Morrissey in Louisville
First, let me say that Morrissey's performance was terrific. His voice and stage presence were great. His band was tight. The crowd was really into the show. And he even had these giant lighted letters, like KISS uses, that spelled out "Morrissey" in red.

Unfortunately, there were a couple things not related to the music that really diminished the quality of the show for me:

1. Peta: The first thing I see when I walk into the Palace is some drone in a Peta T-shirt pushing a clipboard at me. He apparently wants to trade the possibility of winning a Morrissey poster for my signature on his Peta petition. I declined his offer and told him that I wasn't down with Peta.

On top of that, there's a table with all sorts of Peta propaganda including a TV showing images of animals being slaughtered.

Then during the show, Morrissey had to make a point of bringing up Peta and mentioning that all of the band members were vegetarians.

My problem with all of this is that I don't care what anybody at the concert had for dinner. Not one bit. Even if I did, I wouldn't support an organization like Peta who funds terrorism (bankrolling members of ELF who bomb research facilities that test on animals) and preaches hate (harrassing and threatening employees of animal shelters).

2. Politics: I understand that Morrissey's music often talks about politics; however, I don't particularly care to hear him talk about it between songs, too. Twice he took shots at Laura Bush. Even though I don't care for the President's policies, I don't have a personal issue with his wife. I guess I just don't want to be preached at about anybody's politics even if the beliefs are similar to mine. That's not what I paid to see.

So the musical portion of the show was great (a nice mix of new stuff, old stuff and Smiths stuff), but I probably wouldn't go see Morrissey again considering all of the other crap that he feels he needs to subject his customers to.

BTW, I went to the show with my friend (and militant Republican) Pat. He had a much more extreme reaction to the show. Read his take here.