Concert Review: Morrissey, April 7, 2009, at the Midland
“Can you stand it?” Morrissey asks his fans.
Oh, they most certainly bloody can.
Moz was slightly more talkative and frisky than he was at his last show in KC, in 2007. Though the show ran mostly seamlessly from one big, chugging misery ode to the next, the 50-year-old self-loathing charmer did parley a bit with the not-small but not-sold-out crowd at the Midland.
The above question came after the ninth song, “Seasick, Yet Still Docked.” Before that, after turning out the Smiths’ “I Keep Mine Hidden,” he said, “Are you feeling sick? Was it the Cheez-Its? You were warned.”
And before that quip, he’d introduced the band — Boz Boorer (guitar, Morrissey’s faithful Samwise Gamgee), Solomon Walker (bass), Matt Walker (drums), Jesse Tobias (guitar), Kristopher Pooley (keys) — concluding with, “And I’m nasty.”
Toward the end, he even passed his mic into the front row, allowing audience members to speak their minds. This led to at least one requisite “I love you” and also to an exchange with a woman that was hard to hear but seemed to involve her asking Morrissey if he’d received the gift she sent him in Columbus, which she ordered off eBay. I have no idea what the gift was, but I like to think it was a gingerbread house.
And as per recent custom, the sexy ol’ tiger stripped off his shirt (he sweated through several, one which he claimed he bought in Kansas City) during “Let Me Kiss You” — precisely at the line about seeing someone you physically despise — and threw it into the crowd.
Mostly, though, through this 90-minute set, Morrissey let his eyebrows (how like a New Yorker Talk of the Town illustration he is), his cantering croon and his prizefighting, gong-equipped backing band do the talking.
