[] comments by Scott Krajewski
Solo-gigs in Japan on Dec 13,14,16,17
European Bowie/Morrissey-Tour:
Jan 17: Helsinki, Finnland
Jan 19: Stockholm, Sweden
Jan 20: Gottenberg, Sweden
Jan 22: Oslo, Norway
Jan 24: Copenhagen, Denmark
Jan 25: Hamburg, Germany
Jan 27: Brussels, Belgium
Jan 28: Utrecht, Holland
Jan 30: Dortmund, Germany
Jan 31: Frankfurt, Germany
Feb 1: Berlin, Germany
Feb 3: Prague, Czechoslovakia
Feb 4: Vienna, Austria
Feb 6: Lujobljana, Yugoslavia
Feb 8: (TBD) Italy
Feb 9: (TBD) Italy
Feb 11: Lyon, France
Feb 13: Geneva, Switzerland
Feb 14: Zurich, Switzerland
Feb 16: Metz, France
Feb 18: Renes, France
Feb 20. Paris, France
Jerusalem plays before the concert...
Morrissey (in a brown suit):
"Good evening, we are the support band"
Do Your Best And Don't Worry
Reader Meet Author
Boy Racer
? ("Just can't wait to make more mistakes"?) [Nobody Loves Us]
Billy Budd
We'll Let You Know
Spring-Heeled Jim
Dagenham Dave
The Operation (sans drum solo intro)
Hold Onto Your Friends
Now My Heart Is Full
Sunny ("This is the new s-s-single, it's called s-s-sunny")
Speedway
The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils
Sound started off pretty rough but improved by Boy Racer. The band were tight and everyone, esp. Moz, seemed to be enjoying themselves. A few folks got up on stage to hug the man and were escorted off. He didn't seem to mind and had a dig at the security about keeping everyone in their seats.
The Low Symphony plays in the intermission...
David Bowie:
No Hell
Look Back In Anger
Hearts Filthy Lesson
Scary Monsters
Voyeur
Oxford Town
Outside
Andy Warhol (radically noisy version!!!)
Man Who Sold The World (strange, stripped down, slow)
Small Plot Of Land
Boys Keep Swinging ("Let's do something silly, shall we?")
Strangers When We Meet
Deranged
Breaking Glass
We Prick You
Nite Flights
My Death
DJ
Teenage Wildlife
Under Pressure (with Gail Ann Dorsey -- I saw her live at Surrey
University a long time ago...)
Spaceboy
The end -- NO ENCORE!!!! (but it was a 1 3/4 hour set from Bowie after an hour of Morrissey so we can't really complain)
Bowie's set had a really dark, angry feel to it. Seemingly very loud and full of noise. Excellent stuff. The reworkings of the old songs were also pretty amazing.
sean@corf.demon.co.uk (Sean A Corfield)
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|> Morrissey (in a brown suit):
Frankly the suit looked a bit embarrassing and it stayed buttoned throughout the concert. He wore a white shirt underneath, unbuttoned most of the way. He did a fair bit of running around and striking poses during songs. He also swung from side to side, 'whipping' himself with the mic lead. But it all looked a bit amateur -- his theatrics were more successful with The Smiths.
The rest of the band were nearly as active as Moz, lots of one-legged dancing around from the guitarist (Moz didn't introduce anyone and I can't remember their names just now).
|> "Good evening, we are the support band"
A lot of humourous comments were made along these lines: "Hope you enjoy David" was said a couple of times. He seemed to enjoy the irony of supporting an act, most of whose fans actually didn't want to see Moz at all -- Wembley stayed half empty until the interval.
|> Do Your Best And Don't Worry
Apart from poor sound, this really improved my opinion of this songs. The raw-edged live sound seemed to make it more urgent.
|> Reader Meet Author
OTOH, I think this was overwhelmed by the live sound -- it needs more polish to work and it sounded a bit rushed.
|> Boy Racer
This was great! Aggressive and fast, the first song that my friend (not a Moz fan) said he liked.
|> ? ("Just can't wait to make more mistakes"?) [Nobody Loves Us]
I didn't recognise this so I can't comment.
|> Billy Budd
|> We'll Let You Know
|> Spring-Heeled Jim
The latter was too fast and lost it's edge.
|> Dagenham Dave
|> The Operation (sans drum solo intro)
They went straight from Dave into Operation with just a brief drumroll so I was a bit disappointed -- I'd really wanted to hear that solo live! But it was excellent. Definitely better live.
|> Hold Onto Your Friends
|> Now My Heart Is Full
Slowing things down, I somehow expected NMHIF to be much more anthemic live. Maybe it was the audience. Perhaps later in the tour this will get more of a reaction.
|> Sunny ("This is the new s-s-single, it's called s-s-sunny")
First time I've heard this...Sorry, I don't think much of it. Unmemorable.
|> Speedway
Another really aggressive reworking -- so much so that I didn't recognise it until about half way through! Had to listen to it when I got home because I still wasn't really sure it actually was Speedway!
|> The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils
Great track to finish with. Dunno how long it was but it certainly wasn't too long.
My friend was really enthused about the Southpaw tracks but didn't like the V&I stuff. Knowing how it all sounds on the albums (my friend doesn't) I can only agree with him that the concert was definitely geared to showcase the new songs: tight playing, lots of power and aggression. Moz's voice was fairly forward (except for Teachers) but the voice was rougher, harsher so it didn't suit the few slower numbers they did.
If I'm honest, I'm disappointed with Moz. I really like Southpaw and I guess I expected too much. But it was the first night of the tour so maybe things'll improve. At the end of the day Moz and the boys looked and sounded like a 'support band', albeit a pretty good one.
sean@corf.demon.co.uk (Sean A Corfield)
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Moz came on at exactly 7.30 and played every song from Southpaw Grammar except
the operation and Southpaw, he played a few songs from Vauxhall and I including
Billy Budd, Speedway , Hold on to your friends and now my heart is full.
he also sang the new single "Sunny" and the b side Nobody loves us.
The crowd were not very enthusistic as he was the only the support and the
arena was only half full, Moz did not look very happy and gave the crowd a few
digs and some cheeky remarks.There were only a handful of moz fans there who
are following most of the tour which was a suprise, but tickets at #28 who can
blame them,I travelled from Dundee to London and i had crap seats which was a
bit of a bummer but the other gigs in Aberdeen and Newcastle are standing and
my seats in Glasgow and Manchester are pretty good.To finish on a good note the
Moz did play a good set considering the curcumstances and his new single is out
on the 20th with live b-sides which are London, Billy Budd and why don't you
find out.....more reviws to come
give us your thoughts of the moz gigs
Do your best and don't worry, Tony Boyle
Do your best and don't worry
Reader meet author
The boy racer
Nobody loves us
Billy Budd
We'll let you know
Spring-heeled Jim
Dagenham Dave
The operation
Speedway
Hold on to your friends
The teachers are afraid of the pupils
National front Disco
All the songs were played exceptionally well, except for The boy racer,
which was spoilt by Johnny Bridgewood, who either decided to play in the
wrong key or couldn't be bothered to tune his bass, unfortunately this
threw Mozzer's voice out as well. Apart from this Morrissey sung with
great passion despite the number of people who hadn't come into the venue
yet to see the great man himself (the place was only about a quarter full
when he started).
Ed Roll (E.Roll@uea.ac.uk)
-------------
I've been to last Friday's gig in Wembley.
Though i had a lousy ticket in sector 27, i managed to snoop in sector A,
where i joined Christian, after the show started.
So there i was on row 2, central :)
I can't remember the line up. I was too impressed to mind about that.
My favorite tracks were:
Dagenham dave
National front disco
Nobody loves us
An incredible short version of "The teachers are ...". Maybe the nicest
surprise of the concert.
Some impressions:
1 - The guy is a punctuality maniac. He *really* started at 19:30 :-) So
long for the 2nd pint...
2 - Bowie's audience sucks. Bunch of
settled-in-life-middle-age-liophilized-guys ;-)
3 - There were only 2 lines of people standing.... something like 40 or 50
persons :-(
Disapointments:
1 - Not a single Smiths song.
2 - No Sunny
3 - No encore
Funny things:
Though i haven't been to Wednesday concert, Christian told me that he asked
for requests and someone sugested some Smiths song. He said "i'm afraid
we're not able to perform that" to what someone from the audience shouted
"Do your best and don't worry", which made him laugh :-)
Friday he introduced DD, with something like: "the next song is a single,
which incredibly, surprisingly, didn't make up to the top of the charts,
much to the amazement of.........nobody"
Anyway, he sang very, very, very well, specially in the 2nd half, and even
though he couldn't (or didn't want to) "touch" people on the front lines
(because of Bowie's draconian security) it was a very nice concert. Maybe a
bit cold, but very nice...
About Bowie i can't say much, since i left the Arena as soon as Moz stoped
singing :-) I wasn't having nothing else in my hears after him :-)
These are my impressions on the concert. We also had a reunion on Simon
Hughe's place (thanks Simon). We watched the South Bank Show and we heard
the BBC2 thing... Sunny is really a great song, with lyrics that wouldn't
fit in SG. People made arrangements for next morning's walk :-)
Monday morning i had lunch in a pub in Holborn, and they had "There's a
light" on the radio...
That's it.
I'll shut up now
Pedro (pmartel@cernvm.cern.ch)
A word of advice: when going to the NEC, get an *early* bus. It took us an hour and a half to get there from across Birmingham, as the buses only run every half-hour from the centre. Better yet, take a taxi. Owing to this unfortunate and irrititating fact, we missed almost all the set, but from the looks of the NEC, so did just about everybody else. The audience was old, mainly thirties to forties, and not only old but also dull. A comment overheard after the set, on the stairs to the bar: 'Who was that?' 'Morrissey' 'Who's he?' 'Dunno, but he was crap though, wasn't he?'. The songs we heard, which were Teachers, Speedway and National Front Disco (I think there was another but I can't remember what, it was *that* memorable), which were all performed well, if a little listlessly. You can hardly blame him, with the whole area empty or seated, with about twenty screaming fans at the very front. Fans were helped up on stage during Speedway and, I believe, during National Front Disco, but not many, and they were rapidly escorted off stage by security. During Speedway a couple of them virtually lynched him, but they were dragged off. That was pretty much the most exciting moment, National Front Disco ended with the usual dragged-out mess, and that was that. He didn't speak much to the 'crowd', only making a dig about David Bowie before starting National Front Disco (remember it starts 'David ... '?).
David Bowie: C R A P
New album's not too bad, but he massacred everything he played into a kind of terrible 'RAWK' with guitar solos in every song, huge band, etc etc etc. Total waste of money.
-- / there you go \ Jacob J. Davies \ wielding a bicycle chain / email: u5g82@keele.ac.uk / oh why won't you change \ irc handle: WhiTenois \ change and be nice? / - 'Such A Little Thing...', Morrissey
Well what can I say ?
This was a fucking amazing concert. For the Morrissey set I stood in the
front row, centre-stage. Morrissey came out at 8 pm and played for an hour
(when I say a hour I mean an hour , not 59 minutes not 61 minutes) this
was timed to perfection. Morrissey wore a brown suit, pink shirt, Doc shoes,
and that necklace/pendant thingy from the Vauxhall and I album.
The set contained only one Smiths song, London, which I heard him play 3 times at the sound-check which we could barely here because of the traffic and the poxy rain !. Anyway, the goose pimples are only just begining to die down (OOPS ! spoke too soon ). Most of the set was Southpaw Grammar and Vauxhall but he also played National Front Disco and We'll Let You Know. He didn't play Sonny though, DAMN. The back-drop was Cornelius Carr and Morrissey kept pointing to it during Boy Racer. He also kept wiggling his finger at fly level during the " .. whole world in his hands" line
quite a few people got on stage. morrissey, and even the bouncers, were helping
people up. At the end of the set he said
"Thank you for your continuing warm welcome and we hope to see you back
here again soon" Here's hoping eh?
He didn't say much else during the show
"Me ? Are you sure ? Ohhhhhh"
"Yes yes YES YES YES YES YES YES YES "
During the feedback bit of National Front Disco he took his jacket off, tied
it around his waist, then took his shirt off and rubbed himself all over
before throwing it to the crowd. ( Didn't get any of it though!)
Bowie was damn good too. My favourites from his set were Scary Monsters, "the most complex song of ths evening " - Boys Keep Swinging.
Colin (COSULLIVAN@dit.ie)