Ahh Morrissey. The lovely lovely Morrissey. We saw him last night on the opening night of the tour at the Lowry in Salford. More on that later as it will be easier to review it in tandem with the Leeds gig tomorrow night. This space is all about the Morrissey fans.

Now, I have no beef with Morrissey fans. In fact, I rather love being around other Morrissey fans. Mainly because people who aren’t Morrissey fans really don’t get it. They don’t get it so much that they think Morrissey lyrics are depressing. They are tasteless fools, the lot of them. Morrissey fans, however, on the whole are a clever lot. And every single one feels a very strong personal connection to just about every song that ever came from his pen. Last night, although I didn’t attempt to test my theory, I am fairly certain that everybody in the room pretty much knew every song he played or might have played.

So, why is there always one fucktard (or two) who thinks they are a bigger fan than everyone else in the room, that getting to see him is more important to them than anyone else in the room, and wants everyone in the room, including good old Moz himself, to know it. Why as well does this person, or in this case people, always seem to think that despite being, quite literally, one row of seats from the top of a very large, very tall theatre, despite it being dark, Morrissey having a giant spotlight in his face and there being, oh, a couple thousand other places to look, that if they waved frantically for 80 minutes he might actually see them, point them out and wave back?

Now it might seem that I was fixated on this couple when I should have been watching the Mozfather, but that’s not actually the case. They were, in fact, completely and wholly blocking my view when the gig started. Luckily there were no seats directly behind me so I moved up a row and stood behind my chair, and they were still obscuring my view. Mainly because they had big heads which they had pressed together, but also because of the manic arm-waving. And the fact they kept trying to tango. And they were banging into the people on either side of them. I was waiting for a fight to break out, they were that exuberant in their dancing. They were not in exactly the best location for a maniacal crazy-person dance. And they were probably 25-30 years too old to avoid looking like total fools.

So yeah, middle-aged couple, trying to wave to Morrissey from the top row of the Lowry, dancing and banging into people in a seated venue. Yes yes, we all got it, they were fans. But if they weren’t fans, why would they have been there? So what exactly did they think they were proving to the world?

So kids, this week’s gig etiquette tip:
If you’re at a gig, people assume you’re a fan of the band or artist. You don’t need to prove how much you like them, especially if it nearly starts a fight.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 19th, 2006 at 8:50 pm by JustHipper and is filed under Gig-goer of the Week, Random comment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.