The Miracle of the Smiths

If you look at that ticket price it cost $18 to see The Smiths in Los Angeles in 1985, unbelievable but all shows were around that price.

― Bee OK, Friday, May 19, 2023 5:12 PM (yesterday)

100% untrue. The show the night before (in, like, actual Los Angeles) was $13.50.

https://i.imgur.com/HAfIbKs.jpg

Hadn’t realized he had played on Morrissey solo material, now I am curious about which recordings exactly.

Last Of The Famous International Playboys and Interesting Drug both have an all-Smiths lineup (Morrissey, Rourke, Joyce and Gannon)

during the lifetime of the Smiths, I strongly disliked all post-Police, post Clash English acts of the 80s; by the 2000s, I could get over this enough to pick up Hatful of Hollow at the FMU record fair, and man was that a revelation. by 2013, I was looking to expand the remit of the punk-metal karaoke act that I had been running since 1999 in NYC, and so we did a new wave night: like UMS, I was flummoxed like a motherfucker trying to ace "This Charming Man."

I would add that above all, the quality that all bass players, even modestly skilled players, should keep in mind, should they be feeling unappreciated and inferior to the guitarist, relegated to root fifth, root fifth, root fifth like a drone, is that the song or composition or groove at its most fundamental level is located in what YOU are doing the overwhelming majority of the time.

You disliked the Beat?!

I used to try to play along to “This Charming Man” although I never performed it with anyone else. Don’t know what exactly I was doing, must have been some simplified version, since last night I tried it for the first time in decades and couldn’t quite figure it out.

But why pamper life’s complexity?

If you look at that ticket price it cost $18 to see The Smiths in Los Angeles in 1985, unbelievable but all shows were around that price.
― Bee OK, Friday, May 19, 2023 5:12 PM (yesterday)

100% untrue. The show the night before (in, like, actual Los Angeles) was $13.50.

― citation needed (Steve Shasta), Saturday, May 20, 2023 7:49 AM

Why are you saying untrue? I was making a general point. Yes, I'm technically from Orange County and not Los Angeles but it's the Los Angeles TV and Radio market. I listened to KROQ at that time as OC didn't have like a similar radio station and ironically I did see that Palladium Smiths show too. That show cost $14.25, as you need to add the service fee.

Or I should have said $15.25, so yeah my point stands.

I thought it was a good-humoured "actually it was even cheaper than that!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn9ihX4SBeA

https://i.imgur.com/uU5JsyD.jpg

My actual ticket stubs with some bonus shows I saw. This was the third and last time I saw them and this would be The Queen Is Dead tour. This one cost me $19.50, inflation lol.

There's part of me that regrets missing these shows massively (though granted I was in San Diego rather than the LA area). At the same time, I kinda appreciate how this *wasn't* my high school listening -- college, sure, but it's nice not to have those bands/music tangled up with said high school times. Probably explains why they last for me.

I wish I still had my ticket stubs. I saw them in 1986 at what we affectionately called the "Cement Center" on the University of Colorado campus.

The Smiths
September 3, 1986
CU Events Center, Boulder, CO

Still Ill
I Want the One I Can't Have
There Is a Light That Never Goes Out
How Soon Is Now?
Frankly, Mr. Shankly
Panic
Stretch Out and Wait
The Boy With the Thorn in His Side
Is It Really So Strange?
Cemetery Gates
Never Had No One Ever
What She Said
(with Rubber Ring intro and outro)
That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore
Meat Is Murder
Rusholme Ruffians
(with (Marie's The Name) His Latest Flame intro)
The Queen Is Dead

Our seats were pretty far back, so it was hard to get a solid impression of the band. I did get to see Mike and Andy playing with Sinead on her first US tour a couple years later, we were right up front. I had no idea they were touring with her until I saw them. What a magic moment that was.

Meanwhile their music is almost entirely tied into my miserable high school experience to a profound degree. I don’t think I listened to this band for 15 years after hs until it seemed like distant history bc my life had changed sufficiently.

I can find almost no evidence online of that Sinead show, other than these photos from her press conference of the same day. Odd.

https://fairangels.wordpress.com/2012/12/02/sinead-oconnor-in-denver-1988/

xp I can relate, LL. For me, it was the middle of my college career, a time when I felt lonely, isolated and exhausted. I found the Smiths affirming as well as depressing.

Bee OK forgot to mention that the $17.50 Nov 1986 New Order show at Irvine Meadows also included The Fall and The Durutti Column as openers

Bee OK forgot to mention that the $17.50 Nov 1986 New Order show at Irvine Meadows also included The Fall and The Durutti Column as openers

I texted some friends that went to this show with me to see if we were on time. We were and The Durutti Column opened the whole damn thing. My mind is sort of blown right now as I realize that I saw the Fall live.

Thanks ET for taking me down that road for some early memories.

Ah, yes, the "Pumped Full of Drugs Tour."