2013-04-02 Mercy Lounge (Nashville)
Setlist
Recording
Banter
- This is a song about how I, John Darnielle, am gonna stab you in the eye [cheering] with a foreign object. [more cheering] It's called....... Foreign Object. (Foreign Object)
- There is a type of wrestling match called the battle royale. It's royal because unlike some battles which may just be two people, that's just people fighting, but in the battle royale, everybody has to fight. But only one may emerge victorious from the battle royale. Some of 'em take place in cages, others take place in a ring. But in the battle royale, if you haven't seen one, they put 12-18 people, usually dudes, in a wrestling ring, with or without cage, sometimes with a coal miner's glove on top of a pole, and whoever can get the glove gets to beat the other guys up with it. But the thing I like about the coal miner's glove is that very few people y'know, around, there's plenty of people mining coal, but most of us who go, you know, to see entertainment in a big city, are not actually working in the mines during the daytime. 'Cause at the end of your mining day, you don't go, oh, what will I do and go party now? After your mining day you're very exhausted so you go home and you eat and go to sleep. So, the coal miner's glove is this mysterious thing, you say, oh, I'm gonna hit you with a coal miner's glove, you don't know what, it could just be a regular old glove that you wear. But it sounds scary as hell, and it's a big old gray thing on a pole. And one of these wrestlers will climb up the pole and assault the other wrestlers with a coal miner's glove, or maybe he'll escape with it, it's like a title belt but better, because it's grimy and mysterious. So in the battle royale, 18 guys all start kicking each other's asses all at once as soon as the bell rings. You would almost think it was choreographed the way it goes off, it's really amazing that something horrible doesn't happen, somebody doesn't get grievously injured...but it all seems to go off seamlessly, and one by one, they exit the ring, and allegiances are formed between enemies, between strangers. Allegiances of necessity are formed in the heat of the moment, to emerge victorious. And some of these teams last a lifetime. This is about one such team, formed under the harsh glare of the labor and delivery room. (Animal Mask)
- This is a song about King Kong Brody. (Stabbed To Death Outside San Juan)
- JD: This is a song about...
Audience: Peter!
JD: Nah, I don't write songs about Peter, that would be weird. I always feel funny saying this, because we all have our own paths through the demons that haunt us, and they're not all the same path, but, there was a time in my life when the outlook was jails, institutions, or death. And that's what happened to a bunch of my friends, and several of them are in this song. (Steal Smoked Fish)
- Audience: Where's Peter?
JD: He's backstage while I do the solo part. I wouldn't have thought that was difficult to grasp. That's a gimme, there.
- Audience: GUNS?
JD: [laughs] I always wonder, when somebody's asking for a song that I played the chorus of once, in Pittsburgh...I wonder two things. I wonder what are they thinking, and two, were they in Pittsburgh, or did they hear it on the - it seems unlikely. It just seems unlikely. The internet. Say Italian Guns, he might have the notebook, I might do the same chorus. I don't have the same notebook. That's a red notebook. I have my David Bowie notebook tonight. [woooo!] I bet you don't know this one. (Beyond the Mysterious Beyond)
- JD: I would like to welcome back to the stage my doubtless very confused bandmates.
Audience: [yells of PETER are heard]
JD: Nah, that's Matt. Peter's the tall skinny one.
Audience: Wurster!!
JD: Yeah, that's the other one.
Peter: The other tall skinny one.
JD: So we are in the mid-south territory, which, who did this one belong to? Jerry Lawlor is correct. Andy Kaufmann (?) came out here, Andy Kaufmann came to Memphis. In the days of the regional territories, which were a time when wrestling was a small stakes business. You'd have a promoter, who worked maybe Nashville and Memphis, maybe Biloxi or something, and that was his neighborhood. And then you had Ed Farhad (?) up in Michigan working his territory. And they were small little fiefdoms of wrestling. I lived on the West Coast, it was really hot there for about two years before I got into it. When I was into it, it was in decline. Not that many people showed up and the building was falling apart. The TV was on UHF. It was the Southwestern Territory, which is what this song is called. ( Southwestern Territory)
- JD: Like I said, we have a new album coming out this week, but you can actually buy it early back there at the merch table, because we're outlaws. Living outside the law. We heard about the release date and said, well, we'll respect that if we feel like it, but you can't predict the mind of the outlaw. He's gonna do what he wants - he's a desperado. And you can ask him to come to his senses, but he'll be mindless, wandering out in the desert, staring directly at the sun, when people tell him not to, and what not. It's just the kind of outlaws that we are. Living that outlaw lifestyle and selling the record before the release date. With the blessing of our label. So, we got - I was just figuring out the chords to the bridge of this song, because it has a bridge with four chords in it, and two of em aren't in the rest of the song. This is a song about a guy. [woo!] Somebody told me that you like songs about guys. And so that's why I brought you this one. In this song, there's a guy. Imagine if you were working someplace, say, at a hospital, you're an orderly. They don't actually have such a position anymore, that's like, an old old position, orderly maybe knows what you're talking about but you will never actually write orderly on your tax forms. Certified nursing assistant or something. Don't you anyway me, I'll say what I like. I got a lot on my mind tonight.
Audience: Keep it orderly!
JD: Yes, I am keeping it orderly, very good. SO let's say you're an orderly. YOu can't sort of throw, you can't say, well, I'm gonna put on a different orderly sorta game today, you have never seen any orderly like this. Then they will fire you. Because there are specific parameters to your job, that you were hired to do. You weren't hired to mix it up. Maybe, y' know, bleed all over the bed instead of making it. OR attack your patients instead of passing them their medications. This is not - you can't do that. But in wrestling you can come up with a character who does what he likes.
Audience, various/overlapping: Wolfman! Chavo! Peter!
JD: This is about- no, this is not about Chavo, Chavo is a predictable guy. He's a good dude! This guy has fur on his face. ANd long sharp terrible claws. And a dark, dark heart with dark, dark secrets in it. (Werewolf Gimmick)
- I feel if I were about my business, I'd perform that one [Werewolf Gimmick] in a werewolf mask. But I'm never gonna perform that one in a werewolf mask, I'm telling you that right now. You can give me a hundred werewolf masks. I will try them all on. But when I play the song there will be no mask. This is a song about alcoholism. [Woo!] They say woo now, but later, they say, I said woo. JD would say, it's about alcoholism, and I would say woo, but then later, I didn't say woo. Next morning there were few woos to be had. But when the woos were rich and full and growing on the woo tree, we would eat of their fruit and gently feed them to one another, in a small house on Southwood Plantation Road. (Game Shows Touch Our Lives)
- In return, I'd like to play you another song about suicidal depression. [woo!] It's about how, if you are a certain type of person - me - you...but I'm not the only one, you hear about somebody who did something horrible and drastic and you feel bad, but there's a part of you that goes, what - now I know, now I recognize my kind, because you did that. So this is about a guy who did a terrible thing, and he couldn't live with the memory of it, so he went and did a worse thing. (Cry for Judas)
- As it happens, this song is about a fellow from Texas. [woo!] I could tell a very long story about this song. [audience is enthused] Nahh. I don't think it's actually that interesting. Long doesn't necessarily mean interesting, it took me like 32 years to figure that out, but it's true. [tell it!] Trust me on this one. We love the way this song came out, but figuring out how to do it wiht people on a stage is different, because there's a lot going on. So, we will be experimenting for the next week or so, figuring out what we're gonna do. It's about a guy who I looked up to when I was a child. (The Legend of Chavo Guerrero)
- Drummer's choice! [off mic debate, crowd yelling for songs] The drummer has spoken! The drummer is not one of those guys who wants to play, like, an obscure B-side from '94 as the final encore! That's not what it's like in his gut! He thinks of the person who said, well, there was a particular song I came to hear, and instead he played the monkey song. Maybe that person, he would like, everybody else would be like, monkey song, monkey song, but that one person is like, I don't know or care about a monkey song. They wanna hear the song about how you're gonna make it to the end of the year. (This Year)