Fine Family Dinning

March 7, 2010 - Exit/In - Nashville, TN

(I apologize for the mixed tenses in this entry. I wrote some of it in the club between acts and some after the fact so my present and past have gotten confused.)

Greetings from Nashville! We have driven for two days to get here, past thousands of cows, several sheep, a donkey, 13 road-side crosses, and the titular poorly spelled restaurant advertisement. Arrived in the Country Music capital in late afternoon. Realized that, oddly, Nashville is in a different time zone and we had traveled back an hour.

Headed to the club just before 6pm and discovered a quite sizeable crowd already in line. Turns out most of them thought doors were at 7 (they were at 8). Waited in boredom and increasing cold. Heard soundcheck through the walls of the club: Hearing Aid, Someone Keeps Moving My Chair and part of WDTSS. Saw Curt Ramm waling out of the club. Jonathan Coulton (seriously, the best opener TMBG could have provided) poked his head out of a side door at one point to let some friends in and inform the crowd by said door of the late door time. These same people only recognized him after about the third time he stuck his head out, having apparently missed all announcements that he was opening (where have they been?).

Managed to get the slightly obstructed but direct Linnell eye-contact view in front of the keyboard. Struggling to get Oscar updates while waiting for the show to start. I am a HUGE Oscar fan and this is the first Oscar ceremony I have missed watching in probably 15 years. Only for TMBG. Thus far from what I have gathered, all of my predictions have been correct, except maybe one. (Post script: I got 17 out of 24 categories right.)

In a bizarre move Hanson has been added into the pre-show mix. Also several songs about food: one about potato chips and one about beans.

JoCo was AWESOME! I can't imagine a more grin-inducing combination for me than a show that contains both him and TMBG and I get four! He did Future Soon, Shop Vac, Betty and Me, Skullcrusher Mountain, Mr. Fancypants and Re: Your Brains. Our crowd made excellent zombies. He didn't do too much banter but responded to a lot of things yelled at him by the crowd. The best of which was the guy who yelled "show me your Hoover" after Shop Vac. Jonathan said he didn't know the Hoover of whom you speak but if you had said "show me your Dyson" he would know what you were talking about. He also did some explaination of Mr. Fancypants, saying that even though it wasn't one of his best songs it didn't matter because we weren't going to be listening to the song because we were going to be too distracted by his strange musical instrument. I am not going to try to explain this thing. If you haven't seen it, go look up the song on YouTube. He started the drum beat on it, then did this "where's that coming from, there is no drummer on stage" thing. At this point someone in the crowd yelled that there was and pointed at Marty's drums. Jonathan had to point out that there was no drummer and that "this is what we in the rock business call a drum set."

I admit that I have not been doing as much of my post-opener crew watching between the sets because I have been blogging but I did watch Iggy scale a light fixture and pull a piece of confetti out of a light box. I have also been amused by the proximity of the men's room to the backstage door. Men needing to use the facilities were fighting with crew for space.

Setlist:Subliminal - Meet James Ensor - Damn Good Times - Meet the Elements - Fingertips - Memo to Human Resources - Mesopotamians - Road Movie to Berlin - They Might Be Giants - Sapphire Bullets - Women and Men - Hot Cha - Whistling in the Dark - Letterbox - Minimum Wage - Hearing Aid - What Is a Shooting Star - Stalk of Wheat - Someone Keeps Moving My Chair - We Want a Rock - Twisting - Particle Man - Your Racist Friend - Dead - Istanbul - Lucky Ball and Chair - Birdhouse - Theme from Flood. Encore - Clap Your Hands - Withered Hope - Polk. Encore 2 - Guitar

When TMBG opened with Subliminal I was ecstatic. Subliminal is one of my favorite songs and possibley my very favorite to hear live. I heard it a couple of times in the spring, then all fall I kept reading about it getting played in other places but they never played it at the shows I attended. Finally!

Flans made some cracks about all the fans standing on the stairs being a fire hazard and how they'd gone 10 years without an industrial accident (but they didn't want to talk about what happened 10 years ago.) He referred to them as the Fire Marshall dancers and the Fire Marshallettes. He also commented on the people in the balconey looking sleepy.

He explained the format, that they would be playing eight songs before Flood so there were seven left. He asked Linnell later how many songs they had left and told him they were numbered on the setlist but Linnell couldn't read the numbers. He kept doing the countdown but he had been wrong about the number they started with so by the time they got to Flood they had only played seven songs.

Linnell introduced Meet the Elements as being about the periodic table and that lots of people leave during this song and don't come back for the good ones.

My view of the stage was severely limited by the keyboard. I could see Linnell (obviously) and I could sometimes see Dan off on the left. Flans moved in and out of view but except for a view occations I could mostly just see his head and feet. I could see Danny's legs behind the keyboard (which was good since he was wearing the red pants) but could only occationally see his head. And Marty was just completely invisible.

A few songs in Danny took off his long sleeved shirt and was wearing a black t-shirt that said Jingle Punks underneath. Dan said something to him about this and Danny put a large piece of tape over the name. I have no idea why. Eventually, he put the long sleeves on again. Odd but funny.

Since it was Academy Awards night Flans made several jokes about the awards. He introduced one song as the winner of Best Costume Design and one Best Special Effects.
Before starting Flood, Flans explained that they had tried multiple ways of playing it and the one that seemed to work best for them was backward. This also made me happy as I had seen that they had already played it backward a few times and I was looking forward to the variety. He also said later that if we knew the order of Flood backward we were better off than the band. He and Linnell also had an amusing discussion about doing the whole album in Ubbi Dubbi and proceeded to recite a few lines. Linnell thought it could be done but sadly they did not try it.

Curt Ramm joined them on stage for Road Movie. I like the trend of bringing a horn player on the road. It makes some of the songs sound so much fuller. Flans shouted "Rock me" just before the bridge, which they definitely did :-)

After one of the big confetti launches Flans said they should have warned us that there would be confetti. "Confetti and strobe lights."
Linnell: "And a tidal wave of blood."
Flans: "You ruined the surprise."
Linnell: "It's going to wash us all out into the street."
Flans: "That's my favorite part of the show."

Some other amusing interludes...

Flans asked everyone in general who had won awards at the Oscars and got a lot of unintelligible response. He said that their Coraline song was eligible but it hadn't been nominated.
Flans: "Fuck everyone. Twitter this: Fuck everyone. That's 40 characters. I can even double up. F-F-U-U. Then my one Twitter follower can read it."
Linnell: "It's me. Fuck me? Fuck you!"
Flans: "This isn't a kid's show is it?"

The puppets did a lot of amusing facial expressions. They said they wanted to play their 2012 Avatar release but they didn't want to go to sock puppet prison. "First they take your ears, then they take your dignity." They also told the rest of the band that they were fired and that the Johns had made the puppets tell them because they were too lazy. And they sang Stalk of Wheat which was a first for me (haven't had one of those in a while).

At the end of the puppet set the camera panned in on a picture of Meg Ryan stuck in front of the camera and they thanked her for coming to their show. After the puppets left Linnell said she had been at the show in Atlanta too and she must be a real fan.

Flans asked the club to turn on the ceiling fans at one point and some suggested they might just be for show. Flans said that would be cruel. When they did turn them on showers on confetti fell from them.

During the band intros in the encore I finally caught a glimpse of Marty under the keyboard when Linnell stepped aside. Linnell started to step back in front of the keyboard while I was trying to take a picture of Marty and noticed and stepped back out of the way. Thanks John! Then he bumped into Flans when he did step back.

The Guitar finale featured an awesome trumpet solo and to me excitement the people of Nashville all recognized the appropriate time to wave in the song. Yay!

After the show there was a very uncool girl who reached over everyone to rip Linnell's setlist off the keyboard, then came back to get a piece that had torn off. Not cool, chick, not cool. We managed to get a setlist by being patient (and because Victor recognizes my boyfriend). It has this great note between two songs: JL look at JF. I wonder why...

Excellent start to the trip. They managed to make Flood fresh and exciting and I totally won't mind hearing it again later this week. Next stop The Orange Peel!