{"id":805111,"date":"2020-03-11T09:53:17","date_gmt":"2020-03-11T15:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=965631"},"modified":"2020-03-11T09:53:17","modified_gmt":"2020-03-11T15:53:17","slug":"watch-morrissey-perform-smiths-obscurity-half-a-person-for-first-time-in-20-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/watch-morrissey-perform-smiths-obscurity-half-a-person-for-first-time-in-20-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch Morrissey Perform Smiths Obscurity \u2018Half a Person\u2019 for First Time in 20 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Morrissey<\/a> played his first concert of 2020 on March 6th at the First Direct<\/a> Arena in Leeds, England, where he treated fans to a reworked setlist. It featured not only the first performance of the Smiths<\/a> classic \u201cThe Boy With the Thorn in His Side\u201d since 2013 but also the first \u201cAt Amber\u201d since 2002 \u2014 plus live debuts of \u201cJim Jim Falls,\u201d \u201cOnce I Saw the River Clean\u201d and \u201cLove Is on Its Way Out\u201d from his upcoming album I Am Not a Dog on a Chain.<\/em><\/p>\n

But he saved the big moment for the first encore when he broke out the Smiths 1987 obscurity \u201cHalf a Person\u201d for the first time in 20 years. The song was released as the B-Side to \u201cShoplifters of the World Unite\u201d and later appeared on their compilation Louder Than Bombs<\/em>. It was never played at a proper Smiths concert, although they did perform it at a BBC John Peel Session on December 12th, 1986. Morrissey began playing it at his solo shows in late 1999 and it was a mainstay all across 2000, but then it vanished until this month.<\/p>\n

Morrissey and Johnny Marr wrote the song while standing face-to-face in the stairwell of a recording studio. \u201cThe best songwriting moment me and Morrissey ever had,\u201d Marr said<\/a>. \u201cWe were so close, practically touching. I could see him kind of willing me on, waiting to see what I was going to play. Then I could see him thinking, \u2018That\u2019s exactly where I was hoping you\u2019d go.\u2019 It was a fantastic shared moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Rob Sheffield ranked all 73 Smiths songs in 2017,<\/a> he listed \u201cHalf a Person\u201d at Number Two, topped only by \u201cThere Is a Light That Never Goes Out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAny 10-second snippet of this song has more joy and anguish than most bands\u2019 careers,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe Smiths tucked it away on a B-side. Keats, Yeats and Wilde would all be proud.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morrissey is releasing I Am Not a Dog on a Chain<\/em> on March 20th. He is playing at New York\u2019s Hammerstein Ballroom on March 20th and then the Apollo Theater on March 21st. In late June and early July, he\u2019s playing five nights at The Colosseum at Caesar\u2019s Palace in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Morrissey played his first concert of 2020 on March 6th at the First Direct Arena in Leeds, England, where he treated fans to a reworked setlist. It featured not only the first performance of the Smiths classic \u201cThe Boy With the Thorn in His Side\u201d since 2013 but also the first \u201cAt Amber\u201d since 2002 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-805111","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-19 13:34:14","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}