Click on the symbol for concert information:

Nov 10 - Portsmouth Polytechnic
Nov 16 - Leicester Polytechnic
Nov 17 - London, Westfield College
Nov 18 - Ormskirk (Liverpool), Edge Hill College
Nov 23 - Huddersfield Polytechnic
Nov 24 - Manchester, Hacienda
Dec 7 - Derby, Assembly Rooms
Dec 9 - Dublin (Ireland), SFX
Dec 19 - London, Electric Ballroom
Dec 31 - New York, Danceteria

These dates form the last bunch before the Smiths went on their first real tour in support of their debut album early in 1984. "This Charming Man" was in the charts, Smithsmania was the buzzword, the concerts were becoming wilder as they were attended by eager fans as well as curious non-devotees who wanted to find out who were these supposed saviours of rock'n'roll.

As these dates didn't form a tour, the support band changed from gig to gig. See individual links above for more information.

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The setlist was increased in length to 12, sometimes 14 songs. "Hand In Glove" was often performed a second time during the encore. This also occasionally happened with "This Charming Man". Other regulars in the set included "You've Got Everything Now", "Handsome Devil", "Reel Around The Fountain", "What Difference Does It Make?", "Miserable Lie", "Still Ill", "Pretty Girls Make Graves" and "This Night Has Opened My Eyes". B-sides "Accept Yourself" and "Wonderful Woman" and b-side to be "These Things Take Time", though performed less and less often, were occasionally added to complete the set.

"Back To The Old House" was likely introduced to the fans in Derby, or at the latest at the same time as "Barbarism Begins At Home", at the Electric Ballroom in London on 19 December. The former was just a few weeks away from being made available to the buying public as a b-side on the "What Difference Does It Make?" single, but the latter would not be released for another 14 months.

Here is the number of times each song was performed on this leg, in descending order of frequency. This is based on 6 concerts for which the setlist is known.

This Charming Man - 11
Hand In Glove - 8
Handsome Devil - 6
Miserable Lie - 6
Pretty Girls Make Graves - 6
Reel Around The Fountain - 6
Still Ill - 6
This Night Has Opened My Eyes - 6
What Difference Does It Make? - 6
You've Got Everything Now - 6
Accept Yourself - 4
These Things Take Time - 3
Back To The Old House - 1
Barbarism Begins At Home - 1
Wonderful Woman - 1

See here for more tour statistics.

In the middle of 1983 the Smiths had often given their fans a second helping of their debut single "Hand In Glove" as an encore. During the period covered in this section, now that "This Charming Man" (their second single) was released they did the same with it.

In "Accept Yourself", Morrissey still occasionally yelped twice after the line "Time is against me now" although it now happened rarely. He also sometimes added a laughing "ah ah ah ah ah ah" line between "tell me when will you" and "when will you accept your life". In "You've Got Everything Now" Morrissey often changed a line to "No I've never had a job because I'm... too handsome" and another one to "A friendship sadly lost, it could be true, it could be false". He also made a few other minor changes. In "Hand In Glove", instead of singing "but we have something they'll never have", Morrissey usually sang "we have something they never had". On at least two performances of the altter, he flattered his appreciating audience by singing "This one is different because it's you".

The debuting "Barbarism Begins At Home" was very different to the version that would be released on the "Meat Is Murder" album. See full details on the song's lyrics page.

Only one of these shows is commonly circulated at this point in time. The Derby concert was filmed and broadcast on British television programme The Grey Whistle Test and repeated since on other channels. A 2003 digital rebroadcast from Brazil is the best version out there, but it also comes with Portuguese subtitles. Other versions on DVD don't have the subtitles, but they were transfered from inferior VHS copies. Video digital files (avi, mov) ripped from different bootleg DVDs can be found on the internet.

The Hacienda show from 24 November was professionally filmed and the footage from one of the cameras has made it into limited circulation. This is not being traded on the internet yet, but the first six songs can be viewed on Youtube. The leaked footage is from a camera set on the stage, on the band's left side, and features nice close ups of Morrissey and Marr. It is however too dark to eventually see a mainstream official release.

As for audio, the most interesting gig to collectors would have to be the 19 December one at the Electric Ballroom for the early versions of "Back To The Old House" and "Barbarism Begins At Home". The latter is significantly different to the version that appeared on "Meat Is Murder". The audio for the Derby show mentioned above is the most common and, because it was produced from a television broadcast, is also a good choice. See these two dates for a list of bootlegs.

The Hacienda concert has to be one of the best performance-wise. It is not as common as the above two dates because unlike them, it is not available on 'official' bootlegs. It is however possible to get it from bootleg traders on tape or cd-r, occasionally under the title "To The Old House". Completists might also be able to track down the Leicester, Westfield College (under the title "Incredibly Charming" or "College Heroes") or Liverpool (under the title "Gladioli All Over") concerts from the same people.

Digital files (MP3s) have been made available for all the concerts mentioned above, and are found on file-sharing networks.