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

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.