Rick Astley & Blossoms - Albert Hall, Manchester post gig thread (October 8, 2021)

Entered to Coronation Street theme and opened with What Difference Does It Make?



Setlist:

What Difference Does It Make?
Bigmouth Strikes Again
Still Ill
Reel Around The Fountain
Cemetry Gates
Ask
Hand In Glove
Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others
The Boy With The Thorn In His Side
Girlfriend In A Coma
Well I Wonder
Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now
Panic
William, It Was Really Nothing
Barbarism Begins at Home
Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want

Encore:
How Soon Is Now?
This Charming Man
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

Regards,
FWD.

(Post anything related to this gig here).




full
 
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Ricks voice is too low and a bit aggressive sounding





Clips a bit distorted, but this Smiths tribute band below do a much better cover, though I don’t know how they managed getting John Deacon from Queen to join them ....

 


Wow surprisingly that’s really good, taking a song and putting it in a new light. Never heard this before, thanks!

If you must do covers folks, then make them new !!! Take note Rick and you long hairs !
 
I thought these sounded amazing, well played all concerned.

On a related note - can the original performers/recorders of a song stop anyone else performing it in a paid show (should they wish to)? Do Morrissey and Marr get anything monetarily by having their songs performed by someone else in a live paid show?
 
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It’s Friday night in Manchester and inside a sweaty, sold-out Albert Hall I am excitedly waiting to see Rick Astley and Blossoms sing songs from The Smiths, is a sentence I never imagined I would write.

The gig had come under fire from Johnny Marr who had dubbed it "horrific and funny at the same time", while an article posted on Morrissey’s official website called it a "futile attempt" to separate Morrissey from the music he wrote. They needn’t have worried: tonight was deeply weird but ultimately wonderful - a musical love letter to The Smiths penned by true, if unlikely fans.

Stockport quintet Blossoms were not born when The Smiths were releasing music and Rick Astley was making music that existed in a different musical universe. And yet here he was tonight, in spectacles, a dark, double-breasted blazer and wide-leg, dogtooth trousers, swinging the microphone to huge cheers as he launched into What Difference Does It Make?

Astley initially appeared a diffident presence - trying to suppress his innate Rick but nervous about going full-tilt Moz. The songs saved him and us - the 19-strong set list was studded with beloved classics and there was an uncomplicated joy in hearing them performed with love and affection.

This was a night filled with memorable moments: the communal singalong of 1986 single Ask, when Astley crooned "to a buck-toothed girl" and the crowd hollered back "in Luxembourg"; Blossoms frontman Tom Ogden playing a harmonica on Hand in Glove; Astley miming a running action when singing "provincial towns you jog round" during Panic; and guitarist Josh Dewhurst’s shimmering, menacing work on How Soon is Now? which culminated in Astley and the audience singing "I am human and I need to be loved."

It felt genuinely transcendent and a show that threatened to resemble a celebrity version of Stars in Your Eyes became revelatory and transporting. I closed my eyes and could almost believe I had travelled back in time 35 years to October 1986 and the last time The Smiths played Manchester.

The night ended with a joyous This Charming Man and a glorious rousing There is a Light That Never Goes Out. The question that hovered over Astley’s head during the night was whether it was possible to celebrate the songs by The Smiths without celebrating the controversial and problematic man who wrote them.

What was revealed was that, while Morrissey and Marr created the songs, they now belong to anyone who loves them and tonight they belonged to all of us in the Albert Hall, to a young band from Stockport and, as beautifully improbable as it seems, to Rick Astley.
 
Wow surprisingly that’s really good, taking a song and putting it in a new light. Never heard this before, thanks!

If you must do covers folks, then make them new !!! Take note Rick and you long hairs !
Once again you have your finger on the nub. Every single person at ths show looked nonplussed and bored at having the songs they are familiar with done in the way they remember. Look at them all - they're disgusted they aren't being played in a new novel way.
 
I thought these sounded amazing, well played all concerned.

On a related note - can the original preformers/recorders of a song stop anyone else performing it in a paid show (should they wish to)? Do Morrissey and Marr get anything monetarily by having their songs performed by someone else in a live paid show?
I believe it is not possible to prevent someone from performing your songs, either live or recorded. But you will automatically get royalties through the normal channels (PRS in the UK).
 
It was glorious

The Blossoms really shone in pretty much album worthy recreations of HSIN and Please...

Zero crowd trouble, zero pushing and me and the wife were able to stand about five people back in the pit barely being moved. People danced, laughed and sang

Sure Astley faultered in places but by and large the vocals were great and he REALLY went all in for the falsetto pieces

A lovely night.
 
Once again you have your finger on the nub. Every single person at ths show looked nonplussed and bored at having the songs they are familiar with done in the way they remember. Look at them all - they're disgusted they aren't being played in a new novel way.

Nah. As you are pointing out, people like the familiar, lap it up like the dogs on the chain they are. Very sad.

:(:sleeping:
 
I thought these sounded amazing, well played all concerned.

On a related note - can the original preformers/recorders of a song stop anyone else performing it in a paid show (should they wish to)?

Do Morrissey and Marr get anything monetarily by having their songs performed by someone else in a live paid show?

Maybe not, but it may turn a lot of young folk onto Morrissey’s work.

So something good may actually come out of this farcical trip down memory lane.

Thanks Rick & Blossoms (y)
 
Nah. As you are pointing out, people like the familiar, lap it up like the dogs on the chain they are. Very sad.

:(:sleeping:
Yeah, how dare people have fun.

I await your Damascene conversion the next time Morrissey plays some Smiths songs.

Is your head full of wasps? Do you really lack non-partisan critical faculties?
 
He played loads of covers in Vegas,
Yeah, and it’s awesome the way he makes them his own.
he also opened with a Smith song which you frowning upon when Liam opened with an Oasis song

Yes but how many years did M wait before pandering to fans or doing what’s expected of a solo artist for ‘success’ ?

Please don’t even try to compare clown shoe Liam with Morrissey.
 

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