2003-06-27 - Mains d'Oeuvres, Paris

John Darnielle, Daniel Brodow (Tollund Man; bassist of Refrigerator), Lisa Li Lund (Scavenger Babies)

Recording: Internet Archive / Video

Setlist

• Alphonse Mambo
• Jaipur
• Source Decay
• 02-75
• Soft Targets
• Downtown Seoul
• No Children
• Going to Scotland
• Oceanographer's Choice
• The Recognition Scene
• Jenny
• You're In Maya
• Prana Ferox
• Palmcorder Yajna
• Scavenger Babies (with Lisa Li Lund)
• Tollund Man (with Daniel Brodow)
• See America Right
• Going to Georgia (encore)

Banter

• C'est va, Paris? [sic] We're the Mountain Goats. [tuning] This is a song about you, and the one you love, and a hotel room in Florida. (Alphonse Mambo)
• It's a song about coming home, after a manner of speaking. (Jaipur)
• This is the first love song I ever wrote for my wife, before I had ever laid eyes on her face. [woo!] It's named after her post office box in Grinnell, Iowa, where we used to exchange letters before we knew what one another looked like. (02-75)
• It's a love song, after a manner of speaking. It's called - well, here's the thing. In the US military, uh, has this way of coming up with nice ways of describing bad things. So you have hard targets, that's buildings and military installations and streets, right, and then you have soft targets, and that's people. (Soft Targets)
• I don't get over here often, so if there's anything you wanna hear, say something now. [much yelling of requests] Seeing Daylight. I don't know if I can play that one. [plays one chord] No, I can't. I'm sorry. [French accented yelling for No Children] I could try. Kimya, are you around, could you supply me with a cäpo or a cãpo or however you pronounce that? Hold on, I'm gonna try No Children. [woo!] Thanks. I never play this song live, though [ed: hearty laughter from 2025] so if it totally, like, if I fuck it up completely, it's that guy's fault. [Kimya provides JD with a capo] I think I put it here. I never play this song live, but it's a love song, it's about how, when two people love one another, but then, they succumb to the urge to wanna kill each other - what's love like then? (No Children)
• This is another love song. Sort of. (Oceanographer's Choice)
• This is a song - well, of course it's a song, it would be weird if I was about to do a play. This is a song about how there's a moment in every relationship where you look at the person you love and you think, inside yourself, I don’t actually love you anymore. What am I gonna do now? I don't wanna say that, you know, I mean what would happen if I said that? Well, nothing would happen. I mean, you'd just have a conversation, but you think inside yourself something disastrous will happen. So you don't say nothin'. Then it's next week, and you still feel the same way, now what are you going to do? Now you've spent a week living a terrible lie! So you've already got a week invested, you might as well give it another year. That's what this song is about. (The Recognition Scene)
• This is a song about a man and a woman and a motorcycle. (Jenny)
• This gentleman here wants to hear a song that's never been released. It's called You're in Maya, it's, uh... one of the very few true stories in my arsenal and I feel really weird playing it. (You're In Maya)
• This is a song about alcohol, and the wondrous things it can, you know, the ways it can bring a relationship to a place that it mightn't've gone before. Right? A bad place, but a place that it mightn't've gone before. (Prana Ferox)
• It's about all my friends up in Portland, may most of them rest in peace. (Palmcorder Yajna)
• We just wrote this song this week. This is a brand new song, I wrote it day before yesterday. (Scavenger Babies)
• This is a song about a man what they found at the bottom of a swamp in Denmark. [audience cheers for bog bodies] You know what I'm talking about! He had been there for like 4,000 years and because scientists are very clever they were able to tell what the last thing he ate was before he died. He died because he was the local candidate for a sacrifice. How he garnered that honor is unknown, but it's suspected that it was random, so it's as though somebody came to your house one day and said 'we're gonna drown you, get ready'. (Tollund Man)
• This is a dance number...This is a song, it's about people, they go down to Florida, it doesn't go well for them. They wish it would go well for them, but it's rather too late for them to turn back. So, what can ya do? Watch them burn. (See America Right)