This gig was the first time I'd seen Morrissey live in 23 years! I had previously seen him play in Chicago on the Kill Uncle & Your Arsenal tours of 1991 and 1992. The first gig in '91 was one of the best gigs of my life, we ditched high school and queued up all day to secure front row seats at the Aragon Ballroom and the atmosphere was incredible. I caught and retained parts of both of his shirts, handed him a book of Oscar Wilde poetry which he read from the stage, and my friend, who was an even bigger Moz freak than I, needed to be collected from hospital after the gig due to concussion after numerous attempts at climbing onstage and fighting an army of bouncers.
Of course, things have changed in more than two decades. Morrissey may not be throwing himself flamboyantly all over the stage the stage these days but he was still a charismatic performer and was singing very powerfully, with plenty of witty between song banter.
I thought the crowd would consist of middle aged men with greying hair or balding heads but was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of younger people, teens and early 20's, throughout the crowd, who all seemed to know the new album word for word. The way they all bounced up and down singing along to the opening riff of The Bullfighter Dies, with just as much enthusiasm and gusto as they had to bona-fide classics such as Suedehead, was a clear sign that Morrissey is reaching a new audience as well as his die-hard fans.
The set was dominated by the new album and it's extra tracks (Scandinavia was especially good) with a few well-chosen Smiths numbers (What She Said was particularly powerful and The Queen Is Dead was a great opening song, though Stop Me.... was played a little slugglishly in my opinion) and solo tracks. A well balanced set, but when you have a back catalogue as rich as Morrissey's, then no matter what he plays there'll always be a long list of other songs you'll be left wishing you'd heard.
Personally, I was very happy to hear People Are The Same Everywhere in the set. This is a classic Morrissey lyric and I don't understand why people slag it off so much. I would much rather hear him put more obscure songs like this into his set rather than the same old obvious hits like How Soon Is Now or Suedehead, no matter how great they are.
One of the highlights of the set was in the breakdown of Speedway where the audience took over Mozza's accapella segment of Irish Blood English Heart. A really beautiful spontaneous moment hearing those lyrics being sung by so many in the pitch black dark.
The Meat Is Murder video was indeed horrific and I saw people leave the crush of the crowd, turn away, or even faint and get carried out whilst it was playing, but hey, this is something that Morrissey has always felt strongly about and it seems that this video is here to stay in his live set, so we'd better just get used to it. I thought it was a strong performance and loved Mozza's lyrical additions ("ham,lamb, kebab, spam, MURDER" etc) which show that he can marry humour and horror to push his point home. At the end it seemed as if the audience simply didn't know how to react. The applause was muted, as it felt so wrong to clap after what we had just seen.
I went for a Mcdonalds afterwards and it was disgusting.
Everyday Is Like Sunday was a decent encore, but seemed to be more of an opportunity for the disciples to touch the hand of their idol rather than a serious rendition of the song, which hardly matters as the audience were singing the words full force anyway. When Morrissey ripped off his shirt he looked to be in pretty good shape. The battery in my camera died at this exact point, his torso exposed and his shirt pressed into his face.
All in all a great gig. I took along a friend who was seeing Morrissey for the first time and he loved it, saying that the legend didn't disappoint.
Here's hoping that he gets in the studio and records the next album very soon and gets back on the road. I'll definitely be going to see him again!
