good and bad from tonight
TMBG at the 9:30 Club tonight. basically a good show.
Not boring: instead of just standing around for an hour waiting for the show to start, we were treated to a video of venue songs, narrated by the deranged millionaire, aka John Hodgman. I haven't heard most of the venue songs, but some were quite amusing and the videos that went with them were mostly fantastic. And that took up about 25 minutes of the 70 minute wait for the show to start.
Good: Flood. Yeah, there are better albums, but Flood has some great stuff on it, and they had a three piece horn section, which really made songs like Whistling in the Dark awesome. (They did reverse the order of We Want a Rock and Twisting because We Want a Rock involved accordion, which made it an easier transition from Particle Man)
Also good: in the main set, we got to hear Hey Mr DJ, Dinner Bell, West Virginia, and Unsupervised. It was neat hearing the side project stuff played in a TMBG context. Maybe each tour they can do one State Songs song and one Mono Puff song. As long as they don't forget Careless Santa.
Also also good, or at least neat: the album version of Istanbul. Normally, when they do this live, they skip the middle refrain and the second instrumental part, but with the horns, they had a sax playing the violin part and they played pretty much the same song that they recorded back in 1989. And I'm not sure it's ever been performed live that way.
The best: DC smoking ban. I don't have to destroy my clothes or drink a gallon of hot tea.
Interesting: It occurred to me most of the audience probably don't really 'get' Road Movie to Berlin now. For the majority of them, there has always only been one Berlin. "Can't drive out the way we drove in" must seem strange to those people. (Also, for the record, they did include the 'missing' lyrics: "You said you were the king of liars / and I believed you and called you sire / but I realise now that I have been deceived" - some of the most brilliant TMBG lyrics ever)
Not so good: The new arrangement of She's an Angel. Come on, guys, if you're sick of playing it, just stop playing it, but don't mess with it like that.
Bad: ending with Alphabet of Nations. I already can't stand the song because it's boring and they could have been more creative and maybe gone through a different list of countries the second time through. But also, it's a terrible closer. Opening with Hey Mr DJ worked great. End with something that works at the end, like The End of the Tour or Space Suit.
Disappointing: not enough horns during the main set. they've got the horns there and they're preparing for an Apollo 18 show tomorrow night. So why not take full advantage and play The Statue Got Me High and I Palindrome I and Turn Around? It was great hearing Dinner Bell, but Fingertips really ought to be retired now.
And so does Crap Your PantsClap Your Hands.
They also played a very near-album version of S-E-X-X-Y, with Linnell playing clarinet for one of the string parts in the ending. We were excited that he carried the clarinet out on stage with him, thinking they might dig up Reprehensible, but he only ended up using it on the one song.
On the subject of instruments they don't usually play, Flansburgh played the keyboard at the end of Particle Man and did a reasonable job of it. At the very least, he knows his way around the keys.
The response to Why Does the Sun Shine was kind of funny. The Sun is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma. So we can add 'miasma' to the list that includes such words as 'obsequious' and 'folderol' of 'words we thought would never appear in songs'.
Overall a pretty good show, minus the few songs that really bug me. I think this 'once a year' thing is working out pretty well. They don't mix up the set enough any more to justify travelling, but it changes often enough that I can see every 9:30 Club show and hear a reasonably good selection of songs.
Maybe they'll come back here next year and play all of John Henry.
Not boring: instead of just standing around for an hour waiting for the show to start, we were treated to a video of venue songs, narrated by the deranged millionaire, aka John Hodgman. I haven't heard most of the venue songs, but some were quite amusing and the videos that went with them were mostly fantastic. And that took up about 25 minutes of the 70 minute wait for the show to start.
Good: Flood. Yeah, there are better albums, but Flood has some great stuff on it, and they had a three piece horn section, which really made songs like Whistling in the Dark awesome. (They did reverse the order of We Want a Rock and Twisting because We Want a Rock involved accordion, which made it an easier transition from Particle Man)
Also good: in the main set, we got to hear Hey Mr DJ, Dinner Bell, West Virginia, and Unsupervised. It was neat hearing the side project stuff played in a TMBG context. Maybe each tour they can do one State Songs song and one Mono Puff song. As long as they don't forget Careless Santa.
Also also good, or at least neat: the album version of Istanbul. Normally, when they do this live, they skip the middle refrain and the second instrumental part, but with the horns, they had a sax playing the violin part and they played pretty much the same song that they recorded back in 1989. And I'm not sure it's ever been performed live that way.
The best: DC smoking ban. I don't have to destroy my clothes or drink a gallon of hot tea.
Interesting: It occurred to me most of the audience probably don't really 'get' Road Movie to Berlin now. For the majority of them, there has always only been one Berlin. "Can't drive out the way we drove in" must seem strange to those people. (Also, for the record, they did include the 'missing' lyrics: "You said you were the king of liars / and I believed you and called you sire / but I realise now that I have been deceived" - some of the most brilliant TMBG lyrics ever)
Not so good: The new arrangement of She's an Angel. Come on, guys, if you're sick of playing it, just stop playing it, but don't mess with it like that.
Bad: ending with Alphabet of Nations. I already can't stand the song because it's boring and they could have been more creative and maybe gone through a different list of countries the second time through. But also, it's a terrible closer. Opening with Hey Mr DJ worked great. End with something that works at the end, like The End of the Tour or Space Suit.
Disappointing: not enough horns during the main set. they've got the horns there and they're preparing for an Apollo 18 show tomorrow night. So why not take full advantage and play The Statue Got Me High and I Palindrome I and Turn Around? It was great hearing Dinner Bell, but Fingertips really ought to be retired now.
And so does Crap Your PantsClap Your Hands.
They also played a very near-album version of S-E-X-X-Y, with Linnell playing clarinet for one of the string parts in the ending. We were excited that he carried the clarinet out on stage with him, thinking they might dig up Reprehensible, but he only ended up using it on the one song.
On the subject of instruments they don't usually play, Flansburgh played the keyboard at the end of Particle Man and did a reasonable job of it. At the very least, he knows his way around the keys.
The response to Why Does the Sun Shine was kind of funny. The Sun is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma. So we can add 'miasma' to the list that includes such words as 'obsequious' and 'folderol' of 'words we thought would never appear in songs'.
Overall a pretty good show, minus the few songs that really bug me. I think this 'once a year' thing is working out pretty well. They don't mix up the set enough any more to justify travelling, but it changes often enough that I can see every 9:30 Club show and hear a reasonably good selection of songs.
Maybe they'll come back here next year and play all of John Henry.