The Miracle of the Smiths

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."