It's a Brand New Record For 1990

I have seen four full performances of Flood and am about to see many more as there are several Flood shows on the road trip. The first one remains the best (at least for now).

October 24th, 2008 - Calvin Theater - Northampton, MA

We had front row seats for the Calvin Theater, however, there is about 20 feet between the front row and the stage so it is purposefully designed for people to stand by the stage in front of the seats so the front row seats were pretty moot. There were already quite a few people lined up by the stage when we got there so we got a spot on the far right in front of the speakers.

Just before the show started a young guy pushed his way through the crowd so he was standing right next to me and proceeded to pile his bag and about six layers of clothing onto the side of the stage. He was obviously high on something, as he kept twitching and scratching at various parts of his body as if he was trying to brush away bugs, between spells of standing staring at the floor or at nothing at all. He also smelled as though he hadn't bathed in several weeks. He was only mildly annoying at first but once the show started he climbed up on the edge of the stage and started taking pictures. Got a bit distracting. Then he actually started standing up on the side of the stage to take pictures. VERY distracting. It took a surprisingly long time for the theater staff to notice him and make him get down too. He stayed nearby for a while longer but eventually moved behind us and stopped bothering me. He didn't look like he was enjoying the show at all so I am not sure what he was doing there.

The show opened with the Critic Intro as featured on Then: The Early Years. I am always amused by the inclusion of Orson Bean among the reviewers. Only time I have ever heard it at a show though. They started by explaining that they would be playing two sets, the first of which would be Flood in it's entirety, in order, followed by a regular rock set. They also pointed out that they knew that the songs were in order because they were using liner notes from Flood cassettes in lieu of setlists (or at least the Johns were). This led to lots of squinting from Linnell while he attempted to read the tiny liner without his glasses.

The Flood set was AMAZING. Despite what they have said at subsequent Flood shows this is the only time I've seen them play the album actually in order (every other time they flip Twisting and We Want a Rock so that Linnell doesn't have to keep swapping accordion for keyboard). It was weird starting a show with songs that usually end a show, namely Birdhouse and Istanbul but they were both excellent. There are so many songs on Flood that they never play so at least half of the songs I hadn't heard before. Highlights for me were Whistling in the Dark, Women and Men and They Might Be Giants. Flans pulled out the huge bass drum for Whistling in the Dark and pounded away on it. I was standing right in front of the speakers so I could feel every "bam" vibrating in my chest, so much so that it actually made me feel a little ill. It was great! Women and Men is my second favorite song off the album (after Birdhouse), even better live than it is on the album. And it is just funny to watch them attempt They Might Be Giants. They said before they started that they didn't think they had ever played it completely right and tonight was no exception. They flip flopped a few of the lyrics. Still sounded great.

They had the horns with them for this show, though there was a different trombone player than usual. He was an excellent player but seemed a little stiff, right down to his jazz club look (which I personally liked but it didn't match the rest of the band in their jeans and t-shirts). The addition of the horns really livens up frequently played songs like Birdhouse, Istanbul and Particle Man and keeps them fresh.

After they finished Flood they took a break, then came back to the Stompy Intro.

The second set: Hey, Mr. DJ - S-E-X-X-Y -  Alphabet of Nations -  Mesopotamians, - Memo to Human Resources -  Experimental Film - WDTSS? and WDTSRS? - Don't Let's Start - Drink! - Spider - Damn Good Times - Dinner Bell - Withered Hope - Seven - Dr. Worm - Clap Your Hands - The Guitar - Mr. Me - Older - James K. Polk - Fingertips

I had not seen Experimental Film before so was very excited about that. I really enjoyed hearing Why Does the Sun Really Shine? again. I don't think I had fully appreciated Withered Hope until this show. This performance left me in awe.

I will now air my personal grievance about audience participation during The Guitar. This was the first show at which I noticed numerous people raising their arms to wave during EVERY verse about the lion. I am of the opinion that you should only WAVE during the verse about the lion WAVING. Makes a lot more sense right? I've been at a few shows where everyone did it right (ie my way) and a couple where almost everyone did it wrong. Just one of my personal pet peeves.

Older featured the return of the confetti canon, missing for the last few shows I had attended. Yay, confetti! (I have a little stash of a few pieces of confetti from every show I've been to with the confetti canon that is stuffed inside one of my foam fingers.) Fingertips did not, unfortunately have the Where's Dan feature. He stayed put on stage for his solo, though oddly the spotlights turned toward the balcony at one point as if the spotlight operators had been expecting him to be up there. Perhaps he had intended to go up there then changed his mind.

This was one of the longest shows I have seen (41 songs) and every minute of it was excellent.

The next day on October 25th we went to New York City for the second show at Le Poisson Rouge, also a Flood show.

This club really grew on me over time but they never did seem to get their act together as far as how to line people up outside. We took the train into the city and walked to LPR from Grand Central which took almost an hour so we got there about 30 minutes before doors. There was already quite a line outside. We ended up right by the CVS entrance (if you went to any of the LPR shows you know what I mean). The staff seemed to be having a really hard time sorting out how to separate the will call folks from the people who had tickets. They ended up making two lines but it was all very confusing (and I never saw them do it the exact same way twice in the eight shows I saw there).

Once we got in, we found a spot on the Linnell side several people back from the stage. The club is in the basement of the building and isn't that large. The stage is raised enough that you can at least partially see no matter where you stand, but it is very easy to get a blocked view if someone tall is next to you. Totally not band related, but they also have some really futuristic looking hand dryers in the bathroom.

On to the Flood set again. Almost as good music as the night before but the banter was definitely better. On Lucky Ball and Chain Linnell made the buzzer sound astonishingly loud on his keyboard, to the point that Flans thanked him for the wake-up call after the song. Linnell said he was trying to keep people on their toes. I couldn't tell if he had meant it to be that loud or if it was a mistake, but I rather think he meant it.

Both last night and tonight they made a point of playing the studio version of Istanbul rather than their current live version. Flans pointed out that the only main difference was the substitution of the sax for the violin. Afterwards Flans decided that he liked the sax better and they joked that they were going to re-do the album and they'd like all our copies back.

At the end of Particle Man, Linnell ran out of bellows on the accordion and said Danny had "won" for ending the song last. Flans said that while some bands try to end a song together in this band it's whoever ends first that wins, in which case Linnell was the winner. Linnell then fooled them all by declaring a new contest for who could start the next song first, "Me!" and dove into Twisting leaving the rest of the band scrambling to catch up. It was hilarious!

There are a few songs that the band does where Flans will hold out his guitar for the audience to play to make some not very melodic noise. Hearing Aid is one of them, except at this show he didn't just hold the guitar out, he sent it surfing into the crowd. It made it a good 10-12 people out from the stage before he tugged on the cord and the crowd set it back to him.

Flans had trouble with the drum on Whistling in the Dark. Something was wrong with the strap and he ended up playing it on the floor. He looked really frustrated but he was a trooper, even figuring out how to play and hold a mic at the same time.

They got They Might Be Giants mostly right tonight. I know I saw them do it pretty much perfectly once but I can't remember if it was this show or the next Flood show.

At the end of Sapphire Bullets Flans said they were going to take an 18 year break and started to walk off the stage without playing Road Movie to Berlin. The rest of the band was just looking at him and Dan Miller leaned over as he passed and you could see him say "we still have to play Road Movie to Berlin." Flans went back to the center of the stage and started the song without making a comment. And then when he finished he made the same joke again about taking an 18 year break as if we hadn't already heard it. Whoops!

The setlist for the second set was almost identical to the day before: Hey, Mr. DJ - S-E-X-X-Y - Mesopotamians - Memo to Human Resources - Experimental Film - New York City - WDTSS? and WDTSRS? - Drink! -  Spider - Damn Good Times - Dinner Bell - Mink Car - Withered Hope - Seven - Dr. Worm - Clap Your Hands - The Guitar - Mr. Me - Older - James K. Polk - Alphabet of Nations - Fingertips

New York City got a huge response as we were in New York City. It was my first NYC show so I wasn't used to the New York pride (though I was rather expecting it).

We got more of the story of how Why Does the Sun Really Shine? came to be. Flans explained all the stuff about realizing that WDTSS? was incorrect and that the sun was really made out of plasma again. Then he said they had been in the studio discussing it and their engineer Jon Altschuler, who was in the audience (Flans pointed him out and made him wave in the spotlight), had suggested they write a song called The Sun is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma. So they did. Cool!

Before Mink Car they announced that they had a special guest to invite to the stage and David Driver of People Are Wrong fame came up from the back. He was wearing a shirt with an upper and lower case letter printed on it (I think it might have been a D) and a guy in the audience yelled out "Helvetica!" (as in the font) and David gave him a "right on" kind of signal for getting the reference. He also mentioned the futuristic hand dryers in the bathroom before he started singing. He did a stellar performance of Mink Car, a song I would be willing to bet, I will never see again.

They did a very horn heavy end of the set and I was pleased to see that Dan Levine was back. No confetti canons (they never used them at LPR presumably due to low ceilings). And Dan didn't find anywhere interesting to play in Fingertips but he still rocked the solo.

All in all a fantastically Flood-y weekend. Next up Apollo 18!

P.S. Only 8 days till the next show...