Just A Guy Made Of Dots And Lines

The second show we attended at Le Poisson Rouge on November 29, 2008 was another Apollo 18 themed show except this time they played the entire album. The initial announcement of the theme had said this was the first time they had played the album in it's entirety but they later issued a correction as they had remembered that they had actually played the whole thing at Joe's Pub a few years earlier.

This was also the first show that we brought a camera to and got some pictures of (not counting some crummy cell phone pictures). It was our old camera, not my nice new one so the pictures aren't great but I will include a few of the better ones.

While this was an excellent show and I really enjoyed it, this was one of the worst experiences I've had as an audience member because of the people standing near me and it started outside.

We got to the venue a bit earlier this time which meant waiting in line longer in the freezing cold. I was really annoyed by the people standing behind us who were speculating about how an Apollo 18 show was going to work and how on earth they were going to manage to play Fingertips live. I wanted to scream at them, "They play it live ALL THE TIME." The girl also really irked me by declaring how much she loved the band and that her favorite song was It's Too Loud. Seriously? If you are that big a fan you should at least know the actual name of the song. I am sure this particularly bothered me since Man, It's So Loud In Here is also my favorite song.

We were a little bit closer to the stage this time having arrived at the venue a little earlier, but otherwise we had pretty much the same view as the last show.

The opening act was the Driver Quartet featuring the very same David Driver who had guested at the last show. He had a guitar player, a keyboard player and a drummer with him. They did a few songs which were mostly enjoyable, particularly one the female keyboard player did about being obsessed with Tina Fey. Driver had some pretty crazy mannerisms while he was singing, a little like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, which made him fun to watch.

Prior to the band coming on I was listening to a very irritating conversation that two guys behind me were having. At first I thought they had come together but later realized they had just started talking because they were next to each other. One of the guys (actually the less annoying one) was telling the other about the last show at LPR except he was talking about all sorts of things that didn't happen at the show. Not sure if he was just misremembering or if he was just making stuff up. Then they couldn't remember the name of the album they had performed at that show (Flood) and spent a while trying to remember (I was afraid to tell them for fear of being sucked into the conversation) before turning to the guy behind them and asking him (he knew). Then they were asking him what album they had played at the first show at LPR and it took them a while to understand that it hadn't been an album show. Next the conversation turned to a band (I think it was The Who but I'm not sure) that was in town to play some rich guy's birthday party and wondering how much they were being paid for that which led to a discussion about how much TMBG is paid for a show. So they turned back to their "friend" behind them to get his opinion. The really funny part about it was that the guy they were talking to was Jon Altschuler, the recording engineer that Flans had introduced at the last show as coming up with the idea for WDTSRS? but they had no idea. So he's just trying to be polite and give them some vague answers without letting on that he actually works with the band. I really felt bad for him getting stuck talking to the idiots.

It was worse once TMBG came on, because the more annoying of the two guys kept singing along with all the older songs very loudly and badly (and not always getting the words right) and kept bumping into my boyfriend and I. Then during the banter he kept shouting at the band while they were trying to talk to play Everything Right Is Wrong Again, over and over. Every time they played something new off The Else or one of the kid's albums he actually booed and yelled at them to play old stuff. At least during the new songs he couldn't sing along because he didn't know the words. I have to admit, I really don't remember as much about the actual concert because he was so distracting and obnoxious. If I had more guts I would have turned around and told him to shut up.

TMBG opened with Space Suit and then announced that we were only 7 songs away from Apollo 18. Immediately after Space Suit Linnell announced that he was switching to the keyboard because his accordion was "fucked up" (said in a very sing-songy voice). Apparently some of the treble keys had fallen off. He then had to play the rest of the show on keyboard which was very odd to see on songs that are always done on accordion. Flans suggested he put the keyboard on the accordion synth which Linnell had apparently not thought of and he did (after much squinting to see which was the right button to push).

They trucked through Damn Good Times and West Virginia with very little banter. Then Flans told a story before Why Does the Sun Really Shine? about how he had mentioned in an interview that the new science album discussed evolution. Then the next day their management had informed him that a woman on MySpace had written them a letter and was "super mad" about it. Apparently she even had TMBG has part of her MySpace name so she was a real fan (Linnell said "she's probably here"). They thought it was pretty ridiculous that she was angry about being reminded about what is taught in schools and said that the science album was really the Mouse House sending them on a "cultural suicide mission." There was also a funny aside to a guy video taping the story, when Flans said he would kill him if he put the video on MySpace.

Unsupervised, Withered Hope, Istanbul and Hey, Mr. DJ closed out the pre-Apollo countdown.

The Apollo 18 set was excellent because so many of those songs are seldom played and thus this was only the second time I had heard them (many of them I haven't heard since). They also played all the tracks they hadn't played at Mohegan like Space Suit and Hall of Heads. See the Constellation was the highlight of my night, not the least because the audience knew to provide the "heys" without being prompted.

If I Wasn't Shy featured the dueling clarinets of Linnell and Stan Harrison. Most excellent.

They reprised Space Suit at the end of the show, this time with Linnell on keyboard and featuring Dan Miller's finger on the kaoss pad.

For the encores they did S-E-X-X-Y, Doctor Worm, Drink! and The Mesopotamians (which made obnoxious guy very angry and me very happy).

At some point near the end of the show, they were discussing what they should do for a theme at the next show (Flans tried to convince Linnell that they were actually having the conversation later backstage) and Flans suggested doing something they used to do back in the early days where they would have people bring their own guitars and invite them on stage to play a song. They apparently had chords displayed and a guy with a pointer but it was usually a spectacular failure. Linnell said someone had shown him a picture of one of those shows with a whole bunch of people on stage with guitars and this one guy on the end with a recorder. The story was funny at the time but has more significance at the next show.

I had another kind of crummy audience experience after the show which turned out to mostly be a misunderstanding but still really put a damper on my night. So excellent show, partially ruined by one obnoxious guy and some other minor irritations.

Here is the best pic I got that night. There are several more pictures available here but none of them are great. I think out of almost 100 taken, there were only 22 even worth posting. Thank goodness for the new camera.