did anyone here ever see The Smiths live? if so, what are your memories of that.

just curious.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/3e/b7/d3/3eb7d3d175d3156870b4de7c4bd6bb0e.jpg

my dad saw them on the queen is dead tour. he was/is a huge fan, and no one knew they would disband in a year. loved the show, but his main impression/memory is that they didn't deviate at all from their recordings, and that it was a fairly perfunctory performance, great as it was. he's happy he saw them at their peak. this was the setlist:

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out
Still Ill
I Want the One I Can't Have
Vicar in a Tutu
Frankly, Mr. Shankly
Panic
Stretch Out and Wait
The Boy With the Thorn in His Side
Shakespeare's Sister
Cemetry Gates
Never Had No One Ever
What She Said (with Rubber Ring intro and outro)
That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore
Meat Is Murder
The Queen Is Dead
---
How Soon Is Now?
---
Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now
Bigmouth Strikes Again

saw same tour. it was next to the USS Intrepid on the Hudson. And that's about all i remember.

Yeah, on the 'Meat is Murder' tour, James were support.

It was all very good.

Someone came onstage from stage right after M had waved about something. A brief chat then bloke ran back off. After a moment, Moz turned to the crowd and said 'Don't be nosy!'

Right, next post has to be from someone that saw then on the 'The Smiths' tour.

they played like 20+ gigs in the u.s.? more than the sex pistols anyway.

I know at least a few LA area ILXors saw them at the Universal for The Queen is Dead. (I was down in San Diego and had only heard the band mentioned once -- via an article in Newsweek! My sister was way more plugged into KROQ-style stuff via our own local equivalent 91X and I remember hearing "Please Please Please..." etc. coming through her bedroom door because of the Pretty In Pink soundtrack -- only fully got into the band after I went to UCLA in 1988.)

I saw them in the Electric Ballroom in December 83. I was trying to see a lot of current bands at the time.
Can't remember too much about it. Other than enjoying it but never seeing them again.

Trying to think if Felt were on the same bill or if that was something within the next couple of weeks at the same venue.

I do still like the band, have them popping up on random on the walkman but don't listen to them specifically much.

Yes, I saw them at the free GLC 'Jobs For a Change' festival on London's Southbank. Googling tells me that the date was 10th June 1984, so I would've been 17 years old. It's still one of the biggest gigs, in terms of crowd size, I've ever been to. It was staged in a large courtyard area behind County Hall, and people were standing on all sorts of dangerous ledges - it was rammed. Can remember nothing about the gig really, other than that The Smiths played a full, long set and were well received.

Earlier on in the day, my small group get trapped in a panicky crowd trying to push their way into a locked County Hall building after Nazi skinheads got onstage and beat up The Redskins (and also poor old Hank Wangford, which I didn't see). We didn't stay for Mari Wilson, on after The Smiths iirc, but I remember a nice walk back over the old Charing Cross Bridge with my friends, and those are the things that stay with you, 30 plus years later.

http://www.morrissey-solo.com/threads/1984-june-10th-glc-jobs-for-a-change-festival-jubilee-gardens-london.82300/

Sorry, that seems to be redirecting to a different link on the morrissey-solo.com site, which I am not normally a patron of.

I saw them in 1985 at Irvine Meadows: http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-smiths/1985/irvine-meadows-irvine-ca-33d7d479.html

KROQ was heavy on "How Soon Is Now?" so that's all I basically knew of them apart from a punk friend who played the "Hand In Glove" 7" constantly, and the huge buzz in LA that week with the two shows at the Palladium selling out. Some friends had tickets to the Irvine gig, one dropped out, and by the way could you drive, etc. etc. I was 19.

I was surprised at just how together they sounded and seemed to uncannily know how to scale up to a 16,000 capacity amphitheater. The crowd was bananas, and the band ended up playing three encores - the last being a 16 minute version of "Barbarism Begins At Home" where Morrissey invited the crowd up on stage. At some point he threw his shirt out into the audience where it was prompted shredded by the crowd. Imagine several hundred people coming on/off stage to dance as security simultaneously tries to clear them off while this is going on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0jMdf7-2a4

As much as I liked Marr's playing, I thought Andy Rourke was somehow the glue that kept it all together. After the show, someone in the parking lot was selling squares of Morrissey's shirt for $5. One of the friends I was with bought a square. I felt like I'd just seen the biggest cult band in the world.

I saw a show with the Red Guitars (who I had gone to see) which I was sure was in Dunfermline but the internet suggests was Dundee - which doesn't seem likely but you never know - in March 84. Remember very little about them, possibly because I don't think I had heard The Smiths by then, just the singles.

The only other time I saw them was with my gf of the time during the Craig Gannon era; it felt over-rehearsed and perfunctory and I remember thinking Morrissey was playing up to the crowd far too crowd, like he was in a role. Lots and lots of flowers, which seemed antithetic for Glasgow.

pretty sure i *tried* to see them at nyc's danceteria on nye 1983/84 and didn't get in? DEFINITELY saw april 85 at the beacon theatre and loved 'em.

Wolverhampton, 1986. Moz had his "Queen is Dead" sign, and another one that read "Two Light Ales, Please" iirc. Also a noose that he swung during Panic. The band was tight and very very loud - two guitarists and a big bank of effects pedals for JM. Big numbers such as Queen is Dead were approaching Stooges/MC5 territory in my memory. Echo comment about Andy Rourke above.

I had that 16-minute version of "Barbarism" on a bootleg cassette ... it's probably been 20 years since I heard that.

since I last heard that, I mean -- I haven't got a clue what happened to that cassette and I'm not sure I ever even knew which gig it was recorded at.

my ticked stub:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/AlYtL4KDHhvtWqHDg7msGboegbk_zjZ8z0GVFr2zT6yiIGe2hLfUjlRQrMsylh0Vpgs2BXxRY7qQ4eOH6Lv2rd8vj_Tnvf9wj2b_IkHAO7JnbmTSvWfU5ZxJbgijwM9SFbpDYYKnH05iZuCwjPrxRDQ0pus11F1klnjVM8nnKeijD1lYM0m4mmdNMOQO6O4_AZDOytZcllWI7J41r2TESBLaw2lzhClLNUPdXF-Pbk0-bkbvjoakM5Mb09XDVKNme15EGmLwCLLZgNqn2y3n64uUa-FQetp5w2ZfWjmwtZqTd3LmjxYJo_qsuAf3hGDOBKVJsLXOCvXBQPdff0OD-F0myYwbmei1ZoGIlF9tDvdVjvyXx3B_V0y0xpk_hjdrkDe1qxf4HQ5qMRU81PR_EWKBxH0-JcINQmteqBt0dYTVISFB4ExPyeQ2hA0ocZ32ME0fZPWqr9Vm7XuqnfDdgIPv3d-JazhsZwoHFNjpEpoID29ijLzCGq8pd4asOsPB9iifjXCEWD4zQueu4yxyi1SbANrFR-dKUXywl9YlF6BFXe3mkaRcMdHV89jMJICqjcNWMeESPtTe9RfP9Q1gRmIvzWTshBPlJSSXA11-5Bx0wEXc=w1698-h955-no

The Queen is Dead Tour and the set list that night:

Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want
Still Ill
I Want the One I Can't Have
There Is a Light That Never Goes Out
How Soon Is Now?
Frankly, Mr. Shankly
Panic
Stretch Out and Wait
The Boy With the Thorn in His Side
Is It Really So Strange?
Cemetry Gates
Never Had No One Ever
What She Said
(with Rubber Ring intro and outro)
That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore
Meat Is Murder
Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now
The Queen Is Dead

Encore:
Money Changes Everything
I Know It's Over

Encore 2:
Bigmouth Strikes Again

sorry, that was so big, hard to believe i paid $17.50 for that show. what i remember about that show is they seemed off. i think Morrissey's cat died or something like that. Andy was probably shot up that night. Johnny Marr seemed to be in his own little world. the crowd was crazy for them but they seemed distracted.

I'm so curious as to who you saw a month before (on July 24th 1986) ...

my very first show was The Cure during The Top tour. my life really did changed forever after that night. also the Cure are my all-time favorite because of that.

anyways i will go over just this page:

Depeche Mode July 15, 1986
The Cure July 24, 1986
The Cure July 25, 1986
The Smiths July 28, 1986
New Order Nov 1, 1986
New Order Nov 5, 1986
Siouxsie and the Banshees June 7, 1986
Siouxsie and the Banshees June 14, 1986

i should have just died after this year. show wise did it ever really get any better than that? probably not.

also i was very young, and these were the first shows of my life...

That's a fucking great series of shows, IMO!

KROQ

the funny thing about that Cure show is, here i thought i was going to hear a pop band play a lot of song similar to "Let's Go To Bed" as Japanese Whispers was the only Cure i knew at that time. lol, mind was blown.

I have a feeling I was at a lot of the same shows Bee OK was at.

i should have just died after this year. show wise did it ever really get any better than that? probably not.

My summer of 86 was similarly unmatched for live shows. Saw New Order (although Barney was clearly smashed and Hook closed the show while slowly falling down against his amplifier, it was still excellent overall), shared a pre-show beer with Pat Fish prior to the Jazz Butcher gig and yes, I caught the Smiths on August 2 in Ottawa. I think Craig Gannon was on second guitar? For much of the show, there was this steady stream of fans jumping onstage to embrace Morrissey. Most memorable moment was when one guy jumped up, ran toward Moz then suddenly veered left, grabbed a drink from the floor and ran back into the crowd.

Afterward I bought a tour T-shirt (the one with the kid with the popsicle) that I kept until the mid-2000s when I finally acknowledged that it no longer fit my middle-aged frame. Donated it to a thrift store. A couple months later, I saw a young girl in a record shop wearing a similar shirt. I asked her where she found it and yup, same thrift store. Needless to say it looked exponentially better on her.

Hmm, so the New Order show in Ottawa apparently happened in November 1986. Thirty years passing should forgive my slight lack of precision. Great year, still.

Saw them in Bristol in 1985 - March maybe? On the Meat Is Murder tour, also supported by James. The Smiths were my single favourite thing in the world at that point, and I enjoyed it very much but I recall the show not quite amazing me in the way it might have; little did I know at that point that my Smiths fandom was on the wane and I'd never buy another of their records (still love the first few obviously).

They were selling sets of 10 badges, each with a detail from the cover of one of their 10 releases up to that point; think I still have those around somewhere.

Oh, I think I have that too. I def have the programme someplace.

Do they still make programmes?

I saw them in London at the Hammersmith Palais in March of 1984, while visiting the UK. Frank Chickens (terrible, I thought) and Red Guitars (amazing, though their records never came close) opened up. Morrissey came out with a bouquet of daffodils stuck in the back pocket of his Levi's. The band were amazing, Sandie Shaw joined them for a song or two, to great applause. To me, this was their peak, and many have seen the show as their breakthrough - the crowd was a brilliant mixture of the enthusiastically curious, a small coterie of bonkers early fans and a lot of press sniffing it all out. It was a pretty magical show, the band in top form and Morrissey really seemed like a newly-born star. I'm not the biggest Smiths fan - never really made it to The Queen Is Dead, for instance - and to me it was surprising how quickly it fell apart and they lost that early brilliance.

this is a good thread! i was too young to see the smiths, but i like reading these recollections ...

reposting my ticket stub since it disappeared:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/z-KgPDD1vt2y20dMbf3cEbEewm8-XTdGRZWGW4LOxhmrv6oc_BSTpcl-28ZW7QjFUvdOb4Z2IFFuGU9BXk3j7o5tLRxVcz6vcoV_duHrc_HJe0ChWkp2Nu3qIZeqrAlwp6TSh1rS1rSIsLua0FbsrO89r6OnL9olr5T2MlaSTiMWbibogiRYF9c4ywejIRa5STCj3_CGgdqsQ_cmLjMRzULyMuRk72U5jZJipOsz7SlJzmS1h8kKIMl8pzbvOJZMIv13EOHZTSNNcQfjYaEQu2OY4h4-7KvJWza3WxqLE-ZeW-nfJEtYbJjNeLBdk_romGFpsG63Y8h2s1VGkkoTdCfpWrsYhvGH1u9nlV39tIKX-YNgpStzOKV6xs_p8DHDfe4Wmw3M3g029k6-yCAdQ1TdGy9izyZ9Uv1ixnP1LphFKNB0TAPXKiOJyMvtApqYC5zIhnymAha2DGJ4fDko7vt2EA1YXzTDLawyDh4y8X9FLL8XHD2JiChvaH4ltmFfnimmPojwC9PsPM9C7TRUL_M0hCamIqnYRtsVQaIC7SmyBfC0uupFq7v-iX-h_DagYgh9fwQ2zT067Dz2TLuC_uKeIMcpd20wcSQfkRDO9Tmjd2Fh=w1698-h955-no

lmao at budweiser
for the smooth taste that wont fill u up but never lets u down, make it moz night

I saw them on the Meat Is Murder and Queen Is Dead tours – Royal Albert Hall and London Palladium respectively.

They were my favourite band at the time, along with REM, but truthfully, they couldn't compete with REM live. Both times my main sensation was being underwhelmed. At the Albert Hall, they opened with How Soon Is Now? and it simply had none of the power of the recording (Marr later admitted that, basically, they couldn't do it live well until that spell with Craig Gannon on second guitar). The momnt that sticks in the mind was That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore, when the stage went dark apart from a single spotlight in the Gods picking out Morrissey as he sang the "I've seen this happen …" coda. One of the encores was Barbarism Begins at Home, as a duet with Pete Burns, which was unexpected, given they he was in his brief flush of SAW electropop stardom at the time.

As for the Palladium, I have almost no memories of that at all. And I was too young to be drinking. Looking at the setlist, it's pretty much Rank.

I'm perfectly prepared to believe they were incredible at the start of their career in clubs. And maybe my expectations had something to do with my disappointment. But I really believe they weren't that good as a big-rooms band.

They had a blanket-laser effect for that coda of "That joke" back at the Hexagon, it was clearly a new thing as Johnny Marr was all 'whoa!' to Andy Rourke about it when it kicked in.

Maybe it was the same thing, and my memory is playing tricks on me. What did the Hexagon show thing look like?

Saw them at the Nottingham Royal Concert Hall on the Queen Is Dead tour, October 1986. Seated venue, we were on first tier. Set list: http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-smiths/1986/royal-concert-hall-nottingham-england-23d7d427.html

My partner, during the first song: "If those PRATS at the front hadn't STOOD UP, we could all have had a PERFECTLY GOOD VIEW."

My partner, after the sixth song: "They are fantastic. But I have to leave now."

And so he did. He has never been able to cope with crowd hysteria - hell, he even had a panic attack at a k.d. lang show - and the hysteria was pronounced. The two girls to our left kept screaming and clutching each other, every time Marr made a significant move. It was all a bit Hard Day's Night.

For the first few songs -and especially during the openers, "The Queen Is Dead" and "Panic" - they felt like the best band in the world. Then it tailed off a bit. I remember getting a bit bored during "Never Had No One Ever" and "I Know It's Over". In hindsight, I could have been a considerate boyfriend and left when he did, and I'd still have had the best of the show.