The Smiths' 25th

Two events have profoundly impacted my life. Meeting my beautiful wife, and sitting in a friend's bedroom in 1987, summer before high school started, and hearing "Frankly Mr. Shankly" come over the speakers. I had never heard anything like it, and it blew the lid off a world of music I didn't know existed. The album I had bought previous to the Queen Is Dead (familiar colors?) was Bon Jovi's "Slippery When Wet". If you asked virtually any kid what alternative music was back then, the answer would have been Run DMC. Can the uniqueness of the Smiths be appreciated by those too young to remember the mid-eighties? Could an internet-ready world where you can hear as many new bands as you can possibly click on understand the magnitude of finding something like this in a sea of 80's mediocrity? I hope. Until 120 Minutes started coming on MTV around that time, there was simply no way for a kid with no cool connections to find non-mainstream music. Sean O'Hagan (not the musician) writes in Guardian Music:

"To put the extent of their achievement into context, you need only remember that they arrived at a time in the early-to-mid Eighties when punk's rupture had long been papered over, when the new synthesised pop of Boy George and Wham! ruled the charts, and, more importantly, when sample-based dance music first began crossing into the mainstream and rock music seemed to be fighting a desperate rearguard action. ...the Smiths almost single-handedly reclaimed and revitalised the ailing tradition of the guitar-driven, four-piece rock group"

The article highlights the fact that it was twenty-five years ago that Morrissey and Marr first met. And twenty years since they caused my musical awakening. This show is from a bootleg called "Reel Around The Fountain", it's their ninth ever show and first outside Manchester or London. I have untracked, remastered, and tracked it (for smoother transitions between songs), here's how it sounded before and this is how it sounds now. This was a month after their very first single, "Hand In Glove", and still six months from their first album. Enjoy.

The Smiths
"Reel Around The Fountain" boot - Remastered
Fighting Cocks, Birmingham
June 6, 1983

01. You've Got Everything Now
02. Handsome Devil
03. Accept Yourself
04. What Difference Does It Make
05. Reel Around The Fountain
06. Wonderful Woman
07. These Things Take Time
08. I Don't Owe You Anything
09. Hand In Glove