2022-10-03 The Belasco
Notes
Isa Burke, John Darnielle, Matt Douglas, Peter Hughes, Jon Wurster, John Vanderslice (This Year)
Setlist
Recording (Taper: Tape & Bake)
Banter
- This is a song about how when you have a lot of people to murder, it gets real dark. It's called Dark in Here. (Dark In Here)
- Audience guy: Wonders and Riches! [ed: this made me lol for some reason]
JD: Sir, I love you. Thats a really slow song. That belongs nowhere near the four spot. This is a song about how I have guys on every corner. It's called guys on every corner. (Guys on Every Corner)
- JD: See, I thought I had to put on the guitar, but I get to wait one to put on the guitar. [off mic chatter for a sec with Peter] No. Peter's correct. I have to strap up. And if I do well, then I get to take off the guitar.
Peter: (off mic) and capo 1.
JD: ...where's it at?
Peter: the capo?
JD: [off mic searching for a capo, capo is provided by our hero Ben, cheers] Thank you, Ben. [more Ben cheering]
[more off mic set list confusion]
JD: Matt, you've got the wrong setlist. We're playing Training Montage. [crowd has an extremely justified conniption] Matt had 'On Green Dolphin Street'. [one guy goes 'aww'] I know. But it would have been a catastrophe, I can't play that. Only Matt can play that. (Training Montage)
- JD: We're about to play a new song. [everyone goes nuts]. I have a tendency to blank on the top of the second - yes! but Jon Wurster has it! [JD fetches his lyrics from Wurster]
Peter (deadpan): It's a reeeeally good song. [ed: he's right]
JD: Jon Wurster: remembering my lyrics for me so I don't have to stand here with a Teleprompter like a dumbass. [woo!] This is called Only One Way. (Only One Way)
- Matt just fed me the first line of the last one for this one, which I consider unsporting. [band laughs] I know this one because I recognize the people in it. (Cleaning Crew)
- [to the band] You go rest, I've got some things I want to talk about. [band leaves] Someday, I'll make good on my threat to just talk in the middle part. Yeah, I've been meaning to share some opinions, and just say terrible things. Please play a song. No, no! I have to tell you what I think. This is the thing guys my age - and you see them, because you're on facebook whether you admit it or not, you see either your uncle or whatever, if you're my age you see your friends, and you go, whoa, man, nobody asked you to share that opinion! You coulda just kept that one to yourself. And then the thing is, you know, I will, this dates me, but I consider it really gauche to bring internet speak to your actual verbal speech, I think they're different languages, and yet and yet and yet. It's good to say aloud to people, 'cause they need to hear it, shutting up is free. What's that apropos of? Nothing whatsoever. The original thought, where I would talk only and not play songs, that's where that went. I had one I wanna play. [strums] As is often the case, I didn't rehearse it. [laughs] I know what it is, I'm sitting here going, isn't this the one where you usually fuck up the lyrics? Well, we're gonna find out. I know why I mess up the lyrics, it's 'cause it doesn't have a narrative through-line. Guitar, why are you crackling? [off mic] C'mon man. I'll play it on electric, don't think I won't. [on mic] Yeah. That's right. Fixed my own guitar. Feeling myself right now. (Hebrews 11:40)
- I don't mean to get technical on you, but there's something fucked up about the guitar. How much is it bothering you. [yelling] Maybe it's just in my monitor. It's a little crackly. Brandon, should I switch to electric? [crowd yells] You're not Brandon! [tuning happens, audience yells for pigs] Which pig song do you mean? There are several songs about pigs. [laughing] I feel like you probably meant Pigs That Ran Straightaway Into the Water, maybe I'll play that, but I'm gonna go over to the piano and play you the Pig Song. 'Cause I never get to play the Pig Song. Haven't thought about it in awhile. Some of you, who aren't the most blessed fanatics who know all the bootlegs, are wondering what is the Pig Song. When I, about 11 years ago, I was about to say I had a child, I didn't have a child, my wife had a child. I became a father. And so, when you have a baby, two things happen. A lot more than two things happen, but. One thing is that people start asking "are you gonna write a children's record, now," and I go, do I look basic to you? Do I look like every other singer songwriter who ever lived, who suddenly is like, I've been a dad for six months, and now I have a lot of insight. Nah, man, the Mountain Goats don't go out like that. But I did sit at home writing songs for my son, 'cause I'm also not basic in that way. Like, you know, it's really fun to write these songs for my son, and he would get really excited about them, and he had, this is a long story, if you need to use the bathroom or something, I won't be hurt. It's fine. Because it would be very weird to be hurt for you using the bathroom. Talk to a therapist about that. But, um, there was a little book, a little crackly book, it had a story in it, but you're reading to an infant, you're really only practicing reading to a child. The infant doesn't care what you say. You could be making nonsense noises or reciting recipes. Or Grateful Dead lyrics. As I did. Now my son knows all of the Grateful Dead songbook. He goes to school. And I had him fooled for a few years, he would sing [sings] "drivin' that train/feelin' no pain", which was my version of the song, the second line is in fact "high on cocaine" which is what he sings now and I'm very proud. He also got in a lot of trouble for watching a Crowbar video once at school, which was great. Video called Symmetry of Black, has marble statues with blood running down their eyes, I was so proud. But this obook that he had, it was called, well I don't know what exactly - it didn't have a title, it just had a pig. On the front. And it was the story of pinky the pig, three pages. 'Cause it's not really a book. It's a crackly thing that's designed to entertain infants. You have a story on it to read, so you won't be sitting there going 'here, see this thing that crackles' and maybe feel cruel. So the story goes: 'big, bigger, biggest, three pigs in a row. Pinky is the smallest. But oh, how he'll grow. red, redder, reddest, three apples ready to eat. pinky has the biggest apple, oh what a treat.' I don't remember the third part, because it was a bad narrative, but I did start to write a piece that wouldn't be published called "towards a hermeneutics of Pinky the Pig". Anyways, I was thinking about pigs. And I had a son. And I had a piano. And I wrote this. (The Pig Song)
- JD: One of my favorite things - I've been standing on stages with drums for a long time. So I can't really hear things from the middle of the room that well. So I thought the young man back there said "Do it hog style!!" [laughter] Yes sir I will! That was already in my plans, but I appreciate the encouragement! Gentlemen! Peter! You gonna do it hog style?
Peter: Been doing it hog style all night.
JD: Yeah! That's right! That's the only way I really know how to do it, Matt, is to get up here and do it hog style. [Matt oinks]. This song is like a cautionary tale. It's a cautionary tale about what happens to society at large when you don't do it hog style. (Incandescent Ruins)
- [audience yells for a song from Poker Face] The guy who got me in that is really famous [ed: Rian Johnson, known equally for making the Mountain Goats album movie Life of the World To Come and also Star Wars], and I'm against name dropping, but a certain guy who produces that song texted me today and said "you should play Staple Head". But I didn't write the music to Staple Head. Jamey Jasta from Hate Breed wrote the music. I wrote the lyrics and vocal melodies. I hope it is not the final Mountain Goats-Hate Breed collaboration, but it's hard to get the unit together. Whaddaya do when you drop the Mountain Goats and Hate Breed? [ska-esque] Pick it up! Pick it up! [groans/laughing] Let's play International Small Arms Traffic Blues. (International Small Arms Traffic Blues)
- I know what I wanna play next, it's a quiet song, and I was like, oh yeah, let's do this one. [LOUD electric guitar chord] (Love Love Love)
- [Someone adds hand claps to an already ska-djacent intro] You know, you could skank to this part of the song. Kind of the, I like to prepare people for this song, by reminding them that whatever you're going through, it will be over soon. That may or not be good news. There may not be much on the other side of the disaster, sometimes the disaster is all that you have. Sometimes you cannot imagine yourself outside of the great yawning canvas that is the Disaster. Sometimes the eye of the disaster looks at you and says, it's you and me, it's you and me, it's you and me, bud. And you say, can I bring a friend? And from the ceiling, at 3 am, the disaster says, yes you may. (No Children)
- I'd like to welcome to the stage the guy who recorded this song, John Vanderslice. [raucous cheering and various instrument noises] I believe that the hand claps were actually his idea. We did them in real time instead of doing four of them and copying and pasting because we're not posers. (This Year)