St. James Theatre, Wellington, New Zealand
Interesting DrugMorrissey's first show in New Zealand was a success, it was positively reviewed in the local papers. The man was in great form. He danced wildly, posed and teased the audience by collapsing to the floor or over the sound monitors. The crowd was extremely appreciative and Morrissey seemed to feed off this. He was miles away from the UK or the USA but during the break between the main set and the encore, like everywhere else, the impatient crowd broke into a chant of the man's name. The opening act was a string quartet of members of the Wellington Regional Orchestra.
Piccadilly Palare
Sister I'm A Poet
Mute Witness
The Last Of The Famous International Playboys
Angel, Angel, Down We Go Together
Alsatian Cousin
Asian Rut
The Loop
King Leer
November Spawned A Monster
Cosmic Dancer
Everyday Is Like Sunday
That's Entertainment
Will Never Marry
Sing Your Life
Our Frank
/Suedehead
/Disappointed
Once again the setlist was significantly scrambled. The content remained sensibly the same however, only current single "Pregnant For The Last Time" was removed to make space for part-timer "Will Never Marry".
Morrissey's only banter of the evening was incomplete sentences: "I think it's about time I said..." before "Everyday Is Like Sunday" and "The thing I meant to say before..." before a very energetic performance of "Our Frank". He looked like he wanted to say something else before each of the encore songs, but again he didn't go much further than mumbling a few words.
During the bridge in "Mute Witness" and once again at the end of the song Morrissey got into a headstand. He threw two tambourines into the audience during "The Loop", the first at the beginning of the song and the other at the end. In the first verse of "Will Never Marry", after the line "I will live my life as I will undoubtedly die...", Morrissey whistled instead of singing "...alone". Three quarters into "Sing Your Life" Boz slipped on something, fell to the floor and his guitar got unplugged. At some point during "Suedehead" Morrissey's microphone gave out. He banged it in the palm of his hand trying to bring it back to life while the audience supplied the vocals.
A video recording of the full set is circulated among collectors. The filming was done from the left balcony and the footage is clear and steady, with many close-ups. It is a rather good visual souvenir of this period of the Kill Uncle tour.
A fair audio-only audience recording of the full concert is also available from bootleg traders and on the internet. It was taped by the same person who provided the video recording mentioned above. Collectors should be aware that the audio was lifted from the video and put into circulation on the internet. Therefore, digital bootleg collectors should make sure they get their hands onto the scarcer files produced from the master audio tape and not the inferior sounding video audio.
Do you have information about this concert? Or do you own an uncirculated recording of it? If yes please contribute and get credited.