Thank you for the music, Morrissey!

A pink shirt is tucked in his jeans, along with a Philippine flag. His paunch bulges against the cloth. The quaff hairdo is there, much less obvious than how we remember it. The tall fluff of black hair has largely been replaced by a thinner cover of graying strands. He walks onto the stage, almost directly in front of the drumhead that also bears our country’s standard. Has time finally caught up with Steven Patrick Morrissey?

Yes and no. Despite cutting a figure that screams more retiree than rock star, the Moz still commands attention when he’s in the throes of a song. You could almost make out former Smiths collaborator Johnny Marr beside him. Almost. He is animated, confident, nonchalant — anything and everything you imagine a pop star, nay, icon, to be.

So, Morrissey, it’s about bloody time. We waited for forever. The Foo Fighters arrived with the Beastie Boys (RIP, Adam) and Sonic Youth. REM called it quits and never made it here, the Red Hot Chili Peppers canceled, but even Frank Sinatra found his way were before signing out four years later.

We, your devotees, have grown up — and old. We who were weaned on new wave, punk, and pre-vitiligo Michael Jackson found ourselves going the way of baby boomers seeking solace in RJ (both the bar and the radio station). We look for our niche. We have become the new outsiders to mainstream radio and standard MYX fodder.

So, it’s about time. Never mind that it’s Mother’s Day. There’s some weird parallelism to the fact that our moms never really understood why we listened to your music all those forgotten years ago. If Caligula would have blushed, what more our parents? They’d understand if we didn’t bring them along. It’s nighttime, anyway.

We troop to the World Trade Center to finally see you live — someone who helped shape our youth. Well, that may be an exaggeration. Just a bit. Certainly you were among those who sang in the background while I was studying for one of those high school quarterly exams. “How could you study with that racket on?” I remember my late beloved lola thundering. She’d always wrinkle her face when she entered my room because it was blaring with music. Morrissey, you were there, too, at our soirees. Any self-respecting “mobile” business wouldn’t be caught without Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now or Panic or This Charming Man. So where was I? Morrissey Live in Manila. Go to the World Trade Center. Just have to be there.

Past the muscled bouncers and ushers and more bouncers, we find our seats. We ask ourselves if a front act is in the cards. In response, the lights go out and a fabric screen lights up with an assortment of footage and music videos. Most are period pieces or inspired by a bygone era where men slicked back their hair and women wore lush clothes. One can imagine this is the kind of stuff that made Morrissey an icon for these times — an era he once derided as “not terribly sophisticated.” That he is, really. Sophisticated. Cultured, gasp, even. He is perhaps England’s best import — ranking higher by some reckonings than the Beatles.

The sentiment is so unoriginal it needn’t be driven to the ground further, but Morrissey had always been ahead of his time. He was ahead in the ’80s, and remains ahead in the blasé present. It’s easy to be ahead when the rest of the field twiddles their thumbs and pays no heed to the lyrics except for the rhyme at the end of each line. Listen up, songwriters, and pay heed to the Moz.

Way before the LGBT community incurred the self-righteous wrath of some —    including a fallen (literal), falling (any other way) beauty queen — Morrissey had stringently skirted having to explain himself. At one time, perhaps in exasperation, he cheekily referred to himself as “a kind of prophet for the fourth sex.”

As civilized people go, that didn’t matter to us. What did was the music, the glorious music. On this rainy night we are crowded around the campfire to hear the headmaster speak. To make us feel alive again, to rally our convoluted feelings and make sense of how far we’ve gone and how we never really left.

Morrissey and company (Jesse Tobias and Boz Boorer on guitars, Solomon Walker on bass, Matt Walker on drums, Gustavo Manzur on keyboards) launch into the Smiths classic How Soon is Now, dripping with tremolo, and he has us riveted. In many ways, he is still ill — that weirdly dancing front man with the loose shirts and sometimes atonal whine. My ears hurt in a din of noise, but I don’t mind. If it’s too loud, you’re too old. I’m never going to admit to that until I go deaf.

The Moz delivers some token Filipino for effect: The always reliable “mahal ko kayo” and “mabuhay,” but he keeps the in-between songs banter to a minimum. During a break, he quips: “I have so much to say, I don’t know where to start, therefore, I won’t.” Oh, you witty you.

You can google the set list for Morrissey and company’s Manila show, but suffice to say that it features Smiths and post-Smiths tracks. Memorable ones include the unsettling Meat Is Murder, a treatise on the evils of raising and handling meat for our consumption (the Moz is a vocal animal rights activist and vegetarian), and it features a projection of a disturbing video of livestock and poultry hardship in the background. Then there’s Everyday Is Like Sunday, and the painful and haunting Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Love Me — the latter off the swansong Smiths album Strangeways Here We Come. The lyrics are beautiful, real, and something that connects to you on a base level — unlike a shining, polished, reworked Justin Bieber song.

Morrissey utters plaintively in the waning moments of the encore track There Is A Light That Never Goes Out: “And if I seem a little strange, that’s because I am.”

Viva strange. Strange is good, Morrissey, and we won’t have it any other way.

But please be back before long.