2021-08-19 Gothic Theatre
Setlist
Recording 1
Recording 2
Banter
- JD: There was a newspaper of record that was popular in the 1980s among people who wear crosses for earrings. It was, the news in it was so heavy that you could only digest it once a week. If you put it out daily it would be too much to bear. It was called the weekly world news. And it broke many important stories, like the alien who was actually in control of the government and was eating the heads of state. Bat boy was a big one.
Peter: The guy who had a 9 and a half inch long tongue.
JD: Yeah! Oh yeah, on the cover, and he's stoked, because normally he's relegated to page 9 or whatever, but on the weekly world news the man with a nine and a half inch long tongue gets a headline. But the thing that inspired me was the story of how some Russian engineers had pierced the vault of Hell that was underneath the earth. And this like... there's something, I can't call it primal, but it's very basic in me, that like, when I hear something like - well, the thing is, the piercing of the vault of Hell which lay undernearth the earth: that was exciting to me. But then, when the story reported that there was an audio recording of it. Well, that's me all over. Like these days it would be like a shaky video, and that's fine and Blair Witch-y, you know, but nah, nah. An audio recording of Hell. I just loved the idea that these engineers who were working on an oil rig in Siberia, they pierce the vault of Hell, they hear the screams of the damned, they say 'Does anybody have a tape recorder? This is pretty wild down here.' You know? So I read that story, and of course there's a longer story explaining what it actually was, but I'm not interested in a longer story. I'm interested in what happened when the Russian engineers pierced the vault of Hell. As a sidenote, it was in a place in Siberia called Kola, and there used to be a tower there, because in fact the hole they were digging was for a long time the deepest hole on the earth, right? For a long time, you couldn't dig any deeper than that one. It's only about this big around but it went down further than anything had ever gone. At some point after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the tower was destroyed and nobody knows who did it. This is called The Destruction of the Superdeep Kola Borehole Tower (The Destruction of the Kola Superdeep Borehole Tower)
- JD: On the popular internet news resource Twitter dot com,
Audience: What's that?
JD: A website. Somebody asked for this. And I said, by god, I know that song. (Onions)
- I was watching a bleeped version of Scarface on TV. And I had a two year old in the house. I got excited about a particular line in the movie, and I repeated it. He laughed from the next room. And I said to my two year old, I'm gonna extend this joke, and I'm gonna write a whole song on the piano. This is called the Diaz Brothers.(The Diaz Brothers)
- Peter (off mic): I wanna call an audible here.
JD (off mic): Call the audible, coach! Call the audible, man!
Peter (off mic): I wanna play both!
JD (off mic): Then we'll play 'em both!
[audience cheers raucously, Wurster hits the bass drum in agreement]
Erin: Good call, Peter.
JD: I sometimes put audibles on the set list, with 'or' in between. Coach over here says we gotta play em both. He is the coach. [Wurster starts playing the song] You know, there's so many rock songs about being cool. This is a song about never, under any circumstances, being comfortable. I wanna stress: any circumstances whatsoever. (Lizard Suit)
- >One of these days, 'play all of 'em!', alright, sit down! [laughter] Get a sandwich. Nah. this one's about fish. (Pez Dorado)
- This is a song about a coupla drunks trying to help each other out. But they don't know how to help each other out because their consciences are damaged. [in the background, Peter teaches Erin the chords, so she can absolutely rip on the guitar] They are not going to get better. People used to - we would play in clubs that didn't have a dressing room, and, like, a couple would come up to me in, say, South Carolina, and say, HEY ARE YOU THE SINGER? 'Hey, yeah, I'm the singer, good to meet ya.' 'WE'RE THE ALPHA COUPLE!' And they'd have a big ol' smile on their face. And I'd think, God, if this were a movie, in the 30s, a pre-technicolor movie, and I was Wallace Leary or somebody, and I could say, 'oh, let me draw your picture, and I want you to keep it and not look at it for seven months.' And then in seven months they'd look at the picture and see that it was actually what they looked like in seven more months of being the couple they think they are. This was an actual pair of people who I am 100% certain are not doing well today. And I dedicate this song to you, anonymous South Carolina Couple at the New Brooklyn Tavern, 2004. (See America Right)
- This is a song about six people picked to live in a motel room. [In the background, Peter again teaches Erin how to play the song on the fly so she can, again, play a really sick guitar solo, presumably she is grateful it only has like, two main chords.] It is based on a motel room that was next to my apartment in Portland, but I moved it to Pomona, as I am wont to do. It's from We Shall All Be Healed, one of whose working titles was 'Prominent Metaphysicians of South Pomona'. I have the notebook with all the other titles, it is pretty funny. I'd like to dedicate this song to those prominent metaphysicians south of Pipeline. (Palmcorder Yajna)
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