26 June 2008
Cork (Ireland), Live At The Marquee Festival

All You Need Is Me
Ask
First Of The Gang To Die
That's How People Grow Up
I Just Want To See The Boy Happy
Vicar In A Tutu
Mama Lay Softly On The Riverbed
Sister I'm A Poet
Something Is Squeezing My Skull
The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores
Why Don't You Find Out For Yourself?
I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris
Billy Budd
One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell
Death Of A Disco Dancer
You Say You Don't Love Me
Stretch Out And Wait
The Loop
Life Is A Pigsty
How Soon Is Now?
What She Said (with Rubber Ring outro)
/Irish Blood, English Heart
The first of Morrissey's handful of summer dates went down quite well. Morrissey himself was generally in good form. He looked a bit strained at first, but he quickly eased into the show and was more voluble as it progressed. The crowd was not the most receptive, but there was a good deal of singing along in many sections of the audience. It must be said that the sound was not the best, particularly at the front. Some attendees also found that there was a lull in the middle of the set. A few fans tried desperately to make it on stage but no one was successful, mainly because of the big gap between crowd and stage.

The setlist was similar to those from earlier in the year, but there were a few surprise additions, mostly from the Smiths catalogue. For the first time since the split of his old band Morrissey performed the songs "Ask", "Vicar In A Tutu" and "What She Said". As in 'the old days' the latter number was done in a medley with the outro to "Rubber Ring". The other surprise was the cover of a song originally done by the Buzzcocks, "You Say You Don't Love Me". The setlist also featured the recent singles "All You Need Is Me" and "That's How People Grow Up" as well as 4 songs from the forthcoming album "Years Of Refusal" (which at the time was announced for the coming autumn, but would only end up being released the following spring): "Mama Lay Softly On The Riverbed", "Something Is Squeezing My Skull", "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris" and "One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell".

As he entered stage Morrissey greeted the audience in Gaelic "Conas atá tú?" (How are you?) then added "Welcome to the midsummer murders..." He would address the crowd in Gaelic again now and then throughout the evening. The first surprise came after set opener "All You Need Is Me" when the band launched into "Ask". The song was slightly updated by Morrissey who sang the alternate "Coyness is nice but coyness can stop you from being all the things in life that you'd like to". After "First Of The Gang To Die" the singer thanked the audience in Gaelic: "Go raibh maith agat!... You see, I'm not dense!"

After "I Just Want To See The Boy Happy" Morrissey interrupted the fans chanting his name to ask "Yes friends, what the hell is it?" He made many minor lyric changes in "Vicar In A Tutu" but the most notable one was the change to "I was lifting some lead off the roof of the Salford Lads Club". This was in reference to the recent theft of building material which had been purchased to repair the roof of the Club, a famous Smiths-related landmark and shrine. After that song he asked the audience "Is my hair okay? (crowd cheers) Nothing else matters!"

Following "Mama Lay Softly On The Riverbed" Morrissey teased a fan by handing him the microphone and asking "Are you feeling... suitably... suitably Corkian? (crowd cheers) Off you go! (fan says where he's from, Morrissey repeats the name and adds) I coulda guessed!" Then after "Sister I'm A Poet" he asked the crowd "Would you like to meet the band? Well go ahead! Off you go!... Boz Boorer... on the bass guitar, the very elegant Solomon Walker... playing the drums, Matt Walker... on the electric guitar, very stylish, Jesse Tobias... and he was married five days ago, and he's spending his honeymoon in Cork City, Kristopher Pooley... and, it doesn't really matter what we accept to say, something is squeezing my skull..."

After "The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores" Morrissey said "So, last night we went to see Damien Dempsey (crowd cheers/boos) Oh yes?... Why the boos, is it because he's from (makes circling motion, hinting at Dublin)....? Is that really a reason?" Following "Why Don't You Find Out For Yourself" he made a reference to a recent interview published in Hot Press: "So you weren't too horrifed by Hot Press... In fact! In fact you didn't even read it did you?" Following the yet-to-be-released "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris" he announced "That was a song from 'Years Of Refusal' which (crowd cheers)... Oh yes, you may cheer... is released, I'm told, in September (crowd cheers)... Can you bear to wait?... I'm not sick, really..."

New composition "One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell" was introduced with the line "So from the groins of 'Years Of Refusal', a happy message, which has surely occurred to you, 'One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell'..." Following the noisy "Death Of A Disco Dancer Morrissey thanked the crowd for "...all your souls". The next surprise was the live debut of Morrissey's cover of the Buzzcocks' "You Say You Don't Love Me". For the benefit of the many people in the audience who might have thought it was another new song, he asked "That song was a cover version of a song by one of the greatest Manchester bands... Seven people up here know who it was... (mocks hecklers in funny voice) It was a song by a group called Buzzcocks... Surely you knew that... sophisticated people like you... No?... What's wrong now? What am I doing now? I'm just trying to sing a song!..."

After "Stretch Out And Wait" Morrissey threw his arms in the air and exclaimed "I'm stretching!" As he was about to launch into "The Loop" he exclaimed "Thank you for the whistle!" Before going into "Life Is A Pigsty" he announced "And after all the jubilants and high jinx and wildness, where, there was only one answer..." The answer he was looking for was of course "Life Is A Pisty". As had been custom the previous few years, the song was followed in quick succession with the classic "How Soon Is Now?". But unlike previous pairings of the sort, the short piano interlude leading one song into the other was changed from the traditional "Auld Lang Syne" to the "Happy Birthday" tune.

The final setlist surprise came at the very end of the main set when the band launched into "What She Said". The song had not been done in front of an audience since the Queen Is Dead tour of 1986. Its live arrangement was similar to the 1986 one as it was done in a medley with "Rubber Ring". However, while the 1986 live arrangement started and ended with "Rubber Ring", the 2009 one only ended with it. When he was called back on stage again after a short break, Morrissey's final words to the audience were "I'll be with you at apple blossom time... Kilmainham here we come... thank you Cork!" For some strange reason he followed the line "no regime can buy or sell me" in encore "Irish Blood, English Heart" by saying "E-U" or "eee-you". He left the stage after saying goodbye to the crowd in Gaelic (slán!).

 


A fair sounding audience recording of this show is circulated on bootlegs (recorder: Wiltteri). The recording features the full set minus one minute in the middle of "That's How People Grow up" and the end of "How Soon Is Now?" to the beginning of "What She Said". A MP3 of "Vicar In A Tutu" from a different recording is also circulated on the internet.

A DVD bootleg was put together featuring the material Wiltteri filmed in Cork and Dublin on this leg of the tour. Some of the songs are complete, but many arent. The songs from Cork on this DVD are "Mama Lay Softly On The Riverbed", "One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell", "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris", "The Loop", "How Soon Is Now?", "What She Said" and "Irish Blood, English Heart". The audio from these are also circulated on the internet.

 

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