to murder the meat.
To their credit, the band still retains the passion and self belief which has fired even their most derivative songs, and raised them way above the level of mere copyists. Dig out your dusty copy of Olympian, and you'll find songs which, though redolent of those celebrated Rustholme ruffians, still manage to fill the heart with a ragged sense of hope and a bruised, unbeaten optimism. And anyone who has seen Gene in concert will realise that they're quite capable of transcending their more obvious influences and raising the moth eaten banner of Britpop to something approaching inspirational.
Being lumped in with last year's B division of Britpop must have rankled with Rossiter and his Gene geniuses, but with a whole new crop of hopefuls trying to catch the train using a dog eared ticket from rock's past, it's time for Gene to finally make their big entry into the great book of Britpop, or forever become an academic footnote in rock history.
