1996-08-30 - The Knitting Factory, NYC
John Darnielle, Alastair Galbraith (violin)
Recording - incomplete
Setlist
Banter
- I know this is a stadium question to ask but how are you doing? [laughter, woos] Are you ready to rock!! Well, the next song doesn't rock very hard, so those of you who were ready, it's more of a quiet song. Are you ready for a quiet song! [woo!] This song is on, like, there's a new album, about which I'll be telling you more than you want to know, later in the set, Alastair, in three consecutive performances, has failed to mention that he has stuff for sale, without the sale of which, he will be going home poor. So, please buy Alastair's records, and I'd like for you also to buy mine. Now, if you came down to a choice, that's very hard for me, because religiously, I would prefer to say 'buy Alastair's', but I know I wouldn't mean it, so, I urge you to buy both of our records. I have a lot, he only has some. So. I'm gonna light a cigarette so I can hand it to one of you in a second. Can you take care of this? Anyways, this is on the album that's gonna be out sometime next year. (Minnesota)
- Tell ya what, if anybody can tell me what 60s top 10 song I ripped off the closing chord progression from for that song, I'll give you a free 7-inch. [silence] I didn't think so. It's Crimson and Clover (Grendel's Mother)
- I feel bad about my set list, because the first few times Rachel and me went out of town, the setlist was like, very similar to a, you know, the Pentateuch. You couldn't change a word in it, it was just, it was set in stone, and now, this is the second, third day in a row I look at it and go, nah, I'm gonna tell you about a record I have, can I do that for a second? Then I'll play something somebody asked for. It means I gotta go over to my suitcase!! This is my suitcase, you'll notice it makes me have to strain my muscles to lift it! My friends! That's because it's full of records!!! [yay!] It's aaaaall full of records and compact discs, aauohh look at them all! And, becuase you'll be able to see it better if I hold up the trunk (?) [loud thump]...ah, that's okay. [laughter] This is the new one, it's called Nothing for Juice, it was titled long before the Simpson verdict, it has nothing to do with that. So, you see the delightful fire alarm from a Swedish health pamphlet, and a wonderful quotation from Suetonius, and if you don't buy it, then I'm going to read you the quotation from Suetonius, and it's in Latin. So, I wish you would buy it from me, it's cheap-er than you would get it in the store, it's ten dollars, and I have most of the other stuff. Also. [shouting for translations and monkey song, general chaos]. This is a song I wrote, and I gave it to a friend of mine's band, but I recently talked with him and it's ok with him if I do it again. (Tulsa Imperative)
- [audience: Bad Priestess!] I'll tell you what I told them last night - I cannot play Bad Priestess, because I don't know how, and there's a guitar that I can't show you, because I couldn't bring it from California when I go to the Midwest, but it's from a company called Kima (?), the great manufacturer of guitars, and it's about this big, it's a 3/4 size, and I wound heavy-gauge strings on it which immediately warped its body, and caused it to resonate in the most alarming way, and I played it in whatever tuning it happened to fall into, and I don't know what that was.
- I'm gonna do one more and we can all go get some sleep. I dunno what it's gonna be though. [chaotic yelling] I'll tell you a secret, I learned this trick from Randy Newman, who I saw when I was really young, and he said, is there anything anyone wants to hear? And his albums averaged about 12, 13 songs per record, and he had about six out, and he said, anybody wants to hear? Now you all say what you wanna hear. [many overlapping requests] I'll play that one!
- [intro] Yes, those of you who've seen me before know it's time. If you'd have thought hard enough you'd have left the room, 'cause I can see ya, once, when people wouldn't sing my song with me, I made them bring the house lights up, I went chasing after the [bridge? british?], in the rough trade shop, they don't like it when you come at 'em and tell 'em to sing along. Makes 'em very nervous. This is my favorite song. It was #1 in a number of countries, but as we all know, Tasmania was not one of them. [inaudible] subsumed under the Australian chart. It was #1 in Australia.
[first verse and chorus]
Now, I see some of you moving your lips. Maaaaaan, who do you think you're fooling?! You think I didn't go to grade school? And have some dude with an acoustic guitar come to class and ask me to sing Woody Guthrie songs, that I didn't feel like singing because people were always saying I sang too much anyway? And you move your lips, man, I've been there! So I want you to sing, as though, you were certain that the messiah would arrive tomorrow, and the only people to be subsumed into heaven would be those who sang along with a song by a certain Swedish band! [second verse and chorus, which are sung with vigor by the audience]. (The Sign)
- Can you hear the violin? [Alastair plays violin] That's a violin. I'd tell you where and when it was invented but I don't actually know. My friend Joel would lie, that's why I love Joel, because he'd just make something up. And most of you would know that he was lying, I think what gives him satisfaction is that two or three people would go home like, wow, the violin was invented in Latvia as recently as 1931! Anyway, Alastair and I did a single together, and we'd like to play some songs from it. (Raja Vocative)