david hess
October 13, 2002, 08:53 PM
“Friday Night in Outpatients”
I forgot to bring my gun to the first Morrissey show at the Mandalay Bay’s House of Blues in Las Vegas. Sitting at a casino bar near the venue, I became possessed by a vision. I would kindly order the bartenders to stand back as I raised my weapon, aimed it at the exotic aquarium that stood behind statues of Satanic-eyed ram’s heads and yelled out “Free the fish!” as shots pierced the tank and the water and its inhabitants came crashing down on liquor bottles and the rest. Morrissey always believed in animal rights, right?
This vision was interrupted by three fans who stopped nearby to get pre-show drinks. “We’re going to see Morrissey,” the leader boasted. “Good for you,” grinned the bartender who never gave me back my change. “Do you have a Shiraz-Chardonnay combo?” was my cue to leave, but I stayed a little longer to watch the flashes go off and blind the poor fish.
Security at HOB was extremely tight. First a guy looked at your ID and gave you a pink wristband if you wanted to drink. Another guy looked at your ticket. A third guy rubbed you down with a metal detector and a fourth looked at your ticket again to determine if you had floor or balcony seats. Then I recalled that at a Morrissey concert five years back I was frisked and removed of so much an ink pen.
I had a floor ticket. I walked over to one of the bar counters where I paid $4.50 for a Budlight in a plastic cup. The walls of the New Orleans-themed venue gleamed with Catholic-voodoo iconography. A motto above the stage read “In Diversity is Unity.” I joined the crowd on the floor and began the next leg of the tortuous wait.
The sound of a pounding piano sputtered from the speakers. The piano came and went. Just when you thought it was over it would come back on. You could not dance to the piano. You could not hum along. “I feel like I’m in a bookstore!” I shouted in vain.
Above the stage hung a projector screen: Country singer Dwight Yoakam, La Diabla dance night, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Comedian Jim Breuer ... and Morrissey. Chants for “Morr-i-ssey” would inevitably start up and die as his image appeared. I chanted too: “More Pee-ano!” “I love this movie!” “I’m naked under all these clothes!” and “All right Morrissey, longer hair!” when a roadie walked out to fix up the mike.
A guy asked me in all seriousness, “If you catch a towel will you give it to me?” “Why, do I look lucky? I think I might catch a punch instead,” I said, referring to the shoving behind us. “I want to catch Morrissey’s shirt,” another confessed. “Yeah, he takes it off and throws it,” added his girlfriend. “He’s hot.”
As expected, the audience was pretty much split down the middle gender-
wise. And I’m not the first to comment in amazement on the size of Mozza’s Latino fan base. The passion young Hispanic males and females, especially males, show for the middle-aged Englishman remains one of the great sociological mysteries of our time.
There is, of course, the singer’s ambiguous sexuality and gender role-playing, which is a form of drag more intellectual (one could almost say spiritual) than physical. Perhaps the tone of mournfulness in his songs resonates with certain aspects of Mexican culture, with its Catholic underbelly, in contrast to the amusement ride of nihilism and optimism we have here. Not to mention that his appeal to youth seems eternal. The downtrodden, the misunderstood, the unloved and forgotten, the dead and the martyred, the fundamental aloneness in us all – these are his core subjects – in addition to himself.
Cheers went up as the movie screen did and the lights dimmed. The women in front of me tied their hair into buns in excited preparation. An imposing fellow behind me threatened to push ahead to his female friend. “Why are Morrissey shows so violent?” I asked. “That’s just the way it is.”
After some wacky Irish-techno-jig music, King Cheetah took the stage. One song they played was about suicide (“Don’t do it, because I didn’t,” the singer told us, but what followed wasn’t exactly what you’d call the clincher) and another I think had the title “Victorian in Reverse,” which sounded like a nostalgic homage to empire-era England but was supposed to be about Morrissey. In any case, I sympathized with the band’s opening slot as did the rest of the audience with polite applause. The singer almost apologized for being up there. The drummer failed to catch his drumstick after tossing it in the air three feet beyond his kit. It was a nice touch.
When the headliners came on all hell broke loose. A flurry of church bells and a recording of an elderly man reading something (exactly what, I don’t know) first teased the pit into a Jello-like mass. A hunched-over Morrissey and his bespectacled and bearded guitarist Boz Boorer both looked like slightly weary college professors, as if they had just graded papers all day and it was time yet again to teach another class.
If you want to get an idea of what it was like to see the Beatles when they first landed on U.S. soil, go to this show. Barely into the first song, the Smiths’ “I Want What I Can’t Have,” some worshippers began to lose bodily control. Later on, I looked up at the balcony and saw what looked like a swaying gospel choir against a background of stained glass.
Other Smiths songs included “Meat is Murder,” not a tune one would think could be performed live given the moo’s (thankfully Morrissey did not attempt to simulate these), and the encore, “There is a Light That Never Goes Out.” Morrissey set the tone for the former by poking fun at an HOB advertisement. “Does that say ‘Old-Fashioned Burgers’? Now that is really old-fashioned.” At once I felt sorry for anyone who ate any meat for dinner.
With the stage bathed in a red light the singer pleaded, “Who hears when animals cry?” as Boorer distorted his guitar to create a saw-blade effect. Morrissey then did his I’ll-lay-on-the-stage-with-my-groin-in-the-air move, which was permissible since the band never took a break during its 80 minute-or-so set.
The other highlights were the new songs: “The First of the Gang to Die,” “I Like You,” “Mexico,” and “The World is Full of Crashing Bores,” all of which were very catchy. I cannot comment much on the lyrics except to say that right before Morrissey sang the lines “in Mexico / I went for a walk / to inhale / the tranquil cool lover’s air,” I caught a whiff of something potent and illegal. Synchronicity comes in many forms.
Someone hurled a Mexican flag that Morrissey wiped over his brow and under his armpits (how much do you think that perspiration is worth?) and then threw back to everyone’s sudden delight and dismay. He flung a doll dressed in Mexican national colors that ended up on the light support beneath the balcony. A fan crawled down to grab it before security grabbed him. Later, Morrissey gripped a teddy bear. “This is all I need,” he mused, “and I hope God or Jesus or Mary Magdalene blesses you all.” Pop music doesn’t get much stranger.
Two shivering young Allen Ginsberg look-a-likes held each other as their hero perfected his whimper and moan. Needless to say there were lots of huggers at this show. A blue bandanna-ed man played air fiddle while his girlfriend lay slung over his shoulder like a big black hairy piece of luggage. Though there was no fiddle, I did see a banjo, clarinet and massive golden gong used during the performance.
With a shrug and a furrow of those magisterial eyebrows, Morrissey skipped off stage and his band mates were left to paw at their instruments until drowned out by the return of church bells. The curtain was pulled across the stage and Sinatra’s “My Way” filtered in to convince everyone that it was officially over. The casino resembled an airport terminal with friends and on-lookers waiting to greet the sweaty gang. It struck me that I had lived a truly Morrisseyan moment for I had gone to the club where I stood on my own, left on my own and went home, cried and almost wanted to die.
I forgot to bring my gun to the first Morrissey show at the Mandalay Bay’s House of Blues in Las Vegas. Sitting at a casino bar near the venue, I became possessed by a vision. I would kindly order the bartenders to stand back as I raised my weapon, aimed it at the exotic aquarium that stood behind statues of Satanic-eyed ram’s heads and yelled out “Free the fish!” as shots pierced the tank and the water and its inhabitants came crashing down on liquor bottles and the rest. Morrissey always believed in animal rights, right?
This vision was interrupted by three fans who stopped nearby to get pre-show drinks. “We’re going to see Morrissey,” the leader boasted. “Good for you,” grinned the bartender who never gave me back my change. “Do you have a Shiraz-Chardonnay combo?” was my cue to leave, but I stayed a little longer to watch the flashes go off and blind the poor fish.
Security at HOB was extremely tight. First a guy looked at your ID and gave you a pink wristband if you wanted to drink. Another guy looked at your ticket. A third guy rubbed you down with a metal detector and a fourth looked at your ticket again to determine if you had floor or balcony seats. Then I recalled that at a Morrissey concert five years back I was frisked and removed of so much an ink pen.
I had a floor ticket. I walked over to one of the bar counters where I paid $4.50 for a Budlight in a plastic cup. The walls of the New Orleans-themed venue gleamed with Catholic-voodoo iconography. A motto above the stage read “In Diversity is Unity.” I joined the crowd on the floor and began the next leg of the tortuous wait.
The sound of a pounding piano sputtered from the speakers. The piano came and went. Just when you thought it was over it would come back on. You could not dance to the piano. You could not hum along. “I feel like I’m in a bookstore!” I shouted in vain.
Above the stage hung a projector screen: Country singer Dwight Yoakam, La Diabla dance night, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Comedian Jim Breuer ... and Morrissey. Chants for “Morr-i-ssey” would inevitably start up and die as his image appeared. I chanted too: “More Pee-ano!” “I love this movie!” “I’m naked under all these clothes!” and “All right Morrissey, longer hair!” when a roadie walked out to fix up the mike.
A guy asked me in all seriousness, “If you catch a towel will you give it to me?” “Why, do I look lucky? I think I might catch a punch instead,” I said, referring to the shoving behind us. “I want to catch Morrissey’s shirt,” another confessed. “Yeah, he takes it off and throws it,” added his girlfriend. “He’s hot.”
As expected, the audience was pretty much split down the middle gender-
wise. And I’m not the first to comment in amazement on the size of Mozza’s Latino fan base. The passion young Hispanic males and females, especially males, show for the middle-aged Englishman remains one of the great sociological mysteries of our time.
There is, of course, the singer’s ambiguous sexuality and gender role-playing, which is a form of drag more intellectual (one could almost say spiritual) than physical. Perhaps the tone of mournfulness in his songs resonates with certain aspects of Mexican culture, with its Catholic underbelly, in contrast to the amusement ride of nihilism and optimism we have here. Not to mention that his appeal to youth seems eternal. The downtrodden, the misunderstood, the unloved and forgotten, the dead and the martyred, the fundamental aloneness in us all – these are his core subjects – in addition to himself.
Cheers went up as the movie screen did and the lights dimmed. The women in front of me tied their hair into buns in excited preparation. An imposing fellow behind me threatened to push ahead to his female friend. “Why are Morrissey shows so violent?” I asked. “That’s just the way it is.”
After some wacky Irish-techno-jig music, King Cheetah took the stage. One song they played was about suicide (“Don’t do it, because I didn’t,” the singer told us, but what followed wasn’t exactly what you’d call the clincher) and another I think had the title “Victorian in Reverse,” which sounded like a nostalgic homage to empire-era England but was supposed to be about Morrissey. In any case, I sympathized with the band’s opening slot as did the rest of the audience with polite applause. The singer almost apologized for being up there. The drummer failed to catch his drumstick after tossing it in the air three feet beyond his kit. It was a nice touch.
When the headliners came on all hell broke loose. A flurry of church bells and a recording of an elderly man reading something (exactly what, I don’t know) first teased the pit into a Jello-like mass. A hunched-over Morrissey and his bespectacled and bearded guitarist Boz Boorer both looked like slightly weary college professors, as if they had just graded papers all day and it was time yet again to teach another class.
If you want to get an idea of what it was like to see the Beatles when they first landed on U.S. soil, go to this show. Barely into the first song, the Smiths’ “I Want What I Can’t Have,” some worshippers began to lose bodily control. Later on, I looked up at the balcony and saw what looked like a swaying gospel choir against a background of stained glass.
Other Smiths songs included “Meat is Murder,” not a tune one would think could be performed live given the moo’s (thankfully Morrissey did not attempt to simulate these), and the encore, “There is a Light That Never Goes Out.” Morrissey set the tone for the former by poking fun at an HOB advertisement. “Does that say ‘Old-Fashioned Burgers’? Now that is really old-fashioned.” At once I felt sorry for anyone who ate any meat for dinner.
With the stage bathed in a red light the singer pleaded, “Who hears when animals cry?” as Boorer distorted his guitar to create a saw-blade effect. Morrissey then did his I’ll-lay-on-the-stage-with-my-groin-in-the-air move, which was permissible since the band never took a break during its 80 minute-or-so set.
The other highlights were the new songs: “The First of the Gang to Die,” “I Like You,” “Mexico,” and “The World is Full of Crashing Bores,” all of which were very catchy. I cannot comment much on the lyrics except to say that right before Morrissey sang the lines “in Mexico / I went for a walk / to inhale / the tranquil cool lover’s air,” I caught a whiff of something potent and illegal. Synchronicity comes in many forms.
Someone hurled a Mexican flag that Morrissey wiped over his brow and under his armpits (how much do you think that perspiration is worth?) and then threw back to everyone’s sudden delight and dismay. He flung a doll dressed in Mexican national colors that ended up on the light support beneath the balcony. A fan crawled down to grab it before security grabbed him. Later, Morrissey gripped a teddy bear. “This is all I need,” he mused, “and I hope God or Jesus or Mary Magdalene blesses you all.” Pop music doesn’t get much stranger.
Two shivering young Allen Ginsberg look-a-likes held each other as their hero perfected his whimper and moan. Needless to say there were lots of huggers at this show. A blue bandanna-ed man played air fiddle while his girlfriend lay slung over his shoulder like a big black hairy piece of luggage. Though there was no fiddle, I did see a banjo, clarinet and massive golden gong used during the performance.
With a shrug and a furrow of those magisterial eyebrows, Morrissey skipped off stage and his band mates were left to paw at their instruments until drowned out by the return of church bells. The curtain was pulled across the stage and Sinatra’s “My Way” filtered in to convince everyone that it was officially over. The casino resembled an airport terminal with friends and on-lookers waiting to greet the sweaty gang. It struck me that I had lived a truly Morrisseyan moment for I had gone to the club where I stood on my own, left on my own and went home, cried and almost wanted to die.