"Morrissey: Memories, Memories"

Vancouver Province Newspaper (Oct. 03, 97)
review by Mike Roberts (staff reporter)
submitted by Heidi

I could tell you about an awesome show. About a miserable misanthrope named Morrissey. About a room - the Orpheum last night - brimming with adoration. But I must digress.

To the mid-eighties. To three friends in rabbit-hutch apartments. Before jobs, wives, girlfriends. Before Bona Drag. Around the time of Viva Hate.

The Smiths still the mainstay on the tinny blaster. Three guys swiggin’ gin and listening to Morrissey. Black sweaters, black stove-pipes, black pointy boots... steadying ourselves for a night at the Luv-A-Fair dancing to the band we loved.

I remember someone saying at the time: "If someone’s that miserable, it can’t be all bad."

That was Morrissey, the guy tapping into adolescent angst, pouring it out from the universal diaries of distress. He and Johnny Marr. The guys who took the punk ethos to art school and made it personal.

So I took one of those friends - now solo, 38, hair thinning like his tortured-artist schtick - to Morrissey and we had a gin tipple to "the good old days" and closed our critical eyes as we wafted down the river of fond remembrances.

"Are you bored stiff yet?" asked the man from those ugly new houses of a capacity room flooded with a flurry of strobes.

Not a bit, my man.

What Morrissey lacked in emotion, he made up for in what can only be described as a ritual of unadulterated audience adoration.

Behind us sat the man’s number one fan. "Morrissey! Morrissey!" he screamed.

The new stuff - Boy Racer and Roy’s Keen - proved Morrissey’s still got it. Strong. But when he lit into the old material - Paint a Vulgar Picture and Shoplifters of the World - the starry-eyed crowd went mad. Before Shoplifters ended, Morrissey, shirt torn from his back by fans, ran for the wings.

The lights came up. And we smiled. Yes!