2013-04-12 City Winery (Washington, DC)
Setlist
Recording by nyctaper, download only.
Banter
- JD: We're the Mountain Goats.
Peter: [laughing audibly]
JD: Peter's laughing because I didn't say 'hi, we're the Mountain Goats'.
Peter: It was like something was wrong.
JD: No, something was wrong. Here, let's play our last chord again.
[band plays last chord of Get Lonely and it is heinous, then try again and it's correct]
JD: Hi, we're the Mountain Goats.
Peter: There we go.
JD: It's true, that is much better. I'm aware that there's sometimes people who say, I like the Mountain Goats but I sure wish I could have seen those early shows where he would just do whatever. You go see them on the tour and you see the tour, and it's cool, but some of those early shows, you find out you did three covers of songs you just learned that day because he was excited about the second Commodores album or something. So, yes, we have second Commodores album fans in the house. It's a good record. So, yesterday, we came here, we shot a thing down in the basement for the city winery, they have some sort of bands play in the basement thing. I think it's called City Winery: Bands Play In The Basement. And it's really - so - we showed up and did it, when you're on tour, you get in this 'do what you're told' mode. You go, ok, basement, cool, take the guitar, the saxophone, everybody come on down to the basement. We did it, and they sent the mixes today, and it sounded really cool! Aw! We should do that! And I was feeling excitable, so I sent an email to everybody: guys! guys! let's just do the thing, throw away all the drums, you only get a snare, and then a floor tom, and a hat. Peter on the fretless, quiet basement stuff. So that's what we're doing. We had about seven to fifteen minutes of practice on this concept during soundcheck. So I am very excited for the spontaneity of this set.
- This is a song about how you may find it necessary, in your career as a wrestler, to adopt a werewolf gimmick. (Werewolf Gimmick)
- So once you get the idea, ok, we're gonna take away all the drums, and use the fretless bass and play quieter and everything, then you start really messing with things. And where they would normally go in the setlist. This song is called This Year. [song] I promise this will be the last I reflect on the nature of the experiment for a minute but in the middle of the first verse, I was like, this sounds exactly like the version on the record. It's as close as that has ever been to the version on the record, in 10 years of touring the song, that's the closest. That was fun. [fretless bass noises] (This Year)
- There is a type of wrestling match that you may have wrestled once or twice called a battle royale. [woo!] And the nature of the battle royale is everybody is kicking everybody else's ass all at once. Really it's amazing that, that, it plays out as it does. You would think it would just be mayhem, and everybody would just get hurt. But instead, like one at a time, or sometimes two at a time, the wrestlers are ejected from the ring, and nobody does seem to get hurt, they're all back next week, and the next thing you know, there's only a few people left, really just grappling, urging one another toward victory in a sort of antagonistic way. It's the nature of the game. This is about a battle royale, and it's also about the labor and delivery room. (Animal Mask)
- [tuning] So this here is a song, well, this is tuning. We're gonna get done tuning. [continues tuning, bari sax honks] It's a song about how when a wrestler has a weapon, if you watch high school wrestling, or college wrestling, you may think that usually they don't have weapons. And that's true, but that's because they're still in high school and college. They haven't really leveled up to the real wrestling. They're still learning. They can't be trusted with weapons yet. Only the professional wrestler is really equipped to handle a weapon, you know, like a - I say 'like a' because you never know what it is, because they don't - It's not very scary if you say, 'Oh my god, he's got a pencil.' How bad - he'll take your pencil away, now you'll have no weapon. So the announcers found a way around this, back when. They would say, 'Oh no, Bad News Kowaji is coming back into the ring, and he's carrying - a foreign object. Well, that's a little more threatening than a pencil, isn't it. You don't even know what that, where a foreign object is from. You just know it's from someplace else. This song is called Foreign Object. (Foreign Object)
- I appreciate that. [more woos] It is lovely as always. I'm feeling really chatty tonight. It's like, I wanna say, well, let me know somehow if it's over-chatty, but then I think no, that would hurt my feelings. Just keep it to yourself. This is a song about Luna Vachon who was a wrestler of uncommon power and vision, and who died too young. (Luna)
- This was on Life of the World To Come, and it's called Deuteronomy 2:10. Not two hundred and ten, there is no chapter two hundred and ten. Chapter 2, verse 10. You can follow along. (Deuteronomy 2:10)
- [chords] How does this song go is the question now. [incorrect chord] no, I don't think that's it. Hold on one second. This might take a second. [more chords] I feel like D minor is right. [discordant chords that do get better] That's right. Yeah. I'm pretty sure I know this song. I didn't write it, so I have to figure it out. [song - stops midway at "I wouldn't listen, I learned how to fight/I opened up my mind to treason"] Which is a very interesting line, because Ozzy does not write his own lyrics. And yet these themes persist. Opening one's mind up to treason, for example. I'm very interested like, does Ozzy communicate with his songwriters through some telepathic thing like, 'I want you to have me say treason and I want it to rhyme with reason'. Make it happen!' Because it does seem to happen. This song has to assert somehow that he's independent of, like, parochial institutions and stuff like that, and I always wonder does, like, does Ozzy have a list of "here's what my songs should be about" or do you just meet Ozzy and you understand? That that's what you need to be singing about? I suspect rather the latter. (Shot in the Dark - Ozzy Osbourne cover)
- Alright, there's an audible in the setlist here, where I have one that I didn't play last night in the solo section, and then one that I did, but I really enjoyed. So I have to decide now. [audience: play both!] No, I'm only going to play one of them. Because it's an audible. It says this or that, and I'm Roman Catholic. So I'm not going to go off of the script, and make my own decision. Because then I will feel ashamed. And the shame will be delicious, and I will carry it with me wherever I go, but at the same time, I don't know if I'm prepared to carry that shame just yet. Because if I delay it, then it'll be even more delicious later. That's just what it's like with us Catholics. I wanna play the one I played last night, 'cause I'm feeling a connection to this song right now. It's about a bunch of friends of mine who are gone, Ivory and Devin, Devin's around, but Emil is not. (Steal Smoked Fish)
- The eternal conflict between playing a song by the Mountain Goats which I like, and playing St. Stephen by the Grateful Dead. [song, stops at "with their treason"] What is it with these bros and treason?! It's like, there's a thing that they have something on their minds about that. They shoud talk to a therapist, it's a thing. I'm not sure what it is, I myself have not rhymed anything with treason yet, so I dunno what's going on. I can't look into the hearts of the treason rhyme. [song completes] (St. Stephen)
- One more? What do you think? [audience: one more!!] Does that mean you hated that? [audience: no!] I'll do one more, make up for the... Now I'm gonna get the Catholic shame. Kickass! (Cotton)
- Audience: LET WURSTER SING!
JD: Where is his microphone! Where is Jon Wurster's microphone! Brandon! What has happened here?! [Wurster clicks the hi-hat, presumably liberating either himself or the mic] The man has a song to sing in his heart! And yet he is denied the opportunity to sing.
Wurster: [inaudible crosstalk]
JD: This is unfair! And yet the unfairness will continue. Every day!
Wurster: Or will it!
JD: Let Wurster sing - no!!
Wurster: Or will it!! Look it, I'm gonna [unintelligible]
JD: This song can't be a surprise.
Wurster: [singing] oh girl...
Audience: We love you, Jon Wurster!
JD: He has a song in his heart! And it's called Mississippi Queen.
Wurster: By the [long mountain band?]
- Now here's one that's normally quite loud, that we haven't figured out.
Peter: Yeah, what's up? [? off mic]
JD: Let's find out what happens! It's a mystery.
Peter: There was a time when the idea of a Mountain Goats unplugged set would have seemed kind of amusing.
JD: Self contradictory, yeah. Unplugged!
Peter: Here we are.
JD: The story. Of a very special group of pigs. [woo!] Who, of their own free will, if there is such a thing, ran straightaway into the water, the text does not specify which water, but most towns have a little bit of water. And these pigs found some! And therein, found their great triumph. (Pigs That Ran Straightaway into the Water, Triumph Of)
- JON WURSTER. [crowd enthusiastically agrees] You can say what you want about the Mountain Goats, you can say my voice is nasally [ed: I asked my speech path friend about this and apparently JD's voice has a timbre that is described as "G0R0B0A0S1 for singing and G1R0B1A1S1 for speaking"], whatever the hell you wanna say, but we have the best drummer. That's all there is to it. [tambourine noises, much cheering] All the other drummers, you say Paul from Cannibal Corpse, yes, he's a very fine drummer, but Jon Wurster. [suspicious lack of drum noises and much audience and band laughter as Wurster is up to some shenanigans.] I turned and you were gone!
- I was sad that there was a little vote. You do in the studio, I do these sort of song introductions, they're shorter than these. Most of the time. [band laughs] I mean, there's longer bits, but nobody's listening, I know that in the control room they have muted the mics so they don't have to hear me for 5 or 6 minutes going, well, I wrote this on the floor of my office, but this one had one all the way through the rough mixes. Sometimes they hurt to cut off because you think it's kinda funny, well, do I wanna wear that around like an albatross and say it all the time? But with a very uptempo number, so you're trying to get all jacked up to do it in the studio, it's hard to get all jacked without an audience in front of you so it went like - THE VOICE DESTROYING SONG KNOWN ONLY AS CHOKED OUT!!! ( Choked Out)
- I had maybe my most favorite moment in that last song, because if you're doing the full high-octane, full-kit, loud version, you lose track of your apple. And it's very challenging to play the apple [starts shaking what is presumably an apple-shaped maraca] and sing at the same time, and -
Peter: You're killin' it with the apple.
JD: I've gotta say, I try to avoid tooting my own horn because I hate that phrase so much, but I was like, yeah, I got this apple now! [plays 16th notes on the apple] If this singer thing doesn't work out, I can play the apple! [plays a little fanfare on the electric piano] That's not the sound I'm looking for. [cycles, lands on a Wurlitzer-ass thing, plays take me out to the ballgame?!] Yeah, you know what time it is. This is a song - do we play this in C now?
Peter: C.
JD: [plays C chord definitively] We used to play it in a different key, and I would forget to hit the button that transposes. And it was a disaster. But now I got it figured out. This is a song about a couple of guys who we know very little about except that they get murdered. I know it's sad, right? [woo!] You wanna you think, oh, I would like to have known more about those guys, but no! They weren't good fellas, they got murdered for being bad folks! So probably it's better - the less we know of them the better. Then we can construct romantic narratives about their lives, and say, well, no, these guys were hustlers, you know, I don't wanna kill them myself, but it's best that somebody got rid of them. Because that's the truth of them, and yet, we pray for their eternal souls. This is called the Diaz Brothers. (The Diaz Brothers)
- You wanna do Southwestern Territory while I'm over here? [piano chords] How many of you were here last night? [woo!] You guys have already heard this story. You don't have to listen if you - so. In professional wrestling before the consolidation of all of the individual regions, you had what were called the territories. There was the Southwestern territory, which is the name of this song, there was the southern territory, and they were all sort of, like, fiefdoms. There were these little, individual kingdoms run by these really ambitious guys. I have no idea how they got started, it's something I like to think about - you wake up one morning and you go, I'm gonna go to the gym, I'm gonna find some guys, and I'm gonna ask them, do they wanna wrestle? And then they will say, well I dunno if I really wrestle, and you will say, it's not wrestling exactly, you're gonna get hurt very badly, but you won't - the outcome is predetermined. But actually, the pain is otherwise real. And then they will say sure, sounds great, why not. And then you say, cool, your name is Dick the Bruiser. And then the guy says, oh- okay, cool, what do I get paid? Fifty dollars. To get beat up. Yeah. Cool. I'll see you on Friday. This is my theory about the territories. About how it worked. Because there were these guys, who were just entrepreneurs. And who would start these territories, and you could move from territory to territory, but you had to be able to work with these guys. This all got consolidated in the 80s, but before, it was kind of like, if you were on tour in the early 80s, you would drive through someplace, and instead of seeing a Subway, and a Starbucks, and a Burger King, and a McDonalds, you might see a place called Joe's, and you might say, man, I don't know anything about what's going on in there, it could be the greatest meal you ever had or it could kill you, and this was part of the appeal of the territories. And they were small stakes games. The southwestern territory was the smallest of them all, and it's where I grew up.Southwestern Territory
- I gotta consult my band about something. [off mic discussion] I love my band, 'cause I propose something ridiculous and they go, sure, yeah. Like Matt just said, and I quote, 'sure, yeah yeah'. [laughter] If it was the 30s, his name would now be Matty Yeah Yeah. And he would be cast in Guys and Dolls. [singing bits of Guys and Dolls].
Audience: Play No Children!
JD: That's what I'm gonna do! Matty Yeah Yeah's got it! (No Children)