2013-06-05 - Maxwell's, Hoboken
Peter and JD duo show - Recording
Setlist
Banter
- Peter: Brandon, can I get some more guitar?
[various bass and guitar noises]
Peter: Maybe more of everything.
JD: Man, I missed that one note in the end there. And, I mean, obviously, I should take full responsiblity.
Peter: Own that missed note.
JD: But. There's this piece of red tape there, that red piece of tape is there for the bridge of Amy, Spent Gladiator 1 song, because that thing is played with a capo, and its bridge is a little atypical, and I'd keep missing and not know where to go, so I put a little piece of tape there, or probably somebody put it there for me, so that I would stop doing that. But then the red tape is like a beacon in the night, and so whatever else you're trying to do, when you play, the red tape's like, check out that fret. It looks pretty juicy right there. That's probably where the action is at, the red one. Go for the red one. And it's usually not the right one, because it's a C# if there's no capo on, that's not the right one. So, no, it's an Eb, even worse. I'm trying to put this off 'cause I got this idea to put this second in the set list, and I don't think we've played this song in something like five years. [much cheering] (Linda Blair Was Born Innocent)
- [tuning] If you ever feel guilty about the time you feel tuning and feel like people sort of get restless and stuff, I advise you to do as I have done and get really into the Grateful Dead. Because those guys will tune for 20 minutes between songs, and they're nowhere near the note, and you can hear that none of them actually have a tuner, they're just sorta, they know where the note is, they have a good pitch, and they're taking their time at it and saying cantankerous things to the audience between. You think, well, I may be awkward but not as meanspirited as those guys when they're tuning.
- JD: I realized while I was playing it that that song enters, like, this proves me to be as big a record collector geek about my own stuff as about other people's stuff. So the Mountain Goats - sometimes you show up and it's just me. You are writing about shows, you say that ten times in a row, you go, [That Guy voice] it was actually only the one guy! And if you're me, you read that and go, heh heh, tremendously good observation. Then sometimes, and for a long time, it was just me and Peter, and then we added the greatest drummer in the universe, Jon Wurster. [cheering for the absent Jon] And so - and then in recent years, Wurster and I have done a couple of duo things we've never toured it, but it's a whole different dynamic and feel. That's one of the tunes we do as a duo, so I think - there's maybe only three songs that have had all iterations, that I play by myself, play with Peter, and play as a trio, and played with Wurster. And I think - that's the sort of thing I get really excited about.
Peter: You haven't heard the version that Wurster and I do together, though.
JD: The Peter and Jon version will blow the doors off. It really explores the space of those I and IV chords. (Love Love Love)
- [tuning, JD singing grateful dead tunes off mic, I think] In order to keep things fresh and to keep it as much like the old tours - the duo tours we stopped doing - as possible, the setlist has very little changeover from night to night - well, it has lots of changeover, very little trade-over - from night to night. And many of them are songs we haven't played together y'know...[laughs] since before we can remember. I'm taking off the red tape. I know it will distract me here. Ah, man, that was brutal, I'll put it here so I can remember. I'm excited for this. I'm not using a pick. (Nine Black Poppies)
- Peter: We had the idea that we were going to sit down on this tour.
JD: And we get our ideas, and our ideas seem good to us.
Peter: Seemed like an awesome idea.
JD: I used to - I didn't stand up until like, I wanna say fall of 2004! We were in Atlanta, Georgia, and I was like, I'm gonna buy a guitar strap and blow everybody's mind by standing up. This is what narcissism will do for you, like, man, I'm gonna pretend like everybody gives a shit and believe it! So I bought the strap and when I didn't make headlines the next day, I was very angry. We were gonna sit for this tour, you play a little better when you're sitting down, but you rely less on the energy, 'cause you're sitting down. I mentioned it to our booking agent, Adam, without whom you've never seen any Mountain Goats shows at all, I'm back in Iowa, nursing. And Adam wants us to sell - [audience member: sit down!!] I'm not gonna sit down, I'm telling a story about standing up. I think you came to the wrong show. So I, Adam says, the Washington DC show sold out really quick. And they're asking if they can open up the room, because it's a seated show. And I said, but we're going to be sitting down. And there was an ominous three seconds of silence on the other end of the line. He said, you're sitting down. Yeah, didn't I mention, we got this idea, we'll play better, and it'll just be like, a groove, you know? And he goes, ah, I dunno, I just, forget it. I said, no, if you think we should open up DC, and he says, I want to open up the show to more people, but I don't want you guys to sit down, and be like 1200 people in a room with two guys sitting on chairs. So I go, alright, alright, hence, that's the story of why I'm standing up. [woos]
Peter: The moral of the story is, listen to Adam.
- Can I tell you a story about Paul Stanley, one of the singers from KISS? [woo!] So there is rather famously a bootleg of Paul Stanley between-song banter that floats around. It's called "People, Let Me Get This Off My Chest". [Ed note: DO YOU GUYS LIKE TO GET LICKED???] I find Paul Stanley - people listen to it to laugh because he's yelling at these big crowds and it's a board recording so it sort of sounds like a guy yelling at a room to nobody. So, but, there's a real charm and humanity in the way that he's sort of trying to share ideas in his head with, y'know, 75,000 people. And at one point during what I theorize is a solo appearance at, like, Legends or something, he tries to explain how, when you're recording a song in the studio, you have your ideas about, ah, people are gonna hear this and flip the fuck out. They're gonna like that. And then other parts that you think are just connecting links between the good anthemic choruses and then it turns out that the parts you didn't think are that exciting are the ones that crowds like, and the other parts are the ones they're sitting through waiting to get to the part that you didn't think was so exciting. But the way that Paul Stanley puts this is he says [reasonable Paul Stanley impression]: "Sometimes the parts that you think are the cool parts are cool, but then the other parts that you're not thinkin' about, turn out to be the cool parts!" [laughter] And the whole reason I'm telling this story is that I do not think of Tallahassee as a real crowd pleasing song. And the last - but I mean, I wanted to play it because I've always been really fond of it, and I'm moving over to keyboard, and we played it in DC and it sounded kinda good, and then last night, I was like, I'm feeling a little tired tonight but man, Tallahassee, and it's like, it's shaping up to be the one that surprisingly rises up, with no yelling or me jumping up and down, and it's great. (Tallahassee)
- This is a true story about the time that I became a crystal healer and I ministered to all of the sick who I could find. There was no shortage of sick people, so I was a very busy crystal healer. I actually got too busy, I got tired of working double shifts, so I found a different line of work. But not before healing many people with crystals. I figure, if this dries up I can always go back to the crystals. I hear the field - no, not crystal. No, that's a different earlier time in my life. That was not a profitable time at all, on account of I couldn't follow commandment number two, don't get high on your own supply. (1 Samuel 15:23)
- If I could just hold forth in the service of praising my bassist for a minute. [woo!] So there's a thing that started happening to the Mountain Goats when the Mountain Goats was just me or just me and Rachel [Ware] way way way back when, that people who were running small labels which - if you were running a small label and you got a little road under you, it could be a good line of work, and so people would look for bands who seemed to be developing a following and start to preach a business model to them. And I was really - I come from southern, I come from the Inland Empire, we don't - we hate all business models. If you have a business model, then we don't like you. That's our position. Do your work and shut the fuck up is our position. So weasels were everywhere, weasels right and left. And they would come up and say [business guy voice] wow, hey, I really liked your show! I really enjoyed that, you got any records out? [normal voice] oh, yeah, I got 20 tapes, here have one. And they'd call you up when you got home and say hey, man, I listened to your tape, are these demos? And I'd go, I hate you, I fucking hate you. [laughter] But you wanna be nice to people and also get good stories to tell later. No, no, that's what they sound like. [business guy voice] If you were to make a record.... [normal voice] I gave you the record and you listened to it. That was it. [business guy] If you were to make a record, do you think you'd wanna re-record these? And as soon as somebody said that, it was then that I knew that I wished death upon them and all that they held dear. And it was like, I was very cantankerous about it. If anybody at all re-recorded one of their older songs for whatever reason it was, well, that guy's bullshit now. Seems like that guy doesn't toe as strong a line as yours truly, the bastion of ideological purity. [woo!] And I have clung very fiercely to this over the years. And suspect that I will never be able to beat back the bastion of ideological purity. But then you play a song like Cobscook Bay - I really like the studio version that I did all the parts by myself on the Yo-Yo EP, but then you play with Peter and you go aw, man. I feel like one of those weasel label guys, like, what if we could record that with a bass. Fortunately for me, I have the big [inaudible] how awesome it is to play that song with Peter. However, Peter will never record it. Because Peter, like myself, is a bastion of ideological purity. [cheering] Speaking of which, this song is unreleased. The greater number of people who like it, the more certain it is to remain unreleased. [more cheering, then tuning] This song got, aw man, if I'd had a time thing, that would be like, long story bumping into long story. That's bad luck for you guys, I'm sorry. So we - can you handle one? [resounding yes from Peter and the audience] So we go to record Tallahassee, I'm still pretty much in my ideological purity phase, but I'm willing to go into a studio. Because recording bass into a boombox is kinda bullshit. [laughter] So we go up to Tarbox Road studio, where the Flaming Lips had just cut - they'd just recorded Yoshimi, I think, but they'd also recorded Soft Bullet in there, and many bands - Mercury Rev had recorded all their stuff there, it's a great studio, so it was a great joy to hear people call the record lo-fi when it came out. You didn't actually listen to the record, did you, you just read the previous, ok, cool, appreciate that. Flew that dude in from Scotland for nothing. But I come in, I have 19 songs which I would like to track and mix in six days. If you haven't been to a recording studio, that's completely unrealistic. You should record about two songs a day. But you can do three if you don't have a drummer. Going over three is completely ridiculous if you're actually trying to make the songs good and get a good take. I mean, you can do 19 songs in two days if you want to, if you don't care which take you get, if you just sort of wanna get the songs, but I was, again, I was pretty - we'll start working at ten AM and we'll clock out whenever, about two in the morning, and... that's exactly what we did. And Tony [Doogan, Tallahassee producer] was a good sport about it, and a couple songs got left off, this was one of my very favorites, and I had envisioned it as being, like, the one that led off the album, so you'd sort of picture somebody going out onto the water and discovering the water is threatening, and coming back home and finding it's even worse at home than it was on the boat with the blood all over the boards. (Alpha Chum Gatherer)
- Audience: Color in My Cheeks!!
JD: I'm not gonna play that song right now, but I will love you forever for calling it Color in My Cheeks. [awws, Peter laughing] That just made me so fucking happy, you'll never know. 'Cause I do that with my own songs all the time. I'll just change a little, change a pronoun there and be really happy about it. This is like, two alpha songs in a row, and I was very excited to see this on a setlist. And surprised, because I surprise myself by forgetting things. (Alpha Rats Nest)
- [various bass and guitar noises, off mic murmurs]
JD: This is what it looks like when we're calling an audible. Don't wanna say it too loud, the people in the front row, they're good people, but you can't rely on them. [laughter and bass] They're nice people but they will rat you out as soon as they [inaudible].
Peter: It's the equivalent of the catcher - the pitcher putting his glove to his mouth and the catcher...[presumably Peter and JD do a Bit here, everyone laughs]
JD: I like that. We could also have code names, that'd be the best - Dungeons and Dragons club sorta thing.
Peter: Signs, like, [presumably demonstrating]?
JD: No, I'm bent on like, having really dumb code names. [Peter laughs raucously] This is called...what if they were the most guessable code names in the world? Like...rise of the failed high school quarterback? They'll never know what we're talking about there! They will be confounded! They will all feel confounded, is how they will feel. They'll be like, man, that JD and Peter, they counfounded us. (Fall of the Star High School Running Back)
- JD: Well, we could. I mean, I feel like we're gonna have to do it eventually. Is there a capo around here? [audience says something presumably about the pronunciation of 'capo', inaudible] Shut up. Don't you dare. [laughter]
Peter: Can't hear you, Brandon, what?
Brandon [Eggleston]: I have a spare one here.
Peter: Toss it up here, man. Pass it up.
JD: Hit me in the forehead with it, and then I die. That would be so badass. Yup, right before Maxwell's closed forever, he died on the stage there. It was....and then he....and then it turned out there was a clause in his will that said they had to bury him in the building. He had been planning on this ever since he heard it was going to close. Brandon didn't know he was throwing the poison tipped capo at him...[Brandon passes capo up, no one dies]. [...] The Mountain Goats are entering their 367th consecutive day of playing without food or water on the stage of Maxwell's. They ran out of songs a long time ago. [plays opening chords to No Children but slow, Peter joins in] They just keep playing the intro riff from No Children. For eight hours John says, 'this is what's on my mind'. Then he gets cantankerous and says he's off work but keeps right on playing the riff. It was a noble effort. [continues slow jam No Children] If nobody ever does this on one of those American Idol type shows, then my ghost will haunt the future judges of whatever American Idol show is left during the post-nuclear age. As the mutants crawl, deformed, across the earth, to audition for whatever their American Idol type show is called. I will haunt their mutant asses. I'll whisper in their ears, if you do "I Will Always Love You" instead of No Children, the haunting will continue. I will find - if there's one thing mutants in the post nuclear age are not afraid of, it's haunting. And I will be a bitter ghost, and my lifetime goal of becoming a bitter ghost will be complete. (No Children)
- Peter: John! I don't think they're leaving! [cheering continues]
JD: What...What?? They're still here!?
Peter: You said thank you goodnight!
JD: I said goodnight! This used to be fairly, like, when we went from playing, y'know, a room that could hold 200 people and had 40 in it to one that could hold 150 but it would still be a small room, you'd be like, man, getting off the stage between the set and the encore, because by the time we get to the end of the crowd they've decided, well, they must be leaving, 'cause they fought past the people. [various yelling and cheering]
JD: You know, sir, telling a person you're old enough to be my dad from the audience is not a way to endear yourself to him. Just...for future performers, if you need to know this. If you go and yell that at somebody, he probably goes, man, there's that one fucking guy, I hope I run into him later.
Audience: You're young enough to be my mom!
JD: Do not respond to the calling out! Take your calling out!
- I wanna fill you in on the conversation that's going on about the encore here. Peter [says] should we do Alpha Omega? Rockin' version? 'Cause there's one version I tend to prefer, it's the one on the record, it goes [plays quiet Alpha Omega guitar]. Very hard to play. The other version's easier to play but harder on the arm. But it's actually, in the tape that I should probably digitize before everything falls off it [ed: archivists wept, it's gone now], it's like the first song I ever played outside of southern California, and you can see that I am afraid that the five peoplewatching are going to leave, so I had better scorch their faces off while I have the chance. This is chronologically the last song in the alpha series, in which a person wakes up one morning and finds that their partner has just bailed. With no note, no nothing, no climax, just gone, not in the house anymore, and so he has a bowl of peanuts. (Alpha Omega)
- Another thing you learn from listening to Grateful Dead sets is to save your absolute best stuff for the encore. (International Small Arms Traffic Blues)