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Wednesday March 08, 06
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05:27 PM - See The World - Fly Morrissey
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Now I've said it, I feel duty-bound to record it; I'll do my damnest to see this journal through to the end of May. You have my word.
For reasons I'll try to explain in due course, I'm going to be attending enough concerts this time round to make keeping a tour diary seem almost worthwhile, and here seems like a better place to do it than most. So here we go.
At the time those Palladium tickets originally went on sale, it all seemed so far away. I was slightly agog today to realise that the first date on the tour is actually on Monday. Monday! And still I have travel arrangements to finalise... a surprisingly large number, in fact. As of now, I have tickets for, and am definitely going to attend, the following concerts:
11/4 - Paris Olympia
13/4 - Killarney INEC
15/4 - Dublin Olympia
1/5 - Alexandra Palace
19/5 - Portsmouth Guildhall
21/5 - London Palladium
23/5 - Truro Hall For Cornwall
24/5 - Cheltenham Town Hall
27/5 - King's Lynn Corn Exchange
I half-feel I should be trying to get tickets for the second day in Dublin and at least one other of the Palladium gigs. Ooh, and Reading would be nice, wouldn't it?
But I also worry that I may already be overdoing things. I have noticed, for instance, that I am attending more dates than many who post on the discussion board. For me, this is venturing into new and strange territory. I am dusting off various pieces of mental furniture, and they're a fair bit wierder than I remembered them being.
Usually - like most of the other regular visitors to this site, I suppose - I get myself to between two and four concerts on each tour. Since I moved to London in 98, I don't think I've actually left this city in aid of my interest in matters Moz. Although, admittedly, to a gal what lives in the East End like mysen, Brixton and Kilburn seem like a pretty long way away... really.
[An aside:
I was aware of the demands of tradition in my teenage years, and was immersed in Smithdom to a frankly unhealthy extent. I came to London with the intention of brushing all childish quiffs aside and left my even-then hugely impressive collection of Mozzerabilia in the unloving arms of my parents. I think I took the albums with me, but that was it. Very determined I was. So who, then, do you think I met within a few days of moving here? Isn't life just laughable sometimes?
Asides aside...]
Are you still with me, non-existent reader? I was just about to attempt to explain myself. There are, I think, at least three reasons why my gigging tally has risen so spectacularly for the ROTT tour. As tradition dictates, I'll start with that which cuts least close to the bone.
Whatever other accusations are slung my way, the one that I could never hope to rebuff - I would never even try, and I do like a pointless argument - is that I am a southerner. From the East End to the wilds of Essex, to the tames of Dorset and back to the East End again, I am a Southerner - irreedemably and incorrigibly so. I couldn't say I'm proud of it, but neither am I ashamed.
The past few Morrissey tours have not been great for those of us on this particular side (no rights or wrongs from me, please note) of Watford. Lots of opportunity to get yer Mozzer fix in places like Blackpool and Blackburn, not so great for Bournemouth and Bath. Even had I been minded to leave the capitol, my choice of provincial venues would have been pretty limited.
I know that at this point there will be snorts of derision and accusations of feebleness. I am aware that the UK is not the biggest country in the world geographically, but that is missing the point. The Watford Gap is primarily a mental gulf. The North of England is strange to me: people speak strangely there and keep strange customs. Don't even speak to me about Scotland...
I know in my heart that this is bad. I think it's probably partly the impact of a generation of very expensive train fares. I have no doubt that now we have megabus, future generations of Southerners will not be quite so parochial as me. Well, that's an exaggeration, maybe, but you get the idea.
(BTW: Despite all the localist reservations I'm expressing here, I do have great admiration for those who rountinely drive through the desert for hours and cross continents to see Morrissey in concert - it's an extraordinary, wonderful and fantastic thing. I take my beret off to all of yous.)
Not only are the locations better for me this time round, so are the actual venues. Lots of small places, standing room only. I've seen Morrissey seated (me, not him) before, and it lacks something. Lunacy cannot take full hold unless the crowd is rowdy, squashed and generally less than comfortable. I'm convinced of that. And there are benefits to being right at the front of the crowd, crushed right up against the barriers, which we all know about and I surely don't need to go into here.
While it's true that all the concerts save one that I'm going to are standing room only (or at least, I will be standing), the fact that I'm also travelling outside the UK means that the above is not a completely sufficient explanation for my actions. So onwards we go, into the breach.
I always meant to buy tickets for a number of dates on this tour, but not necessarily so many as I have done. In fact, I would have probably just gone to the Palladium dates had I been able to get tickets for all three of them, even though for me that's a distinctly sub-optimal venue. But I didn't get any Palladium tickets, and so I panicked. I am a simple lass, you see, not too smart with me cash, and a tour promoter's dream. At each possible juncture, I committed myself to more and more. In short, I got carried away, and was pleased (? maybe) to discover that I didn't actually care. The threshold was probably passed when I realised that I was actually going to Truro. From thereonin I knew I was going to hell in a Ryanair handbasket.
But why the panic? I am twenty-six. I first saw Morrissey in concert in 95 and have lived through quite a few tours since then without being (too) excessive about it. And at times when I had more disposable income than now, too. What the hell is wrong with me?
At this point I have to make a confession which will diminish me in the eyes of the very few who haven't already made sound conclusions as to the extent of my idiocy. I didn't go to any dates on the Quarry tour. None of them. Even though I could easily have wangled a lot of freebies during Meltdown in particular, I chose not to take advantage of it.
I imagine I will return to this subject, but all I can say is that I made a deliberate decision to blank off a lot of the Quarry palaver. All of it, in fact, other than actually buying the LP. And I mean that in the most literal sense: the record was hanging around on my shelves for at least two months before I worked up the strength to unsheath the vinyl and introduce it to my turntable.
No exaggeration, I promise you. I don't think I stopped caring as such, and I certainly wasn't unaware of what was going on, but I didn't read any of the interviews, see any of the TV appearances - nothing. Since I fell back onto the waggon, I have of course caught up with all the paraphenalia and the songs that go with it. And how it rolls on. That's what makes this deeply strange for me in retrospect: I've always been a bit over-dedicated to this particular cause if anything and yet I was definitely AWOL last time round.
Am I explaining myself at all well here? I suspect that fundamentally it's something I don't quite understand myself. I can think of certain reasons why it happened that way, but none of them really get to the core of the matter for me. I was poor and busy then, but I'm poor and busy now, so what gives?
All I can say is that I was either in remission or denial - and I'm not even sure which, to be honest. I think the degree of publicity around YATQ wrong-footed me somehow, but I'm damned if I can pinpoint exactly why. But in any case, it does get me closer to the reason why I'm going to 9 (and probably 10 or more, I shouldn't wonder) dates this time round. Which is what I intended to explain.
Enough! Prolix should be my middle name. As the kids in this part of the world say, 'this is long for me'.
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