Linkstew

TMBG concert #2 of 3 was tonight, and I guess it was a little disappointing after last night... but honestly, how were they supposed to top playing 41 songs? They really should have booked the Sapphire Bullets to play Wednesday night instead of Monday, but what can be done?

At any rate, the opening act for the evening was the The Long Winters. They were were fairly likable, and I liked their name... Unfortunately, I was kind of dazed and confused while they were playing, so I don't feel qualified to say anything qualitative about them right now other than that they were my third favorite band I've seen open for TMBG after The Incredible Moses Leroy and You Were Spiraling.

So, for TMBG I was about 4-6 rows back, a little right of center. When The Long Winters came on, I realized my ears weren't up for the task at hand, and I went and bought myself some earplugs, which were a good investment, because now my left ear shouldn't still be ringing by the time tomorrow's show rolls around.

John and John were a lot more talkative tonight -- probably because they were only playing half as many songs -- but that means that I was scribbling notes like mad at some points and still only managing an approximation. I wrote so much that I filled up my piece of paper (which I only got halfway through filling up last night) and had to switch to using my Palm right around the encore.

Early in the show, they reminded us that they were going to play every song off of Apollo 18 that they felt comfortable playing in public. I'll italicize the Apollo 18 songs, and we'll review afterwards. Here was the set + quotes:

• Hypnotist of Ladies
• The Sun - fairly normal, with copper is a gas, and nuclear estrogen reactions.
• "We're thinking about changing our name to "Nu Shoes..." That's nu with an N-U... Because we're all wearing new shoes."
  -- linnell
• Dinner Bell
• John Lee Supertaster
• James K. Polk (canon)
• Clap Your Hands
• She's an Angel
• Fingertips
• My Evil Twin - hey, this was unexpected and cool.
• "Keeping with the theme of evil, we have our next song..."
  -- linnell
• Dr. Evil - performed by Robyn Goldwasser! This was awesome!
• In the Middle In the Middle In the Middle - also performed by Robyn. Way cool.
• "This next song has three verses but we're going to kind of jumble them up... We're not going to rest on our laurels.... We're not going to compromise... We're just going to publicly humiliate ourselves. This song is starting to sound like it was influenced by The Go-Go's... I'm not sure we got to this point."
  -- mostly flans I think, moderately reconstructed by me.
• See the Constellation
• Okay, so then there was this crazy long intro here that I was scribbling like mad trying to take notes on, so what follows here is entirely approximate. Don't quote me on this one. Also, it seems like this intro would be better for No One Knows My Plan, except there's no sax on that song.

  "Inside the prison the real saxophone is playing the shitty blues.
  Deep inside the prison staring at four walls and playing the shitty blues.
  Outside someone drives past in his Chrysler and reading the New Yorker.
  It is the arch nemesis of the real saxophone.
  It is the synthetic guitar and he is laughing and doesn't give a rat's ass
  The synthetic guitar drives by the prison yard, care free
  He takes his hands off the steering wheel to adjust the radio and listen to his own recording of the shitty blues.
  Inside the prison the real saxophone is despondent and he is barely able to play the shitty blues.
  -- flansburgh, backed up by linnell on the tenor sax...

• She's Actual Size - in the drum solo flans included Dave Grohl of Nirvana, and it sounded like Dan was playing Smells Like Teen Spirit, which was cool.
• "I don't think we've ever gotten to 17 before... We not going to be playing that again... Not for awhile."
  -- flansburgh
• "This is a new song that has never been played here before last night. And today on tech tv. And now it's kind of spent."
  -- linnell
• Au Contraire
• "This next song is 33 seconds long."
  -- flansburgh
• Boss of Me - (30 second tv intro version)
• The Stature Got Me High
• "This next song features Dan "Stormy Black" Miller, whose guitar playing is a thing of legend in both dressing rooms here at the great american music hall. It's a song for those whose thirst cannot be quenched or... no word beginning with a q can solve their problems."
  -- flansburgh
• Drink!
• The Famous Polka (instrumental)
• Spin the Dial
• Spider
• The Guitar - featuring Linnell's "Sound of the Future" near the end again.
• "Hey, who's that playing, the guitar? Is it Stormy? I don't know... Is it Stormy? I don't think so"
  -- flansburgh, during The Guitar
• Birdhouse in your Soul
• "I don't know how to say 'thank you' -- except with words..."
  "Perhaps with the words 'Thank you?'"
  -- flansburgh / linnell
• "After the show we'll be accepting your friend's bad credit card in the back - we need that gas money more than you know."
  -- flansburgh
• No!
• Encores: There were two, and I could have sworn they played five songs, but I only have four written down... And I'm not entirely sure where they left the stage, either, so I'm just listing the encores as one block until I find out otherwise:
• "Sorry for the delay... I had to change my clothes, but my wardrobe guy was nowhere to be found."
  "It was totally worth the wait. I put on a new t-shirt under this..."
  "You look fresher."
  "It was actually just another used t-shirt..."
  -- flansburgh / linnell / flansburgh / linnell
• Again, this is another long block of conversation which I only partially recorded, so don't quote me on this one. There was actually a lot more in that "history of music" bit, including flans doing an imitation/mocking techno/trance. But here's what I got:

  "We left out the middle of this next song so the audience would have something to do instead of getting bored... It's like the wave, exactly. It goes like this... I'm going to do this off mike so I don't shock anyone. [oooOOOO!] It slowly goes through the audience until it reaches the back where the people that aren't enjoying the show at all are... Got it? No? Now I'm going to have to explain this again... It started in Africa with drums, and spread to Europe... some genre in Ireland... until finally we get to this song."
  -- flansburgh

• Violin
• At this point, flans flipped the radio back on for a second and a snippet of "Last Train to Clarksville" played. Pay attention, because this will be important to the story later.
• Robot Parade - during this song, Flans showed the setlist to linnell with a change on it. After the show, and found out that they'd dropped Dig My Grave to play the next song:
• Hey Hey We're the Monkees - I still liked this a whole lot, but honestly I would have rather heard Dig My Grave. Oh well.
• "This next song is a very special song which we seldom do very well."
  -- flansburgh
• Turn Around

The other interesting things on the setlist was something that said DOOM! after Drink! (no idea what that was about) and they had listed CYCLOPS after Birdhouse, but they didn't end up playing that. I also mentioned above that Dig My Grave was sadly swapped for Hey Hey We're the Monkees.

As for their grand Apollo 18 plan, they only played 10 out of 18 of the songs on the album. And wouldn't it figure, most of the songs they didn't play were the ones I want to hear more than the ones they did play. In particular, Dig My Grave, I Palindrome I, Narrow Your Eyes, Hall of Heads, Which Describes, and If I Wasn't Shy would have all been preferred over most of the other things they played. I was actually kind of surprised that they didn't play Mammal, because I've heard them play that before. Oh well.

More problematic than that, however, was that they only performed 24 songs, and they played 13 (or 14, if you count Spin the Dial) of those songs last night. Thankfully, they didn't play Istanbul or Particle Man again, and instead opted for the much more enjoyable Birdhouse.

So, while I enjoyed the concert, I didn't have nearly as much fun as last night on account of being tired, being partially def (my ears were still ringing), still being really sore from snowboarding, and the set in general. Hopefully tomorrow night will be better. The main song I really want to hear tomorrow night is Ana Ng. I'd also like a lot of other stuff off of Lincoln or The Pink Album, or even John Henry, because all three of those albums have been really neglected (they've played 2 songs (Destination Moon and She's an Angel) off of them so far). But if about 2/3rds of the set are songs that weren't played on either other night, I'd be happy.