Filling In The Blanks

If you have been following this blog for a while you may remember that back in the fall when I was blogging about all my past shows before I left on The Great TMBG Road Trip 2009, I ran out of time and never blogged the last five. There is a batch from May-June of last year that have gone undiscussed and I've decided that has gone on long enough. Unfortunately, they are now so far in the past that I don't remember them very clearly but I'll share what I do remember and add in a bunch of pictures to make up for what I don't.

Ready...


Set...


Go....


May 30, 2009 - LPR - NYC

The last of the Rent Party series at LPR was billed as a Non-Stop Rock show. I remember thinking at the time that it would have been more appropriately titled Kid's Music for Grown-Ups because they played so many songs off the kid's albums.

The opening act was a band called Mixel Pixel who were not great and had bizarre outfits. It looked like they were wearing pajamas on stage. One of them had no shirt and seemed to be wearing a cape made out of a blanket. They used video projection while they played but it didn't really help improve their music. Just not my cup of tea, I guess.



The TMBG setlist:

WDTSRS? - Birdhouse - Figure Eight - Clap Your Hand - Guitar - Nothing's Gonna Change My Clothes - It's Kickin' In - Thunderbird - Hearing Aid - Mesopotamians - John Lee Supertaster - Paleontologist - Polk - Broom - Don't Let's Start - I'm Impressed - Puppet Head - Subliminal - Meet James Ensor - Polka - Damn Good Times - Istanbul  Encore - Asbury Park - I Palindrome I - NYC Encore 2 - Older - Dead - Fingertips

This was the only one of the LPR shows where they did not have the horn players with them. It was kind of sad and yet kind of nice to be back with just the five-guy line-up for a change.

This was the first time I heard Figure Eight. They had premiered it in Kansas City the weekend before so this was only it's second appearance. Also the first time I heard Nothing's Gonna Change My Clothes and Thunderbird. It was a pretty exceptional setlist.

For Hearing Aid, Flans pulled out a little stylophone to play the weird noises at the end. (Yes, I know they are technically some brand of synthesizer and not REALLY stylophones but it's the same general thing and I like the word better). He was making all these great faces then Linnell pulled one out too and started playing behind him. He got this great surprised look on his face like he was shocked that there was another stylophone and then they did a little stylophone dueting.



When Danny introduced Paleontologist, he said that this was the first time the song was being played for adults and only the fifth time it was being played ever. He promised this would be one of the top five performances.



Broom came out to play and proved that he can be very inappropriate for children. Linnell commented that he doesn't usually get to play for adults and Broom said he thought the audience looked taller. Linnell told him he was "working blue" and Broom said he felt like Bob Saget. Then he said fuck quite a bit. It was pretty fucking funny. They continued to banter for quite a while before eventually getting to the song. It seemed like Linnell was trying to drag out the banter because he was having such a good time.



Subliminal! Yay!



Flans let some of the crowd play his guitar during the Polka. I got probably the best picture I have ever taken. Actually, I have better pictures from this show that almost any other. The stars must have aligned.



It was an awesome way to wrap up the series. I wish they would do another batch of shows like these. It was so nice to have something to look forward to every month.

Some extra pictures:














June 12, 2009 - Port City Music Hall - Portland, ME

This was the start of a very hectic but TMBG centric weekend. I was meant to be doing bachelorette party stuff for my friend's wedding that I was in and I had already changed plans once to accommodate the TMBG show in Boston on the 13th when this show was announced. I am from Maine and just couldn't resist seeing the band in my home state. So I changed plans again so I could go to this show too and skipped out on some of the party on Saturday. I felt bad and I hope the bride understood. To make up for it we took her with us to this show. I think she enjoyed it, or at least I hope she did.

We drove up to Portland after work on Friday and got there plenty early. While we were exiting the parking garage we ran into another fan whom I recognized from other shows but had not actually met. This would turn out to be one of those fortuitous fateful meetings as we have since become good friends and she is probably reading this blog right now. Hi!

The parking situation was very stressful as we parked in a garage that closed at midnight and weren't sure we would be out of the show in time to get back to the car. The encores were very tense as we kept looking at our watches, wanting the show to keep going but also needing it to end on time. We ended up making it back with about 10 minutes to spare.

We were among the first people to arrive at the venue but everyone just milled about rather than making a line. Enough people went through the door in front of us that we might have ended up standing off on a side of the stage but everyone of them headed straight for the bar. Not quite believing our good fortune we took spots absolutely dead center stage, up to that point the best spot I had ever had at a show.

Port City Music Hall was at the time a newly renovated and recently opened club (I suppose it still is, just not quite as new). It is very deep and rather narrow and does not exactly look like a rock club. There is unusual sculpture in the front window and the whole place actually has a more art gallery feel. And there is an unexpected drop in the floor at the top of the stairs leading to the bathrooms so watch out!

The opening act was a woman called Audrey Ryan who did a mix of music mostly in the folk/rock genre. She did kind of a one woman show thing, playing guitar, accordion, maracas, tambourine and drums often at the same time and all while singing. She was actually pretty good but it got a little tedious to watch because she would lay down a rhythm track before starting each song which would take several minutes and then if she messed up she had to start over. She did have a friend come out and join her on glockenspiel for a few songs but, sadly, was lacking the G-L-O-enspiel song.



There are two things about this venue that particularly stick out in my mind. One of which was the crazy camera-nazi lady who worked for the club. Before the show started one of the staff told us we could take pictures as long as we turned off the flash. That's fine, I usually do that anyway. Then part way into the TMBG set an employee came over and told me no pictures so I turned my camera off and set it down. Fine, whatever. But this crazy woman was obsessed with the idea that people were taking flash photos. She came over and talked to me again after I had turned the camera off and hadn't been using it for probably 20 minutes, telling me off for using the flash (which I had never done in the first place), then later ran across the front of the stage to do the same to some other girl who was not using her flash either. I think she was actually seeing light reflecting off the mirrors on the lighting stands because I never saw a single person take a flash photo except for the official photographer who had a photo pass. Then after the show someone tried to take the setlist off of Linnell's keyboard and she lunged at them and snatched it back. I actually applauded this but then she wouldn't let anyone else near the stage to even ask one of the crew for one. I think she was enjoying the role of enforcer a little too much. Fortunately Iggy was much nicer and gave me his.

The other thing about this venue was the heat. It was SOOOOOO hot. Like, sweat soaking through your clothes, t-shirt plastered to you hot. It was a level of heat I have never experienced before or since in a club. Obviously, they hadn't installed the air conditioning yet. And if we were hot, the poor band was melting. By about halfway through, you could see that they had all soaked through their clothes and many of the guys were having to use towels to wipe the sweat off their hands so they could continue to play. And yet Danny, who was wearing a long sleeve shirt over a t-shirt, never took off the long sleeves. Despite being sad that the show was over, I have never been so happy to exit a venue into the fresh air as I was after this show.



Yet another reason this show was particularly memorable is that it was on Linnell's 50th birthday. Many people in the crowd were shouting "Happy Birthday" to him between songs and at one point he said that it would not have been as happy without all of us. Awwww. Even if he was just saying it to be nice, awwwwww. Thanks, Linnell!





The setlist: Twisting - Mesopotamians - Ana Ng - Memo to Human Resources (1st verse only) - Thunderbird - Hearing Aid - Birdhouse - Clap Your Hands - The Guitar - Nothing's Gonna Change My Clothes - TMBG - Polk - NYC - Don't Let's Start - Seven - Doctor Worm - Particle Man - Meet James Ensor - Polka - Alphabet of Nations - She's an Angel - Damn Good Times  Encore - Drink! - Asbury Park - Fingertips  Encore 2 - Older - Dead - Istanbul

They started Memo but Flans called it off part way in and said he didn't feel like playing it so they moved on. He actually still said "Celebration" in a left over from those spring kids shows. They pulled out the stylophones again for Hearing Aid and I got some great pictures. They had brought Curt with them so we got some great trumpet solos. He was in top form, probably because he got to leave to stage periodically and go stand somewhere cooler.








Alphabet of Nations wasn't on the setlist but they added it in, I believe because someone had been shouting for it in the audience. I think that may be the only time I've seen them take a request. Dan did an encore presentation of Where's Dan? for Fingertips, playing from the raised VIP area on the side of the club. He may have even been standing on a chair or a table. I'm not sure. But that was the last time I saw him do it. I wish he'd bring that back.

Despite the heat and the camera-nazi and the fact that I had been up since 5:30 in the morning, this remains one of my all-time favorite shows. The official photographer actually snapped a picture of all of us at the show. I am making a ridiculous face singing along to either The Mesopotamians or Birdhouse, I'm not sure, but it's nice to have the pictorial evidence anyway.


Photo by Bryan Bruchman


June 13, 2009 - Berklee Performance Center - Boston, MA

We missed the family show in the afternoon because of the bachelorette thing and then ended up running so late to get to this show that we missed the beginning of the opening act. It was a good thing that it was a show with assigned seats or we would have been all the way in the back. We were in the front row of the balcony because all the good floor seats had been sold by the time I realized tickets were on sale and I thought the view would be better from the balcony than the middle of the orchestra. It definitely was but I don't think I have ever been so far from the stage (except maybe at an outdoor show).

The opener was Jed Parish whom we had seen in Tarrytown. I think I was still so burnt out from the mad dash speed walk I did from Boston Common to Berklee before the show that I didn't really pay that much attention to him. Sorry, Jed.

This was Flood show number four. They did Alphabet of Nations - Damn Good Times - James K. Polk - Asbury Park and The Guitar before Flood. Then Clap Your Hands - Mesopotamians - NYC - Older - Drink and Doctor Worm for the encores. All the pictures I have are from the encores because cameras weren't allowed but I snuck mine in and everyone was standing for the encores and thus blocking the security guard's view of me. I didn't really get any good ones.



The Johns kept talking about why they liked playing at Berklee. It had to do with it being a music school, memories of shows there when they were kids and the theater being so much nicer and having better acoustics than what they were used to. They also liked that the audience was so much more polite and actually clapped after solos. I believe they also made mention of the fact that both the Dans went to school there.

Curt was with them again (he was along for the ride the whole weekend) and got to do the Istanbul intro and outro. They played with their stylophones again on Hearing Aid.

I saw someone I am pretty sure was Flans' mom down in the orchestra area. No one stood and rushed the stage until the encores. I actually ran into a teenager at work the next day who had also been at the show and was very disappointed in the lack of energy and dancing in the crowd. They really were a very polite crowd.

Flans' attempts to divide the audience for the call backs on Drink were only marginally successful and the audience's rhythm was not very good considering how many of them were probably music students.

It is very hard to jump in the air in a balcony.

Iggy's lighting "booth" (for lack of a better word) was up in the balcony with us. We waved at each other as we exited the theater.

This was probably the most subdued non-family show I've attended. But at least there were no drunk idiots.


June 14, 2009 - New Haven Town Green - New Haven, CT

Free show as part of the International Arts and Ideas Festival. Originally I wasn't sure I wanted to go to this one for some reason, then decided I did and complicated my weekend even further. I had to work in the morning; I think I left a little early. Then had to drive to New Haven to get there by six. We were there in plenty of time but the Green was already packed. I read later that there were 22,000 people there which was the most the Festival had ever had at a show.

We originally found a space right on a corner of the path by the sound tent but when the show started everyone stood up and I couldn't see at all. So I went and found a better spot a bit closer up. It was great except for the tall guy in my direct line of sight who kept putting his kid on his shoulders. He moved after a while. This was the first time I had really tested the digital zoom on my new camera and it worked pretty well though the pictures are rather grainy.



I am sorry to say I remember only two things that happened at this show. One was an ongoing joke about how Curt had come down from his ice cream mountain to perform at the show. Flans was basically making him out to be the king of Candyland or something and teasing him about how far he had had to travel (he's from Connecticut).



The other was Danny dedicating I Am A Paleontologist to "that dude with the green mohawk." There was a person with a bright green mohawk in the crowd that I had noticed earlier and apparently so had Danny. The funny part was, it was a girl. I believe Dan point this fact out to Danny while they were playing the intro to the song and after some squinting he had this very funny "whoops" face. I actually had a brief back-and-forth with the mohawk girl on Flickr afterwards and she didn't mind at all and was very excited that he had noticed her. I also noticed that she joined the wiki recently. Hi, if you happen to be reading this!



I was going through my videos from shows trying to see if I had a video of Paleontologist at this show. I don't but I did find video of I Am Not Your Broom that is very funny and which I do not remember AT ALL. I have never posted any of my videos (save one) because I always figured there were better ones out there but after going back through them today, I decided to throw most of them up on YouTube, partly so I can link to several of them in this blog.



The setlist: Alphabet of Nations - Birdhouse - Guitar - Seven - Paleontologist - Pirate Girls Nine - Particle Man - I Never Go to Work - Figure Eight - No - Clap Your Hands - Polk - Older - NYC - Alphabet Lost and Found - Broom - Four of Two - Doctor Worm  Encore - 813 Mile Car Trip - Istanbul



After the show we went and got some food at the concession stands along the green and while we were eating we saw the band all milling about the trailer behind the stage and packing up their stuff to go home. I also got a nifty picture of the guitar rack on stage after the crowds left so you can see just how many guitars they travel with. Note - most of them are Dan's. How many does he need?




And finally..

July 11, 2009 - Prospect Park - Brooklyn, NY

I felt like this was really venturing into TMBG's home turf. And the show was awesome. So much energy, soooo much confetti, so much fun.

We got to the park early but there was already a large crowd in line. I think we had to wait for close to an hour before they let us in. I saw Marty down by the door at one point talking to some friends in line. When we got in, there was a large section of folding chairs on the floor or spots to sit on the grass on a hill. We chose the chairs. There was a big chunk in the middle reserved for members and sections on the side for everyone else. We picked something in the middle where we could see but not feel like we were stealing good spots from the families. There was a long wait before the show started but some good people watching. Several band members could be seen on or around the stage, not even having changed for the show yet.

There were two "openers" for the show. One was a giant purple anteater looking thing called ZoZo who was the mascot for something but I don't remember what. He introduced the concert with some adults but they wouldn't let him say what band was coming on because they didn't want to get the kids too excited that the concert was going to start before the next opener.



Next was someone called Claudia Marshall who was, I believe, a radio DJ, reading two of Ezra Keats' books. I think it was some sort of anniversary for him and there were people there who were trying to get his art on a postage stamp. I've always liked his stories but it was weird to have story time before a concert. Ms. Marshall also humorously said Bronx when she meant to say Brooklyn at one point and got lots of "oh, no she didn't" type response from the Brooklyn crowd.



TMBG started with Fibber Island. A little kid managed to get on stage and ran part way across, then stopped to look out at the crowd, very proud of himself before he was scooped up by an adult. The band seemed remarkably unfazed by this though it did seem to amuse Danny. The Johns did some great silly flubbering sounds before leading into Zilch and got a lot of the crowd going with them.



The rest of the setlist: Alphabet of Nations - Seven - Clap Your Hands - Guitar - Paleontologist - I Never Go to Work - One Dozen Monkeys - Particle Man - Figure Eight - Happy Birthday - Pirate Girls Nine - Bed Bed Bed - Alphabet Lost and Found - Broom - Where Do They Make Balloons - No - NYC - Doctor Worm  Encore - 813 Mile Car Trip - Brooklyn - Istanbul

There was so much confetti at this show. Iggy really got into the canons, probably because he didn't need to do much with the lights at an outdoor show, and he and the guitar tech just kept reloading and reloading them. There was even one accidental shoot off while one was being loaded.  I believe they went off four times in total. The best of which was during Bed Bed Bed when a large portion of the confetti landed on Linnell's head and keyboard and he just kept playing without bothering to brush it off.



I have some fantastic pictures of Linnell making extremely silly faces from this show, including a great "Guatemala" shot. I also must be allowed a very short fangirl moment to point out that after the very unflattering cut it received in January, Linnell's hair had once again reached optimum length.










Flans introduced not one but two euphoniums for Seven and Dan and Curt had a nice little euphonium party center stage.



Flans promised they would keep playing if it started to rain, as the sky was looking a little threatening but it held off until we were driving home several hours later.

Flans introduced Paleontologist, asking us to stand up and pretend that it was our favorite song even though we had never heard it before. No need to pretend! I loved that song already :-)



Linnell didn't insert a song into Particle Man but still dragged out the bridge with some ad-libbing about how he was making the song longer just so we would clap more.



They sang Happy Birthday to a little girl named Flora who was sitting in the member section. She must have been a friend of someone in the band. It was very cute.



Flans told us that Marty was going back to his boy band roots with Alphabet Lost and Found and that unlike the rest of the band, he was only in it for the money.



Broom performed a little bit of "All Star" trying to get Linnell to sing something else but he wouldn't bite. They also stopped the song to explain that servitude was what happened when a server has attitude.



I am convinced that they did Where Do They Make Balloons only because an article that the Johns had been interviewed for before the show for one of the Brooklyn papers listed it as sure-to-be-played (probably not realizing that they hadn't been playing it since they started doing Paleontologist). When Danny came back to the mic he said, "Remember me? I'm the guy that sang your favorite song." He also asked us to help him with the words but he did fine on his own.



Flans introduced Doctor Worm with some shtick about worms under then bandshell being graduates.

This show being part of the Celebrate Brooklyn Festival, they of course did the Brooklyn venue song. It's a bit of an odd song for a family show but they really couldn't not do it.



And they finished with an excellent horn performance on Istanbul. We attempted to get a setlist after the show but couldn't get close enough to the stage. Did get to see Marty signing some things for other fans but didn't have anything to get signed.




There! I have finally recapped all my shows. For now anyway. That was kind of exhausting and kind of fun. I'll have another audience participation blog coming soon.