Wembley Arena, London
Do Your Best And Don't WorryMorrissey was in good spirits and seemed to be getting used to the idea of singing for a small portion of the audience. He was throughout the show very theatrical, miming lines to "The Boy Racer", "Spring-Heeled Jim", "Dagenham Dave" or "The Operation". his friend Linder was present, taking photographs like she did on the Kill Uncle and Your Arsenal tours in 1991 and 1992. No one made it on stage. There was no change in the setlist.
Reader Meet Author
The Boy Racer
Nobody Loves Us
Billy Budd
We'll Let You Know
Spring-Heeled Jim
Dagenham Dave
The Operation
Hold On To Your Friends
Speedway
The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils
The National Front Disco
At some point Morrissey was given a tambourine by someone in the crowd. It had the words 'SEXY SEXY SEXY' and a photo of him bare-chested on it. It had become a tradition in 1995 for him to throw a tambourine into the audience with something written on its skin. Now someone was doing the same for him. When fans shouted his name after "We'll Let You Know", the singer simply asked "Yeah?". He introduced "Dagenham Dave" with the line "this is a single which did incredibly badly in the charts... which is a great surprise, of course... to nobody..." He didn't say much following this. As he sang "what the hell have they stuck into you?" during "The Operation, through the flashing of strobe lights, he mimed someone shooting a syringe up his arm. The show ended like the previous one, with Morrissey wiping his face and body with his shirt before throwing it into the crowd to be fought over.
This concert was recorded by BBC Radio 1 and seven songs ("Do Your Best And Don't Worry" / "Reader Meet Author" / "Nobody Loves Us" / "Dagenham Dave" / "The Operation" / "Hold Onto Your Friends" / "The Teachers Are Afraid Of Their Pupils") were broadcast on the radio shortly after. In 1996 the first 6 of the latter 7 titles were broadcast on Finland's RadioMafia. A selection of songs from this show were also webcast in 2003 by BBC6 in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the release of the Smiths' first single. The webcast selection is unknown.
The manufactured bootleg cd "Practising Troublemaker" features the seven-track BBC broadcast mentioned above, obviously in FM stereo quality. The rest of the concert is also featured, but taken from an audience recording. The cd also includes "Sunny" and "Now My Heart Is Full" from 3 days earlier because those two songs were not on the setlist on this date. Finally audio recordings of "The Boy Racer" and "Sunny" from UK television programme Later With Jools Holland first broadcast on 11 November 1995 are tagged at the end. Because the songs taken from the audience recording are also of rather good quality, "Practising Troublemaker" may be the best bootleg of this tour.
The same seven tracks from the BBC radio broadcast are also found on the manufactured bootleg cd "Shoplifters From London", but mislabeled as being from 18 November 1995. In this case the recording is paired with 10 songs from 24 February 1995.
The six tracks broadcast on Finland's RadioMafia (as mentioned above) are circulated in digital format on the internet. The sound is in FM quality.
The full audience recording of this concert, scarcely available from certain bootleg traders, will be interesting only to completists in search of Morrissey's between-song banter that was edited out by the BBC and the makers of "Practising Troublemaker".
This concert is also available in its entirety on bootleg VHS, DVD and on the internet on torrent sites (recorder: Chris A). The filming was done from the left balcony and the footage is steady. A 'restored' version of this recording is circulated on DVD and torrent sites with the original recording's rather bad audio track replaced with the audio from the "Practising Troublemaker" bootleg mentioned above (restauration by B.Clark).
Do you have information about this concert? Or do you own an uncirculated recording of it? If yes please contribute and get credited.