outside the Manchester Opera House

This was the second of four Morrissey concerts I saw on the ROTT British tour. I'm writing these out of order, because I finally found an easy-to-use, simple photo manipulation program (ImageForge) to crop and resize some of my photos, and while I only have 4 from the opera house (and they truly suck b/c I was up in the circle AND the douche bags in front of us stood the entire time, making it impossible for me to take a decent photo, what you're gonna get isn't so great ;)

First, the photos. I can sort of piece together when my Bridgewater Hall pics were taken, for these - beats me when these were taken! You can probably figure it out based on the lighting though, they must have spent a fortune on this tour with all the flashing lights and

I'd like to point out that in the fourth picture, you can tell that our seats were up *really* quite high. I'm afraid of heights, so this wasn't so good, but it wasn't so bad leaving, as once the lights were up, we could see the steps. Weirdly, the steps up to the circle were staggered and worse, they weren't standardized. So one step could be really short, like a brick tall, and the next one could be 2 feet high! We were up in the circle, and after the gig, one of our other friends, Rachel - slightly to the right of us in the theatre - said that one slightly drunk guy tried to make his way back to his seat, wobbled like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and nearly fell into another woman or two, almost causing a domino effect. I didn't see this happen but I can only imagine, had I seen it, I would have gasped. Regardless, when me and Paul (my concert companion for the night) tried to get up to our seats while the second opening act (Sons and Daughters) were finishing up their set. Neither Kristeen Young (who Morrissey just adores, god knows why) or Sons and Daughters (whose last night on the tour was this concert) really was my kind of music. personally, I preferred Tiger Army, but now that they're off the tour, it's just too bad. (I rather liked their interpretation of Eddie Cochran's "Be-Bop-a-Lula" at Bridgewater, oh well...)

Second, the setlist from mozzolo.

First Of The Gang To Die / Still Ill / You Have Killed Me / The Youngest Was The Most Loved / In The Future When All's Well / The Father Who Must Be Killed / Let Me Kiss You / Girlfriend In A Coma / To Me You Are A Work Of Art / I Just Want To See The Boy Happy / At Last I Am Born / Ganglord / Life Is A Pigsty / Trouble Loves Me / I Will See You In Far-off Places / How Soon Is Now? // Irish Blood, English Heart

The setlist was altered slightly from the one played the previous night at the Carling Manchester Apollo, so I was psyched. This was the first time I'd heard LMKY live since Constitution Hall, and this was the first time I got to hear "The Father Who Must Be Killed" and "In the Future When All's Well" (my favorite ROTT song after initial album listen). He dropped "My Life is a Succession of People Saying Goodbye," I like that song a lot, but it's not exactly a crowd-favorite. It's definitely a song I'd include if he was doing an all-acoustic, MTV Unplugged kind-of segment where he was sitting on a stool for the entire show and just sang into a mike, not feeling like he had to entertain the crowd by whipping the mike wire about. "Reader Meet Author" was also dropped for the Manchester gigs.

Earlier in the day, Paul had kindly acted as tour guide and taken me around to see Morrissey's childhood home, Southern Cemetery, Salford Lads' Club, and the iron bridge immortalized in "Still Ill": "under the iron bridge we kissed, and though I ended up with sore lips..." Paul had never seen the bridge before either that day (even though he has lived in the Manchester area all his life), so we shared a knowing look when that line came up when Morrissey sang "Still Ill." It's really nice to share something like that with a fellow music lover :) He also explained to me why everyone booed when "You'll Never Walk Alone" started playing on the intro music before Morrissey took the stage; it has to do with it being the fight song of Liverpool's football squad. It was made famous again by Gerry Marsden (of Gerry and the Pacemakers...please tell me you remember "Ferry Down the Mersey"?) and I rather like that song! But Liverpool and Manchester have been feuding for years, so I get the booing now, even though I sing along to the song, not boo to it!

Now that I'd seen one of the concerts on the ROTT tour, I knew that "The Youngest Was the Most Loved," would come along with police-type sirens and the accompanying flashing lights. I have to say that of all the songs that I liked off ROTT initially, this one truly is a corker live. I mean, it's nearly worthy of headbanging. I know the people behind us must have been mortified - most of the circle sat during the whole concert, as was the case at the Palladium one week later - but we had a reason for standing. Paul's probably close to 6', but I'm 5'3", and these 2 girls were in front of us, holding their beers, standing the whole time, boyfriends in tow (see their moronic arms in the fourth photo above). It wouldn't have been so bad if I could see, but you can't see through towers, even though these girls were probably around my height or only slightly taller. one of them even had the balls, in her idiocy, to light a fag during the concert in a non-smoking venue. Yeah, really smart. I think she took one whiff, then threw the stub into her beer. After she did that, I decided I wasn't going to risk trying to take pictures with my digicam, because she and her girlfriend were standing there with their pasty white arms, looking like a beacon in the dark theatre. I could make out the guards over by the stairs were pointing in our direction, obviously noting that someone had lit a cigarette and I was just waiting for her bum to be kicked out of the place. It never happened, though. I felt bad about standing in front of the people behind me, but I paid almost $100 US for my ticket (50-something quid, almost losing them in a nail-biting faceoff with someone else) off eBay to get this ticket, and I was *not* going to let some thoughtless concert goers ruin my evening.

This was the first concert where I realized that for the beginning of "Life is a Pigsty," Boz doesn't play guitar at all. Instead, he's got a thing that I can't describe other than it's like a triangle because you hit it with a mallet, but it's like there's a whole series of them lined up in order of key. He takes up the guitar again after the repeated "life in a pigsty" section in the middle of the song. I was thinking about how a lot of the songs have extended, non-lyrical outros - take LMKY, "Pigsty," "To Me You Are a Work of Art." It's almost as if these are written so Morrissey has a chance to disappear from the change, towel himself down, and change shirts without appearing to have missed a beat. He introduced the band as not being Northern but oh well: "the wonderful Boz Boorer, the indestructible Gary Day, Matt Walker the Great, the extremely sultry Jesse Tobias, the horny Mikey Farrell. and I...I am nothing."

Moz couldn't help but complain about pop music and Radio 1 again. Give it a rest, Moz, we know how much you hate them. And the more you talk about them, it's not going to change their playlists. They either play you or they don't. I wouldn't give 2 hoots about what the radio stations play, because we all know they play junk like James Blunt (or as my Duranie friend Taylor calls him, James C*nt...haha), snore-worthy band types like Nickelback, and gawd-awful rap and hip hop that I neither have the patience or lack of brain cells to enjoy.

Definite highlights were "In the Future When All's Well" and "I Just Want to See the Boy Happy" (which was not at any stretch of the imagination a favorite from ROTT of mine, but it's great live - go Mikey go with the trumpet! or shoot, was that the trombone? haha) Also loved "Trouble Loves Me," finally starting to have an appreciation for this track off the much-maligned "Maladjusted" album, as well as "Pigsty" (which I always liked from the get-go, but live it's so much more exciting.)

as they say in Manchester - and well, all of England really - cheers!

originally posted 05/20/06
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