Morrissey at the Quest Club, Minneapolis (02/08/2000)

In 2000, Morrissey went on tour in support of his ¡Oye Esteban! DVD.

Although it wasn’t a traditional album release, the DVD itself was a delight, collecting old fan favorites like the band aid on the nipple “November Spawned a Monster” and the recent (but controversial) skinhead video for “Sunny”.

“I’ve really grown old since the last time I was here,” pretty much sums up Morrissey’s struggle with the Twin Cities. He hadn’t been to Minneapolis since 1992 for his Your Arsenal tour, because he suddenly fell “ill” for his next appearance. Incidentally, Minneapolis was the only canceled date on Morrissey’s 1997 Maladjusted tour.

Sue McLean, who booked the show, had over-anticipate the demand for Morrissey. She originally booked a much larger venue of the Roy Wilkins Auditorium in St Paul, but as ticket sales would prove, they had to downgrade to the Quest Club in Minneapolis… which I think was the smarter move, especially because, even at a smaller-size, the Quest show did not sell out. This was probably because of expensive ticket price, which was over $30 if you count in “convenience” fees. You have to remember, if you read any of my flashback articles, that average prices was about $10-$12 a show, around this time period.

But what a great show! Morrissey was incredibly talkative. His fans were quite loud: screaming and shouting throughout the set (as heard on the bootleg, which I’ll get to in a minute). You can tell that Morrissey was healthy, and probably at his very best for this show.

If you look over the setlist, Morrissey chose to drop his popular hit “Tomorrow” in favor of “Break Up The Family” (a much slower song). I also forgot that Morrissey started playing Smiths songs again. He didn’t play the classic songs for a while, especially early in his career because he wanted to stand on his own solo materials. I was probably singing along to all the songs, especially “Is It Really So Strange?”, which served as my anthem when I was traveling to England.

It’s funny how the most memorable moments I have is actually not the music, but hanging out with his fans! This is typical of any Morrissey show, meeting and spending your time with other fans. For example, I picked up a fan at the airport and we drove to the venue together. I met Julia Riley, who was selling her fanzine “True to You” outside the venue (of course I bought the latest, even though I had a subscription already). Also, bought a bootleg from a Morrissey apostle, who used the proceeds to fund his trip across the country following Morrissey. I never knew there were so many Minneapolis Morrissey fans, when it came down to it.

 

Anyway, I got a chance to go back and revisit the bootleg audio of this show in the form of ¡Oye Esteban! in Minneapolis. The audio is fan made, and although it’s not the best live recording, it’s also not the worst. Even though I’ll probably never listen to it again, I want to thank whoever recorded the show. Sure, I would love to have a soundboard recording, but this is better than nothing.

Instead of suing your fans (cough, Prince), for trading these horrible recording, why not just offer the recording from the soundboard? I have been to a few shows where the artist would make available the performance, like five minutes after the show. I think it is a wonderful service for their fans, especially if they want to take a memento home.

So, I was pretty spot-on as far as transcribing, on the fly, on all the wonderful things Morrissey would say between the songs. As you can see, Morrissey had something clever to say between every song. I’ve gone back and fixed some of the errors. If you prefer to read the original transcription by me, head over to morrissey-solo.com.

So if you’re listening to the bootleg, I have added some notes to help explain some of Morrissey’s comments, particularly Moz acknowledging Julia Riley.

Here’s all the Morrissey quotes from the show:

Note that the opener band was a local band called the Cultivators. Singer Dan Israel explained that it was “a last-minute call”, and the band canceled their prior commitment of playing with the Urban Hillbilly Quartet at Eclipse Records. Looks like the Cultivators are still around, check out their website.