Royal Court, Liverpool
William, It Was Really NothingThis was a great concert. Liverpool loved the Smiths and the Liverpudlian fans often sang along with Morrissey to their favourite songs, such as set opener "William, It Was Really Nothing". After "I Want The One I Can't Have" Morrissey apologised "Sorry about the barrier, nobody told us..." Before going into "How Soon Is Now?" he teased the fans who were shouting requests: "Which, which one? Who? When?..." Then before "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore" he said "I hope everybody's well enough... we're not..."
Nowhere Fast
I Want The One I Can't Have
What She Said
Hand in Glove
How Soon Is Now?
Stretch Out And Wait
That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore
Shakespeare's Sister
Rusholme Ruffians
The Headmaster Ritual
Still Ill
Meat Is Murder
/Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now
/Barbarism Begins At Home
//Miserable Lie
"Shakespeare's Sister" was sarcastically introduced as "...our new single (crowd cheers), which you're probably sick of hearing on the radio..." Between "The Headmaster Ritual" and "Still Ill" Morrissey told someone something that sounded like "This story is horrible..." The whole verse from "Ask me why and I'll die" to "and I should know because I've seen them but not very often..." in the latter number was skipped. At the end of "Meat Is Murder" Morrissey sang "who cares when animals die" instead of "who hears when animals cry".
As he returned to the stage for the encore, Morrissey read someone's dedication of the next song to a handful of people: "This song is for Allison Flood and Jill, Sue, Sharon and Donna... hope you enjoy your holiday, from Collette". "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" often stirred audiences into singalongs and it was the case in Liverpool. Morrissey refrained from echoing the ending of certain lines in "Miserable Lie" the way he had been doing at the time. After the song he shouted "Goodbye! Good luck! Thank you!" before leaving the stage.
"Handsome Devil" wasn't played in Liverpool despite being being on the setlist now and then on this tour.
Review collaborator: Nigel S.
There are two different audience recordings of the complete concert in circulation. The best of the two is credited to recorder Steve from Soundsville International. Two different transfers of this recording can be found on the internet. The best one, produced from the Soundsville master, is more scarcely found than a different transfer produced from a cassette tape of inferior quality (higher generation).
The other recording is credited to BigBopper. It is inferior to the Soundsville recording, but still reasonably good and features the bit of banter missing from the latter when Steve had to switch the tape over between "The Headmaster Ritual" and "Still Ill".
A subset of the Soundsville recording appeared in inferior quality (surely via a tape copy) on the manufactured bootleg LP titled "Your Full Of Smith". The 6 tracks up to "How Soon Is Now?" are found on side A and the 5 from "Still Ill" to the end are on side B. The LP has since been transfered to CD-Rs, in various levels of quality as some versions have more or less pops and clicks than others. Some of these used the same artwork as the LP while other transfers to cd are available with this alternate artwork. Another version with the same title has the same 11 songs paired with the Blacksmith mix (unofficial megamix of Smiths songs) and 4 songs lifted from the "Playbox" bootleg 7", "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now", "Jeane", "This Charming Man" and "Hand In Glove" from Aberdeen on 30 September 1985.
Do you have information about this concert? Or do you own an uncirculated recording of it? If yes please contribute and get credited.