Click on date for concert information:

After a 10-day break, Morrissey and his band were ready to tackle the second American leg of the Maladjusted tour. This portion would take them from California along the Southern states into Florida then up the East coast. Strangely, Texas was skipped while Florida got five dates.

Morrissey was still very sexual, he let the microphone hang in front of his fly or behind, rubbed it on his nipples, swinged hips, caressed himself, etc. He also teasingly waved his finger at crotch level during the 'standing at the urinal' line in "The Boy Racer". During "Ambitious Outsiders", he made shadow figures on the walls or ceilings to add drama to the song's lyrics. By then end of the tour, towel and tambourine were thrown into the crowd at the end of each date.

Personnel: Boz Boorer (guitar), Alain Whyte (guitar), Jonny Bridgwood (bass) and Spencer Cobrin (drums).

 


The Smoking Popes, except on the first date in Phoenix.

 


- A grey sport-style shirt with "Morrissey Swimming" in yellow on the front, in an arc. 20$ to 25$.

-A black t-shirt with a sepiatone picture of Morrissey sitting in an alley, wearing a plaid short sleeve shirt. Morrissey's name on the back. Offered in L and XL, 20$ to 25$ depending on the city. View.

- A white t-shirt with a sepiatone photo of Morrissey sitting on porch steps with a young girl in the background, looking away. Morrissey's name in gold on the back. Offered in L and XL, 20$ to 25$ depending on the city. View.

-T-shirt with "Morrissey" and "On this glorious occassion of this splendid defeat" crest on the front; "Satan Rejected My Soul" on the back. Introduced in Albuquerque, available in L, XL and baby-tee, 20$ to 25$. View.

- "I ♥ Moz" on the front. Introduced in Albuquerque, available in L, XL and baby-tee, 20$ to 25$ at first, and then 10$. View.

- White t-shirt with Morrissey circa 1995 wearing a white shirt, jeans, and silver bracelet, one hand caressing his chin; on the back "Wide to Receive" was printed near the hem bottom; sold for the first time in Claremont. 20$ to 25$. View.

- Another t-shirt was sold from Salt Lake City on, available in light blue or medium blue (view) with darker blue trim. It featured on the front a large picture of Robert Wagner and Jeffrey Hunter as on the tour backdrop, "MORRISSEY" written under the photo; the back also showed "MORRISSEY", with a list of cities visited during the tour. 20$ to 25$.

- Poster with the same picture of Morrissey squatting as on the black shirt described above, 7$. (image needed)

- The "two lumps please" mug may have be sold on certain dates of this leg of the Maladjusted tour.

 


Different intro tape to the first leg, but still ended with the Nico song and the "The Operation" drum roll. Included (partial list):
Traffic - Hole In My Shoe
Curved Air - Backstreet Luv
Anthony Newley - Girls Were Made To Love And Kiss
Jaybee Wasden - De Castrow
Francoise Hardy - You Just Have to Say the Word
Mister Bloe - Groovin' with Mister Bloe
Nina Simone - ?
Love Affair - Rainbow Valley
Small Faces - Lazy Sunday
Tyrannosaurus Rex - King Of The Rumbling Spires
Hurricane Smith - Don't Let It Die
Nico - Innocent And Vain
Morrissey and his musicians took the stage at the end of the drum roll intro from the "Southpaw Grammar" song "The Operation", surrounded by smoke from dry ice. Exit music after the concert was an instrumental version of Morrissey and Siouxsie's duet "Interlude".

 


There seems to have been fewer backdrops used on the second leg than on the first one. The most commonly used one was the Robert Wagner and Jeffrey Hunter backdrop, one behind the other in a pool, taken from a 1958 film called "In Love and War". The other one was the black and white backdrop of two boys playing.

 


A total of 24 different songs were performed here and there on this portion of the Maladjusted tour. Morrissey significantly changed the setlist order and content almost every night, selecting an average number of 14 out of those 24 songs.

Although this tour was mainly put together to promote the recently released "Maladjusted" album, as the tour progressed Morrissey played gradually less from it, and more from his previous two ones, "Southpaw Grammar" and "Vauxhall & I". Neither of the latter two had been toured in the USA before 1997. At some point into this leg the number of songs on the setlist from "Maladjusted" hit a low of only two songs. The fan-favourite "Trouble Loves Me" was added to the bill for a few California dates and a few more later. It had never been played live before. "Alma Matters" was a setlist regular, and "Roy's Keen" and "Ambitious Outsiders" played very often. "Satan Rejected My Soul" made the list for about half the dates. Strangely, the first leg standard opener "Maladjusted" was only performed three times in this second part, and "Wide To Receive" was dropped altogether.

"Southpaw Grammar" was represented by the same songs as on the first leg of the tour, with the addition of the newly introduced "Do Your Best And Don't Worry". The fan favourite "The Boy Racer" was played almost every night. The other ones were performed in about the same measure as on the first leg: "Reader Meet Author" often, "The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils" for a few weeks in the middle, and "Dagenham Dave" on a few selected nights.

"Vauxhall & I" wasn't toured in 1994, but this tour should be seen as a late replacement. With seven songs regularly included in the setlist, the album was more represented than "Southpaw Grammar" or "Maladjusted". On top of "Billy Budd", "Speedway", "Now My Heart Is Full", "The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get" and "Hold On To Your Friends" which had been performed on the first leg, "Spring-Heeled Jim" and "Why Don't You Find Out For Yourself" were added to the bill in Thousand Oaks.

The tour surprise was the one-time live performance of the Smiths-era "The Queen Is Dead" in Claremont. The song had never been performed before, and hasn't since that one time. This was the fourth song Morrissey ever did from the Smiths' catalogue in his solo years. Also from the Smiths days, "Shoplifters Of The World Unite" was again slotted as the near-standard encore song. "Paint A Vulgar Picture" was performed now and then on this leg, for about three out of four dates. Finally another Smiths song made its North American debut at this time. "London" had been played in the UK in 1995, and was re-introduced in Irvine where it was slotted as the encore. It was then dropped for some time before being reinstated and played regularly on the last two weeks of this leg.

Besides the above, two non-album songs were occasionally included in the setlist for variety. "Sunny", a UK-only single then unreleased in the USA was performed four times on this leg. The 1995 b-side "Nobody Loves Us" was played only once. It had been in the set on and off on the first leg, but on this one it was played only in Kissimmee.

Here is the number of times each song was performed on this leg, in descending order of frequency. This is based on 25 concerts.

The Boy Racer - 25
Alma Matters - 23
Shoplifters Of The World Unite - 23
Billy Budd - 22
Reader Meet Author - 21
Spring-Heeled Jim - 21
Hold On To Your Friends - 20
Speedway - 19
Why Don't You Find Out For Yourself - 19
Ambitious Outsiders - 18
Now My Heart Is Full - 18
Paint A Vulgar Picture - 18
Do Your Best And Don't Worry - 17
Roy's Keen - 17
The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get - 15
Satan Rejected My Soul - 13
London - 11
The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils - 11
Trouble Loves Me - 6
Dagenham Dave - 5
Sunny - 4
Maladjusted - 3
Nobody Loves Us - 1
The Queen Is Dead - 1

Click here for more tour statistics.

 


In occasional set opener "Maladjusted" Morrissey sometimes sang "I'm never to be trusted", but he stopped doing the other live changes. In "The Boy Racer", Morrissey used to sing the more family-friendly line "and I'm gonna tell him" instead of "I'm gonna kill him", but at this point in time he often muffled the word 'kill' by singing something that sounded like "I'm gonna tsh-ill him". In "Now My Heart Is Full", he made the line "just some rain-coated lovers' puny brothers" easier to sing by dropping the word 'puny' from it. He also sang "I was tired again" instead "I'm tired again". "Ambitious Outsiders" was dramatized by Morrissey by using lights to make shadow puppets on the ceiling. In "Roy's Keen" Morrissey replaced "I will be set alight" by "but that's alright" and skipped the whole "Don't say you'll hold it steady... (to) we trust you to wreck it" verse. By the end of this leg he introduced a new change by singing "He's romancing you and chancing his arm, he'll be here frowning on time" instead of "...smiling on time"

Morrissey made even more lyrical changes in "Paint A Vulgar Picture". He sang "please depressing Belgians" instead of "please the press in Belgium", "MTV, MTV, MTV, kiss their arses", "I just haven't earned it yet, baby" and "what makes most people feel happy still leads me headlong into harm". The last verse of that song was always dropped, bringing up the ending after the first occurrence of "me and my true love will never meet again". That song was often humourously introduced by Morrissey as a song from his old band, a different one in every city: The Clash, Siouxsie and The Banshees, Canned Heat, Fleetwood Mac, etc. In "Reader Meet Author" Morrissey often changed a line to "Say, have you ever escaped from a shipwrecked life?" or "I say, have you ever escaped from a shipwrecked life?" and often sang "If a fight broke out here tonight, I'd be the first away because I'm that type". He also spiced up certain songs, such as "The More You Ignore Me The Closer I Get" in which he usually followed "Ah, you're asking for it..." with "...and it you shall get" (which was often misheard by some as "Ah, I need to shag it").

In "Speedway", the intro lines "And when you slam down the hammer can you see it in your heart?" were dropped and Morrissey changed a line to "when you try to break my spirit, it just won't happen". He stopped doing the other previously heard live changes in that song. In "Spring-Heeled Jim", he sometimes changed "well it's the normal thing to do" to "as long as it's the normal thing to do" and followed that line with "... ah yes!". In "Do Your Best And Don't Worry", Morrissey often messed with the "this is you on a bad day, you on a pale day" and "this is you on a drab day, you in a drab dress" by reversing them or mixing them one with the other. He also sometimes sang "The way you hang yourself" instead of "The way you watch yourself", or vice versa. In "Satan Rejected My Soul" Morrissey often changed a line to "You'll never see all the crap in life it's cost me" or "You'll never see all the shit in life it's cost me", and sometimes another one to "He knows heaven's never gonna be my home". He also sometimes sang "I'm really sly" instead of "It's really sly". At the end of the song, where he usually sang "pull me in" and "haul me in", Morrissey often added "take me in", "shove me in", "tug me in", "drag me in", "push me in" or "kick me in".

The live version of "Hold On To Your Friends" was more electric, harder than the album version or the typical live version of the 1995 tours. In the few performances of "The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils", the two verses starting with "Say the wrong word" were dropped so the live version wouldn't last 10 minutes like the song does on "Southpaw Grammar". However the sample at the end wasn't dropped. In "London", just as he did during the Smiths days or on the 1995 Boxers tour, Morrissey sang "My God he goes!" instead of "he really goes" and answered "do you think you've made the right decision this time?" with "Oh no! Oh no!".

 


At this point in time, nothing from these dates has been made available on official releases.

 


Five dates from this period of the Maladjusted tour are circulated on bootleg videos and dvds and for one of them, three different recordings are available. So this adds up to seven different recordings, all filmed from the audience, featuring the full set, steady and clear of obstruction.

The concert for which there are three different recordings out there is the New York one which closed the leg. All three feature the full set, are steady and clear and have nice close-ups. Two of them were filmed from a raised central position probably under the balcony, while the other was shot from the center balcony. The latter one is the least interesting of the three as its quality is significantly inferior. In 2009 a new DVD was created by a fan who paired the footage from the two best recordings mentioned above, with as audio a mix of one of the video's audio track and a different audio-only audience recording.

Quality-wise the Irvine recording should also be mentioned. The show was filmed from the rear of the venue but the footage is clear and steady and Morrissey's performance in Irvine - just like in New York - was among the best of this period. Lowell, Buffalo and Phoenix were filmed from the balcony. The footage in all cases is clear and steady and features some close-ups.

 


Recordings of sixteen different dates from this leg of the Maladjusted Tour are available on audio bootlegs. The sound quality ranges from good to very poor. Soundwise the best date is Kissimmee. The recording is from the soundboard but unfortunately only two songs have made it out there at this point in time.

All other recordings are audience ones. The Salt Lake City bootleg is possibly the best sounding one. Other good alternatives are the recordings of Glen Burnie, Albuquerque, St. Louis, Buffalo and New York, which are good to fair when found at their best. Not far behind are one of the two transfers of the Claremont recording, New Brunswick and Lowell. Recordings of Thousand Oaks, Irvine, Boulder, Phoenix and Miami are of average/fair sound quality. Tulsa is inferior, while the only bootleg in circulation for Raleigh sounds very poor.

Content-wise one of the most sought after concerts for this period is Claremont for the only live performance of the song "The Queen Is Dead" in 1997. This show is also interesting because it featured one of the few performances of "Dagenham Dave" on this leg. As mentioned above, two different transfers of this recording are out there, one sounds rather good while the other one is tinny. "Nobody Loves Us" was only played in Kissimmee on this leg, but no recording of it has made it in circulation yet. Fortunately the song was often played before this leg and on later tours.

The rarely performed "Sunny" is best found on the Thousand Oaks recording which also includes the rarely played "Maladjusted" and "Trouble Loves Me". However fans of the latter title will prefer the better sounding recordings of Buffalo or Lowell.