Stare Into The Subliminal

February 28th at LPR. The theme is once again...Flood. It's a really good thing I like this album. The opener is Oppenheimer. Finally, a really, really excellent opening act. They were loud and awesome. There was one song that they played that I particularly loved though I have never learned it's name despite having access to the CD now. Their sound man had gotten food poisoning from a burrito the previous night. Poor guy. I am always impressed by drummers who can sing while they drum and Shaun Robinson does just that. I was amused that Rocky left the voice modulator on his mic even while talking between songs. It was silly.


The first thing I noticed when TMBG came on was Linnell's disastrous new haircut. It was very severe, particularly on the sides and I missed the floppiness. It had been near perfect when they appeared on Conan just a few days earlier. Fortunately, it grew back to a much more pleasing length before the next show.


I will let you form your own opinion.

They opened with Subliminal which was a new one for me. I once scoffed a little bit when I read someone's reaction to hearing Ana Ng at a show. They said they did not realize it was their favorite until they realized they were still holding their breath half way through the song, or something to that effect. At the time I thought, how could you not know it was your favorite song? It wasn't until the band started playing Subliminal at this show that I knew what they meant. I had no idea I loved this song so much. I was just enthralled. I may never hear them play Man, It's So Loud in Here live but I might not mind if they would just keep Subliminal in the rotation.

They followed with It's Kickin' In which was also a first for me. Really great one-two punch start. Then they did Older, Upside Down Frown, Damn Good Times, Bee of the Bird of the Moth, Hey, Mr. DJ and Seven. Then I got another first timer, With the Dark, which sounds really cool live. That also meant I have now heard all of the songs from The Else played live except for Feign Amnesia, which they have never played anyway. They closed out the pre-Flood set with Doctor Worm.

This was a particularly excellent Flood set. The whole band seemed to be in a really silly mood. Dan played what is possibly his best intro to Istanbul I have ever seen. I have just made my very first ever video upload to YouTube in order to share it with you. Just look at how fast his hand is moving at the end. I also really enjoy the way he bobs his head while he plays.

The horns did an excellent outro (in that a word?) to Istanbul too complete with some freaky trumpet playing.

Someone at the last show had been loudly requesting Your Racist Friend and they promised to play it at this show. I hope that person was there to enjoy it.

Linnell started singing Clap for the Wolfman in the middle of Particle Man. Danny and Flans played along with the weird noises on the keyboard as usual. But very unusually, Flans continued playing the keyboard after Particle Man restarted and he went NUTS. He was attacking the keyboard and making wild faces and hammering out all sorts of weird sounds all with his guitar pick in his mouth. Danny even joined back in at the end on the kaoss pad. Thank goodness, I have photographic evidence. It was insane! Incidentally, the guy whose video camera is in the photo has a great video of the whole thing up on YouTube if you care to seek it out.

 Flans could not seem to get the "little bird" line of Letterbox out tonight. He just kept mumbling. He also had to be reminded, by the audience I might add, to get his drum for Whistling in the Dark. He said that the worst thing about doing these album shows in that everyone knows what's coming next and yells at you if you don't do it fast enough. He makes the most amusing faces while trying to hold that drum up and play.

At some point in the show they started talking about Tom Poston again. This was either the second or third time this conversation has been reprised. The initial story was at Lupo's but then I think they brought it up again the next night at LPR and were talking about it as if everyone there knew what they were talking about. They eventually went back and explained it again. Then I think, it came up again at this show except this time without any explanation so people who had not been at the other shows were completely in the dark. I may be misremembering and the last two incidents may have been the same but it was funny either way.

When discussing themes for the next show they announced an Every Album in sequence show for 2012. I would so be there for that.

For the first encore they did Maybe I Know, Los Angeles, and Drink! The second encore was S-E-X-X-Y with Linnell on clarinet again and The Guitar.

This show was a great example of how two people can have completely different experiences at the same show. I loved this show but my boyfriend was driven completely crazy by an obnoxious guy behind him (whom I was oblivious to) for pretty much the whole show so he really couldn't enjoy it as much. A PSA for show goers everywhere: by all means, sing along, but please do not sing a different song than the band is singing or sing while the band is talking. Please? It's just not cool. Thanks.