Happy New Year! (Very Late)

So I totally blew it when it came to doing a write-up of the New Year's Eve shows. I started it over a month ago and never finished and of course now I have forgotten most of the good bits I wanted to write about. So here you have what I wrote in January plus some random memories. I invite those of you who read this blog and were there (and lets face it, I think three of my four readers were there) to add your own favorite moments in the comments.



We ended up leaving for Northampton a lot later than I originally intended. And once we got there it took us forever to find parking. The city was having a big New Year's celebration all day so there were a lot of people competing for parking spaces. We got to the theater just a little after the doors opened for the early family show and met up with our friends. I passed the entire Linnell clan walking into a side door of the theater just as we approached. I managed to contain myself.

The early show was general admission so we picked seats on the right side of the theater about four rows back. We intended to stay in our seats for the show and let the kids and parents fill the dance floor but after Clap Your Hands the guy in front of us remained standing and stood his son up on the chair in front of him so we couldn't see at all. So we ended up going down to the dance floor so that we could see.

The set list was very similar to the other family shows we attended this fall.

Setlist: I Never Go To Work - Clap Your Hands - Get Up And Go - Where Do They Make Balloons? - Pirate Girls Nine - WDTSS? - Bed Bed Bed - Famous Polka - Roy G. Biv - Alphabet Lost and Found - Older - Seven - Fibber Island - Zilch - Particle Man - In the Middle - What Is a Shooting Star - Alphabet of Nations - My Brother The Ape - Doctor Worm Encore - Meet The Elements - Istanbul

It was a great show but not much new. Even a lot of the banter was similar.

Some of the stand out moments:

Linnell messed up the words to Particle Man, starting the wrong verse in the middle. We were speculating that it might indicate the end of the world but so far so good.

The nuclear reactions in Particle Man were caused by Goofy Grape, Rootin' Tootin' Raspberry, Lefty Lemon and another Fancy Face pack flavor that I can't recall. After the song the Johns were remembering the Red Sox baseball player Lefty Lemon and teasing Marty about his love of the Yankees. This prompted Marty to end Alphabet Lost and Found with "I think there's a box of Yankees in the back."

There was some incredible clothing sported by the men on stage. Flans was wearing shiny silver sneakers. Stan had on black velvet shoes with moons and stars on them and Dan Levine was wearing a shirt almost as loud as his trombone.

We had to wait outside the theater between the afternoon and evening shows for quite a while and it was really quite cold. My feet were pretty much frozen. But we were treated to a lovely fireworks display by the town of Northampton. We watched numerous members of the band and their families come and go out of the theater. By far the most exciting was when I saw Flans, Marty and John Hodgman (who was appearing as a special guest) walking toward us and realized that they also had Jonathan Coulton with them. I was so excited by this that I completely missed the fact that Flans said "Happy New Year" to our group as he passed. But Hodgman waved at us which made it all ok. I spent much of the rest of the wait groundlessly speculating what Jonathan Coulton was doing there and if he would be appearing in the show. It turned out that he had just given Hodgman a ride and was there to watch but it was still awesome.

Once back inside the theater we scored prime stage side space (taking up most of it since our group had doubled in size while waiting in line). Iggy came out on stage and told us it was going to be an awesome show. He also heard someone commenting on the plastic birds on the lights that I have mentioned before and explained that they were Rock Doves. I found this very funny and appreciated the three dimensional pun.

The setlist for the evening show: Doctor Worm - Withered Hope - Birdhouse - Guitar - Dig My Grave - Meet the Elements - Take Out the Trash - WDTSS - Meet James Ensor - Los Angeles - Anaheim - Albany - Dallas - Vancouver - Pittsburgh - Glasgow - Charlottesville - Asbury Park - Brooklyn - Museum of Idiots - Clap Your Hands - Whistling in the Dark - Seven - Istanbul - New York City - Mesopotamians - They Might Be Giants  Encore - Shoehorn with Teeth - In the Middle - Damn Good Times  Encore 2 - Alphabet of Nations - Mr. Me

I was anxious to see what role Hodgman would be playing in the show but it turned out to be a reprisal of his Venue Songs performance. After a warm-up set he came out and stood behind the camera that the Avatars use and they projected his face onto the big screen. In his role as the Deranged Millionaire he provided narration for the whole Venue Songs set. He had written some new material to suit the evening which he was reading off his iPhone. I've heard them do this set twice live now plus on a live show I downloaded and the narration has never been exactly the same anytime which keeps in fun. I do have to admit that I was a little disappointed they didn't do anything new with Hodgman like they had done on Conan but I was happy enough to have him there. The best part was watching him use his iPhone as a lighter (though he didn't seem to have the lighter app) during Brooklyn.

Stan did an absolutely ridiculous sax solo in one of the early songs. I think it was either Withered Hope or The Guitar unless I am completely misremembering and it was at the afternoon show. Flans kept yelling at him something like "more notes, less feeling." It took Stan a little while to get what Flans was saying and once he did Flans kept making him keep going and going. It was pretty amazing and funny. Poor Stan probably blew all his best stuff at the start of the show.

Marty did a great demo of the sound each of the drums in his electronic kit plays during WDTSS. Flans made jokes. I don't remember them but they were funny.

Linnell accidently spit while singing at one point. It probably hit some girl in the audience who then fainted.

Linnell made a fantastic joke before the Mesopotamians that hopefully someone else remembers because it was so good and I've forgotten it (are we sensing the theme here?).

They played the most in-tune version of Dallas I've ever heard. They can never seem to start that song in tune with one another and this time it came out perfect. I think they may have surprised even themselves.

I still love the puppets. I don't care how many times Flans-puppet does the "stick an eyeball in the camera lens" thing. It is still funny.

The second bell on Marty's bells that he uses for Shoehorn did not work. It was sad. But also funny.

And that is pretty much all I remember. If you were there and you remember more, please, please comment and remind me.

We got a setlist and one of Dan Miller's guitar picks after the show and then went for late night ice cream with all of our friends, old and new. We even went out and watched Northampton's strange New Year's ball raising complete with overly-startling cannon fire. It was a pretty spectacular day. I may have been just a tiny bit disappointed that they didn't play anything I haven't heard before but even so. Pretty spectacular. I actually found pieces of confetti still stuck to me while I was in the shower the next morning. It made me very happy.

There are just a few pictures up on Flickr. I didn't take as many and many did not come out great. But there are pictures of the fabulous shoes.