Morrissey has penciled in Dec 8th at the Manchester Apollo. The news is out!!!

Ticketmaster UK reports the first London Moz gig on 13th November - not yet on sale though.

Support act in Belgium is SACK, according to Belgacom On-Line.

On the Belgacom site is a graphic which I assume will be used for the tour - the full picture from which the detail Southpaw Grammar sleeve is taken.

And finally, the tour starts tomorrow, Oct. 5 in Tempe, AZ. Remember, to check the tour page for information regarding individual shows. From Roberto Hernandez, a forwarded message from the Entertainment Director of Club Rio regarding tomorrow's show:

Club Rio will be serving lunch from 11am - 2pm on the day of the show. We will clear the building. Then we will begin the countdown to doors. Doors are at 7pm, you can get in line whenever you wish. This will be a sold out show !!

It seems that you have missed one of Morrissey's more interesting answers, possibly because it was his first one.

He was answering my question "Are you going to play Smiths-songs on your coming tour, and are you going to debut new songs?"

He answered "Morten, the answer to all your questions is yes."

Quite a positive answer in my opinion.

I'm the webmaster of www.side-line.com, we had an interview with Johnny Marr some weeks ago, it was printed in the August issue of Side-Line magazine that can be bought in Tower Records or at the side-line.com website. He also talked about Morrissey and his fellow buddies from the Smiths.

I thought this could also interest you: Johnny Marr told Side-Line exclusively [September 29 1999], that the recordings for his solo-album are going quite well, we quote "I have an amazing new band: Healers, and we're half-way through the first album" though he also said "I'm recording every waking hour, no exaggeration."

Marr has not decided on a record company yet. Marr: "I can't say I like any of 'em that much. Gotta like who I'm working with you know." Marr ended by saying that the track he recorded with Beck is called "Milk and Honey" and not "The Doctor" as reported in the U.K press for his next album.

I just read on an (unofficial) New Order site that there are rumours that Electronic have split. The site says: "Electronic won't make any more promotion about "Twisted Tenderness". Barney went back to New Order, Johnny Marr started a solo band (the Healers ?) and word is that he might team up with Mr Steven Morrissey again soon. Do not expect anything from Electronic for a couple of years".

In the latest Addicted to Noise, there is an interview with the band Filter. In it, lead singer Richard Patrick talks about bands he listened to in the late eighties. He had this to say about Morrissey, and the Cure:

"Patrick: The Cure was a big hit for me. Didn't like the Smiths. That guy [singer Morrissey] was just too wimpy for me, I think."

Just thought I would let you know. No other mentions. Morrissey may think this Richard Patrick guy is a little too aggro.

In today's issue of the German "Rolling Stone" is an article about Morrissey called "Der letzte der internationalen Playboys" ("The Last of the international Playboys")... It is a bit more than what appeared on the Sunrise site, although the quotes are taken from that source. The article is 1.3 pages long with a big photo of Moz and 4 Album sleeves...

Yesterday, Echo & the Bunnymen played for the first time in Buenos Aires at the Opera Theatre. Since they're my all time second favourite band, I went to see them.

After the show (by the way, it was great!), I went to have some drinks at a bar called "La Cigale" with my girlfriend and guess who I was with? Yes! You're right... Ian McCulloch...

The man was in a good mood, so I felt free to talk a couple of minutes about the concert, people in South America and music in general. Since I was wearing a Belle and Sebastian T-shirt we talked about them (he doesn't know a lot about their music) and of course, I couldn't help but to ask him about Moz.

First, he smiled when he saw my pin of The Queen Is Dead and then, when I asked him what he think about Morrissey, he laughed with his friends and said something like "aarrrrgg come on! He's not bad, but I don't like him"... Also, in his usual way he said things like "Aren't we the greatest band on earth?" Well, I thought you might be interested in it...

This is getting to be a daily event. April (a Smiths/Moz, Housemartins/Beautiful South fan) sent a message to The Beautiful South mailing list describing the following events.

April had the privilege of picking up Billy Bragg from his hotel to deliver him to a radio station interview. April had "a smiths mix tape i made playing in the car, and he [Billy Bragg] turned it up full blast and started rocking out and singing at the top of his voice to "still ill", it was great. at some stoplight a lady next to us had her window rolled down and looked over at us all pissed off, so he started singing louder. It was hilarious. He was nice enough to bring me in during the soundcheck and introduce me to his soundman, who is grant showbiz - ex-of the smiths camp." He also talked about "all of the times he'd seen the smiths live and how great it was."

• Related item: New Morrissey book in October (?) - Sept. 22, 1998.

Here's a link and quote in an article from the Times (October 1, 1999) in the UK which mentions Morrissey and his lyrical strength.

...Far from all this self-serving bombast, the lyrics most worthy of being called poetry are the least self-consciously poetic; the ones where the writer steps outside the maelstrom of his own adolescent ego and imagines what another might feel like - Jimmy Webb's Wichita Lineman, for instance, or Elvis Costello's Shipbuilding, where a marriage and the Falklands war respectively are described in relation to the working routine of an ordinary man.

Pop lyricism boasts hardly anyone - maybe Morrissey or Jarvis Cocker - comparable to Simon Armitage, Paul Farley, Sophie Hannah or Ian Macmillan. These are poets who use vernacular easily and write engagingly about life as most of us live it. (That said, Macmillan points to the adolescent nature of much adult verse: "I judge a lot of amateur poetry competitions and the entries fall into one of four types: the Hospital Visit, the Nature Poem, the Princess Diana poem and the I Need Sex Now poem.")