6 October 1999
Arlington Theatre, Santa Barbara, CA

You're Gonna Need Someone On Your Side
The Boy Racer
Billy Budd
Reader Meet Author
Is It Really So Strange?
Hairdresser On Fire
Lost
Sunny
Speedway
The Edges Are No Longer Parallel
Now My Heart Is Full
Alma Matters
Meat Is Murder
Trouble Loves Me
Tomorrow
The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils
Break Up The Family
/Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me
This concert was a very wild one. The constant pressure of the crowd towards the front was too much and many seats were torn from the ground. It all ended in chaos as many fans invaded the stage, slightly cutting the last song short. In the process guitarist Alain Whyte hurt his back and the concert scheduled for the following night in Las Vegas would have to be cancelled. Morrissey was throughout in great spirits and rather talkative. The setlist was very similar to that of the previous night, but "Roy's Keen" was dropped.

As Morrissey came on stage he thanked his audience in Spanish ("Gracias!"). We would repeat this now and then throughout the evening. A banana was teasingly used as a prop at crotch level during the "...urinal" part of "The Boy Racer". After a very well received "Reader Meet Author" Morrissey stirred the audience into more action with the invitation "you know you can do what you like, don't you... within reason...".

In "Is It Really So Strange?" Morrissey changed "I found a tiny house" to "I found a modest house". He also sang "Oh yes you can kick me, and you can butt me, and you can break my face but you won't change the way I feel" and further down "Oh yes you can slice me, and you can punch me, and you can dislocate my shoulder but you won't change the way I feel". There were even more changes into "Hairdresser On Fire". After that song Morrissey shouted "Wendy! The gas bill... have you paid the gas bill?" and introduced "Lost" as "Found".

After "Lost" Morrissey teased the audience again, this time by saying "You can have my trousers later". The other lesser known b-side "The Edges Are No Longer Parallel" was introduced with the line "This is a song you will pretend to know... it goes nothing like this...". In that one Morrissey replaced the second occurrence of "then you're bound to stay down" with "then you'll always feel down". But more interestingly he changed "my only mistake is I'm hoping" to "my only mistake is I'm hopeless", "my only mistake is I'm English", "my only mistake is I feel hopefull" and others of that type, many of them undecipherable.

After that song Morrissey declared "I think if you've got something to say, you should say it now... I think..." In "Alma Matters" he changed a line to "it's my life to end my own way". At the end of "Tomorrow" he asked a fan to hand him something while he sang "Gimme! Gimme! Something! Gimme!". After the song he teased the audience once again: "I wish I could sleep with all of you, but there's no time, there's no time... boo...".

The first line in "The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils" was changed to "there's too many people planning my downfall". Further down Morrissey joked "to be Finnish would be a relief" and to make sure everyone got the pun, he continued "to be Mexican would be a relief, to be Scottish would be relief, to be English (mumbles, adlibs)... to be Flemish..." His last words to the audience before going into encore "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me" were "Whatever happens, I love you..."

 


A rather poor audience recording of this concert is circulated on physical bootlegs as well as on the internet, sometimes under the title "My Only Mistake Is I'm English". The recording plays a bit too fast and occasinally skips or repeats. It features the full concert minus the first two thirds of set opener "You're Gonna Need Someone On Your Side".

 

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