Phoenix, AZ - Oct. 22, 1997
Veteran's Memorial Coliseum [Arizona State Fair] (capacity: 14000)

Set List (provided by Jase[[email protected]]):

The Boy Racer / Alma Matters / Billy Budd / Roy's Keen / Sunny / Ambitious Outsiders / Speedway / Reader Meet Author / The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get  / Paint A Vulgar Picture / The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils // Satan Rejected My Soul / Shoplifters Of The World Unite



Summary by Jim Duke

There was no opening band, the ticket stub showed a starting time of 7:00 PM. He came on stage at 7:01, and was finished at 8:00, living up to his affinity for promptness.

He was in fine form vocally, and seemed to be in quite the good mood. He looked healthy and refreshed, and pomped and circumstanced his way around the stage, utilizing amazingly huge gestures and being quite the thespian with his usual backdrop and the large screen dangling overhead. He looked like he had spent the week at a Club Med, as he was very rested and full of energy and tanned. He had a great rapport with the audience, gesturing and talking off microphone (during songs) to people crumpled down at the front.

The venue (Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum) is probably the largest he will play on this tour. It holds approximately 14,000 people for concerts, and on this day there were right around 3,000 to 4,000 in attendence. This is pretty good, considering that he gets virtually no radio support in this town. In fact, no radio stations were even sponsoring his show, which is quite unusual for "State Fair" acts. Our two local "modern rock" stations are only promoting the Howard Jones concert between them, but I digress...

His voice was astounding. The band members were excellent. He brought the house down with a crescendo of roars for the encores of "Satan Rejected My Soul" and "Shoplifters."

His quipped:

"We are the (sic) sideshow this evening. We are a band from England"

This was a obvious a reference to playing at the state fair, where he perhaps had the feeling that half the crowd might not know who he is. Fortunately this was not the case, as everyone certainly knew what was going on.

"Where did you get that t-shirt."(over loudspeaker) "Give it to me." (off loudspeaker) which the audience member certainly did! Incidentally, I have no idea what was on the shirt...

He said, "Thank You, Phoenix, you’ve been SWEET!" before launching into "Shoplifters."

Stage Rushing: Moz tried to help one female audience member up during "Shoplifters," but the overzealous fascist (and quite large) security FORCE pulled her back down. One brazen boy made it up, and repeatedly broke away from the aforementioned fascists and actually got to cling to Moz for a second or two.

There were at least thirty of these security people keeping audience members in their seats and off the stage, which of course completely sucked. However, this was a small price to pay for such a great show. Tickets were only $7, plus fair admission. His thirteen song, 55 minute set was well worth the total outlay of $13. All in all, a tremendous performance!

Summary by Matt Smiley

My first Morrissey show! He started off the show with "Boy Racer", and it took off from there. He was fairly restrained throughout the show - he kept his shirt on till the encore. However I think the energy wasn’t as high due to the fact that attendance wasn’t spectacular - there were a number of empty seats even up close. My only regret is that security was very strict - in the beginning, when the people on the floor tried to move up, they were quickly put back in their place.

The best part was at the end of the show - Morrissey came out for the encore and he did "Satan Rejected My Soul" and "Shoplifters of the World" - during "Shoplifters", he pulled one guy out of the audience and another catapulted himself on stage - well the catapulted guy made it to Morrissey and was quickly removed while the second guy barely made it 3 steps before he was tackled. Well, he didn't stop! He was thrashing about in the back of the stage, collapsed on the drum platform (I thought he was going to take out the drum set) and FINALLY wriggled free of the security guard who looked like he was crushing him... but only by losing his shirt in the process. He then approached Moz and gave him a hug - and Moz took off his own shirt as well and responded with a hug back. Fantastic... they couldn't have choreographed it better (um... they don't plan these ahead of time do they?)

The crowd then sprayed Moz with water, and Moz stuck his tongue out and pulled out his boxers? (or whitie-tighties?) above his pants, taunting the crowd. He got a little more water for his effort. Moz was somewhat talkative between songs "Hello Phoenix!..Where did you get the shirt??... About four of you knew that song? Oh, five..." ["Sunny"]. Of course, I would have liked to hear something from before Vauxhall, but oh well - he played three songs from Vauxhall which were my three favorite... Everything went smoothly as far as I could tell, no muffed songs. The wall shadows of himself he created during "Ambitious Outsiders" were a nice touch... I enjoyed the show. I was going to go to the Chicago show, but I am glad I caught this one instead.

 


last modified: 09 Nov 1997 09:06 AM

All rights reserved. Copyright © 1997 by David Tseng