I will know who you are yet, I will know who you are yet
Tonight I went to see the Mountain Goats with Marisa, Maggie, Cristin, and Shane. You'd think by the eighth time I'd learn to study up before these shows; I have a formidable chunk of the hundreds of Mountain Goats songs floating out there, but there are usually at least a few songs and sometimes half a set that I don't really know, and the latter was the case tonight, as it was the time before last. Also, this might hurt my cred, and my standing during the "coming anti-poseur revolution" Darnielle spoke of, but I've listened to all of the albums that are on CD, and We Shall All Be Healed and Sunset Tree are just flat-out better than Coroner's Gambit or Nothing for Juice. So I remember those songs because I like them more. Though Full Force Galesburg is pretty fantastic.
The show was at the Society for Ethical Culture Concert Hall, which I had never heard of before, and is (a.) the first non-Brooklyn Mountain Goats venue I've been to since the time they did Bowery on my birthday and (b.) the first place I've ever gone to see them north of Houston in Manhattan. This tour is John Darnielle playing solo/acoustic, accompanied by John Vanderslice, and the venue had seats (pews!), albeit not assigned, so it was a different sort of vibe. The old-bones part of me was pretty happy with being able to sit the whole time and occasionally take pictures, and watching an opening act play classical music and not something noisy or annoying.
The tradeoff for this old-person, non-rock-club comfort was some kind of venue curfew, which, like most concert curfews, was enforced sort of haphazardly at the last minute. However: after probably two-thirds of the crowd had exited, Darnielle returned and did a no-really-actually-unplugged encore which was amazing and beautiful, featuring one of the many songs he claims not to play any more but so clearly does.
Also, he played most of the set with the house lights up. That was weird but kind of neat.
Marisa worked hard on the research for this setlist:
John 4:16
Woke Up New
Song For Tura Santana
Cobscook Bay
Going to Lebanon
November Love Song
Going to Kansas
The Last Limit of Bhakti
You or Your Memory
Going to Queens
From TG&Y
Dance Music
The Day the Aliens Came (Or: Hawaiian Feeling)
Ontario
So Desperate
Color in Your Cheeks
A song about the Virgin Mary [this one might be new]
[John Vanderslice comes out]
A song about cruising around that may have been Vanderslice's
Surrounded
See America Right
[Vanderslice leaves]
No Children
---
The Sign
So yeah, obviously I would've loved "Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton" or "Going to Georgia" (like Rob got earlier in the week) or "Up the Wolves" or anything from We Shall All Be Healed. But "Going to Queens" is one of my favorite songs that I never particularly expected to hear live, so there was that. Anyway, that is why we go to Mountain Goats shows, to find more songs and go back again.
Here are some pictures of what it was like:
The show was at the Society for Ethical Culture Concert Hall, which I had never heard of before, and is (a.) the first non-Brooklyn Mountain Goats venue I've been to since the time they did Bowery on my birthday and (b.) the first place I've ever gone to see them north of Houston in Manhattan. This tour is John Darnielle playing solo/acoustic, accompanied by John Vanderslice, and the venue had seats (pews!), albeit not assigned, so it was a different sort of vibe. The old-bones part of me was pretty happy with being able to sit the whole time and occasionally take pictures, and watching an opening act play classical music and not something noisy or annoying.
The tradeoff for this old-person, non-rock-club comfort was some kind of venue curfew, which, like most concert curfews, was enforced sort of haphazardly at the last minute. However: after probably two-thirds of the crowd had exited, Darnielle returned and did a no-really-actually-unplugged encore which was amazing and beautiful, featuring one of the many songs he claims not to play any more but so clearly does.
Also, he played most of the set with the house lights up. That was weird but kind of neat.
Marisa worked hard on the research for this setlist:
John 4:16
Woke Up New
Song For Tura Santana
Cobscook Bay
Going to Lebanon
November Love Song
Going to Kansas
The Last Limit of Bhakti
You or Your Memory
Going to Queens
From TG&Y
Dance Music
The Day the Aliens Came (Or: Hawaiian Feeling)
Ontario
So Desperate
Color in Your Cheeks
A song about the Virgin Mary [this one might be new]
[John Vanderslice comes out]
A song about cruising around that may have been Vanderslice's
Surrounded
See America Right
[Vanderslice leaves]
No Children
---
The Sign
So yeah, obviously I would've loved "Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton" or "Going to Georgia" (like Rob got earlier in the week) or "Up the Wolves" or anything from We Shall All Be Healed. But "Going to Queens" is one of my favorite songs that I never particularly expected to hear live, so there was that. Anyway, that is why we go to Mountain Goats shows, to find more songs and go back again.
Here are some pictures of what it was like: