2013-06-02 Great American Music Hall (San Francisco)
Setlist
Banter
- I always try not to repeat myself, which is why I've been talking less tonight, I know a fair number of you were probably at the Fillmore last night. So I don't want you to have to hear the same stories twice. However, for the benefit of people who don't know about this, I have to tell a story that will probably be somewhat similar to the one you heard when we played the same song last night. This is a song about heroes and villains. So in wrestling, a hero is called a "face", which is short for "babyface". And a villain is called a "heel", like the heel on your foot. And a thing that can happen in wrestling, that generally doesn't happen in your daily life is when a good person, who you know to be a good person, you've seen them around, maybe they're not your closest friend but you know them well enough to vouch for them - like, hey, I've been thinking about letting Dave house-sit for me, you know Dave, he's not gonna steal my stuff or let the cats go hungry. And you go, nah, man, I know Dave, Dave's a good dude, he loves cats. He'll feed your cat, take care of your house, Dave's a good man, God bless Dave. You vouch for Dave, I do. But then, let's say, you find out that Dave went over to the house and burned it to the ground. You would say, "Dave has turned heel. I thought that he was a face but in fact, Dave pursues evil for the sheer love of it." This is the beauty of heels. Heels do not wrestle evil because they think it's going to get them victories and titles. It doesn't. They always lose, they don't get what they want. They pursue evil for the sheer deliciousness of evil. For the most part. But you have to assume, that when you see them turn bad, that something happened to them somewhere along the line. You have to assume that they didn't actually just turn bad one day, because they were tired of feeling good about themselves and people liking them. No. You have to assume that somewhere inside, there was a kernel of resentment and anger and rage that, no matter who they tried to talk to about it, no one was hearing it because...you're not trying to hear about my resentment or rage, I'm a good guy. I have to turn heel in order for you to see what's actually inside me. (Heel Turn 2)
- Listen. I talk too much about the Grateful Dead. I know. But if you look around, you can find that somebody did a supercut of the Dead tuning. It's like an hour and a half, and for the first 20 minutes, it's really annoying. But then you sort of settle into the vibe. [Audience: Tune it again, John!] I'm doing that right now, man, there's a little thing with LEDs on the bottom of this tuner thing, it's nifty. [Audience: Drop D!!] Tempting. That's the glory of drop D, you don't really need a tuner, you just. To make matters worse, I don't really know if I know this song. (Heights)
- So once upon a time in the kingdom of Michigan, there lived a man named Ed Farhat. Most people did not know him as Ed Farhat. They knew him as the Sheikh. His mother was from Lebanon but he himself was from East Lansing. His - he was a wrestler but his main job was running the whole territory. Cutting paychecks, fixing the matches, doing whatever, but his own gimmick was a wrestler of profound, incomprehensible violence. Who did not wrestle to win, because he never won. He just started cheating as soon as he entered the building. Not the ring, the building. He would, like, you know most cheater wrestlers, they can at least make it down the walkway to the ring. But the Sheikh would rake a guy's eye as he was trying to get in, and then beat the hell out of him outside, never even make it in. Just be wandering around the building kicking ass. Terrifying guy. And one of his main gimmicks was to throw fire. Now, you might say to yourself, if I become a wrestler, I probably won't throw fire at people. But Ed Farhat thought about things differently. he was a visionary. And in the wrestling magazines that I read as a child, there would be these editorials. Be quiet back there at the bar, I'm tired of listening to that. [cheering] In the wrestling magazines I would read as a child, there would be these editorials that would say, somebody has to stop the Sheikh! He's gonna blind everybody with his terrible fire! I was a credulous child, I'd think, yes, someone should stop him! This song essentially embodies those editorials. (Fire Editorial)
- People in the full light of day, or in the darkness of our living rooms, in private and in public, in good times and in bad times, in sickness and in health, for better and for worse, game shows touch our lives. (Game Shows Touch Our Lives)
- Taking no prisoners on the guitar, Mr. Matt Douglas! (re: Game Shows)
- You are an awesome audience, with the exception of a small pocket back at the bar. [Drumming in agreement, cheering] To the awesome people, I hope your lives are long upon the earth. To the people who won't shut up, I hope no one comes to your funeral. [audience laughs, more drumming] Except me, in the nude.
- This is a song about a road trip. When you think of a road trip, you might think, oh, I'll have fun. On my road trip. This isn't really that kind of road trip. Maybe that was the idea, when you first headed from the house to the driveway, you had some sort of naive - willfully naive - vision of the road trip, said, oh, we'll get in the car, this will be different from yesterday. It won't be different from yesterday. You have to go - they say past performance is no indication of future performance in the stock market - that only applies to the stock market. Otherwise, past performance is absolutely reliable predictor of future performance. In a marriage, are you joking?! Past performance is what you have to go on. Otherwise, you're living in a child's world where you say, yesterday we got in the car and drove to the liquor store and bought too much liquor and got too drunk and felt terrible the next morning, maybe today will be different, No. No it will not, past performance, I warned you before, but you got in the car, and you drove to the liquor store and you stocked up and you came home, and you poured the vodka in the glass, and the cream and the Coca-Cola and you made a Colorado Bulldog, and that one was good, so you had another. And after four of those sugary, sugary vodka drinks, and then you come crying to me, well I warned you. Past performance is an absolutely reliable predictor of performance gains and/or losses. (See America Right)
- What if this song was hopelessly twee? What if this song tried to sell its sentimental side? [sings No Children like a crooner] Some pretty-voiced person on the radio trying to tell you about the more melancholy side, the sensitive tender side of an alcoholic divorce. I have bad news for my theoretical radio singer, there is no sensitive side. This song is about the absence of the sensitive side. This song is about the black hole left in the wake of the disappearance of the sensitive side, last seen heading down toward Tampa in the full sunlight of the summer day. (No Children)