2023-07-13 The Vanguard
Setlist
Recording
Banter
- In these final days, there will be food and water shortages. And lo, the voice of the prophet was upon me and said, 'there will be shortages of goodwill, people running short on friends, people running short on patience, despite what Axl Rose may have to say about it.' Friends, there's one thing, and Peter, you know what it is, that we're never gonna run short on. (IHostages)
- JD: There was a night earlier on this tour where I got into the idea of back-announcing songs like on radio, instead of talking about what it is ahead of time. That was 'Hostages', by the Mountain Goats, from the Bleed Out album.
Peter: What was before that, John?
JD: I don't know, Peter, [Peter laughs] I get kinda lost in the thing I'm doing, and it kind of erases - I think maybe Birth of Serpents? [audience member yells] Cadaver Sniffing Dog, of course.
Peter: By the Mountain Goats.
JD: Also by the Mountain Goats.
- [JD plays a riff from a nonexistent song] That song doesn't exist, very gnarly sunset tree outtake that didn't make the album. That's all I remember about it. No, I remember a couplet from it, it's about a time when - well, this is one of those Sunset Tree stories we love so much, very positive, feelings that everyone gest to enjoy and share in. This is about the time - there is a trigger warning attached to this, if you have suicide issues, you should leave the room now while I'm in the middle of this sentence and then come back in about 3 minutes when I'm done with this story. But I had decided that that was the day, and I was on top of a 30 story building, getting ready to jump, and I was up on the ledge, but I thought I would wait for a train to come, double my chances. And all I could think about was how pissed off my girlfriend was gonna be. And I bore her no ill will or malice, she was like the one thing I had going for me. So the line from the song I remember that didn't make the Sunset Tree is - and before I'd actually named her, so I was glad the Sunset Tree didn't come out - and the following couplet was "she was gonna be mad as hell/when they scraped my brains out of the stairwell". This song takes place about three years later, but it's the same guy. He's better now. [cheering] (From TG & Y)
- JD: I have to register a dream I just had, because Peter came in and he was adjusting his monitor, but I thought he was on the phone. And it's the greatest thing I'd ever seen in my life.
Peter: Makin' trades.
JD: Kinda busy. Kinda busy right now.
Peter: [unintelligible] I'll get back to you.
- Audience: Devil House was really good!
Wurster: [cool drum fill]
JD: I went back to the hell site today. Somebody said I heard you were writing another book. That thing took me five years! This is a song to prepare you for the future that awaits us all. (Incandescent Ruins)
- This is a dancing crowd and I'm really happy about that. This is a dance tune for sure. (Cry for Judas)
- This is a very sentimental number. When you hear that chord, you know it's probably gonna be the last song you hear at the Mountain Goats show. The one that went viral on TikTok last year. Resulting in the unique pressure on a human being that few will know of having a manager going, are you sure you don't wanna shoot a video where you do the dance? And me, having been continuously online since December of 1994, going, no, I think any short term gain from the 56 year old dad doing the tiktok dance, will quickly be obviated by the fact that it's a 56 year old dad doing the tiktok dance. I am ageless and I am eternal and I will never die, but I know my limits. Friends, I could have done that tiktok dance better than anybody on the planet. I could have taken lessons. At balanchine studios, I could have rehearsed for 8 hours a day and been the absolute exemplar of the form and it would have been approximately two tenths of a second before someone went "that guy thinks he's doing the dance". So therefore friends I did not do the dance, and it was so wild, for a little brief window there were people showing up at Mountain Goats shows who clearly did not know the rest of the catalog. And it gave me - I mean, I'm not really a sadist in any true sense of the word - but I took a sick and prideless pleasure in seeing the people who were waiting for No Children. And only for no children. Growing progressively more irritated with the pleasure and the joy of the other people in the room. It's an amazing dynamic, it's like an ourobouros, you get happier about the stuff, they get madder it's not No Children. And then when it comes, it's like if you throw a tantrum when you're a child, and the tantrum is so good, you really give your all to it, and the parents who know they're not supposed to relent go, I'm gonna give them the candy bar, I can't. I just wanna go to bed. we gotta let em win this one time. Give 'em the candy bar. But if your tantrum lasted too long, then the candy bar doesn't taste good. You sit there eating, licking your own tears up off the Baby Ruth. I don't actually know this firsthand, I'm just thinking about it. This is a song about licking your own tears from the sweet plate before you. (No Children)
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