2013-06-01 The Fillmore (San Francisco)
Recording
Setlist
Banter
- JD: If we're playing a song we've played a couple of times on a tour, I feel weird introducing it sometimes, because I don't, like, memorize my introductions, but if I'm talking about the same song, it's going to run into some similar territory, and then I get anxious about, what if people have been listening to live recordings [hi!] and they already know the story! I gotta figure out some way to tell the story that has some new information in it. But I don't have time to sit and figure it out, so I have to have faith that I'll figure it out. This is a song. [woo! concurring kick drum] About a type of wrestling match. [more woos] There's a lot of kinds of wrestling matches, not just the one where two guys beat each other's asses. There's also, you got a tag team, where there's two over here and two over here, and when one guy gets tired or beat up, or just feels like watching his friend beat somebody up, he tags his hand and his friend comes in, but you gotta go back out, 'cause you can't have two guys from the same team in the ring together in a tag team, that's the rules. A lot of people break the rules, but they shouldn't. So there's a type of match called a battle royale, right, and the battle royale, it's just not an ordinary battle, it's sort of a royal kind of battle, that's why they called it the battle royale. They thought about it, should we call it the normal people battle? the pedestrian battle? the working-class battle? No!
Peter: It's like a monarchist battle.
JD: Yes! It is! It's a sort of - only kings can truly appreciate the battle royale. But! It's for us too. We get to enjoy the battle royale too, which is 18 guys just kicking each other's asses all at once. And it's mayhem, if you see one as a child which I did, you - if you get thrown over the top rope you lose, and eventually there's only one left, and it makes sense in theory to you. And then when the bell rings, it's 18 giant sweaty guys just wailing on each other. And you think, well, there's gotta be some sort of choreography here, otherwise everybody'd just get punched and pass out, which would also be awesome. But anyways, in the battle royale, allegiances are formed out of necessity. You can't be a man alone in the battle royale. No, you have to make friends. You have to make new friends, maybe people you used to be at war with, you have to become friends with, temporarily. In the state of battle, you have to have somebody on your side in the battle royale, for anybody to win. This is a song about a battle royale and the labor and delivery room. (Animal Mask)
- This is a song about how when the time is right, and you don't expect it, I'm going to stab you in the eye with a foreign object. (Foreign Object)
- Audience: WHY IS IT SO HOT?!
JD: It's not my fault. Did I ask for these powers?
Peter: Don't hate him because he's beautiful.
JD: Or do, my fabulousness will continue either way.
- So, look here, I have to explain another wrestling thing to you. Because, I don't know how I know this, but I suspect there's some people in here who are not the biggest wrestling fans. I urge you to pursue a course of enjoying professional wrestling. It's so much better than amateur wrestling. You know, amateurs don't really know what they're doing. Professionals, they’re pros! They’ve got it nailed down. So anyway, the beauty of wrestling is that in life, you know, you meet somebody - maybe somebody in your own family or whatever - who you'd like to say, well, that's just a villain. That's an evil villain. Like, absolutely, monolithically just an evil villain. But then you think, well, no. We had some times that were special, you know, that were amazing. But the evil, evil villain was genuinely evil, but then we did some things and it's complicated. It's what makes your whole existence complicated because everybody you know is like that, right. There are no heroes, no villains. But you yearn in your spirit for the heroes and the villains. You would like to have somebody you could go, well, that's an asshole. I don't like that guy, 100%. I hate that guy. And this is the gift that wrestling gives us. You have the heels. Now they're complex, but the question of their good and their evil is not complex. Either they're bad or they’re good. Eventually, they boil down to that. You see the bad guy and you know that all he wants is to hurt the good guy. It defines him. His desire to wound and injure and cause the good guy to suffer. And the good guy, you see him, you don’t know much about him besides that he's good, because good is sort of less magnetic than evil. But one of the greatest things that can happen in wrestling is when the good guy - who's called a "face" which is short for "babyface" in the backstage parlance - when the good guy, in front of everybody, turns heel. Turns bad. And the reason it's great is because you can relate, right? You watch him and you go, oh man, he's decided he doesn't care if people hate him now. He's going to get what he wants. Neither you nor I will ever have that moment in our lives. It's just not going to happen. Because you do care if people hate you. [Audience member: No!] Yes, you do and you're always gonna. You can't rid yourself of that because if you do rid yourself of that, then you're a sociopath. Then you have major problems. So you have to live in the complex world. But in wrestling, we get to enjoy, vicariously, the sight of somebody going, I am going to embrace evil and get out of here alive and that's the only thing that matters in my entire life at this moment, in front of all these people. (Heel Turn 2)
- I was a resident of the great state of Iowa, whose motto is, if you don't know it, which is the greatest motto, because it ends with 'maintain'. Could there be a less forceful verb than 'maintain'? Don't wanna get all arrogant. Don't wanna say, 'our rights we will protect', no, 'our rights we will maintain'. [laughter] I lived in Iowa, and I was doing a record for the Sub Pop singles club, and I was also recording a record for Absolutely Kosher, a San Francisco label, at John's place, I sequenced the tapes, it was the first thing I did at Tiny Telephone from the boombox I record to at John's place. I've never played it live before, so I'm talking for a long time before I try this. I would like to encourage all of the bros that at that moment reached for their camera phone to not do that. And just chill. Just enjoy. A moment without your phone. [raucous cheering] Every night I get 90 minutes up here without my phone. It's awesome. (Straight Six)
- I don't imagine there's anyone who's quite this, uh....deep into digging into the details, but if you see me throw my pick down, the likelihood is that the song is very, very old, from a time when I very harshly judged those who used picks. (Waving at You)
- You may or may not know about this band from San Francisco called the Grateful Dead. [woo!] When I was a young goth, I hated on them, because they were hippies. So I did not want to know anything about the Grateful Dead and their long hair and their beards, and their, their really advanced musicianship that was rooted in bluegrass and actually extraordinarily interesting if you're even remotely interested in music. Nah, I didn't wan tany of that. I wanted people in black clothes, with black kohl not eyeliner but kohl underneath their eyes. The Grateful Dead didn't have any of that. David Bowie had that, so I listened to him. But as you do, in the course of your life, one day you go, how long have I been hating on the Dead for? Lemme pick up one of these Dead records, and you pick it up and listen to it with an open mind and you go, oh, no wonder people like this, they're outstanding musicians writing very interesting songs! [laughter] and I was at the Warfield last night to see the Kids in the Hall; the Dead played there 82 times. And they played here a bunch of times, too, and this was on their '72 record, which is the one where they had such a giant handful of amazing country rock songs, it's shocking that they'd put them all on the same record, because most bands today would show that to their manager. Who'd [say] 'we're gonna space these out over the next three...so that when you get to Terrapin Station you won't be out of gas.' (Friend of the Devil)
- This is a song about professional wrestling... [JD laughs, audience cheers] It's about a guy who used to like, really, really - I mean all the wrestlers beat everybody up, but this guy didn't even try to win, he just tried to maim and to harm and to burn. His opponents. He never won any matches at all, he got disqualified every time. I was quite inspired by this guy, that really takes a commitment, to go, well, most people are here to win or to lose, but I am beyond all that. The wrestling magazines would get all heated about how he would throw fire at people, and write editorials that he probably wrote himself, about how he had to stop that or be banned from wrestling. (Fire Editorial)
- JD: I'm gonna talk a long time so I can get a rest, this next song needs a lot of energy. And alcohol.
Peter: Let's take a rest.
Audience: Woo! Alcohol!
JD: I mean to have a word with y'all about how you cheer on a guy when he starts drinking. I mean, on the one hand, the person in me who is an addict celebrates your choice there. And then the caregiver in me says no, under no circumstances should you, when a person says 'I'm going to drink more', go YEAH! [laughter, a few YEAHs, a few DRINK MOREs] So, I can't see where my other beer is, what if it was Matt? What if I started berating my bandmates like, you took my beer! Matt. What's that all about, yeah, you're holding out.
Peter, drily: It's because we care about you, John.
JD: It's just you and me, buddy. [searches for alcohol] It's glad to see me. This is a song about some people who share the sorts of convictions we were just talking about. Unafraid to express these convictions both in the way they speak and the way they live. Out there in Garden Grove, California. (The Young Thousands)
- This is a song about the rear-view mirror, which is a weird place to hang out because the ones in your car, like, you drive and the thing in it gets smaller and then it's gone, right? But then there's the other internal rear-view mirror where the shapes grow bigger and larger according to their own sort of calculus that you can't really figure out. But you sort of have to have faith that eventually you'll be far enough down the road that the thing that was there constantly, for most of the drive, will recede and recede and be invisible. (Never Quite Free)
- There's two styles of encores. One style of encore is you come out and you do a couple of songs, and if they continue to go nuts, you come back and you do some more songs. [crowd goes nuts] The other style, which I consider the superior style but it's sort of presuming on the goodwill of the audience most of the time when you do it is, you come back and you go, oh, they're not done hearing music, let's play another longish set. [Crowd again goes nuts] This is the encore style favored by the Grateful Dead, I dunno if you've heard that about me but I like the Grateful Dead. [crowd agrees] I dunno what you heard about me, but you can listen to '72 tapes with me. So we're gonna play a few more.
- I talk a good game about the longer encore [Peter laughs] but then I go, well, that's over at the piano... I'm gonna go over to the piano. This is a song about showing kindness and mercy to the Diaz brothers. And they're going to need it where they're going. (The Diaz Brothers)
- This song also takes place in or around Claremont, California in 1983 or 1984. It comes with trigger warnings attached. Some of us don't mind being triggered as long as you give us a little advance notice. (This Year)
- This is a song about - it's funny, I feel it speaks for itself. I try to say something about it and I don't know what to say. It's about - I don't think I've ever introduced this song. I usually just do the [guitar noises] and then we start. This is a song how if you feel defeated and trodden upon you and wasted – not in the good sense of wasted – you find some small glimmering that manages to carry you through the next sixty seconds and then you do that enough times to make an hour, and then you do it enough times to make a day... and then you keep right on doing it. (Amy AKA Spent Gladiator 1)
- This is the sequel, sort of like, one of the greatest things that used to happen in the 60s was the answer record. You'd have a record called, like, Don't Mess With Bill. And then you'd have a record where Bill spoke, and said his things, and these were great things that don't happen anymore. At the front of this record is the last song we just played, which is a song about persevering in a really positive and triumphal way. There's the other side of that where you say, "Well, I will dig my nails into the side of the cave wall this morning, so that tomorrow when I wake up in the same cave, I'll at least see that my fingernails had enough strength left to make an impression." (Spent Gladiator 2)
- I would like to play for you a song about the miracle of divorce. [cheering] If you know something about the miracle of divorce could I get an amen? [amen! from the audience] There were these two people once in Florida, and they knew that divorce was coming, and they could smell the sweetness of it on the Tallahassee wind. So they said, let's drag this out a little bit. Let's make it last. Like anything you're gonna have to remember, you're gonna make it last. This is their philosophy. It's a deeply marred philosophy. And yet, it's theirs. So we can't deny them this little jewel of comfort they've found in the wreckage of the home they intended to make good. (No Children)