I got to the club around 4 cos I had heard soundcheck was usually
between 4 and 5, but they were running late for some reason so nobody
got there until 5:15 or so. First Miller, with his guitar in a soft
black case strapped to his back, and Hickey a few mins later, he said hi to me without me saying hi to him first, it was pretty cool. I watched Iggy riding his scooter up and down the sidewalk in an attempt to distract myself from the fact that John was probably going to be getting there pretty soon, it didn't work too well.
Dan and Dan were both delivered by car but he got there in a taxi. He was sitting in the back seat and there was stuff blocking my view on
the other side, and then when he got out he was bent over for a moment
so I still couldn't see his head, but I recognized the shoes (the same
olive green Converse lowtops he wore at all the shows I went to last
fall, but the laces are starting to look pretty beat up, so I guess he's gotten a lot of use out of them between then and now). Also semi-baggy black jeans with frayed cuffs, a red long-sleeved shirt with one stripe near the top (light blue?) (I only saw it for a minute, he had a light green pocket t-shirt under it which he wore for the rest of the night) and glasses (!!!!!!!!!!) (the black ones).
He started walking to the bus, and I knew if I let myself think
about it I would lose my nerve (that happened to me at a show before, i
was the only one waiting and John walked by like five times and every time I wanted to say something to him but I would get too freaked out), so I told myself I had to just do it.
QUINN: Hey John! Hi! *wave*
JOHN: *REALLYBIG superadorable smile* Hey, how are ya.
QUINN'S BRAIN: !!!!!!!!!!!!
(John got on the bus and came back out about ten mins later with a cup of coffee and the green shirt on. I got up--I'd been sitting down
before--and started to walk over to him, but he went behind the
equipment truck perpendicular to the name of--err, to the bus, which
freaked me out cos I thought he was going to go that way, that the
friendly thing was just an illusion and he was still good ol' Mr.
Antisocial, but he came back around in just a second.)
QUINN: John, I know you're really busy, but if you could sign a couple of things for me, I would really appreciate it...
JOHN: *smiling again, no teeth this time but that other cute one he does sometimes that sorta crinkles his chin* Absolutely!
(We were walking over towards the back of the club. There was this
little fenced-in area and he stopped over by the gate. I handed him my
copy of State Songs and a blue finepoint Sharpie and noticed how warm his hands were and hoped he didn't notice how much mine were shaking...)
QUINN: So...um...first of all...are you ever going to do another one?
JOHN: *looks at my TMBG wallet* Did you want me to sign that too?
QUINN: Yes please, if you could...
JOHN: Sure. *pause* Oh yeh, eventually, but I'm busy with all this right now...
QUINN: Right. Ok, second of all, are the lyrics to West Virginia intenti--
TOUR MANAGER: John, telephone, it's Michael. *handing John a cell
phone* (to me) Sorry lovey, he has to take this call.
QUINN: Oh, that's fine. *leaning against the wall, watching John pace around, trying to stop shaking*
JOHN: Yeh, I've been there, it's right by my house.
EXCEPTIONALLY EVIL GUY WHO WORKS FOR THE CLUB: Can you do me a favour?
QUINN: Ok...
EXCEPTIONALLY EVIL GUY WHO WORKS FOR THE CLUB: Can you wait out front?
QUINN: But I'm--
EXCEPTIONALLY EVIL GUY WHO WORKS FOR THE CLUB: This area is just for the band and the people who are working the show.
QUINN: But we were talking and--
EXCEPTIONALLY EVIL GUY WHO WORKS FOR THE CLUB: Out front.
QUINN'S BRAIN: Noooooooooooooooo...
(So I went around not to the front but to right by the corner, almost at the front, but where if John, say, got off the phone and wondered where I was and came back outside the gate he would be able to see me--yes, I know, slightly delusional. After a few minutes the evil guy came over.)
EXCEPTIONALLY EVIL GUY WHO WORKS FOR THE CLUB: You really like these
guys don't you?
QUINN: Yes...
EXCEPTIONALLY EVIL GUY WHO WORKS FOR THE CLUB: I'm sorry, you were just right by the parking lot, and if anything happened I would be liable.
QUINN: But...he...he doesn't really like to talk to people very often.
EXCEPTIONALLY EVIL GUY WHO WORKS FOR THE CLUB: Sorry.
And the thing about it was, nobody else cared that I was back
there...there were a bunch of random TMBG-employed people, none of them
cared, John didn't care, he knew I was still there, if he'd wanted to he could've told me to leave or just gone inside or something. A few minutes later some guy who was working lights (not a TMBG guy) said I could go sit in their truck, which I did for a few mins, but then I started feeling nervous that other people would be showing up and getting in line (it was about 6:30) so I went back outside.
About that time I saw Flans stumble off the bus and said hi to him too, he looked really tired, I think maybe he just woke up or something. And then I heard them start soundcheck, which I thought was odd, cos I had never seen Danny show up. Of course, later I found out that was cos Danny wasn't there. (Jeremy Chatzky was filling in cos Danny's wife had just had a baby.)
Also not there: OKGO. They were supposed to be opening but Muckaferguson did instead, I don't know what happened. I like OKGO but I saw them at 3 shows last year and I'd never seen Muckaferguson, and some of the comments about them in the newsgroup had made me curious. I got a copy of their setlist (it was on the back of a Mexican food menu) so I might as well put it in here.
1. You Ain't a Man
They were pretty rockin', and funny. "Man, we're doing all these songs with all this swearing, and then I look and see all these kids in front, and I'm like 'Cool.' Cos someone needs to teach them, and it's never the fucking parents." "Yeh, parents are useless." ..."This is our last song, and then we're going to go backstage to those nice hot towels. You have to love hot towels, they're like clean sheets...c'mon, give it up for clean sheets, motherfuckers!"
After an hour (during which one of the aforementioned kids in front
asked me every 3 mins or so when they would be out) TMBG finally came out.
This was the first non-Northeast show I'd been to and it made me realize how spoiled I was, how adjusted I'd gotten to being at shows where at least some of the audience is actually familiar with them. This was very much a Floodie crowd, *huge* collective cheer when they started Particle Man, and I assume they expected that and that's why they put it so early. And after Birdhouse this guy next to me actually yelled "I LOVED YOU ON TINY TOONS!" which really pissed me off so I told him how, y'know, it was twelve years ago and they've done a LOT of stuff since then, which I maybe didn't neeed to do, but I was pissed. "WELL, I STILL LOVED YOU ON FUCKING TINY TOONS!" God, I hope they didn't hear him, it would give them a bad impression of my hometown. (And did he think Birdhouse was on there, or did he just randomly pick that moment to say it?)
Let's see, what else...no Elusive Butterfly or anything else during PM, the "I don't want the world" part of Ana was done by the audience only, John was jumping around more than I've ever seen him during
Guitar...During the Actual Size drum solos something went wrong with
Dan's drums and it took him a few mins to fix it. Flans was still back
there. "The mystery...of silence. *pause* Your drum solo satisfaction
comes first with They Might Be Giants. *pause* So we will *stop the
show* if something goes wrong." And John was just standing in the wings
drinking coffee and looking amused. Spin the Dial got fucked up too, the radio wasn't plugged in right or something (John: "Keepin' it real!") and Jon Carter had to come fix it, right after Flans did the whole "Guys are leaning over to their girlfriends saying 'This is so fake' right now" thing (he also said "It's not drowning out the voices in my head!" at some point)...he did a little bit with this country song but then said it was still fucked up and they would do it again later, but they didn't. Flans mentioned the Grammy before they did BOM, he sounded like he's still slightly in shock. At the beginning of the second encore someone gave him a bag of gumballs. "I'm going to put this in a safe place." And Miller's acoustic Istanbul intro was even cooler than usual.
John used a tenor sax on Yeh Yeh.
Random fun bits of dialogue, as well as I can remember them...
JF: Is it hot in here, or is it just our band? Temperature, band,
temperature, band...
JL: We're doing this new thing now where we start the songs without
counting off, using ESP. A lot of the bands are doing it...
JF: We have this other album coming out this year, an album for kids.
JF: This is a song we don't do very often, it's on an EP put out by
Emusic, and it's for sale at the t-shirt stand, as sort of a memorial to dot com's past. This song isn't about us, although we have formed a
shadow band in case They Might Be Giants should be unable to tour.
Afterwards I talked to Flans, got him to sign my copy of JH, and asked him to thank John for me since I hadn't been able to. And I told him how I got kicked out of school partially because of them and he said "I'm not going to take responsibility for your crazy behavior." And I asked him to thank John for me cos I hadn't gotten a chance to. And Muckaferguson gave me their CD for $10 instead of $12 cos that was all I had, which was pretty cool.
2. Liar
3. Dictionary
4. Falling in Love
5. Laundry Day
6. F. Up
7. Part Time
8. What's the Point
9. Tattoo
10. Cool Guy
11. Sympathy Shag
12. Punk
13. Choking
JL: Hey, throw that up there, I need to check something out. (There was a balloon bobbing around the audience, somebody threw it over to Flans. He inspects it and then pops it.)
JF: I feel like a five year old kid at a birthday party. And...(lowers
his voice) the party's over.
JL: This is the part of the show where everybody cries.
JF: I call it ESPN.
JL: I call it ESP three-thirty-five. *pause* For some reason.
JL: And we don't mean the kids...It's an album for children, so it has no swear words or death references. Which is disappointing for some of you.
JF: But it's still a crazy psychadelic experiment.
JL: So this song is about a clock that told the same time for 24 years or something. And...I saw it! So it's a real thing.
(They play 4 of 2)
JF: I feel like Charlie Daniels when we play that song.
JL: You're Charlie Daniels and I'm the Devil. (in a voice kinda like the one he uses when he introduces Polk sometimes) "Now Devil, you play that accordion!"
JF: Now this next song is a very adult song, it has no swear words but it's about alcoholism. (cheering) Yeh, this is dedicated to everyone in the audience who just went "Yeah!"