A Swallow On My Neck
I Am Hated For Loving
Ouija Board, Ouija Board
Billy Budd
Is It Really So Strange?
Lost
Now My Heart Is Full
The Teachers Are Afraid Of the Pupils
Half A Person
Boxers
Tomorrow
I Can Have Both
Meat Is Murder
Hairdresser On Fire
Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me
/Shoplifters Of the World Unite

This gig was a historical one because, seeing as this was the second date in a row in the same city, the setlist was completely scrambled and "I Am Hated For Loving" and "Ouija Board Ouija Board" were added to the set, they were played live for the first time. "Boxers" was also added, it was performed here for the first time since the 1995 Boxers tour. It was adapted acoustically with drummer Spike playing bongos. In the process "Billy Budd" and "Shoplifters Of The World Unite" were also reinstated while "You're Gonna Need Someone On Your Side", "The Boy Racer", "November Spawned A Monster", "Break Up The Family", "Speedway" and "Alma Matters" were temporarily dropped.

For the first time on this tour there was no "The Operation" drum intro. Guitarist Alain came on, greeted the audience with "Hello Camden" and successively introduced "new boy extraordinaire" Spike, "always a Polecat" Boz, "best friend" Gary, himself and then "Steven Patrick Morrissey on guitars!". The singer walked on stage with a guitar - amid the cheers - and greeted the audience with the line "All my children... hello again... are you feeling allwrong? Me too!"

Alain and Morrissey then switched to their proper places and launched into new set opener "A Swallow On My Neck". After the song Morrissey said "I can smell you... It's a wonderful smell... I mean you..." This was followed by the two live debuts. In "I Am Hated For Loving" Morrissey did only a few minor changes, but in "Ouija Board, Ouija Board" he only sang the words "Ouija Board" once in the title line instead of "Ouija Board, Ouija Board, Ouija Board", replaced "would you help me" with "would you spin for me", sang "please hear my voice" and mumbled the whole final verse of the song. He commented about the latter number's first performance with "We never played that song before so as you can tell we are very brave ... which will obviously backfire..."

Ìn "Billy Budd" Morrissey replaced "now it's 12 years on" with "now it's a hundred years on" and "did you hear? they turned me down" with "so what! they turned me down". "Is It Really So Strange" was introduced as "...written by Hillary Clinton". On the second date of the year 2000 Morrissey had introduced a new slow acoustic arrangement of "Now My Heart Is Full" but had reverted back to the song's usual arrangement immediately after. He decided to go back to the acoustic version on this second Chicago date, either for variety or because it fit well alongside the other acoustic live debuts of the evening. Besides the usual live changes typical of that arrangement he followed the line "There's gonna be some trouble..." with "I hope..."

After the song Morrissey joked "Sorry, somebody's on the phone, I won't be a second..." Following "The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils" he announced "That was the first track on the cd that you didn't buy..." After "Half A Person" he said "Now we know very well that I'm not as good as Limp Biscuits... so please don't take this too harshly..." Some lines in live addition "Boxers" were adapted to Morrissey and the city being visited: "losing in front of Chicago", "I wish the ground would open up and take me down" and "I will return one day because of all the things that I see when my eyes close". After the song he said "I thought that was extremely brave..." and had an undecipherable conversation with people in the front rows about being "K.O." and about a "t-shirt".

Morrissey was often distracted by fans trying to make it on stage during "Tomorrow", and the line usually changed to "through this miserable body" was instead changed to "through this morbid body". After the song Alain said that if anyone had lost an item of clothing they should claim it at the Lost And Found and said something about "Semisorry", the anagram of Morrissey's name found on the drum skin. Following this "I Can Have Both" was introduced with the words "This song is called 'I Can Have Neither'..." In the song's bridge Morrissey repeated "I really can... honest, I really can..."

"Meat Is Murder" was introduced with the line "This next song is for... all those of you... who still take... the dominant viewpoint... and still... eat... death..." When he came back on stage for the encore he cryptically announced "Now my meat is full!" before going into "Shoplifters Of The World Unite".

An audience recording of the complete set is available on compact discs and in digital format on the internet. Unfortunately the sound quality is not very good and the recorder had very annoyingly loud neighbours.

Do you have information about this concert? Or do you own an uncirculated recording of it? If yes please contribute and get credited.