2013-06-03 The Mayan (Los Angeles)
Recording
Setlist
Banter
- This is a song about sympathy for people for whom no one has a lot of sympathy. (Cry for Judas)
- In or around 1981 down the street, literally down the street from here, I saw a battle royale. [woo, bass noises, etc] Now you might say, oh that must involve kings wrestling one another. No, it's different. Not that sort of royalty. It's really unclear where the term royal enters the battle royale. I'll figure it out one of these days. The battle royale involves putting a bunch of wrestlers in the ring all at once, then ringing the bell, and then they have at it and wail on each other. It looks, just, so chaotic that you can't even believe that someone's not getting hurt, it's almost like someone scripted it or something. [laughter] You know, they just wail and wail and throw each other over the top rope until there's only a few left, but even when there's a few left it's still kinda mayhem, because only one can survive the battle royal. Except for the one I saw at the Olympic, Chavo Guerrero and Andre the Giant [more cheering] were the last two standing. And in one of my favorite moments of all time, because Chavo was the local good guy and Andre was just - everybody in the world loved Andre the Giant. So they each flipped their opponent over and they turned to each other, who else do I have to kick out to win this battle, and they saw it was each other and began to circle each other. The whole crowd was going, oh my god, Chavo can't beat this guy, this guy's like nine feet tall. But something's gonna happen and they looked at each other and, at the exact same moment, again, as if it had been planned [laughter]. They extended a hand to each other and raised their hands, to share their victory. [raucous cheering] This song is also about a battle royale, that takes place in the labor and delivery room, and it is about shared victories. (Animal Mask)
- After after audiences were granted a brief respite from being stabbed in the eye with a foreign object, the time has come! Yea, they told you the hour was drawing nigh, when you will be stabbed in the eye with a foreign object! Lo, the hour is upon you now! (Foreign Object)
- This is a song about the kind of loneliness that incapacitates you and makes it impossible for you to function? It's called 'Get Lonely.' (Get Lonely)
- I would like to talk to you about professional wrestling for a little bit. [cheering] In professional wrestling - the beauty of professional wrestling is that in your real life when someone does you wrong - a real wrong, not like, borrows 5 bucks or in my case, 25 bucks, and doesn't pay you back... I spent it. The money's gone, I can't pay you back. Sorry. The money's gone. - But a real wrong. A palpable harm. And somebody does you that, but generally speaking, it's not, y'know, Magneto. It's not - I don't think about Magneto and the movies. It's not Darth Vader. It's not, y'know, Satan. It's not someone who you go, well, he's just wrong all the time, [inaudible] be the victim of Wrong. It's your friend, or your family member, quite often, who's done you wrong, but you know they're a complex person with whom you have had good times! Who you know to be sometimes decent, except when they're not. This is extraordinarily difficult, which makes wrestling completely awesome. There's bad guys: what do the bad guys do? They do evil. They do evil. That's all they do. They're safe to hate, they don't have the complexity of - they're not ashamed of the bad things they do. Why would they be? It's how they are! Except for - occasionally, one of them will find it in his heart to suddenly do good. Right in front of everybody. He'll be doing evil, and then he will begin to do good. How can you tell the difference? Because he attacks the bad guys. [inaudible] That's called a face turn. Ít also happens the other way around. People who are squeaky clean, who you know to be good people, always good, helping people across the street, being nice to babies, always good, good people, smiling. And then right in front of you, they will attack the guy who's basically a carbon copy of himself. What has happened? Well, what happened he has turned heel. What has happened is he no longer had any interest in being good. His interest now is in pursuing evil. (Heel Turn 2)
- I am deeply under-rehearsed on the middle section. And now I get up here and go, oh, I hope I know that song. (Island Garden Song)
- If I could just bring you inside the process for a second. When I put these old songs on the setlist, when it goes into the long extended guitar part at the end, for the first couple bars, I'm like well, why did you do this? The song is essentially over. You should stop now. But then I play through the actual song as it was written and recorded, don't second guess yourself, and then somewhere it opens up and I go, oh, I could do this for 10 minutes. I should [inaudible] on that because you would all leave. (Island Garden Song)
- This is a song about Luna Vachon, who lost her way after a bad trip. (Luna)
- This is a song about a sort of - you tread lightly around a word like 'liberated,' but - this is a song about wanting to liberate yourself from things that genuinely bind you, and feeling as though the last little bits of those cords will never quite be off your skin. (Never Quite Free)
- This is a song about survival at all costs. (Amy AKA Spent Gladiator 1)
- This is a song on a record called Transcendental Youth, which deals with depression and the sorts of feelings where you become uncomfortably divorced from your own body and can relate more to figures on the television than the facts of your own life. It's about a couple of guys who you only get to see them, you don't see them, you only hear about them, and then the next thing you hear about them is that they've been murdered. I felt bad for them, and that I should write them a song. (The Diaz Brothers)
- Keep smiling. Keep shining. Knowing I'll be on your side forever. That's what friends are for. (Game Shows Touch Our Lives)
- I want to play for you all night. [woo!] Around about 3, some of you will be like, I don't want them to do that all night. I mean, honestly, that's what you'd say, you'd say, wow, I thought I wanted them to play all night. It's like when you find a partner you really vibe with, and you say, I could be with you all night long. And around 4 am, you say, no, I'm ready to go to sleep. It stops being [inaudible] and starts being in the sense that we're in the same bed, but I can't keep doing this. This is a song about some people who can't keep doing this. But while the "this" we're referencing is the "this" of good times and of bliss, this is the "this" of degradation and [inaudible]. Sometimes when you're exploring you think, man, everybody's always pursuing these euphoric conditions or new ways to feel good, and they forget about the ways to feel bad. Which are infinite in their variety. You know, like, you tend to think there's a million ways to have fun and only one way to not have fun. No. There are a billion ways to have no fun at all. One of them is to sort of, y'know, call a lawyer. And you call a lawyer and you say, hey man, we've never met before, but my marriage is not working out, and the lawyer says, who am I talking to now? And you say, well, this is John Darnielle. You don't say that. [inaudible] You must have heard me, I've been around, and he says I don't listen to that kind of music, but I can help you. I have a ten thousand dollar retainer, and you say, I"ll call you back in three days. Hold that thought. And for the next three days, you call all your friends to see if you can borrow some money, if there's one thing you need in this world, it's oxygen. If there's two things you need in the world, it's oxygen and to get a divorce. (No Children)