Morrissey

Still slightly deaf and delirious from the Morrissey gig at St. David’s Hall last Monday; an unexpectedly beautiful experience. I last saw him with the Smiths in 1984, and assumed that both of us might have matured significantly in the intervening years, but sadly not. Supporting was Kristeen Young – piano/movement/electronics/vocals with a drummer; largely harsh and engagingly unforgiving, with the occasional Kate Bush moment – sadly, the bulk of the sell-out crowd elected to remain in the bar area. When the man himself came on, looking somewhat like a Championship football manager, he and the band took a bow before assuming their positions, prompting the fear that they were anticipating being booed off at the end as had happened a couple of days earlier at the London Palladium. No chance of that, though. The new album was given a caning, obviously, but there was respect paid to his Smiths heritage – “Still Ill”, “Girlfriend In A Coma”, “How Soon Is Now” as a finale – as well as “Quarry”. He seemed in a good mood, bantering with individual audience-members, and even doing an encore of “Irish Blood, English Heart”, the nearest he came to making a political statement. I don’t know why I’d been expecting not to enjoy it that much; maybe I’ve just grown too accustomed to life being one long anti-climax. I even managed to get a vaguely passable photograph, since the security people seemed to abandon the venue’s frankly illogical ban on camera-usage, in the face of mass civil disobedience. A delightful evening.

I’m coming dangerously close to completing my doctoral thesis on “The Playwright as Filmmaker”. I’m told it will open doors; I’ll believe it when I see it.