Not Rock On

This is the first of a series of concert tapes you will find here in the next time.

The Smiths live in Hamburg, Markthalle 04.05.1984

As far as I know this was the first and only time The Smiths ever played live in Germany, and I was there! The show was recorded for Rockpalast on TV (one week later they and I were back there for the Carmel concert) and later also broadcast by NDR 2 on radio.

I knew only the singles back then and was very curious how this then still little known band from England would be live, and they were fantastic! Morrissey entered the stage with a large bunch of flowers on the back of his jeans, a horde of english fans singing his name. After the first track he asked the crowd to come closer, because due to the TV recording the ground floor of the Markthalle was blocked for the cameras. Suddenly the fans rushed forward (poor cameramen!) and I was standing directly at the front of the stage (as you can see in the pictures of my previous post).

While they played, Morrissey threw the flowers into the audience, later followed by his shirt. I still keep the left half of it! It was heavily scented, my car smelt from his perfume for weeks.

This was the last experience I could share with my girlfriend back then. Every minute I spent with her after that concert in the car in front of her door is sadly remembered. Still ill was on constant rewind (done manually many times over as that was not a feature of my car stereo) as I did not know another way to respond to her complaints. Stupidity of youth!

I hope you can enjoy it at least half as much as I did anyway! I think the sound quality is pretty ok, Stereo FM recording. As the tape is 22 years old now I was a little disappointed, when I heard it again on my stereo (before I only listened to it in the car), but I hope that Nero SoundWave improved it enough, leave comments.

You should easily find the videos of this concert on youtube. I think I found myself in the end of Hand in glove on youtube! Lower left side at the end of the track!

As there was no clear decision in your comments to the format, I will start with both one large mp3 file with the complete concert, and a zip file with the concert split into single mp3s. I don't know if I will do it always, but let's see.

The Smiths live in Hamburg, Markthalle 04.05.1984 one file

The Smiths live in Hamburg, Markthalle 04.05.1984 single files

Labels: Live recordings, New Wave + Indie

Posted by Jörg on 13.01.2007 at 1/13/2007 08:42:00 AM | Permalink