Summary by Lord Cras

To begin with, the Smoking Popes were amazing. They sounded really good. Other than the dumb girl screaming "it's a mod world" every 2 seconds, the Smoking Popes put on an excellent performance. They played for about 30 minutes and the crowd was really into them. As soon as the Popes' set ended, anxious Moz fans tried to go to the front of the stage to get as close to him as possible , but their attempts were soon enough defeated by the bouncers threatening to stop the show if they didn't return to their seats. But as soon as the lights came down, a herd of about 70 anxious fans rushed the front and the bouncers didn't even attempt to stop anyone. Morrissey came out in a blue shirt and black pants and automatically started to greet the crowd.

Only 2 people got to rush the stage and only got to hug him for half a second before the hired goons came out and put the ambitious fans in chokeholds and dragged them to God knows where. The show overall was amazing, the crowd was well behaved except for the metal heads who thought it was a Slayer show. Moz was more playful with the crowd this time. This show was expected for a long time and he didn't disappoint anyone -- it was worth the wait...

Summary by Ted O'Brien (Fort Meyers, FL)

This show was LOUD. I remarked halfway through that Morrissey must have left the ballads back in the hotel. The band was as awesome as I had hoped, and better. Musically, I could not have been more satisfied. As for the set list, "odd" doesn't seem to do it justice. You can see that he all but passed over the new album, performing "Alma" and "Ambitious" towards the end (that was kind of a disappointment). And I was not surprised he performed nothing pre-Vauxhall (with the exception of the Smiths tunes). What did surprise me was the very strong showing of Southpaw material, combined with the very intense reworkings of slow songs from Vauxhall into songs that would have fit nicely on Southpaw Grammar. It worked great.

Morrissey himself seemed in very good spirits, smiling, toying with the audience, and staying completely clothed for the entire performance. Security was very tight, and I was sure no one would get through to him. Nevertheless, during the encore five of them actually did. Unbelievable! Dialogue with us, the audience, was at a minimum, although the best line was "I have a question about Veteran's Day! What do Americans do on Veteran's Day? I don't understand. Yes? Nothing? Americans do nothing on Veteran's Day!" And that was that.

As for the audience itself, I was further surprised by the diversity of the crowd. Gothics were maybe around 30 to 40%, gays and lesbians maybe about 50% (well, this was Miami Beach), Latinos and blacks maybe about 25% (in both the Gothic and gay categories, as well as "other"). Most surprisingly was the number of older people -- middle aged and up. That was about 5%. The person who sat on my right was a fiftysomething Latin lady who came by herself!! (My theory is that season ticket holders for the Jackie Gleason Theatre could get in to this show for free, and they went out of curiosity. I wonder if they enjoyed themselves.)