12 October 1999
Brielpoort, Deinze, Belgium

You're Gonna Need Someone On Your Side
The Boy Racer
Billy Budd
Reader Meet Author
Is It Really So Strange?
Hairdresser On Fire
Speedway
Now My Heart Is Full
Tomorrow
Sunny
Roy's Keen
Alma Matters
Meat Is Murder
Trouble Loves Me
Break Up The Family
/Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me
The first European concert of the Oye Esteban tour was a success. Morrissey was in excellent form but perhaps slightly less talkative than usual. His fans were very ecstatic and receptive, they chanted their idol's name every change they got. Security was very tight so nobody made it on stage. There was no surprise in the setlist, it was similar to the ones from the recent warm-up dates.

Morrissey's greeting to his Belgian fans were "Belgique! Hello! (...) Hello! (...) Hello! (...) Hello!" repeated many times. In set opener "You're Gonna Need Someone On Your Side" the man changed a line to "well you don't need to look so peeved". He updated "Billy Budd" by singing "now it's 18 years on" but immediately followed this by "now it's 12 years on". After "Reader Meet Author" he thanked the audience and said they were "...very nice". This was received with a chant of his name.

In the 1999 live version of "Is It Really So Strange?" Morrissey made many new lyric changes. One of them was replacing one line to something like "Oh yes you can slice me, and you can butt me, and you can dislocate my shoulder but you won't change the way I feel" and on this date he took it further and sang "Oh yes you can chin me, and you can butt me, and you can dislocate my shoulder blade but you won't change the way I feel". After an extremely well received "Hairdresser On Fire" he said "I don't even know how to say hello in Belgian... doesn't matter...".

After "Now My Heart Is Full" Morrissey answered someone's shout with "I heard that!" There were a few more minor exchanges of that type with fans in the front rows after most of the following few songs. Besides the usual live change in "Sunny" Morrissey replaced "tell us all how things are so much better" with "tell us all how things are no better". In "Roy's Keen" he pulled out an old live change from the Maladjusted tour when he sang "he'll be here frowning on time". He also sang "we've never seen a keener midfielder".

In "Alma Matter" Morrissey sang "may seem wrong to you" instead of "may seem strange to you", and then "may seem shit to you" instead of "may seem wrong to you". He also sang "it's my life to ruin my own way" instead of "it's my life to wreck my own way". In "Trouble Loves Me" he switched "so English... frowning" to "so Belgian... frowning". He apologised about it after the song, saying "I didn't mean the Belgian bit... it (was meant to be) clever, it wasn't really... I should have said 'so foolish'... does anybody care?".

In "Break Up The Family" Morrissey distractedly sang "break up the family and let's begin to live our lives" where he should have sang "I'm so glad to grow older, to move away from those awful times". Besides the usual live changes he sang "resigned, well we were, to ending my life" and "I'm so glad to be older". After the song he and his musicians went backstage for a short break, and when they returned to perform the encore, Morrissey's last words were "Thank you, we're very grateful, thank you...", followed by another "I heard that..." to someone in the audience before the band started "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me.

"Why Don't You Find Out For Yourself" and "Spring-Heeled Jim" were heard at soundcheck, but neither would be added to the setlists of this tour.

 


A good audience recording of the full set is available from bootleg traders as well as on the internet. The soundchecks mentioned above are also in circulation.

 

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