Morrissey - Live In Dallas

In the early 80's, British band The Smiths was the kind of band you either loved, hated, or like me, were not aware of until much later. Vocalist/lyricist Stephen Patrick Morrissey (known simply as Morrissey) immediately launched into a solo career after The Smiths disbanded in 1987 and continued to write and perform many witty and intelligent songs with a range of co-writers.

Morrissey's solo career has arguably been as successful as that of The Smiths, especially in the USA where Morrissey now resides. Morrissey Live In Dallas was filmed on 17th June 1991 at the Dallas Starplex Amphitheatre in front of 11,000 people and contains all the elements of a Morrissey performance that fans might expect. There are numerous stage invasions (the final one ending the show with Morrissey heading for the wings), lots of flowers being thrown onto and from the stage, Morrissey's amateur dramatics, smashed guitars and most frustratingly, a rather short set clocking in at just under 60 minutes with no Smiths songs whatsoever. Don't be fooled by the cover that boasts a running time of 1 hour 28 minutes and 58 seconds…

Morrissey is currently without a recording contract and hasn't released an album since 1997, hasn't performed live since 1999 and has been living a quiet life in Los Angeles. Rumour has it that he has enough songs for a new album and is keen to tour again, but that would be unlikely to include Australia. Morrissey Live In Dallas is probably as close to the real thing as most of us are ever going to get.

Update It has been confirmed that Morrissey is to tour Australia in October 2002 in support of a supposed new album. There are dates as part of the Livid Festival, and solo dates in most capital cities. Check your local press or favourite Morrissey website for details

Track Listing:

While any Morrissey/Smiths release is welcomed, it is a shame they have so far not been afforded the effort that most other music DVD releases receive. The main issue here is that this has been copied straight from VHS and it shows, but at least EMI had the grace to point this out on the back cover.

As with most live performances, stage lighting is very problematic. There are numerous instances of glare and colours go from washed out to oversaturated regularly depending on the light. The lighting in this performance is restricted to mostly blue or white and it is when the stage is washed in blue light that the video quality hits rock bottom. There is a complete loss of sharpness and clarity of every object on stage and grain is as bad as I have seen on any DVD. The picture quality in general is consistently poor throughout and is akin to watching a good VHS copy.

On the positive side, there are no signs of film artifacts, tape tracking errors, jumps or flicks. If you can accept the picture for what it is, and concentrate on the performance rather than its presentation, then it is watchable, but only just.

Even those that argue that music DVD's should be listened to in stereo as we did for decades will be hard pressed to defend the quality of this recording. Presented only in 2.0 mono with no subtitle options, there is no separation between the left and right speakers which makes the whole performance sound a little cluttered with everyone fighting for space. When you consider this is your standard bass, drums and two guitars band, this is quite unacceptable. Morrissey's vocals though are clear as is the banter between numbers, though this is infrequent. There are no audio sync problems and of course the centre and rear speakers and sub are not utilised.

Track Selection. That's it.

It's a tough call on the overall value of this release. Without a doubt the video and audio presentation is below standard and will not delight anyone with merely a passing interest in Morrissey, but fans will almost certainly watch it more than once. While this is really just a live CD with pictures, fans should note this is the only Morrissey Region 4 release (apart from The Smiths The Complete Picture - which is far from complete I might add but that's another story) and as such is worth it for those of us who have never experienced a Morrissey show and want some record of what we are missing.

Morrissey is as enigmatic as he as always was and even though this is a bare bones release of a typically bare bones Morrissey performance, it is still an enjoyable experience.