Civic Hall, Whitehaven
First Of The Gang To DieThis concert went down quite well despite the presence of a few negative elements in the audience. At some point Morrissey received a plastic pint full of beer in the face, but this didn't seem to break the man's general good mood. He was in top form, physically and vocally, and his musicians gave excellent performances. The rest of the audience was still very receptive and they sang along to many of their favourite songs. The venue was quite small, which made for a very intimate concert, but unfortunately the sound could have been slightly better.
Still Ill
You Have Killed Me
The Youngest Was The Most Loved
I Will See You In Far Off Places
To Me You Are A Work Of Art
Girlfriend In A Coma
Let Me Kiss You
Reader Meet Author
Life Is A Pigsty
Trouble Loves Me
At Last I Am Born
In The Future When All's Well
Ganglord
How Soon Is Now?
I Just Want To See The Boy Happy
/Irish Blood, English Heart
The setlist was shortened by one song. "On The Streets I Ran", "My Life Is A Succession Of People Saying Goodbye" and "A Song From Under The Floorboards" were replaced by "Reader Meet Author" and "In The Future When All's Well", the latter rarely played before on the tour. Every night Morrissey would play a cover, either of Magazine's "A Song From Under The Floorboards" or the New York Dolls' "Human Being", but on this date he did neither.
As he came on stage "Hello, I am Sacha Distel" declared Morrissey to the expectant Whitehaven crowd, "and I'd like to welcome you to an evening of French drama." He would later introduce himself again, this time as Blah Blah Blah or Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm. Flanked by his band, all decked out in Playboy bunny T-shirts and later introduced as "Tormented playboys", the bequiffed one then proceeded to take a bow, before launching into "First Of The Gang To Die" to rapturous cheers from the 600 capacity crowd.
The Smiths-era "Girlfriend In A Coma" was introduced with the line "This song was written when the world was a different place". He acknowledged the locals by changing a line in "Let Me Kiss You" to "I zig-zagged all over America, and then I came across Whitehaven" or perhaps "I zig-zagged all over America, but I've never been to Whitehaven". "Reader Meet Author" was then introduced with "In the land of bad reviews, in which I live, there was an album, a cd to you, and there was this song".
At some point Morrissey enquired "I read today that Pete Burns has been arrested... I was shocked... Does anybody know what he did?" He then offered the microphone to someone in the audience who shouted "He's a twat Morrissey!" Morrissey also handed the microphone to his #1 fan Julia and asked her whether she knew anything. As was tradition on this tour, "Trouble Loves Me" was preceded by a local well known song and Whitehaven was no exception. (does anybody know what song it was?)
Besides the above, Morrissey also asked at one point "Does anyone know any Italian?" and at some other time "Does anyone have anything intelligent to say?". When someone shouted "I love you!" or something similar, Morrissey asked "Is that the Tennants Super Strenghth talking?" When somebody asked him to take his shirt off he replied "Why, you wouldn't like it if I did!" and then went on to say that he was 36 or 46. He still ended up removing his various shirts and threw two of them into the audience after wearing them. Both ended up torn into many pieces in the hands of various fans, after a good deal of struggling.
There is an audio recording of this concert out there, but it is not shared much at this point in time and is of unknown quality.
Encore "Irish Blood, English Heart" was filmed by recorder G.O'G. but this is not circulated yet. It might eventually found as an extra tagged at the end of a recording of another date.
Do you have information about this concert? Or do you own an uncirculated recording of it? If yes please contribute and get credited.