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15 December 2006 Düsseldorf (Germany), Philipshalle
PanicDüsseldorf was arguably the best of the five German dates of this leg of the tour. The venue was sold out, Morrissey was very talkative and there was a good deal of interaction between him and the audience. The crowd did seem a bit reserved at first, but they gradually warmed up, particularly during the Smiths-era numbers and the performance of recent singles such as "First Of The Gang To Die", "Irish Blood, English Heart" and "You Have Killed Me". Because of the size of the venue the sound quality was not always good. There was no change in the setlist. Morrissey's first banter after he entered stage, bowed left and right and picked up the microphone was "I must warn you, I must warn you, I sing in a foreign language!" Throughout the evening his extensive banter included the mention of Düsseldorf more than once. He said "I walked around Düsseldorf today and not one person said hello to me. Which means they must have recognised me..." He also mentioned the number of "women in furs" he had seen "walking the busy streets of Düsseldorf". He said that he had played the venue in 1968 and asked who was there. When corrected by the crowd that the one and only concert in this hall was in December 1992, he joked "I knew that... I wanted to test you... Were you there? There's my father, he was there..." At some point Morrissey seemed very please that the crowd was singing his name. He told either his bodyguard Arturo or his favourite fan Julia "I can't stop them, I can't!". When mentioning his most recent album, he called it "Graves Of Spinsters" and said "...which I'm sure you cannot buy anywhere in Dusseldorf". "Disappointed" was introduced with the line "This is a song by Diana Dors... Liar!" while "I've Changed My Plea To Guilty" was introduced with "I could explain the meaning of this song, but that would take longer than to play it... This is why God invented the grammophone." When some of the crowd sang along to the opening lines of "Irish Blood, English Heart": "...this I'm made of", Morrissey asked them "Really?" In "The Youngest Was The Most Loved" Morrissey added emphasis to a line by singing "and he turned into a killer, thank God!" In live solo performances of "William, It Was Really Nothing" he usually replaced "God knows I'm trying to live mine" by "I'm here trying to live mine" but on this date, for the first time since he reintroduced that song in his set he only made the change on the second occurrence of the line. In live performances of "Everyday Is Like Sunday" he usually changed a line to "scratch on a postcard" and on this date he extended it to "scratch on a postcard oh Mama! how I dearly wish I was not here" just like he had done on the previous few dates. In "The National Front Disco" Morrissey interrupted himself to say "God bless you!" to a fan who was trying to get on stage but failed. In "How Soon Is Now?" he sang "...of a shyness that is crippling and vulgar" as he had been known to do on the previous few dates, but he also did the previously unheard "you could meet somebody who actually likes you". Morrissey seemed amused when fans fought for his the first of two shirts he threw into the crowd and commented with the words "Very impressive". He then stood for about a minute half-naked in front of the audience before fleeing backstage to get a fresh shirt. When he changed into a blue one, a fan asked him "Feeling blue again?" and Morrissey replied: "There's always room for improvement." At the end of the show he took his time before leaving the stage, trying to shake as many hands as possible and trying to stop fans hurting themselves in the crush.
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