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posted by
davidt
on Wednesday March 15 2006, @08:00PM
Jason Jenkins writes:
Here is the review of Tuesday's show which appeared in today's Daily Oklahoman:
Concert Review: Morrissey floored By George Lang The Oklahoman
Morrissey was floored Tuesday night at the Coca-Cola Bricktown Events Center -- literally. At one point during the British singer’s stunningly assured performance, a fan tackled Morrissey and took him down to the boards. But it was out of pure love, an emotion that was in plentiful supply during the 90-minute set.
Since he was lead singer of the Smiths, the successful and highly influential mid-’80s band, Morrissey has inspired furious devotion among his fans. The 46-year-old Morrissey spent every minute of his Oklahoma City performance giving it all back, delivering every line with passion and a flourish. Following an energetic performance by Los Angeles roots-punk band Tiger Army, Morrissey appeared wearing a dark suit and crimson shirt, but the layers got peeled away shortly after the opening song, “First of the Gang to Die.” Morrissey doffed the jacket and launched into “Still Ill,” an early Smiths song that sounded eerily close to the 1984 original. Boz Boorer, Morrissey’s guitarist since 1992, proved to be invaluable on these early tracks, replicating the delicate intricacies that guitarist Johnny Marr created with the Smiths. Although they were less known, new songs such as “You Have Killed Me,” “The Youngest Was the Most Loved” and “Life is a Pigsty” received enthusiastic applause from the Bricktown crowd. The response did not compare to the thunderous acclaim for classics such as “Girlfriend in a Coma” and “Suedehead.” Just before performing the Smiths’ most famous song, “How Soon is Now,” he told the audience, “The years, and the decades just melt away.” When the opening vibrato guitar to “How Soon” kicked in, the crowd exploded with cheers. Morrissey’s showmanship earned every clap, scream and shout. He stalked the stage with confidence, often resembling a performer of an earlier era such as Frank Sinatra. Most important, Morrissey sounded amazing. Criticized when he was younger for having a one-dimensional baritone, his voice has become more elastic with age. At no time did he strain for notes or avoid higher registers - he was in full command of his instrument. That confidence egged-on the audience - a bra was flung on stage, then a female fan sprang toward the band and was whisked behind the curtain. At one point, a flurry of what appeared to be valentine cards seemed to appear out of nowhere and blanketed the singer, an apparent gift from one overeager Morrissey disciple. For a finale, Morrissey sang “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before,” one of the Smiths’ last hits, then ripped off his dress shirt and threw it into the audience. As Morrissey left the stage to the tune of Sinatra’s “That’s Life” and the crowd exited the building, one fan was heard saying, “Now, I can die.”
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Morrissey floored - Oklahoma City concert review in The Oklahoman
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good read (Score:1)
Did I miss it?
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(signed)He Who Has Issues
Another Morrissey story by George Lang (Score:1)
By George Lang
The Oklahoman
2006.04.10
I was in a classroom with 100 other guys dressed like extras from "The Shawshank Redemption": blue work shirts and ugly bell-bottom denim pants, and the ones who needed glasses all wore heavy, black, Elvis Costello numbers. This was summer in San Diego, and the Navy was teaching recruits from Company 925 how to tie knots, or the difference between port and starboard, or something. It doesn't matter: What I remember about that class is The Smiths.
Classrooms were good, because otherwise we would be charbroiling in the California sun. The class was taught by some kid from the U.S. Naval Academy who looked like Roy Stalin from "Better Off Dead." Introducing himself, Stalin mentioned that he was tired because he was at a concert the night before. Since we all were surviving on about three hours of sleep a night, I was this close to jumping up and throwing insubordinate punches at Midshipman Stalin, but I was topping out at about 130 pounds back then, constantly in danger of nodding off and not interested in going to "the brig."
Someone finally asked him, "Who did you see?" He replied, "The Smiths."
Company 925 was a drill company full of musicians, but there were only a few glimmers of recognition. I happened to own one of those glimmers. "Meat Is Murder" was released in the United States just a few weeks before I went to boot camp, and I had gleaned a few looks at the "How Soon Is Now?" video on MTV. It was enough to imprint Steven Patrick Morrissey's lyrical refrain ("I am human and I need to be loved / Just like everybody else does") and Johnny Marr's guitar hook in my brain for easy and frequent replays. Since I had not heard a radio in six weeks, this came in handy.
Smiths songs formed the sound track for my late teens and early 20s. When I was stationed in Japan, a copy of "Hatful of Hollow" kept me going until the 1986 release of "The Queen Is Dead," still one of the best albums in Brit-pop history. It includes some of the best songs about undying love ("There Is a Light That Never Goes Out"), plagiarism ("Cemetery Gates") and British society ("The Queen Is Dead") ever written. Morrissey wrote with poetic complexity, and I often thought that the man who wrote "What she asked of me at the end of the day, Caligula would have blushed" might have been poet laureate if he had been born 50 years earlier.
I was in Tokyo at the Lexington Queen, a Roppongi dance club catering mainly to foreigners ("Western girls at the Lexington Queen. Prettiest girls I ever seen," sang Mick Jones on Big Audio Dynamite's "Sony") when I learned that "Strangeways, Here We Come" would be the band's last record. The disc, featuring "Girlfriend in a Coma," was filled with unusually simplistic lyrics, a trend exemplified by Morrissey's first solo hit, "Suedehead." He regained his logorrheic tendencies two years later with "The Last of the Famous International Playboys."
Morrissey, who performs Tuesday at the Coca-Cola Bricktown Events Center, labors under impossible expectations. Fans and critics alike hold his solo releases to high standards, and his greatest recordings (1992's "Your Arsenal," 1994's "Vauxhall and I," 2004's "You Are the Quarry") inevitably draw comparisons to his former band. It is partly due to that voice.
It can be a sonorous moan or a lilting croon, but it will always be the voice that sang "William, It Was Really Nothing," "Panic" and "Shoplifters of the World Unite." Great current songs such as "You Have Killed Me," from the upcoming April release "Ringleader of the Tormentors," must stand alongside those classics. When operating at the height of his skills, as he did on the extraordinary 2004 ballad "Come Back to Camden," Morrissey lives up to the legend.
Shortly after tickets went on sale for Morrissey's Oklahoma City date, I was at a party full of Belle & Sebastian fans -- people who consider his work their Rosetta Stone. It was not long before "Louder Than Bom
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