The United States of Morrissey

When the Heavens Smile upon You There's No Need to Smile Back

2009-03-22T13:51:00.000-07:00

Historically speaking Maggie Thatcher set the stage while Morrissey filled the bleak blank page. For a youth culture that had missed its Summer of ‘69 the Smiths generously offered the rapturous Spring of 1983. In the existential wake of Punk, awash amidst a wasteland of Synth Pop and unemployment lines, from the solitude of erudite bedroom walls emerged Morrissey––arguably, the most fully realized, cultivated and conscious Personality in Pop history. A self-taught student of the power of media and music to shape a meaningful life experience, Morrissey willed into existence a “harsh romanticism” and shy sensuality ne’er before seen or heard. Beads, billowing shirts, cuffed jeans, NHS specs, decadent quiff, vegetarian diet, workman’s boots, and gladioli flung in all directions like spiritual, phallic, floral weapons against the dismantling of England’s prized welfare state (and really all vulgar interpretations of human life).

For protection and salvation the brazen Bard armed the Smiths and their uniquely devout following with an arsenal of enriching cultural references to rival even T.S. Eliot’s footnotes: Oscar Wilde, James Dean, Elvis, Shelagh Delaney, Elizabeth Smart, 60s Girl Groups, the New York Dolls, kitchen-sink dramas, obscure film stars, pressing current events and public figures. Morrissey’s velvet croon cut like a knife and soothed like a lover's arms. (And thankfully, it still does). A Critic’s discerning eye and wit, a Poet’s immaculate heart and sensuous love of Language, and a Comedian’s timing, crafted lyrics both subversive and sublime––leaping and languishing against Johnny Marr’s driven, dreamy, jangly guitars. Despite the acrimonious split that would break them in 1987, and the later actions of litigious secondary band members, the Smiths seduced and awakened a niche in the Pop unconscious for unrivaled emotional honesty, intelligence, self-awareness, sorrow and passionate love.

Kristeen Young: Rock Mythology in the New Millennium

2008-03-31T11:18:00.000-07:00

Interview by Samantha Skinazi. Reprinted with Permission of Perfect Sound Forever (http://www.furious.com/perfect).

Imagine a pop song inspired by Dorothy Parker's book of poems, Enough Rope, and written about Morrissey. Or a songwriter who likes her romance with edges and insults, crafting beautiful, heart-wrenching songs that re-interpret the sappy love narrative for time immemorial. Telling me with a smile, "I want to be in love so much that when they're gone, I want to kill myself."

Imagine a Midwestern Christian Fundamentalist adoptive mother angered by your voice as you, a small child played with friends. Telling you who always loved singing, "Kris, your voice cuts like a knife."

Then think high art, high drama and sensory bliss as realized by a St. Louis born and bred, half-Apache self-proclaimed "Rude Girl" who plays the keyboard orgasmically, and still loves bubblegum and Sour Patch Kids. Imagine by her side, a sensitive and sensual, sweat-soaked rebel with a cause drummer called "Baby" Jeff White who bows his head gently, sometimes shedding a tear as he pummels the hell out of his Ludwig drum kit.

Envision haute couture creations so imaginative that they might startle Zandra Rhodes. So glamorous that they'd turn Yves Saint Laurent's head. All drawn from a palette of elements so disparate even Marcel Duchamp might blush (bunches of artificial grapes, 4-inch stiletto transparent boots, first-aid tape, gold-lamé bikini tops, decadent billowing collars, clothespins...).

How about never being "supported by anything but other artists"? And what if those artists were Tony Visconti, David Bowie and Morrissey? Imagine going from ten years in "the trenches" of the music world playing only "the smallest" rock clubs, to opening over one hundred shows worldwide for a legendary artist you feel "practically formed [you]," at venues like the Hollywood Bowl, Teatro Romano di Ostia Antica and Manchester's G-Mex Arena.

And then imagine that at the 116th show (which happens to be in Manhattan, your home for the last 7 years) a crass off-the-cuff remark, probably intended to rile up a stiff audience, misses its mark by country miles, and lands you off the tour.

Well, it's the stuff on which Rock and Roll mythology and folklore is built. It's also the ongoing story of KRISTEENYOUNG. An epic "post-punk piano/drums pop opera" duo, stealthily injecting a sharpshot of iconoclasm into the heart of the mainstream music industry.

And she is Kristeen Young. Work of art, force of nature, mystical misfit, songstress extraordinaire.

I meet with Miss Young on a sunny October afternoon in West Hollywood, a day before the final night of an eight-night residency with Morrissey at the Palladium. Facing a busy boulevard in an open-air café, she wears a high-neck gossamer blouse under a fitted checkered jacket with a round collar. Looking glamorous even in early afternoon, Kristeen orders a cappuccino. The waitress brings her a macchiato instead -- a situation she remedies by ordering another cappuccino and combining the two. An hour later, while sipping a cafe mocha (her third attempt at getting what she wants), she confides, "Unless I'm drinking vodka or coffee, I don't talk." Kristeen laughs, explaining that she always has a shot of vodka before she goes on stage. Otherwise she won't say a word. With an utterly charming schoolgirl giggle, she quickly adds: "But I don't drink any other time. When I'm not touring, I don't touch alcohol."

Could Kristeen Young, who recently came on stage in Los Angeles saying, "I'll be your dominatrix for the evening," be shy and self-conscious?

When I ask her if she thinks of her music as harsh, she replies, "Yeah at times, very much. Brash. I mean I think there are pretty moments, but there's also a lot of brash."

KRISTEENYOUNG the band, expresses Kristeen Young the woman's compelling fusion of icy finger-in-your-face, punk bravado for the space age future with a soft, sensuous emotionality evocative of childlike innocence for another and more wholesome world.

I suggest to Kristeen that not so far underneath her signature brashness she cares deeply about what the audience thinks. Looking into the distance with her huge flying saucer eyes of translucent green, she mostly agrees, "I always care about it." As she shifts her delicate but cutting gaze directly at me, she is careful to add: "But it's not ever going to make me stop doing what I'm doing. Ultimately I don't care. So I care; but I don't. I'm still going to do what I do. Does that make any sense? Like I might cry about it tonight, but tomorrow I'm going to do the same thing. [Laughs] I'm not going to change it."

And so her answer to my next question certainly surprises me. I ask Kristeen if what I recently read is true –– that she always wanted a mainstream hit song. I almost drop my iced tea when she laughs politely, responding with much enthusiasm: "Yeah, I always wanted to be like, you know, Madonna. And then people would say: 'Well you don't want to be like Britney Spears.' And I'm like: 'Yes I do!' And I want to say, 'I think I am like that.' You know like I don't have a proper vision of what I am, actually."

What may at first seem like a conundrum reminds me of Alan Watts explaining Zen philosophy as "an eye that sees, but does not see itself" or "a sword that cuts, but does not cut itself." The distinct oracular power of Kristeen Young may precisely be as the auteur rock savante who knows, but does not know herself.

And beyond that, throughout our interview, Kristeen repeatedly and purposefully chips away at the conventional, dualistic cultural argument that pits pop music against cutting-edge music, and low art versus high art.

For instance, I ask Kristeen, beautiful as she is, and with such an exquisite and mesmerizing voice, what stops her from putting on a conventionally sexy dress and singing pretty love songs. I imagine that she might embark on a diatribe against such pedestrian forms of expression. Instead, she wryly delivers a profoundly simple (and funny) response: "Very low self-esteem. [We both laugh.] I have no confidence in myself whatsoever. So I always overdo."

Similarly, I mention that her outfits remind me of modern art canvases. Her reply, "I don't think that that's a goal. I mean I just make stuff that I like." She explains that her clothes are the only real visual she can offer because an opening band can't have a stage show. Kristeen pauses, thoughtfully extending this to a general philosophy of living. She says slowly: "Which has always been my motto. If I have a motto [laughs]. I do the best with what I have. I make the most out of what I have. That's what I try to do. That's really all the clothes are about."

We tend to assume someone so daringly original tries to be different. But our discussion keeps coming back to the fact that as far back as grade school, even with "everyday behavior," Kristeen Young "was always trying to fit in." She muses, as though still unraveling the knot: "I've always been rubbing off edges, and trying to figure out what it is that everybody else does naturally... What's the difference? I'm a human being. I'm made of the same thing. I don't know. It invades every aspect of my life."

In the end, it's Kristeen who poses the overwhelming question of our moment. She asks, "When did 'different' get to be such a bad word?... It's just not healthy in any way." On a similar note, she speaks passionately about her active involvement in the 2004 campaign to remove George Bush from office. I ask her where she thinks the counter-culture's hiding these days. Deeply concerned, she says: "There's just such a feeling of apathy, and just this embracing of blandness. It puzzles me. Maybe that's the new generation's statement, but I'm too old to understand." She continues, "It's like they need -- [pause] some sort of bravery, or heart, or just to care about something." Kristeen expresses her unequivocal belief in the purity of youth, thoughtfully adding that she feels, "it's someone else making the decision [for them]." If given the option, kids "will always like colorful things; they'll always like something that's different. Sometimes they're just not given the options, and they pick the best of the options that they're given."

If you've become accustomed to just choosing from available options, relegating art to the museum and pop music to mind-numbing blather, the revelatory experience of KRISTEENYOUNG may unsettle and astonish you. It may also, in these shockingly apathetic times, give you back some of the bravery that is your birthright. The same bravery that allows Kristeen to say -- after ten exceptional years mostly under the radar -- "Maybe it can be an inspiration, just my whole experience. That I do what I want, and I'm not going to really change just to be part of the system or whatever. Ultimately... as trite as it sounds... I can be nobody but just me."

And thank the Pop heavens for that.

All of KRISTEENYOUNG's albums can be purchased at iTunes or Amazon. And they are currently recording a new album with legendary producer Tony Visconti. Take your protein pills and travel to myspace.com/kristeenyoung for more info.

A Defence of Poetry: Because We Must

2008-02-04T21:43:00.000-08:00

Article:"Bigmouth Strikes Again"
Available at: http://www.newstatesman.com/200801310035
Published: 31 January 2008
Journalist: Jude Rogers

My response:

Ms. Rogers, I hope you will forgive me the familiarity of stating that I know your type. You are the sort of Morrissey fan who still laments Marr’s absence, the kind who only starts bopping her head about when Morrissey sings songs from his Smiths catalogue.

Well no one I know, or like, comes to a Morrissey concert chasing the mercurial memory of Morrissey wearing beads and glasses, whilst waving gladioli like spiritual weapons against Thatcher’s sterile vision of a revitalized England.

Please don’t misunderstand me. The 24-year-old slightly awkward Adonis does make for a lovely memory; a triumphant memory of the jaw-dropping birth of the most unlikely, and the most perfect, Pop vision of all time. Only, the Classical Age of Morrissey has yet to go into decline. As for the Classical Era of journalistic writing about him, and art and music in general, well that perhaps is the story that you tell too well. Too well.

I am baffled by Rogers’ assertion that Morrissey has “spun a web of mystery around his sexuality and political beliefs for the past 25 years.” In terms of Morrissey’s sexuality, there is no mysterious web to get caught in, but rather a philosophical treatise that quite openly refuses entrapment within the snares of “umbrella sexuality.” Morrissey has made his position perfectly clear from the outset, by expressing that he doesn’t believe people are hetero-, homo-, or bi-, but rather that people are simply sexual, with no need for prefixes that prepackage identity. Morrissey does not participate in the language or ideas of the clinical sexual taxonomy of the late Victorian period.

In terms of his political beliefs, again, I fail to find his positions shrouded in mystery. Morrissey has written songs like “Margaret on the Guillotine,” “The Queen Is Dead,” “Irish Blood, English Heart,” and voiced innumerable political commentary over the years, including dissenting statements about Tony Blair, issuing a public statement urging US voters not to vote for George Bush in 2004, as well as repeatedly mentioning Barack Obama as his preferred candidate for the current US primary elections. Beyond such explicit political statements and positions Morrissey has continuously expressed his conviction that practically everything is political: eating habits, sexual labels, vapid pop stars on Top of the Pops, etc…

The racism issue, well the best way to discredit an Anglo male is to say that he is racist. This slanderous label has been slung at Morrissey since the beginning, in repeated campaigns aimed at reducing his moral credibility. To address this properly I am currently at work on an essay entitled “We Hate It When Our Friends Remain Successful: And If They’re Northern and Named Morrissey, Well That Makes It Even Worse.”

Also I would be remiss if I did not add that Rogers paints quite a vulgar picture of the breathtaking song “Life Is a Pigsty.” While indeed a journalist bears the unique burden of deciding where to begin and end quote, Rogers’ omission of the song’s preceding line succeeds perfectly in omitting both sense and tone. In the line she omits, Morrissey asks: “Can you please stop time?” The gentle tone of the lyric is framed within the profundity of its request by the dramatic deafening gong that follows immediately. Then come the lines quoted by Rogers, and before Morrissey deftly (not effetely, thank you) takes to the ground, the other lyric omitted: “And even now in the final hour of my life I’m falling in love –– again…”

I realize I have almost written another article in response to this article. I do not respond as a fan, or fanatic, who cannot hear her hero thoughtfully or intelligently criticized. As a cultural critic I live and breathe for imaginative and well-written Criticism. I am though so very tired of these chronically clichéd attitudes towards Morrissey and what seem to me to be the Press’ willful and loaded habit of misreading his work and his meaning.

If I am defensive of Morrissey, which I certainly am, I defend him with the same passion, rigor and purpose with which one must protect her favorite novel, or poet, or painting from fundamental misinterpretations and misrepresentations.

Morrissey at the Palladium: The First and Last of the Famous Intellectual Sex Symbols

2007-10-31T17:13:00.000-07:00

Saturday (Closing Night)
13 October 2007

KRISTEENYOUNG at the Palladium: In the Year 2050, You'll Understand (Maybe...)

2007-10-30T19:21:00.000-07:00

Saturday (Closing Night)
13 October 2007

Set List:
Stop Thinking/You Must Love Me/9/Everybody Wants Me To Cry/This Is the Dawn of My D-Day/Lies/Halfway Across the Atlantic Ocean/(But It's All Just) Imagined/Depression Contest

Morrissey at the Palladium: Some Stages Are More Like Operating Tables Than Others

2007-10-30T19:18:00.000-07:00

Friday (Night VII)
12 October 2007

Morrissey set the record to right tonight, explaining after the second song: “You think this is a stage; this is an operating table. I am the slab, and here is the nature of the struggle. And off we go.”

As far as I’m concerned Morrissey stands in the line of fully realized Western male personalities: Socrates, Jesus, Wilde…Morrissey. All four were both lionized and persecuted by their respective Ages for articulating and expressing the ways by which their particular historical moments fell short and faltered from the path of realizing the grand and pressing potential of the human spirit.

A priest, or monk, takes a vow of self-abnegation, effacing the self into a universal and impersonal representative of the Holy. Morrissey, working in the Western performative tradition of Personality as Art, takes a vow of public self-realization—celebrating the self into a particular and personal example of the Holy.

Morrissey began tonight’s celebration with this query for his audience: “It’s approximately 9:15 in the evening; do you know where your parents are?” From there, looking radiantly dapper in a white embroidered dress shirt, he dove into a playful evening, infused as always with the transformative power that is Morrissey’s operating table.

After “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before,” Morrissey walked over to the drum kit and pointed to each printed word, as he read aloud slowly for anyone who had not yet noticed the prominent new motto: “Some of us is turning nasty.” He then complimented the audience for our tenacity exclaiming with a modicum of pride, “You brave daredevil people!”

Before “Irish Blood, English Heart,” Morrissey half-joked: “As you all know I began life with no advantages and it’s all been downhill since then, as exemplified in this next tune…” And after an incendiary performance of the incendiary track, he said quite tenderly (and truthfully given the Moz Angeles audience): “For some of you, of course it will be Mexican Blood, American hearts. Or it could be Mexican blood, Mexican hearts.”

In “The National Front Disco,” Morrissey also sings about nationalism. The song certainly never was mere justification, or foolish romanticization of British skinhead youth culture in the 1980s. The racism slander campaign orchestrated by the British press against Morrissey in the early ‘90s, though hurtful, harmful, and vile—always did strike me as utterly transparent, and painfully ill conceived.

When Morrissey lovingly sings:

“There’s a country
You don’t live there
But one day you would like to—”

I hear him singing about the desire most of us have to live in a country of which we feel proud, to which we feel devoted and bound, and by which we feel represented and loved. (And yes, when these very basic human needs remain unmet, young people do, have, and will, turn somewhere to meet them). Those lines evoke in me feelings I can only imagine national anthems elicit for others. For me, it is a patriotism to a country of the future, a mythical country of the imagination—ruled maybe by “world poets,” instead of world bullies and bureaucrats.

And just before my favorite World Poet set his teeth into the encore of a smooth and seamless set, in an exaggerated tone, he hilariously exclaimed: “And if you don’t come tomorrow night—I’m gonna whoop your ass!!!!”

As usual “First of the Gang to Die,” devolved or evolved, (depending on your perspective), into a raucous raging surge to get up on the operating table. As Morrissey was kneeling at the edge of the "table" to shake a fan’s hand he was almost pulled off. Once he caught his balance, he continued to shake this person’s hand, and attempt to pull them up. Security eventually got the better of the situation, and Morrissey, impressed by the effort, said: “Brave man.”

And perhaps, too perfect a set seems boring to Morrissey—as he raised his arms straight out in front of him like a sleepwalker, trudging out of view, jokingly comatosed, for the final exit of his Palladium residency's penultimate night.

I realized another fitting metaphor for Morrissey’s stage is to say that it is also a bridge. For me it has been, and he has been, a bridge between two worlds: the ideal and the worldly; the sacred and the mundane; a way of connecting who I want to be with who I’m made to feel I should be, or the way I'd love to live with the way I do live.

As for my own personal transformation, Morrissey has made me feel strong for the very reasons the culture around me has told me I am weak—(and this remains for me the defining characteristic of the truly Subversive). With songs like “Is It Really So Strange?” “My Love Life,” ”Speedway,” "Now My Heart Is Full," “Tomorrow,” “Life Is a Pigsty,” and “The National Front Disco,” I can confidently shout from any rooftop that the Heart is not a manageable economy, and that some lights must be left to burn no matter what the cost.

The presence and gift of Morrissey in my life (coupled with two days on Zoloft) snatched me from the nether-worldian grips of a ten-year depression. Now—years later, I admit sometimes I slip. But, like Pan and his flute, Morrissey and his voice lure me lovingly back to the shores of sanity. And the operating table that is the stage on which he stands, fills that empty page at the bottom of my heart—every single time.
Amen.

Set list:
The Imperfect List
Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before/You Have Killed Me/I Just Want To See the Boy Happy/Tomorrow/Irish Blood, English Heart/Disappointed/Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself?/The National Front Disco/Girlfriend in a Coma/Sister I’m a Poet/The World Is Full of Crashing Bores/I Like You/ Death of a Disco Dancer/Billy Budd/Jack the Ripper/Please, Please, Please Let me Get What (Have Who) I Want/Ganglord/Let Me Kiss You/Stretch Out and Wait/Dear God, Please Help Me/ How Soon Is Now?//First of the Gang to Die

The Boys in white work shirts with black bowties, and yellow pants!

Other asides not included in Review:
“Now as you know I’ve been on this earth for 32 years and if there’s one thing I’ve learned and you only have to look at the American music Press…the world is full of crashing bores.”
And upon the conclusion of the song of the same name : "The world is full of crashing bores. Is that debatable?"

“Since we have taken up residency at the Hollywood Palladium, since we have, 12 members of staff have killed themselves. It’s worth noting.”

"Thank you for listening for so long with both ears."

"Is there a future?"

Audience Q and A:
Morrissey: “Are you well?”
Audience Member: “I’m nasty.”

Another Audience Member: “Morrissey what are you hearing up there you’re not liking? Because it sounds great out here.”
Morrissey: “I know you’re trying to be encouraging, but that kind of stuff only works with children or ponies.”

Morrissey: "Can you bear more?"
Audience cheers...
Morrissey: "Prove it!"

During "Stretch Out and Wait"
Morrissey: "And is there any point in ever having children?"
Audience: "NO!"
Morrissey: "Very good!"

KRISTEENYOUNG at the Palladium: Never Let a Drummer Tie Your Collar

2007-10-25T23:53:00.001-07:00

Night VII (Friday)
12 October 2007

Kristeen Young wore her heart on her collar tonight. Her singular charm and enthusiasm rubbed the edges off her roughest detractors. She landed behind her post in high spirits. Playfully teasing the by now resident audience, she said with alluring smile: “It’s us again, lucky you.”

During “Stop Thinking,” Kristeen and Jeff began coaxing the audience out of the stodgy comfort zone into all-enveloping sensory bliss. Lunging from behind her keyboard, battering the keys, and re-balancing her five-pound ruffle collar, Young even had the lights nodding “yes,” as she sang:

“Let it go…all the reasons for ‘no,’
and stop thinking (ya, ya, ya, ya, ya).”

“You Must Love Me” evoked a playground ethic of love that was anything but childish. Kristeen wrestled with the muses (and her maladjusted collar,) as she evoked beauty itself out of the sinews of heartache:

“Push me on the playground
I will take you down.
Pull my ponytail
You’ll be the one to wail.”

And when, with eyes pressed shut, face whirling in emotion, and voice in full and phenomenal force, Kristeen sang: “I cannot resist—” she gave me pause to wonder if I had ever felt anything truly in my life.

After "You Must Love Me," masterfully juggling seriousness with humor, Young explained: “My collar’s falling, because I let the drummer tie it. Never let a drummer tie your collar.”

Rising above her falling collar she took to center stage for “Touch Tongues.” The song was delivered in the tone and rhythm of a spirited sermon. Kristeen joked afterwards, “I’m sorry we’re from Missouri, so some songs have to be inspired by church”

As she and Jeff began the opening of “You Ruined Everything,” the audience cheered in recognition of the song. In a strangely precious moment, Kristeen raised her hands up to her head, and squealed like a shy child.

After struggling to keep her collar from falling all throughout “This Is the Dawn of My D-Day,” Kristeen suddenly relieved herself of its weight. As she wriggled out of the center-piece of her outfit, tossing it over her shoulder, she said triumphantly: “Next time I’ll tie it myself.”

In one fantastic and dramatic instant, she went from looking like an alternate universe's memory of stealth 40s glamour to Audrey Hepburn at her simplest and sweetest.

A rowdy member of the audience couldn't contain his enthusiasm as he yelled," Show us your ----!" In top form Young replied, “I don’t know what you just said, but I really feel like smacking you.” And following a glorious performance of "Mixed Kids," she aimed her cool fire in his direction again, saying with a smile: “There’s one person right there. I really can’t see you. But I imagine you wearing a wife beater with spaghetti stains all over it, but maybe that’s just my fantasy.”

Kristeen’s eyes, voice, skin, style, snear, and manner, and Jeff’s rhythm, shoulders, gaze, sweat, and swagger reveal something still wild—something that, even come commercial success, will hopefully never be tamed. As we continue to eradicate all pristine and open spaces, every remnant of wilderness, literal and metaphorical, becomes increasingly sacred and vital to our future. And so it is with KRISTEENYOUNG.

Set List:
Stop Thinking/You Must Love Me/Touch Tongues/Everybody Wants Me to Cry/You Ruined Everything/This Is the Dawn of My Day/Mixed Kids/Halfway Across the Atlantic Ocean/Kill the Father

Morrissey at the Palladium: A Taste of Freedom

2007-10-24T21:37:00.000-07:00

Night VI (Thursday)
11 October 2007

With his shirt well past half untucked by only the third song, Morrissey wasn’t kidding when he braved the stage shouting: “This is a pre-dawn raid!” Having turned as he now likes to say “very nasty,” Morrissey began a jolting evening with the bare-boned thriller “Jack the Ripper.” Red lights roving, he stood arms spread-eagled. Fully bearing his heart, both seduced and seductively, he sang (along with the audience): “Crash in-to my arms. I want you. You don’t agree, but you don’t refuse. I know you.”

Morrissey certainly knew his audience well, when he said: “Welcome to the 43rd night of our 79 nights at the Hollywood Palladium.” And perhaps even more so when unabashedly he stated, “You have come back for your fix.”

Well it was true, we had.

Before the show my friend standing next to me, who travels all over this world to see Morrissey, was pondering his sweetheart’s bemusement at his habit. He shook his head as he said thoughtfully, “He just doesn’t understand why I want to see [Morrissey] so much. I don’t either; but I [just] do.”

The beauty of a good fix will always be bound up in the mystery of its rewards. Now we as a culture can continue to displace all our addictions onto the convenient scapegoats of drug addicts and alcoholics—like the rest of us don’t spend our lives on the prowl for our own fixes: money, beauty, cupcakes, control, oil, land, power etc…

What’s interesting about Americans is that so many of these nasty habits stem from an underlying addiction to the Freedom Myth. Yet none of these “fixes” offer much freedom at all. Instead, our addictions to money, control, power, and the like, threaten everyday to enslave us in a wheel, which offers little reward for most.

Tonight, Morrissey dealt out cutting honesty, passion, ecstasy, laughter, knowledge, bravery, subversion of mainstream culture, art, inspiration, and beautiful, beautiful music by the bucketful. And as Americans, born and bred with a taste for freedom, we came to fill our buckets at the Source.

Morrissey always speaks his heart, mind, and body freely. Another friend of mine said in reference to her initial reactions to Morrissey’s unique lyrical prowess: “That’s crossed my mind [before], but it certainly never came out of my mouth.”

Even his joking asides, or seemingly casual segues between songs cut right to the chase: “I would never lie to you in order to spare your feelings but if you go beyond those doors, I think you’ll find, in fact, I know you’ll find that the world is full of crashing bores.” Also on the subject of freedom, Morrissey later commented: “There is so much in life that we cannot do and it’s astonishing when we find something we can do and obviously I’m still searching…[G]ive me three more years. Maybe. Maybe.”

As usual Morrissey pushed the universe towards all the overwhelming, frightening, and potentially liberating questions. With tonight’s set list, he asked: “What really lies behind the constraints of my mind?”; “Is there any point in ever having children?”; “Will the world end in the night time?”; “Is evil just something you are? Or something you do?”; “Why don’t you put your arms around me?”; “When you say it’s going to happen ‘now,’ well what exactly do you mean?”; “Have I failed?”; and jokingly, upon conclusion of the song of the same name: “Why don’t you find out for yourself, instead of always blah, blah, blah?”

During the encore, “First of the Gang to Die,” I almost went under. The frenetic energy unleashed by Morrissey, combined with the desire of fans to get to him transformed the front area of the floor into a near raging sea. People were tumbling over the barrier, launching themselves over one another, and pushing. Morrissey's intelligent bravado and pointed defiance had incited such an overwhelming outpouring of feeling that I moved back and forth with the crowd, unable to see the stage or really hear the final song. It seems the power of meaningful transgression in a public setting can still be infectious.

In an interview with LA TV, given on September 29th in Santa Barbara (just before the Palladium run,) Morrissey was asked if he thought that an artist, or rather the vehicle of music and songwriting might save the world. He replied: “But I think it is music, and I think it is artists, who do save the world. It isn’t politicians. It isn’t the police. The police [chuckles] don’t save the world.”

And when pressed a little further as to whether or not singing itself is a sort of politics, Morrissey replied: “I think any kind of action is politics. So, certainly singing is very political. Because you literally have total freedom. And this doesn’t happen anywhere else in life, with anything…So I think music, rock ‘n’ roll, however you wish to turn it, is policed and watched very carefully because it’s the only freedom, I think, on the planet.”

Set List:
Jack the Ripper/Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before/Sister, I’m a Poet/Tomorrow/This World Is Full of Crashing Bores/I Just Want To See the boy Happy/I Like You/The Loop/Death of a Disco Dancer/Billy Budd/Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself/Stretch Out and Wait/One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell/Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me/I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris/That’s How People Grow Up/Irish Blood, English Heart/All You Need Is Me/The Last of the Famous International Playboys/Life Is a Pigsty/How Soon Is Now?//First of the Gang To Die

Other asides not included in review:
After “The Loop”: “I don’t even possess a telephone. Why would I need one?”
During “Billy Budd” “Did you hear they turned me down? So what!!”
“And to the person who’s been holding the Southpaw sign for the last five years, it’s a beautiful song, but no we’re not going to play it.”
In reference to the sound quality, after “That’s How People Grow Up”: “Horrible. Should we stop? Horrible. You must agree. You must agree! Is the sound alright? Are you wearing headphones?”
Before the encore: “We traveled all the way from Little Romania to get here. Dear God we’re grateful”

KY at the Palladium: Amid Concrete and Clay, and General Decay, KRISTEENYOUNG Will Still Find a Way

2007-10-21T22:20:00.001-07:00

Night VI (Thursday)
11 October 2007

In an ideal pop landscape KRISTEENYOUNG would be broadcasted generously across the airwaves of old-fashioned and satellite radio alike, their complete discography readily available at old-fashioned retailers and iTunes, and the unfathomable beauty of what their music videos might look like would stream constantly through the old Tube and You Tube. Instead, for now, KRISTEENYOUNG remain an opening band. An opening band of mythical proportions, that is, opening for He of the most mythic proportions.

Kristeen looked like a fiery pixie tonight feverishly picking out each note on her keyboard. Her shadow projected against the white backdrop, she appeared as one of her talent and imaginative prowess should — larger than life.

Kristeen greeted the audience affectionately. Letting us know the time and the score, she said: “So it’s hate o’clock.” A few songs into a driving and driven set, “Baby” Jeff began hammering into “London Cry” in earnest. Kristeen, rather talkative tonight, had started to say something, but gave into his early start cheekily with raised eyebrows and a: “Never mind…”

Like the mythical phoenix that reduces itself to ash, and then revives and regenerates new life by its own fire, this song seems to speak to the regenerative possibilities of personal apocalypse by imagination. Moving full speed ahead by way of a relentless rhythm, Young sang:

“Burning up. Then, down again.
Like Josephine and Jimi,
We’ll step while we can still dream,
And pilgrim to the mystic city.
Burning up. Then, down again.”

For the remainder of the set, Kristeen and Jeff hit a tone more reminiscent of Abbott and Costello. Kristeen would try to speak to the audience, while Jeff was already off and drumming into the next song. Kristeen joked, “I keep wanting to say something, and he keeps playing.” Jeff playfully laid his sticks down. Plagued it seems by monitor issues, the other-wordly rapport between these two, made magic of what might in lesser hands have been mayhem.

After “9” several audience members called out: “Kristeen, we love you.” She looked genuinely surprised and unsure of the sincerity of the response. Pausing, somewhat suspiciously, she uttered a reluctant, but humbled “Thank you.” I guess when you’ve been making music this innovative and powerful for as long as KRISTEENYOUNG (ten years) and have received support from fellow Artists instead of the music industry, one must become a bit unsure of more pedantic sorts of accolades.

With a large gold-trimmed plastic bow perched on her shoulder, I realized tonight that Kristeen Young is a gift. Kristeen not only has a face that could launch a thousand ships, but also possesses the voice, vision, and wherewithal to never send those ships out idly, and to bring them back to a home with a future.

Set List:
Kill the Father/You Must Love Me/9/Everybody Wants Me to Cry/London Cry/Stop Thinking/Halfway Across the Atlantic Ocean/Mixed Kids/Depression Contest

Morrissey at the Palladium: From the Lion’s Loving Mouth

2007-10-20T22:02:00.000-07:00

Night V (Tuesday)
09 October 2007

Twenty-five years into his career, his sold-out Hollywood Bowl performance this past summer not even reviewed by the “LA Times,” without a record deal once again — Morrissey remains the just man raging, where the lions roam, in the wilds of the culture wars.

And tonight, the sharp truth from the lion’s loving mouth cut and sliced right through the shackles of everyday passivity and obedience. The liberating rush of rock ‘n’ roll at its finest burst the floodgates of passion wide open during Los Angeles’ favorite encore, “The First of the Gang To Die.”

I knew the night might aim for the modern moment’s jugular as soon as I realized Morrissey had brought back Big Hard Excellent Fish’s “The Imperfect List,” as the initiation piece for the evening’s ceremony. I love listening to that list as I prepare to be serenaded by the ambrosial wit and wisdom of Morrissey. That rousing litany of abuses committed against the social Psyche and Body of the past fifty years always draws me out of hiding. As one who has not been able to bear reading a newspaper for the last eight years, I confess that each time I hear the pointed question, “Where were you?” (which concludes the List and inaugurates Morrissey to the stage,) I feel once again connected to, and responsible for the past, present, and future of the unfolding of human events.

During the roaring incantation which was the opening song “London,” Morrissey triumphantly smacked down his own question: “Do you think I’ve made the right decision this time?” with a resolute, and defiant: “NO!” Strobe light flashing against Morrissey’s black button-down shirt and black slacks, his mad scissor-swiping claps sent the audience into a meaningful frenzy.

Morrissey announced in reference to KRISTEENYOUNG’s new song, and perhaps in joking reference to the media’s chronic poor handling of his career: “Everybody wants me to cry!” Set on causing the sort of trouble only he knows how to manifest, he said: “Welcome to the lion’s mouth.” He later asked the audience mock-sheepishly “Am I causing trouble?” And answered coyly, “I hope so.”

Later, the Lion showed his teeth, as promised, when he stated: “I’m quite certain that yesterday was Columbus Day. I’m baffled by the fact that he was said to have discovered America when there were already people here. However, this is usually said by people who think America’s a white country. It never was.”

In deliciously fun spirits after “Good Looking Man About Town,” he thanked the audience “for applauding a song that you didn’t know and you don’t like.” He made two jokes regarding cover versions of his songs. About “The Loop,” he quipped: “That was a song made famous by the wonderful Tiger Army. Yes, we have taste.” And with a little more sting, after “Stop Me if You Think You’ve Heard This One Before,” he asked the audience: “Did you like the recent cover version that sold 50 million copies? Is that a ‘no’? Does anybody like it? Jesse, do you like it?” To which guitarist Jesse Tobias responded, with his usual deadpan delivery, “Absolutely not.” Pleased, Morrissey joked: “Jesse beats around the bush.”

Healthy doses of humor didn’t keep the bite of seriousness from locking into its prey. “Death of a Disco Dancer” felt like a eulogy as sung from the next and better world, for the unfortunate passing of this one — which might have been benevolent and charming, but instead was selfish and vulgar.

If this is correct, then it seems in the next world the lights will always be kept low (probably because in the name of progress and convenience we will have used up all energy for eons and eons), the atmosphere will be smoky (probably the emanation of exhaust from all our explosions), everyone will be well-dressed (because hopefully Morrissey will make all decisions,) —and if we’re really lucky, Morrissey will take center stage each night, his golden voice still lamenting and fighting for the sanctity and position of what should always have been very obvious to us all:

“Love, peace, and harmony;
Love, peace, and har-mo-ny,
Is very nice,
Very nice,
Ve-ry nice —
But maybe in the next world.
Maybe in the next world.”

The 2000 U.S. Election, Reality TV, Darfur, Dick Cheney, Global Warming, the Invasion of Iraq, “Shock and Awe,” Guantanamo, Matthew Sheppard, WMDs, Paris Hilton, Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone, HR4437, the drilling of the Alaskan wilderness, third generation recycled gangsta rap, Rupert Murdoch, No (Every) Child Left Behind, Mad Cow Disease, the South Beach Diet, the Patriot Act, HMOs, Hurricane Katrina…Where were you?

Morrissey is not being morose or maudlin, or as he was just called by the “LA Times,” “the ambassador of angst,” (10/07/07) when he sings, face in pain, voice reasoning with destiny: “Life Is a Pigsty.”

Morrissey pleaded with the gods on our behalf tonight, posing the overwhelming questions: “Can you please stop Time? [GONG reverberates through the floorboards] Can you stop this pain?”

He addressed and articulated the Truth of our Age, while creating the imaginative space for a new Truth and a new Age. The duty of the Artist has always been to see past the limited vision of the larger culture, drawing forth a newer and more vital Culture.*

Like a Krishna figure who drags your sorrows away, Morrissey pulls beauty from the belly of pain. So much Morrissey criticism makes the literal error of calling Morrissey sorrowful because he is brave enough to talk about sorrow, calling him depressing because he has the nerve to directly confront the depression of the human spirit in the modern moment, and calling him cranky because he insists on speaking out against hypocrisy. Oscar Wilde must have been envisioning the miraculous coming of one such as Morrissey when he wrote: “Formerly we used to canonize our heroes. The modern method is to vulgarize them. Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable.”

Set List:
London/You have Killed Me/Billy Budd/The Youngest Was the Most Loved/Good Looking Man About Town/All You Need Is Me/Death of a Disco Dancer/I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris/Stretch Out and Wait/The Loop/Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself?/Tomorrow/Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before/Irish Blood English Heart/One Day Goodbye Will be Farewell/Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What (Have Who) I Want/Let Me Kiss You/Life Is a Pigsty/How Soon IS Now?//First of the Gang To Die

Endnote:
* The line “The duty of the Artist is to see past the limited vision of the larger culture, drawing forth newer and more vital Culture,” and the idea of Morrissey as the Krishna figure were written under the strong influence of many long conversations with my dear friend, Christian Padilla Martin, during which I must admit I did sometimes sit poised with pen and notepad.

KRISTEENYOUNG at the Palladium: You Can’t Conceive That There’s A New Mix-Up

2007-10-18T23:15:00.000-07:00

Night V (Tuesday)
09 October 2007

Layer upon layer of white chiffon ruffles never looked so sexy and tough; and transparent, black-hued, knee-high boots with four-inch stiletto heels never looked so dignified and classy, as when Kristeen paired them together tonight. But then again, Kristeen Young seems to specialize in resolving contradictions by juxtaposing extremes.

Some monitor issues, and a slightly unfriendly crowd did little to deter either Kristeen or Jeff from giving a raw and rocking performance. In a blue work shirt, dark vest and tie, hair shaved close on the sides, and a slim pile of curls pulled forward and gelled in a quasi quiff, “Baby” Jeff played harder than usual (if that’s possible) tonight.

Kristeen was particularly scathing and in control for a drop-everything rendition of one of their older songs, “Touch Tongues.” Voice in full force, twisting as she held the microphone stand from center stage, Kristeen testified:

“I know it’s dif-fi-cult--
To be so typ-i-cal--
So typ-typ-typ-typ
Typ-i-cal.”

She moved back to the keyboard for a stirring performance of “Everybody Wants Me To Cry.” Bathed in soft pink light, the tenderness of the lyrics meshed with the plaintiveness of Young’s voice seeming to draw a tear or two down her lovely cheeks.

Mixed Kids, one of my favorites, sounded especially triumphant. Kristeen dedicated it to the “Doll Babies,” two charming teenage sisters, and KRISTEENYOUNG devotees from San Diego. Kristeen moved and maneuvered all around her small slice of stage, even wrapping the mic cord around her neck at one point. She explained very conversationally to the audience the complexity of her plight:

“All my life,
I’d be walking down the street,
And people would stare
Until they’d finally spit it out,
‘What are you?!’ ”

Slung from her mouth like an arrow aimed spot-on between the eyes of Fate, that question resounded and dripped with the pointed frustration of one who has been asked the unaskable two hundred times too many. Her reply tamed the question by reframing it and surprising the inquirer with an answer that defies categorization and labels:

“I’m liberation, sexually,
The sharp shot;
The revolution’s fertility you for-got.”

The Sexual Revolution, and all of the revolutions of the 1960s (and perhaps all revolutions in general) had room for life that never grew. In all cases there was so much desire for change and growth that never happened or got stifled. Despite such fertile ground for seemingly endless possibilities, in the end so many of the same old injustices have popped up in slightly different clothing.

In my mind KRISTEENYOUNG align themselves with all of the seeds of revolution that never bore fruit. So if they seem confrontational, well that’s because in part, they are. And also because someone has to be.

Set List:
Kill the Father/You Must Love Me/Touch Tongues/Everybody Wants Me To Cry/Stop Thinking/Mixed Kids/Halfway Across the Atlantic Ocean/(But It’s All Just) Imagined/Depression Contest

Morrissey at the Palladium: Morrissey Is the Only Palladium This City Needs

2007-10-17T20:48:00.000-07:00

Night IV (Monday)
08 October, 2007

To the British youth of the early 1980s Morrissey must truly have seemed to have fallen from the sky—a sacred protector of what it meant to be young, and British, and human at the very moment when Margaret Thatcher’s policies undermined the sanctity and certainty of all of these. To the ancient Greeks, the Palladium was a statue of the Goddess of war and wisdom, Pallas Athena. This sacred object had fallen from the sky, a celestial answer to the prayers of Troy’s first King and legendary founder, Ilus. The Palladium kept the soul of the city safe. During the Trojan War, the Greeks discovered this secret, and Odysseus and Diomedes stole the Palladium. And in so doing stole Troy’s saving grace away.

As we waited in line outside the Hollywood Palladium tonight, Los Angeles provided the sort of mythmaking only she can effortlessly stage.

The local queen of self-promotion and roving L.A. landmark, Angelyne, circled the block twice in her hot pink corvette. Proof that at least in one respect L.A. does not play favorites—even Angelyne couldn’t find any parking. Unimpressed by the clearly marked “Temporary No Parking” sign, she parked her wheels right outside the venue. As she crossed Argyle on her way to the Coffee Bean, venue security reprimanded her.
She donned an exaggerated scowl as she abruptly closed her pink-feathered fan, turning it into a reproachful weapon with which to bat the guard’s arm. She then unapologetically peeled out in her pink star-mobile.

All the while a strung out scalper roamed up and down the line, as the following words tumbled from his mouth: “Tickets? Opium? Who wants tickets? Who wants opium?”

Paramount Pictures (across the street) could not have dressed a better set. One hundred ultra-high, ultra-skinny swaying palms towered precariously above us. And three huge cranes promised more progress to the hills and the Hollywood Sign in the near distance.

One ringleader held this circus together; one honorary Angeleno made sense of the mess. And lucky for us we didn’t need the likes of Odysseus or Diomedes to steal him away from his post as Manchester’s saving grace. The delicate hands of Fate had delivered Morrissey to Los Angeles, and we had long ago accepted this as Destiny.

Radiant in a white button down shirt with embroidered edelweiss details, and black slacks tailored to perfection, Morrissey knelt as he fell from the sky tonight. He proclaimed: “I am humbled; I am here.” And with that, he and his sterling band performed the raucous “You’re Gonna Need Someone By Your Side.” Morrissey changed the lyrics here and there, saying: ”I can’t do it by myself any longer. I’m gonna need someone by my side.” Swinging that mic cord, shaking that tambourine, and swiveling at the waist and knees, Morrissey called the Muses out early tonight. And with extra nuance in his voice, he delicately tore through a rabble-rousing set list.

“Ganglord” and “I Will See You in Far-Off Places,” were sung as if from a stage in the afterworld or hell, where all bets and pretenses being once and for all called off, we finally feel free to talk about the truth.

Morrissey introduced “Ganglord” by saying: “This next song is called the lighter side of dying.” He ended the song, which acts as a scourge against fairytale accounts of the relationship between so-called criminals and so-called law enforcement, by adjusting the closing lyric to: “Get your miserable ass back to the ghetto.” To segue between songs, Morrissey confessed wryly, “All of my life I’ve felt an obligation to always imagine the worst. And I’ve never let myself down so far."

In “I Will See You in Far-Off Places,” Morrissey expressed an unabashed belief in destiny, despite (or perhaps because of) the uncertainty of human life and the certainty of human death. From high on his well-earned soapbox, Morrissey also packed another punch in the jelly donut gut of the Republican Regime, singing: “ And If Bush, Bush, Bush doesn’t kill you, I will see you in far-off places.” He capped off the revelry of truth-telling, bathed in light, shaking his tambourine towards the heavens, head tilted back slightly, invoking the muses once more, as he sang with fervor: “La, la, la, la,la. La, la, la, la, la. La, la, la, la, la.”

Also a night for loaded jokes and puns, Morrissey played a round of fill in the blank Shakespeare with the audience. Referring back to Friday night he queried the crowd: “As my friend said: All the world’s a stage. And we are but---?” A couple fans up front shouted out in earnest, “Actors!” Morrissey, with partial smile and quizzical brow pushed them gently in the right direction, and delivered an improptu pun that would have made Shakespeare blush: “Is that what he said? Are you sure? He didn’t say that we all have our parts. Men and women have their parts.”

At one point he advised the audience: “If you have any complaints write to the management. This is a Japanese song called Rucky Risp.” After which he played “Lucky Lisp.” Before "Shoplifters of the World," Morrissey joked: “We’re all in favor of free expression—so long as it’s favorable.” He also joked about not having a record deal—again: “Well you will be not remotely surprised to hear that we still don’t have a record deal. But we have one offer, which isn’t bad. But we’d like it better if we had two. So if you’d like to make an offer?”

Nobody in the audience did come through with an offer for a record deal, however several other sorts of offerings were made. During "I Like You," the woman who had brought Morrissey a T-Rex record on Saturday, honored his request for a Sacha Distel record. Another audience member also brought him a Distel CD. Very appropriately, someone in the audience handed Morrissey a black New York Dolls t-shirt while he sang the Dolls cover "Human Being." He received it with some manner of pride. In very good humour, Morrissey tucked the t-shirt into his waistline like an apron, and proceeded to wear it like a king.

Dante himself could not have dreamed up a better path home than "Shoplifters of the World," "Life Is a Pigsty," and "How Soon Is Now?" for such an incendiary promenade through the woods of consciousness, as was this Monday evening at the Palladium with Morrissey.

Upon returning for the encore, Morrissey and the Boys playfully bowed as they all fell backwards. The crowd chanted: ”Morrissey…Morrissey…Morrissey...” To which Morrissey replied: “Echo Park…Echo Park…Echo Park…”

Thank the Gods, Angels, and Devils of this city that there remains one Palladium that will never be placed under new management—one Palladium that nobody can tear down.

Set List:
You’re Gonna Need Someone By Your Side/Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before/Tomorrow/National Front Disco/The Loop/Sister I’m a Poet/Lucky Lisp/Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself?/Ganglord/I Will See You in Far-Off Places/I Like You/Human Being/That’s How People Grow Up/I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris/I Just Want To See the Boy Happy/All You need Is Me/ One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell/Shoplifters of the World/Life Is a Pigsty/ How Soon Is Now?//First of the Gang To Die

KRISTEENYOUNG at the Palladium: She’s Had Enough; It’s Not Enough

2007-10-15T14:52:00.000-07:00

Night IV (Monday)
08 October 2007

Sometimes when Kristeen Young opens for Morrissey, the light plays delicately upon her porcelain skin. Just seconds before human she becomes suddenly like glass, shimmering translucent white and glistening like ice, opaque yet reflective. So when I’m driving down the PCH at the golden hour, and I pull over arrested by the pristine character of the light playing upon the Pacific, I realize Kristeen Young reminds me of nothing more than the sea. Comparisons to Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Siouxsie Sioux even, all fall flat. They also point to a tendency in our culture to reduce female artists to their most obvious components.

During “9” tonight, against a background evocative of a perfect summer evening’s purple-tinged blue light, the spotlight framed Young’s lithe silhouette in the likeness of a full setting sun. She pointed directly into the audience as she sang: “You don’t know what you are dealing with. You don’t know who I am, I am, I am, am, am.” With perfect diction, she wrung every ounce of meaning out of each dripping syllable. At the song’s close, she knelt at the front of the stage casting her final siren calls out into the distance.

Young arrived on stage in high glamour. She wore a high-necked, sleeveless, short black wrap dress, with an asymetrical hem. She belted it at the waist with a lime green plastic belt with circular silver details all the way around. Young’s raven black hair slightly curled, and cascading down her shoulders was re-iterated by the copious bunches of plastic grapes (red, concord, then green) cascading down the front side of her left shoulder. All of this coupled with her signature first-aid tape wrapped around her left hand pushed fashion way past whimsy. Everything about this woman speaks and has something valuable to say.

Four nights into the residency, Young had this to say as she rooted in her heels behind her keyboard: “This song is called Stop Thinking, stop being so condescendingly polite. Just throw things if that’s how you feel about it.”

One who seems to know no way other than going with the feeling of the moment, Kristeen seemed intent on drawing the audience out of their routines tonight and into the throes of an urgency and imminence only she can conjure. During “Everybody Wants Me To Cry,” (which if it ever gets some air play has got top 40 single written all over it,) Young sang:

I want to go home,
but not to my home.
I’ve a dream of home.
I know it’s out there—

Oh, oh, oh ,oh…,”

With her mesmerizing green eyes closed, and her nose pressed tenderly against the mic, Kristeen expressed a faith in life so strong that it has carried her past perhaps a lifetime of feeling misunderstood. With the enveloping beauty of this song and Young’s dream of a home, not her own, but the one she imagines and knows to be out there, I imagined her again in that image of the setting sun. With a voice and vision as singular and compelling as hers each day must end with Kristeen Young following, and followed by, the glorious setting sun.

Set List:
Stop Thinking/You Must Love Me/9/Everybody Wants Me To Cry/London Cry/Kill the Father/Halfway Across the Atlantic Ocean/Mixed Kids/This Is the Dawn of My D-Day

Morrissey at the Palladium: The Heart Feels Free

2007-10-11T16:59:00.000-07:00

Night III (Saturday)
06 October 2007

As though he had dematerialized after last night’s performance, Morrissey seemed to just appear at the microphone tonight. Twenty-four hours had passed, but to borrow a phrase, it was only a single sentence back in my mind since Morrissey left the stage quoting Shakespeare. A true showman, he rematerialized before us, quoting Sam Cooke or Cat Stevens, singing a fitting but surprising a cappella: “Another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody. I’m feeling lucky ‘cause I just got …” And with that, the thirsty Morrissey chants that had begun almost as soon as the audience’s feet touched the Palladium floor, were finally somewhat slaked.

By only the third song, “Sister I’m a Poet,” there were already two attempts to jump the barrier. Morrissey encouraged the excitement saying: “However you feel, whatever happens, don’t hold it back.” Morrissey moved back and forth from the Apollonian to the Dionysian, drawing a wide circle that made more than enough room for everyone gathered in the packed-to-the-rafters 67 year-old venue to revel in the light—and delight in the chaos.

During “The Loop” Morrissey held his tambourine, cymbals catching the light, above his head at an angle—a momentary halo over his beautiful rock-hewn head. The last lyric of the song cued a choreographed forward march by all members of the band except of course Matt Walker. From the front lines Boz performed some impressive choreography all his own, doing a cross between the running man and the Charleston, and topping it all of with a staccato high kick (ha-ya!).

The lighthearted rousing revelry embraced a new tone as Morrissey said: “I have always found in my life that whenever I tell the truth something awful happens. However, whatever happens I love you.” Well miraculously, and thankfully for us this never has deterred him. Tonight’s lighting for the edgy “Whatever Happens I Love You,” sharpened the song’s sinister thrust. Small roving spotlights invoked a search and destroy ethic, layering yet another mood on the evening’s fun.

A night of truth telling, Morrissey spoke for the lot of us, when he inserted his now usual lyric change into “Irish Blood, English Heart”: “I’ve been dreaming of a time when AMERICANS are sick to death of REPUBLICANS…” An already elated audience sent shouts back out to Sunset Boulevard. It’s worth noting that Morrissey has been speaking out against George Bush from the very beginning, not just of late since it’s become quite popular and inoffensive to do so.

“In the Future When All’s Well” turned into a festival of gratitude exchanged between Morrissey and the audience. The simple and moving lyric, “I thank you with all of my he---aaaaarrrt,” becomes all the more powerful and startling when you look around and see everyone around you for miles expressing this with all of their he---aaaaarrrts too. Morrissey, voice in top form, held breathtaking command of his falsetto at the song’s close.

Continuing the expression of reciprocity and thanks, a woman in the front row handed Morrissey a 7-inch of “Hot Love” by T-Rex. Morrissey accepted it thankfully, and asked, “Where did you find this?” The woman told him Amoeba Records, to which he replied with another question: “Did they have any Sacha Distel?” She nodded, and he said as he took his gift and propped it up against the bass drum, “For Monday night then.” Morrissey continued to please, and acknowledge, the local crowd stating “I know some of you have driven all the way from Glendale, Downey...Beverly Hills.” Playing along, the crowd booed. Morrissey played at placating the audience saying gently, "Kidding, just kidding.”

The press of the crowd became so strong by “Dear God Please Help Me,” I cannot even call what I was doing standing; I was leaning with one foot off the ground but no chance of falling. My shoulders and ribs pressed so tightly together that when Morrissey reached the stirring words,

“And now I am walking through Rome,
And there is no room to move.
But the heart feels free.
The heart feels free.
The heart feels free,”

there was no space between his description of the emotion and my experience of it.

The floodgates of the audience’s passion threatened to break during “How Soon Is Now?” At least five fans rumbled with security just to barely get a handshake from Morrissey as they were peeled away. One of the first men to take the flying leap was being dragged away by security as Morrissey rushed over saying: “I’ll save you my friend.” He stretched out to take the young man’s hand in his own. Tears streamed down the man’s face as he gently gave in to security.

When the band returned for the encore they took their bows all poised in runner’s lunges. Morrissey said in what had to be at the very least partial jest, “I know I’m unlovable.” The irony of all the old media hype about Morrissey being cranky and depressing etc… dissolves instantly into the pointed slander it’s always been when you witness the amount of love and joy he creates at his shows.

During “First of the Gang to Die,” an irregular regular scaled the barrier. Halted before he could make it on the stage, he looked Morrissey directly in the eye and gave him a salute reserved only for a man who saves lives. A high-spirited show all the way through, Saturday night in the isolating mega-city of Los Angeles never could infuse so much fun with so much meaning—without Morrissey.

Setlist:
Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before/You Have Killed Me/ Sister I’m a Poet/I Like You//The Loop/Whatever Happens, I Love You/Irish Blood English Heart/That’s How People Grow Up/Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself?/In the Future When All’s Well/Tomorrow/Disappointed/One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell/I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris/Stretch Out and Wait/All You Need/Billy Budd/London/Dear God Please Help Me/How Soon Is Now?//First of the Gang to Die

KRISTEENYOUNG at the Palladium: More Than Halfway Across the Semantic Ocean

2007-10-11T08:49:00.000-07:00

Night III (Saturday)
06 October 2007

A venue could be flooding, asbestos falling from the ceiling, walls caving in, and KRISTEENYOUNG would not only keep playing, they’d play harder — and as always, as if the Muses themselves not only insisted, but staked the very future of music and the arts on them.

Perhaps it’s the misfit, post-punk blood in their veins. Or maybe a more ancient impulse, like one that would lead Kristeen Young to say in an interview given this summer: “Music should be magical. It shouldn’t be formulated and scientific; it should be mystical.”

Leaning a little more towards the diabolical tonight, Young took to the stage in her devil or angel outfit. Announcing: “I’m Kristeen and I’ll be your dominatrix this evening;” Kristeen probably would have needed a whip to get the audience to behave tonight. Not that she seemed at all interested in a well-behaved crowd, but rather one open to being moved.

Saturday night, sold-out Morrissey show in Moz Angeles — well emotions run wild, and more than that, more than anything, Moz Angeles wants nothing in life more than to spend the evening with the one they love.

So the Morrissey chants began early tonight. And I’m not one to point fingers, but I would wager quite a sum that the Moz Krew was largely responsible. Now I mostly like the Moz Krew. I appreciate their enthusiasm, their unity, and their monthly Smiths/Morrissey nights, however they do sit as close to the frat boys end of the spectrum as is possible in the wide-stretching range of Morrissey fans.

In between songs, audience members towards the back of the venue had their own song to sing, namely, “Mor-ris-sey, Mor-ris-sey, Mor-ris-sey.” Some guy yelled something slightly obscene at one point, to which Kristeen, never one to back down, said wryly: “Eloquently stated.”

After “Everybody Wants Me To Cry,” (which had special meaning tonight,) Jeff crashed hard right down into “London Cry” eliminating all quiet space. The Morrissey chants resumed, and Kristeen with signature sense of humor quipped: “Morrissey left. He doesn’t like you anymore. There’s an ‘America’s Next Top Model’ marathon on.” And perhaps in his signature style, “Baby” Jeff gave into the moment but invested it with new meaning, beating out the rhythm of the chants so loudly he drowned them out.

KRISTEENYOUNG played their last three songs to the gross spectacle and mess caused by a young woman in the second row center of the GA floor, already wasted, who had vomited in the middle of the tightly pressed crowd. Security was called; foul smells wafted through the venue; fights almost broke out. Some audience members insisted that this woman remove herself or be removed from the crowd, while the woman and her friends refused. The woman next to me, turned quite angry, yelling at the top of her voice to security, over and over again: “Get her out!”

All the while KRISTEENYOUNG played on. As the cleanup crew arrived (two women on staff with paper towels and a garbage bag), Kristeen had begun singing her exquisite new song: “Halfway Across the Atlantic Ocean.” The song’s rhythm bobs sensually back and forth in an ebb and tide that draws you slowly but steadily further out to sea.

I lost my footing tonight pulled in by the singular beauty of Kristeen’s voice and vision, and kept afloat there by Jeff’s rolling beat. I was glad to see all of the silly drama recede out of view, until the stage was the only sea surrounding me.

And all I remember now is the genius of Young's poetry, and the taste of salt water running down my cheeks:

"GONE, GONE, GONE: I have enough rope when you’re
gone, gone, gone. The oven’s cozy when you’re
gone, gone, gone. Prescriptions filled when you are
gone, gone, gone. It’s cocked and loaded when you’re
gone, gone, gone. My knives get sharpened when you’re
gone, gone, gone. It tastes like almonds when you’re
gone, gone, gone. The traffic’s playful when you’re
gone. Take flying leaps when you are
gone. Autoerotic when you’re
gone. See, I’ll be fine when you are
gone."

Setlist:
Kill the Father/You Must Love Me/Everybody Wants Me To Cry/London Cry/Lies/Halfway Across the Atlantic Ocean/Depression Contest

Morrissey at the Palladium: If You Don’t Like Him, Go Ahead Find Yourself a Saint

2007-10-09T15:32:00.000-07:00

Night II (Friday)
05 October 2007

“All the world’s a stage,” unless you’re at a Morrissey concert, in which case the stage is all the world. Morrissey closed this sold-out Friday evening by delivering the oft-quoted line from “As You Like It.” In previous concerts he’s stressed that our “real lives” don’t start as we punch the clock in the morning and terminate when we sign out, and that the “real world” does not merely fall under the jurisdiction of utilitarian obligations. Morrissey has said before in reference to the importance of our evenings together: “This is the real world too,” and half-jokingly “Remember, tomorrow when you go back to your unreal lives…(paraphrase).” Through a conscious effort to irrevocably change “the poetic landscape of pop music” (Morrissey 2002), he has also re-paved the way for re-examining the reigning values of our historical moment.

The New York Dolls cover of “Human Being,” from Morrissey’s “You Have Killed Me” single stood out to me as the centerpiece of an upbeat evening that moved forward like a bullet train headed straight for a swanky lounge club in the afterworld. The audience paused momentarily as Morrissey moved somewhat cautiously into what quickly became a very spirited, gritty celebration of being human, all too human.

“If I’m acting like a king—
That’s cause I’m a human being.
If I want too many things—
That’s cause I’m a human being...
And if it gets a bit obscene—
That’s cause I’m a human being...
In fact I’m talking about the human race.
Trying to cover up the big disgrace.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah…”

Towards the end, Morrissey proclaimed as he pulled the top of his shirt abruptly open, face full of pathos: “’I’m a human be-ing!” It seems to me that if Morrissey has ever been criticized for anything it has been his insistence that ultimately being human is our most pressing commitment.

After the song Morrissey said jokingly, referring to the sultry sounds of Boz’ sax, “Was that a little too rhythm and bluesy for you?” And referring to Boz' grand effort, Morrissey jested: “Boz Boorer has a heart attack!”

A night of humor, Morrissey, playful as ever, in royal blue work pants with matching button down shirt, initiated the first weekend show of his residency by saying: “Welcome to Friday night in outpatients!” After “The Loop” Morrissey said, referring to the text on the front of the bass drum: “As the sign says, some of us is turning nasty.” During the introductions he joked, “And of course you know I’m Alejandro Sanz [Latin pop singer/songwriter].” I thought his funniest and most Lacanian joke of the evening was when he quipped: “The signs in the back say 'Gentleman’s Lounge,' that way, and 'Powder Room,' that way. However if you’re a man and you wear powder, you go [where]? Nobody knows.”

Tonight’s penultimate performance of “How Soon Is Now” was particularly rousing. It followed the delicate double-straight-to-the-heart-hitter of “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What (Have Who) I Want,” and “Dear God Please Help Me.” Morrissey backed away from the touching honesty and cutting tenderness of these songs sung in succession, as he left the lyric “But the heart feels free. But the heart—“ hanging in the poetic stratosphere. He moved slowly backwards, taking to the ground and propping himself up on the corner of Matt Walker’s drum platform.

As the mythic opening chords of “How Soon Is Now?” resurrected Morrissey to his feet, he reached long for the mic stand. From a fully extended arm’s length away he gripped the stand with one hand. Locking his gaze on the mic, he walked a very deliberate and deliberating circle around it. The piercing look in his eyes seemed to me to warn that microphone, as though he were saying: “You and me. Serious talk. Right now.”

Pulling the mic towards him like a lover long-lost he began those familiar lines. And as he set his teeth into the chorus-become-anthem I was mesmerized. Momentarily melding into the movement and passion of the some singing, some crying, some shouting, some punching the air and dancing crowd. In that moment I felt one truth as certain as any I've ever known: You have never been in love until you’ve stood sweating and enraptured, with no room to move, singing along with Morrissey and 700 to 17,000 other people the instantly curative, epic lyric of steely compassion:

“You shut your mouth.
How can you say
I go about things the wrong way?
I am human
And I need to be loved.
Just like everybody else does.”

I realized tonight as Morrissey withdrew himself from the light after lovingly professing: “All the world’s a stage. All the world’s a stage. And we are but players,” that Morrissey is a man wedded to his fate — fully committed to the importance and sanctity of playing his different roles. His songs never were anthems of despair, songs of self-indulgence, or odes to melancholia and so-called miserabilism. They were, and ARE, friction in the fast-moving wheels of industry — oil in the grooves of the human spirit, as we struggle not to become totally and irrevocably irrelevant.

Setlist:
Sister I’m a Poet/The Loop/ National Front Disco/The Last of the Famous International Playboys/ The Boy with the Thorn in His Side//Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself?/That’s How People Grow Up/Ganglord/Human Being/Stretch Out and Wait/I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris/Everyday Is Like Sunday/Shoplifters of the World/Tomorrow/One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell/I Just Want to See the Boy Happy/Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What (Have Who) I Want/Dear God Please Help Me/How Soon Is Now?//Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before

KRISTEENYOUNG at the Palladium: You Don’t Know What You Are Dealing With

2007-10-09T15:24:00.000-07:00

Night II (Friday)
05 October 2007

KRISTEENYOUNG bow down to gods unfamiliar to most of us, so comfortable with our largely pre-packaged, pre-determined days and ways. Playing “London Cry” tonight, from their most recent album, “The Orphans,” Young curtsied from behind her keyboard. Jeff, with perpetually bowed head, seems always to pound the drums in the service of a force much greater than himself. I think that Young and White, both partially of Native American descent, express this lineage every night, in paying reverence to their instruments, and to one another. A sense of meticulous craftsmanship pervades every aspect of their performance.

During “9,” singing from center stage, Kristeen swept the microphone stand into her grip, pulling the top of it right into her gut. Piercing herself, as she lowered her torso in a contraction, I realized that Young falls on her sword everyday spreading the beauty and magic of her gospel.

Tonight, I was particularly struck by Young’s signature method of delivering lyrics. In Young’s mouth words become rubber bands that can be pulled forever and stretched out into their original shape as pure sound. I think that this poetic playfulness with words, and attentiveness to the inherent beauty of language align Young with the likes of Patti Smith. Or to avoid another token comparison to female rock icons (though this one's certainly more appropriate than the sloppy slew of others usually made,) her way of working words into original creations all her own might claim modernist writer, James Joyce as a predecessor. Much as Joyce did in Finnegan’s Wake, Young pushes language, sound (and the audience) past their breaking points. Past this precarious point lies, as ever and always, the possibility for liberation—certainly rock ‘n’ roll’s original and most potent promise.

“Kill the Father” certainly stands out as a modernist manifesto, echoing Ezra Pound’s simple but seminal directive to continuously “Make it new.” Kristeen threw her head back with abandon, as she pushed forward the driving notes of a song headed fearlessly for the future. “Kill the Father” stresses the importance and responsibility of contemporary artists to consciously absorb, and intimately know, their influences — and then to bravely let them go. Kristeen sang:

“This is our stage now.
What do we say now?
Get off my stage.
I’ll take it from here.
There’s work to be done now."

And with her loyal foil fighting selflessly at her side she took that small sliver of stage all the way. A band as avant-garde as this takes over slowly, one stage at a time — injecting a sharp steady shot of iconoclasm straight into the heart of the mainstream American music industry, still yet to embrace them.

Setlist:
Stop Thinking/You Must Love Me/9/Everybody Wants Me To Cry/London Cry/Kill the Father/Halfway Across the Atlantic Ocean/Mixed Kids/This Is the Dawn of My D-Day

Wardrobe:
Kristeen: High-waisted black Marlena Dietrich pants, with cropped fitted tuxedo-esque jacket, and cascading ruffled collar.
Jeff: Fitted vest with patterned tie over short-sleeved work shirt.

KRISTEENYOUNG at the Palladium: You Can't Handle This (Much) Feeling Los Angeles. Or Can You?

2007-10-04T01:15:00.001-07:00

Night 1 (Monday)
01 October 2007

Stop. (thiiiiiinkiiiiiiiiing) Nanananananana-
Stop. (thiiiiiinkiiiiiiiiing) Nanananananana-
Stop. (thiiiiiinkiiiiiiiiing) Nanananananana-
Stop.
Stop.

Kristeen Young gave wise counsel for us all to take in her opening song “Stop Thinking” at the Palladium tonight. When most of us stop relying on the sometimes rigid and didactic mind as our guiding principle perhaps we fall into a gentle daydream, have two drinks instead of one, spend a little extra money, stay when we should go, or say more than we mean to.

But what happens when Kristeen Young stops thinking?

Well I felt lucky to find out that halos fall, microphone stands get bowled over, and perfectly sculptured hair (and just about everything else) tumbles into beautiful bacchanal disarray. Two things though remain standing: the telekinetic bond between Young and band mate Jeff White, and the unflinching sense that KRISTEENYOUNG channel their music and emotions from the ambient sounds of a distant universe.

Young wore a white cotton dress with eyelet details. The dress hung sort of like a sandwich board, the side view revealing a gold lamee bikini top. Attached to the dress was a large gold-trimmed plastic bow, tied over her right shoulder. The center-piece of her outfit/philosophical treatise was a three-dimensional red heart (the shape not the organ) placed just over her own. Dripping from the heart was a trail of red chiffon-like fabric that stretched down and wrapped around her left ankle. In her hair she wore a gold-trimmed plastic halo. Depending on the light and the song she alternated between looking like an angel with a bleeding heart and a devil with a true one.

“Baby” Jeff, in fitted dark vest over white short-sleeved work shirt with patterned pastel tie, appeared dressed for dinner and a black and white movie. Drenched though in sweat with his eyes mostly closed and head bowed slightly, he seemed ready to lay his life down for the love of music.

KRISTEENYOUNG never play it safe, but tonight they went further into the danger zone than usual. Young pounded the keyboard so feverishly during “This Is the Dawn of My D-Day” that even she looked surprised by her own performance. At the song’s end, she stood perfectly still, staring down at the keyboard. She seemed to savour the tingling of the quiet in marked contrast to the storm of sound she and Jeff had just unleashed. Like most of KY’s love songs, D-Day provides another take on the standard sappy love narrative. This love is grimy and urban and leads to self-liberation not mortgage payments. Young sings: “I know you’re hurting…Just take my hand we’ll runaway….runaway….runaway….run-----away…run----away.” Where to? “Rome, Lyon, Omsk, Let’s go. Oz, Mars, all fours, Let go.” No promise of simply being anybody’s baby tonight, Young offers her services in full, shouting: “I’ll be your states-man. Your guru…your mobile home.”

During the anthemic “Mixed Kids,” a dance song in disguise, Kristeen stood just inches away from "Baby" Jeff's drum barrage. Looking him directly in the eye, as he continued to play, she reached her arm out over his drum kit's cymbals, towards his face. She sang each word with such belief and intensity. Singing "Mixed kids get it," while motioning with her outstretched arm back and forth between them, she let go of everything except their locked gaze.

The softness of the closing song, "(But It's All Just) Imagined," allowed a mostly raging performance a contemplative cushion on which to stretch out. Kristeen changed the gender of the person who she imagines giving her hope in herself and in the future. Young sang: "She told me...it's all possible. Take it from me. And that was life to me."

And I realized that in between the angel with the bleeding heart and the devil with the true one are two angels fallen from grace, playing a weightless keyboard and floating drum kit on a cloud somewhere calling out into an exquisite empty sky for love and acceptance—making as much noise as possible to awake the city of sleepwalkers below.

Setlist:
Stop Thinking/You Must Love Me/9/Everybody Wants Me To Cry/London Cry/Kill the Father/Mixed Kids/This Is the Dawn of My D-Day/(But It’s All Just) Imagined

Morrissey at the Palladium: Why Don't You FInd Out For Yourself?

2007-10-03T13:47:00.000-07:00

01 October 2007
Night I (Monday)

Access to the average icon's inner sanctum is strictly prohibited, but tonight in Hollywood, Morrissey invited a jubilant audience right into his. Taking to the stage, and never looking more at home, he announced: “Welcome to my living room!” He sang the opening song “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before” with all the pomp and ceremony of a prince extending his aegis around a new protectorate. Except instead of expanding his rule outward over a public territory, Morrissey made room for the audience in his heart’s own private castle. He sent the microphone cord sailing confidently in every direction, as he took loving command of the old Hollywood ballroom.

“Tomorrow” set the tone for a night that passed like a tender exchange of precious words between reunited long-distance confidants. Morrissey confided:

“Tomorrow, will it real-ly come?
And if it does come, will I still be human?
All I ask of you is one thing that you’ll never do.
Would you put your arms around me?
I won’t tell anyone.
To-morrow, does it have to come?
…Oh the pain in my heart.
Oh, the pain in my legs.
Oh, this useless body.”

As the late 20th and early 21st centuries’ resident self-appointed spokesperson for the value and importance of the human heart, Morrissey offered the audience a feeling of intimacy otherwise unimaginable in such a public setting. He sang lyrics such as those above in the full-bodied voice of innocence wedded to experience.

Songs like “That’s How People Grow Up,” and “Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself?” communicated the unnerving resolve of one who has seen both beauty and pain through to their other sides—so that all life reveals itself in the intricate shape and dimensionality of a crystal. Oscar Wilde’s words come to mind, “The truth is never plain and never simple.” And yet Morrissey expresses the truth in an often off-handed manner that simultaneously cuts right through and gives voice to the complexity of the human experience in the modern moment. After each repetition of the cut and cutting lyric “That’s just the way it goes,” Morrissey turned his back to the audience. He tapped out the soft compelling rhythm of “Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself?” with his foot, or else kept the time casually with his hand against his thigh. His gaze remained slightly upturned and fixed on the back curtain. With these gestures Morrissey underlined the possibility and importance of maintaining dignity in life through concentrated reflection on the past, and finding meaning for this past in the present.

Morrissey drew echoes of the eternal out of every second of tonight’s passing present tense, by making time and space for the expression of spontaneous and impassioned feelings too often ignored and glossed over in our daily grinding lives. During “I Like You” Morrissey walked slowly across the front of the stage, arm bent at the elbow, hand over brow filtering out the glare from the stage lights. He passed, pausing his gaze deliberately and thoughtfully on the faces of those in front.

At one point of quiet in between songs, somebody shouted “We love you Morrissey!” He responded in kind: “It’s very, very mutual.” When handing the mic out at random, asking jokingly if anyone had any humiliating or horrible grotesque questions for him, one fan responded: “You know we love you. But why do you love playing for us?” Morrissey replied with a smile and a gently rhetorical furrowed brow, “Would you like an answer? Is it not obvious? Is it not obvious?” The young man said, “I just wanted to hear it from you.”

Morrissey, never one for cheapening sentiment, shook his head playfully as the band launched into the next song “London.” After which he resumed the conversation saying: “That was your answer Eduardo. And here’s another answer—the answer to the question you haven’t yet made.” The answer to the unasked question was “Billy Budd.” During the lines “And it’s all because of us,” and “If it meant you could be free,” Morrissey, still responding to the question, clasped his hands tightly and placed them over his heart. Exchanges like these hint strongly at some of what lies behind the so-called phenomenon of the unabashedly devoted Morrissey fan: He gives his audience the feeling that he needs us as much as we need him.

Occasionally this feeling of satisfying mutual need can be grossly misinterpreted. During the third song “All You Need Is Me,” a woman clad in a frighteningly short leopard print dress (for lack of a better descriptor), caught Morrissey and security totally unaware, by arriving ninja-style onstage from the far left. She wrapped her arms around his neck, in what looked like a strangle hold, and crudely shoved her tongue into his mouth. The audience seemed to mostly gasp in disbelief. As security pried her off, Morrissey looked genuinely disturbed. He shook his head and muttered “disgusting,” as he valiantly returned to singing.

This did not though stop Morrissey from gladly receiving the efforts, and rewarding the risks taken by other audience members throughout the night. Many struggled to wrangle their ways past security and onstage. During “Disappointed,” hell-bent on hugging Morrissey, a young woman about 17 up front with her boyfriend and her devoted father (also a huge Morrissey fan), thrashed through the grips of three security guards. Despite the intensity of her efforts, she would not have made the much-coveted ascent up the edge of the stage had Morrissey not signaled security to unhand her. He said with approval and admiration: “I think she deserves this.” He helped her up and she embraced him.

Morrissey’s performance of “Dear God Please Help Me” extended this theme of intimacy between confidants, and also demonstrated Morrissey’s giftedness at performing and responding to each particular audience’s mood. As he confessed, “And I’m so very tired of doing the right thing,” an audience member shouted as if participating in a round of excited call and response, “Me too!” Morrissey raised his eyebrows, and attempted to continue the song.

As he arrived at the much talked about explosive kegs lyric the audience let out explosive shouts in the pitch of playful catcalls. He bowed his head laughing and delivered the next line comically in conversational voice, “Oh dear God, please help me.” He stepped back trying to maintain the tone of the song as Jesse Tobias performed the crashing of the cymbals. Returning afterwards to the lyric, Morrissey sang, “I’m spreading your legs,” to the no longer containable, excited, almost schoolgirl yelling of fans. Always in the moment, he skipped the next line and sang in a playfully reproachful tone: “This is a very serious song.” The audience laughed, and somehow Morrissey was able to pull off a version of “Dear God” that respected the over-arching integrity of the song, and respected the particular feelings the song elicited on this particular night.

So by the time Morrissey and his band returned for the encore (all clad now in full Chivas uniforms, except for the small matter of their dress shoes), the audience had savoured more than a taste of the deliciousness of what's in store for the rest of his “lifetime residence at the Hollywood Palladium.” With Morrissey onstage, every night is authentic, precisely because he allows for, and encourages the unexpected. He simultaneously guides and gives into the tenor of each passing precious moment—constantly calling the mind away from the ordinary, and away from the everyday.

Setlist:
Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before /Tomorrow/All You Need Is Me/Sister I’m a Poet/That’s How People Grow Up/London/Billy Budd/The Loop/Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself?/Stretch Out and Wait/First of the Gang to Die/Let Me Kiss You/Death of a Disco Dancer/Disappointed/You Have Killed Me/In the Future When All’s Well/I Like You/One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell/Dear God Please Help Me/How Soon Is Now?//Irish Blood English Heart

Hello San Francisco, JE SUIS MORRISSEY.

2007-09-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

Morrissey at the Fillmore (night II)
24 September 2007

I find it impossible to fully render the beauty of Morrissey’s parting gesture tonight. He backed away from the microphone, leaving the softly spoken words “Lord knows,” trailing out in front of him. As the band played the stirring closing notes of “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What (Have Who) I Want” Morrissey stepped back dutifully, and lowered himself purposefully to one knee. With his hands crossed resting on his upper thigh, and his head bowed down to his right, the white print on his black t-shirt (which he had just changed into for the final two songs) stole center stage.

Morrissey has been accused before of narcissism and self-indulgent emotionality. The knot that binds such misunderstandings together comes easily undone in contemplating the meaning of Morrissey down on one knee, head-bowed, hands crossed, spoken for by the simple (yet profound) French phrase: “Je suis Morrissey.” For better and for worse, for all our sakes, for art, and for the sanctity and seriousness of the pop music landscape from here to eternity and back again, Morrissey IS Morrissey—and he knows and has told us, and continues to tell us exactly what that means. And we continue to love him for bearing so boldly the burden of true Personality.

After the second song “All You Need Is Me,” Morrissey praised the audience for their boldness, and commitment, remarking: “It’s very brave of you to come back.” At ease and in full control, he whipped the microphone cord in his signature circles. The conquistador of compassion stepped seamlessly from song to song, to sharing anecdotal confidences with the audience, to conversations with specific members of the audience, and back to song again.

The whole night flowed like an intimate conversation. The audience called to Morrissey like an old friend, and like a friend he answered: “Yes?” After “Tomorrow,” Morrissey asked someone in the front row if anything shocking had happened since last night. A man replied, “I quit my job, so I could spend the next three weeks with you.” Morrissey took the microphone back, paused, and thought it over as he walked in a quarter circle towards the drum platform. He turned back thoughtfully, nodding with a shy approving smile he said in hushed voice: “That’s okay.”

A slightly botched beginning of “Billy Budd,” which only Morrissey and his band mates (and maybe a couple fans) might have noticed, gave way to a ”Who’s on first?”-esque outing of who exactly had been responsible for the musical misstep. All in very good fun, Morrissey halted the song just after its opening, asking the audience if they would mind giving the band another shot at it. He began with Boz, asking, “Was that my fault?” He proceeded to ask each band member the same question. As he traveled across the stage he turned to the audience saying sheepishly: “It was my fault.” When he reached Mikey Farrell at the opposite end of the stage, Mikey, in a fine example of chivalry, decided to take the fall. Playfully relieved, Morrissey turned back to the crowd asking a woman in the front row, who he addressed by name, what should be his punishment. A true pacifist, she paused with the mic at her mouth everyone awaiting her reply, and decided that he should have to bake everyone cupcakes. The audience rolled with laughter, and Morrissey smiled, thanked her for the suggestion, and kicked off take two with a silly: “One-a more-a time!”

On a more serious note, Morrissey later said “I suppose you noticed today the president of Iran—We say E-ron, you say I-ran, and they say E-rrrrrron. The president of Iran was on television today. He was in your country, which was itself remarkable. He said there are no gay people in Iran, but what he forgot to say is it’s because he shot them all.”

Morrissey also jocoseriously mentioned the Press’ chronic inabilities (after all these years) to correctly spell his name. He cited a recent “New York Daily Post” article in which, “with one inch of the page my name was misspelled two different ways.” Morrissey book-ended the story with the irony that this never seems to happen to American film director Paul Morrissey.

I realized tonight that some of Morrissey’s communicative genius lies in his ability to hold a space open to a certain quality of experience. He never forces or directs. Instead he toes a line of intensity, honesty, and humor, marking out an area into which the audience may enter. In this way, he presides over the possibility for a sacred, meaningful space to which he always leaves the door open.

“Life Is a Pigsty” really stirred the waters tonight. As Morrissey laid his back down to the floor, knees bent and swaying, feet propped up on the drum platform, and pelvis raised up in the air, the deafening crash of Matt Walker’s drums reverberated through the floorboards. Morrissey came to a point of total stillness as the lights and music escalated towards the pitch of an unsettled soul wandering feverishly through the passageway between life and death. As Pigsty's crescendo gave way to the soft pristine notes of Auld Lang Syne, the dreamy thundering pushed its way past the maddening uncertainty of chaos into an apollonian haven of familiar order.

Morrissey, eyes closed, still frozen in his beautiful pose, held the space open for silent contemplation. While some audiences enter easily into the quiet with Morrissey, others find this more challenging. Tonight several calls of “Get up Mozzer,” “He’s dead!” and the like, clouded the space left open for a sort of group reverie. Morrissey’s gift though is whatever the reaction may be, he maintains the integrity of the space.

Likewise, whatever have been the responses of mainstream media, radio stations, record labels etc., he continuously and adamantly holds the space for seriousness, intelligence, and sincerity in pop music—saying simply, repeatedly, and in many different ways: “Je suis Morrissey.”

PHOTOS CAPTURED BY AND COURTESY OF EDUARDO CASTILLO

Set list:
Betjeman Poem “A Child Ill”/Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before/All You Need Is Me/ I Just Want To See the Boy Happy/That’s How People Grow Up/Tomorrow/Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself/Stretch Out And Wait/Billy Budd/Ganglord/Shoplifters of the World Unite/You Have Killed Me/One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell/I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris/Death of a Disco Dancer/Everyday is Like Sunday/In the Future When All’s Well/The Boy with the Thorn in his Side/Life is a Pigsty/How Soon Is Now?//First of the Gang to Die///Please Please Please Let Me Get (Have Who) I Want

Sorry San Francisco, KRISTEENYOUNG Can't Help Being Hardcore

2007-09-25T18:54:00.000-07:00

KY at the Fillmore (Night II)
24 September 2007

In high-waisted, wide-leg, black Marlena Dietrich pants, topped delicately with an ultra thin white shiny belt, she arrived decidedly on stage for her mission. In her singular fusion of a tuxedo and a bolero jacket, black with white trim and fitted to her lithe frame like a fine leather glove, she took drummer “Baby” Jeff White's hand as she made her way to her command post. With piles of white cascading ruffles pouring from all around her neck down to a point at her navel, she re-interpreted the proper role of collars for the rest of time. She had come to show San Francisco what she’s shown almost a hundred other towns—that as one half of Morrissey’s resident opening band, she can take anyone down.

She is Kristeen Young. And Kristeen Young is a work of art, and a force of nature.

For her opening riddle she remarked: “I would say something but I have all these teeth in my mouth.” And with that Baby Jeff crashed a few deafening blows down, signaling that the hour of departure was nigh, and everyone inside was coming along for a ride to an alternate universe––where for about 45 minutes we at least “imagine ev-er-y-thing wor-king out.”

They began with the emotionally enveloping “You Must Love Me.” A softer song with a hard bite, Young approached the lyrics as poetic bits of so many tattered love letters, strung together when love is no longer––and only these words remain to resuscitate feeling from numbness.

When KY played their new song “Everybody Wants Me To Cry” tonight, my eyes closed against my will. I felt as though I were alone in the center of an empty high school gym with crenelated streamer hung haphazardly from the rafters. A cheap disco ball still reeling cast its nostalgic light right through me as I spun in circles choked by a familiar but hated emotion.

This song threw me back to adolescent memories of school dances fused with filmic memories of school dance scenes from the '80s like the one in “Pretty in Pink.” This is not to say that the song speaks to an adolescent sentiment, but rather to one that is universal and eternal––the feeling of being slighted and misunderstood, watching the one you love walk away, looking for friendship and trust and finding instead enmity, confusion, and disdain. Jeff’s cutting percussion anchored the dreamy melody and dreamy mood of dreamy memories solidly in the present tense.

Upbeat numbers like “9,” “Lies,” and “Mixed Kids” were delivered with Kristeen’s usual and signature flair for cabaret-style movement.
Leaving her post behind the keyboard, and taking center stage, she somehow made 3 feet of stage depth look like 30.

After “Lies” Young returned to her keyboard and announced a keyboard change as two crew members appeared with the understudy. Never at a loss, Young smiled and said definitively: “We can’t help that we’re hardcore. We break things.” In the following few seconds of quiet a guy in the audience yelled out “What’s your number?” Kristeen, already poised with fingers on the keyboard, let her head fall down playfully, laughed to herself, and looked up into the crowd with her lovely smile as she said “666. My number’s 666.”

PHOTOS CAPTURED BY AND COURTESY OF EDUARDO CASTILLO

Set List:

You Must Love Me/ Stop Thinking/ 9/ Everybody Wants Me To Cry/ Lies/ This Is the Dawn of My D-Day/ Kill the Father/ Mixed Kids/ But It's All Just Imagined

Morrissey Throws His Arms Around Tijuana

2007-09-23T18:39:00.000-07:00

Morrissey at El Foro
20 September, 2007

An evening with Morrissey “can make us live more in one single hour than life can make us live in a score of shameful years” (Oscar Wilde). Bodies pressed tightly together in El Foro, Antiguo Palacio Jai Alai, Tijuana, Mexico Thursday night know this truth firsthand. A border town always presents the opportunity for a strange and beautiful confluence. Tijuana sits on an ideological faultline, where the politics of identity, meaning, and the past rumble through every iteration of daily life. Just past the corner of Revolucion and Emiliano Zapata, donkeys painted with zebra stripes are harnessed to traditional carts, and made to sell what little remains of their dignity to tourists looking for the prototypical rural photo opportunity.

Fans who spent the day lined up outside the beautiful antique venue witnessed three seemingly local people get arrested and packed like cargo into a locked wooden box in the back of a police pick-up. Morrissey, fared somewhat luckier, as his brush with the local law was mostly benign. He explained during the show: “Today we drive over the border into Tijuana. And we drive down the street and we are pulled over by the police. Welcome to Tijuana!” Southern Californians who made the short trip down (which strangely only required a passport when re-entering the U.S. from Tijuana) did not really feel immersed in a foreign culture. But a friend who had flown in that morning from Atlanta remarked, “If you woke up in Atlanta, Georgia this morning, this is definitely another country.”

Opening the final leg of his 2007 U.S. Tour in this place of sometimes unsettling in-betweens, Morrissey elicited a passionate and tender response. By the third to last number “How Soon Is Now?” this response grew reminiscent of an all-out church revival. Morrissey entered ceremoniously from stage right after a rousing version of visionary William Blake’s apocalyptic anthem for a heavenly social state in England, “Jerusalem.” Morrissey’s brazen and stately front line of stellar musicians led the procession. Amidst exuberant cheering, most often reserved for a home team returning from victory abroad, he launched right into a surprising and effortless “Billy Budd.” Singing “I would happily lose both of my legs…if it meant you could be free,” Morrissey delivered what felt like his over-arching career-long statement of purpose. And with this salient statement he worked his magic from the start.

The set-list featured a seamless blend of Morrissey’s recent work, his mid-career solo songs, and Smiths era material. My own impression is that the decisive message conveyed by his recent refusal of the hefty Smiths reunion offer has given new ease and energy to Morrissey’s relationship with his Smiths’ era catalogue. He approached both “Death of a Disco Dancer,” and “Stretch Out and Wait” in particular, with the masterful and delicate touch of a seasoned wizard reviving powerful spells from his mystical youth. So purposefully was each word uttered with special attention to the imminent effect and the overall reception. “Stretch Out and Wait” sent surging a palpable emotional jump in the audience’s collective heartbeat--moving many to sway as if caught in the crosswind of the lyric:

“So ignore all the codes of the day
Let your juvenile impulses sway
This way and that way
This way and that way
God how sex implores you
To let yourself lose yourself…”

Morrissey seemed also to let himself lose himself in thought and feeling towards the quietly thundering close of “Life Is a Pigsty.” Standing with his back to the audience at the very front of the left side of the stage, Morrissey stared contemplatively at the backdrop of Richard Burton. The image of Burton with pristine blue eyes gazing upwards and outwards, did not return Morrissey’s stare, but rather seemed to be returning a singular call from the next and better world. As the last notes of “Pigsty” trickled into the past tense, Mikey Farrell began the familiar, and under his fingers, haunting notes of “Auld Lang Syne.” The traditional Scottish song first penned by poet Robert Burns in the early nineteenth century, described by the poet as “an old song, of the olden times” concentrated the audience’s exuberance into a reverent and pregnant hush. Morrissey presided over the quiet, still gazing at the otherworldly image of Burton. As the band transitioned into “How Soon Is Now?” the audience followed the transition into a state of passionate release.

By the final two songs, “First of the Gang to Die,” and “Irish Blood English Heart” the audience’s emotion could no longer be contained. Several people triumphantly reached and embraced Morrissey on stage, some by way of his own helpful hand. Those who were stopped by security in the space between the barrier and the stage tore at the stage dressing, removing most of it, in a final full-hearted attempt to touch the one they love. The level of excitement rendered the performance of the final planned song “Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What (Have Who) I Want” impossible. As the house lights rose, and the closing music, Sinatra’s “That’s Life” began to play, no one moved. All stood frozen in anticipation of a third coming. Reluctantly, and after some time, the crowd began to stumble towards the exits. Overwhelmed and fully satisfied, still heavily under the influence of Morrissey, everyone lingered in the night in front of El Foro. Morrissey’s figurative and literal embrace, so lovingly returned by the audience, exuded enough warmth to last all those who gathered in this border town tonight even a nuclear winter.

------------Morrissey's 2007 US Tour------------ From Stockton to Atlantic City: Where Were You?

2007-09-18T17:44:00.000-07:00

Following Morrissey for 18 of the 44 mystical nights of the Spring and Summer legs of his 2007 US tour, I have become certain of what I’d already strongly suspected. What has been referred to in the mainstream as predominantly a “cult,” will in a short time be called by its proper name--Culture. Going to a Morrissey show means taking an invigorating shower in a healthy, lively, and rich culture. Becoming one of the growing number of people who rearrange their schedules, quit the job they never liked anyway, or acquire second jobs, and/or second lines of credit to cover expenses, take a semester (or two) off school, and put relationships on hold, all to attend as much of the tour as possible, means immersion in this culture. The society Morrissey creates inspires intellectual growth and emotional honesty. His music and his philosophy of living strongly encourage individuality, while providing a rock-hard foundation of shared references and meaning on which a diverse and still growing international community of fans can proudly stand together. The truth is I’d follow that velvet voice anywhere. After all it’s followed me faithfully down dark roads, past the darkest nights, through days with the shades drawn and the doors locked, pulling me beyond insufferable feelings of self-doubt and self-hatred. His voice, emotive and immutable, addresses my heart directly when all other sound has lost meaning. Always reassuring, always saying with absolute confidence and so very gently: There is hope for us, I promise. And I know because I’ve seen. There is a light and it never goes out...

The beauty, quality, depth, and expressive range of Morrissey’s epic voice cannot be overstated. On stage he can croon, chortle, confess, entrance, implore, growl, soothe, serenade, and sing an a cappella rendition of “Bye Bye Blackbird” (opening Myrtle Beach, South Carolina July 21 2007) to make your jaw drop and drool, leading you to believe, if ever you’d doubted, in the primordial ability of song to elevate human consciousness. Lines ranging in tone and mood from the gut-wrenching, “Can you please stop time?...Can you stop this pain?” (from “Life Is a Pigsty” off his latest album Ringleader of the Tormentors) to the exuberantly grateful, “I thank you. I thank you with all of my----heaarrrtt…” (from “In the Future When All’s Well,” also off Ringleader) are all sung nonetheless from a state of emotional undress. And yes, as now fabled, it is true that Morrissey also literally undresses himself from the waist up at least once a night. For those of us who see this night after night the significance of the gesture only deepens. When Morrissey begins singing “Let Me Kiss You,” those up front brace themselves. We know what will happen. We await the delivery of those discomforting lines:

"But then you open your eyes—[His hands grasp for the center of his chest; the High Priest of Pop reaching beyond flesh into the depths of his own beating heart.] And you see someone that you physically despise [Buttons go flying, his chest bared like an offering; the lamb who goes willingly, and in his case wittingly, to the Altar.] But my heart is o--pen. My heart is open—[He launches the shirt-become-symbol of an open true heart, and the sacrifice of the Artist, into the expectant crowd] TO YOU…"

From the music that plays in the venue, to the phenomenal avant-garde opening band KRISTEENYOUNG, to the video montage that acts as segue between KY and Morrissey, everything is hand selected with reverence for this opportunity to communicate with the audience. In commercial consumer culture all empty spaces seem overfilled with attempts to empty pockets. In Morrissey/Art culture all empty spaces are tastefully brought to life with direct attempts to educate, embolden, and to connect. Each night Morrissey heralds his entrance with “The Imperfect List,” Big Hard Excellent Fish’s populist litany of the many paths of violence in the last half of the twentieth century. Violence in all its forms: physical (“Hitler…Tiananmen Square…John Lennon’s murder…Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment…”), environmental (“the death of the rainforest…acid rain…massive massive oil slick…”), litigated (“apartheid…the breakdown of the NHS…Clause 28…”), media (“The Sun Newspaper…The Jimmy Swaggart Show…”). The point eventually driven home arrives at the conclusion that these instances of larger violence spill onto, as well as spring out of, smaller instances of daily personal violence, such as: “racist…bully…macho dickhead…silly pathetic girlies…stinking rich female in furs…smiling Judas…gut wrenching disappointment…loneliness.” As we stand awaiting Morrissey, we stand as if in protest; called to metaphorical arms against this spectrum of breakdowns in social cohesion and people’s abilities to imagine identity options beyond the pale. What begins as a list concludes by implicating everyone present with the pointed question: “Where were you?” Forewarned, Morrissey lets no one off the hook; true communication always means participation.

“The Imperfect List” blasting defiantly through speakers more eager to amplify the soothing sounds of Morrissey, voices a world order that might not like to admit that it still takes its philosophical cues from the Thatcher era’s utilitarian (and vulgar) visions of what it means to be human: “To wear your heart on your sleeve isn’t a very good plan; you should wear it inside where it functions best” (Margaret Thatcher). Well Morrissey has made a career of consciously wearing his heart on both sleeves. The sustained exuberance and passion of his following clearly articulates the deep need for this stance in the cut and dry commercial pop paradigm. But as much as Morrissey has always given, he has always asked something of his audience in return. While some may find this unsettling, if he asked nothing in return, what sort a relationship would he be cultivating? Morrissey has earned such a high level of devotion from his audience precisely because as an artist he asks you to change, to look back into the depths of your own heart, to look at your life, your culture, your choices, and to take a position. Where were you? Where are you? Who are you? Each night, for the night, we have the opportunity to become members of Morrissey’s traveling benevolent society, as we experience the joy and fulfillment of an enlightened vision of what it means to be human.

Morrissey remains quite simply the most extraordinary and unique figure in (un)popular music. So with the announcement of the final dates of the 2007 Mexico and US Tour, including a historic 10-night stand at the legendary Hollywood Palladium, the question of the hour becomes: From Tijuana to Miami: Where will you be?

Morrissey is a language anyone can read, but not everyone can hear.

2007-09-08T01:14:00.000-07:00

He's a beautiful language for a beautiful ear--
Not a beautiful language for a vulgar ear.

37.5 MILLION POUNDS STERLING OF PURE INTEGRITY: Morrissey Turns Down Smiths Reunion Tour

2007-08-28T13:07:00.000-07:00

A tasteful artist like Morrissey knows better than to squeeze into his old jeans and squint through antique NHS glasses. Since the earliest days of The Smiths, he has remained true to the singularly crafted mission statement of his celebrity. Always with an eye for the big picture, a young Morrissey etched a golden circle around his identity as rockstar, partisan, intellectual, poet, tastemaker and torchbearer. This persona as art form rooted Morrissey, but also left him room to mature gracefully. Having founded a career on the realization of a unique and prescient vision, he now lives under the weight of fulfilling it.

So what great surprise that Morrissey declined a recent offer for 37.5 Million Pounds Sterling (that’s 75 Million US Dollars) to perform 50 dates on a worldwide reunion tour with Johnny Marr--as “The Smiths”? Press interpretations have already tended towards smug allusions to melancholic grudge-holding, and self-righteous clinging to old wounds. In truth, the finality and emotionality of The Smiths breakup compounded by the toxic residue of litigious secondary band members has already long tarnished the proposition. Tainting Morrissey’s character with negativity where positive meanings are easily found has long been standard practice for the mainstream Press.

Despite prevailing attitudes, Morrissey remains unswervingly committed to the integrity of his art, which for him also means integrity of action, feeling, and word. Elevated on the Wildean platform, Morrissey has long espoused the inseparability of life from art, and art from life. While he did take several appropriate years off from performing his Smiths era songs, proving his solo material could stand alone, by ‘95 he began gradually incorporating Smiths songs into his touring repertory. Genuinely going through the pain of The Smiths breakup allowed Morrissey to move on. Criticized for feeling too much and telling you so, he and his music still matured, and the scope of his audience widened. The neglected truth now calls out: In all cases Morrissey is strong enough to stand behind a broken heart. He cares too much for his place in rock history, as well as The Smiths’ to cheapen either with untimely reunions. And unlike other singers of his era, he has no use for a reunion with something that has never, and will never, come asunder—the bond with his audience. Set to sell out the Hollywood Palladium for a historic ten-night run in October simply as “Morrissey,” why should he pander to nostalgia? Why take a retrospective look over the robust shoulder of a career that is far from over?