Studio 54, Barcelona, Spain
William, It Was Really NothingBarcelona was treated to more or less the same setlist as Rome, including the rarer "This Charming Man". "Barbarism Begins At Home" returned to the set while the lesser known "Stretch Out And Wait" was not played.
Nowhere Fast
I Want The One I Can't Have
What She Said
How Soon Is Now ?
This Charming Man
That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore
Shakespeare's Sister
Rusholme Ruffians
The Headmaster Ritual
Hand In Glove
Still Ill
Meat Is Murder
/Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now
/Handsome Devil
//Miserable Lie
///Barbarism Begins At Home
////You've Got Everything Now
Morrissey's first significant words of the evening were the introduction "This song is called 'I Want The One I Can't Have'." Before going into "This Charming Man" he thanked Barcelona and asked the audience to "...come close, please don't be shy..." The Smiths' latest single was introduced with the brief line "This is our new single, 'Shakespeare's Sister'." After its performance Morrissey added "Thank you we're glad you came, thank you..." Before "Still Ill" he asked "Does anybody understand English? (crowd: yeah!) Good...!"
This concert was filmed and seven songs ("Hand In Glove", "Handsome Devil", "Barbarism Begins At Home", "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now", "Rusholme Ruffians", "The Headmaster Ritual" and "Miserable Lie") were shown in a Spanish one-hour special on the Smiths titled Arsenal. The special also included interviews with Morrissey and Johnny Marr as well as studio songs.
The "Arsenal" special mentioned above is commonly circulated on bootleg VHS and DVDs. The original video recording from which the makers of the latter television special took their footage is also available to collectors. Because this was professionally filmed the quality is quite good, but one should not expect it to be as good as the bootlegs from digital rebroadcasts of concerts of the same era because it was transfered from VHS, usually a few generations down from the master. The fact that this recording features the complete concert doesn't make the Arsenal special obsolete because the latter also features great interviews with Morrissey and Marr.
Two different recordings of this concert are circulated on audio bootlegs, both featuring the complete set. The more common one is the audio from the professionally filmed concert recording above. The other appears to be an average sounding audience recording.
Do you have information about this concert? Or do you own an uncirculated recording of it? If yes please contribute and get credited.