2022-10-27 Cactus Theater
Notes
Setlist
Recording (Taper: Ezralite23)
Banter
- Not to wax unnecessarily political but, like, there used to be old sexist jokes about how the person in the band who can't play, plays the tambourine. Motherfuckers, you try to play the tambourine! That is a sexist joke. The tambourine is hard! [audience: more cowbell!] (off mic) Don't make that joke! That joke is tired! [audience member: new jokes!] You need new jokes! (on mic) We could fix 'more cowbell' with 'more clave'. Same joke, but with claves. (First Blood)
- Peter (off mic): Anything you'd like to say about this one?
JD: I do, Peter! We haven't done this song in a few shows. We were doing it every night for awhile. I don't plan my banter but I did have a story I wound up telling several times about this one. To help you understand the sort of context you need to understand the song. And I don't know if Peter was thinking of this when he asked if I had anything to say, I, I - I was gonna say I'm not a gambling man, that's just a popular way to introduce a proposition, but I am, I play craps. The only good game at the casino. Which is what any partisan of any game will tell you about his game. Roulette people are out of their minds. But - cause it's just - uh. So. But I would bet money, I would give you odds, that a fair number of people in this room have attended evangelical Christian services at one point or another. But if you go to those services, the way they'd introduce the same thought is 'How many of you went to evangelical Christian services when you were a child, amen?' [whistling, shouts of amen, etc] 'And how many of you know the one rhetorical device they use in these churches is to ask you a question so that you can become involved and answer that question so you feel like you're part of it in my shtick when I beat you up for money in about 10 minutes, amen?' [audience yells obligingly] And one thing they used to do at the evangelical churches that I would haunt - which are west coast, this is not the same thing as a Texas evangelical church, I have no illusions. I haven't actually swum in the river of that. I come from my own sort of situation. But the evangelical churches on the west coast I used to go to, they would do a thing, and I went to several of them to test this, it wasn't just the one by the freeway, there was another one down in Pomona, that they liked to explicate their songs by telling you what the chorus was gonna say verbally. But they would also assert, and this is the part I know I've told multiple audiences, because it's a source of wonder to me. They would also, invariably, no matter what the chorus of the song was, assert that the chorus said something very simply. Here's a song that says very simply, with the wounds in his hands he has saved me. And I would think, that's not actually a simple - that's very - as far as assertions go, you, under no real circumstances can call that simple. Even if you come to them all on your own simplistic understanding of it, it's a really complex thing to claim. Here's one that says very simply, he was before I am. Not a simple claim! Not a simple claim. But I was very inspired by this, because what it does is, it makes you believe that whatever you're being told is something even a simple-minded person can understand. So friends, we're the Mountain Goats, out of North Carolina, mainly. I'd like to play for you a song that says, very simply, not every wave is a tidal wave. (Tidal Wave)
- I haven't been here in awhile and it's really good to be here. I figured out the thing is, like, I should try, but I can't make any promises. I had like, a, if you tell me your name, and we work on the same day job together, a year from now you will be frustrated that I can't get your name right. But I knew I was coming to Lubbock for the first time in a long time, and I was walking around my house singing Going to Lubbock by the Extra Glenns. Which is a side project I was in. That's it, right there, it was the record. And my wife was in the house, who bought that record when it was new, before we knew each other. And I shocked myself by remembering all the words on the first pass while walking around the house, a song I have not sung since 1994. [ed: the curator of this website was born in 1994. that is a long-ass time ago.] [audience: woo!] Well, yes, woo, indeed, but then being me, then I was like, ok, I got that one, and I didn't look at it again. This was last week, you know. Then turn around, here I am, probably should have practiced. I bet anything I miss the top of the second verse, but we'll see if it comes to me. If it doesn't, the song will be missing its entire punchline. [note: he did not remember the verse and this is therefore a partial performance which happens] Anyways, turns out there's a skull in the trunk, the end. A few years later we were driving out here and we ran across a creationist museum as we were driving to Lubbock, that had a bunch of human skulls that they asserted were only 200 years old, which is amazing. (Going to Lubbock)
- I'm not as willfully obscure as I used to be, but one thing I still do is write songs that if you don't know the title, it's hard to make sense of the song. And then the title's hard to remember and associate with the song. Probably the most famous of these is No Children. This one is called There Will Be No Divorce. (There Will Be No Divorce)
- [audience member sneezes]
JD: Bless you. My child. [JD and audience laugh] I could either introduce the band with no ceremony at all or I could tell you that today's the day our new record came out. [cheering] And one thing about the internet is that people think that, y'know, memes are forever. But they're not. They die and people forget them. And I alone carry the torch for the letter that was written by a band's label-head 'cause they fucked up at the record release party. And it was an email that he had sent to the band calling them "chumps". He used the word "chumps" repeatedly. And they, good pioneering soldiers that they were, promptly forwarded this email to all of their friends to say 'this guy who runs a label - that is not really blowing up the scene or anything, is angry with us because we were hanging out by the merch table at our record release party.' I'd like to welcome back to the stage for our record release party Jon Wurster, Peter Hughes, and Matt Douglas. The Mountain Goats. And he keeps asking "would the White Stripes do that?"
Wurster: Do you think Mick Jagger is at the merch table at his shows?
JD: No! Do you think Meg is at the merch table up in Detroit when Seven Nation Army comes out? No! Because she's not a chump. [laughing]
Peter: We know better than that. We preserve our mystique. You never see us in the street.
JD: [cross talk] We walk around a little maybe. What are we playing?
Peter: Outside.....we don't go outside.
JD: These guys, Peter's the kind of [unintelligible]. I am the kind of goth that doesn't go outside. (Cleaning Crew)
- [Audience members yell in unison for Lakeside View] Say what? [Request repeated] I mean, we could, and nobody ever requests that one. It's one of the ones we like to play. [Someone asks something unintelligble off mic] I do the first verse by myself. So if you haven't figured out by the end of that, we have to have a talk later. (Lakeside View Apartments Suite)
- Seated rooms are hauntingly quiet in between songs. And the thing is, like, it's kind of awesome, except you're not used to it, so you think, maybe they're just mad, they're stewing with anger. I don't think every performer thinks of it that way. But I do. [plays a cool chord] Somebody was using the distortion pedal. Fellas, can I play my song? (Incandescent Ruins)
- I dunno if you heard, but this is our Record Release Party! We got dressed up for it and everything. This is on the new record and this morning we said 'we should learn that one to try and play it'. Cross your fingers.
[some cross talk about who starts off mic]
Wurster: Do I start it?
Matt: No, we start it.
JD: See, tried to put it on me, saying do you start it? No I don't! I don't have to start it.
Peter: [laughing] How do we start it?
Matt: We start it - with the little - four bars [crosstalk].
JD: You run through the first verse, half verse...fellas, you've got to get it together for the record release party! [everyone laughs and cries of 'chumps!!' are heard from the audience in reference to a previous joke] (Water Tower)
- I remember the Lubbock audience because the first time me and Peter came here by ourselves we did not know what to expect. There were about 50 people here, and they went completely mental. On the Kaki King tour we came here and played at the Pete Block [?] which is not actually a club, a wooden ramp for us to load. I remember that somebody got so drunk they thought he was going to die. You remember the towns where the people get so drunk that you worry they're going to die. This song is, in fact, populated by two people who have gotten so drunk you would think that they would die. But every morning they just get up, champions that they are, examples to us that they are, and say "yesterday I did my best, and today I'm gonna try my best again....to annihilate myself, and everyone who comes within my orbit." This is their pledge. They're not good people. One thing you learn writing songs like these is people say, they may not be good people, but they're my people. [crowd cheers] This is a song that I hope just amuses you, but if you have at some point in your life had need for it, or expect that you will in the near future, then this one's for you. (No Children)
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