Awesome Weekend Part Two

September 25, 2010 - Mohegan Sun - Wolf Den - 5th Annual Audience Appreciation Show

"Rock, Rinse, Repeat" is the theme of this whole weekend. I want a t-shirt with that printed on it.

Damn, I don't think this weekend could get any better.

This recap is going to have a large pre-show section, as one of my favorite things about the Mohegan shows is that you line up on a little ramp leading into the club, hours before the show and thus get to watch sound check and all of the comings and goings onstage and off. It's going to be very speculative on my part as, though I could see what was going on, I couldn't hear any of what was said so I'm basically making up what it looked like was happening.

We got to Mohegan at about 2:30 for 6:30 doors. There was only one group and a couple of our friends already in line so that timing seemed to work pretty well. Marty was on stage when we arrived, putting together pieces of the drum kit and testing everything out. I was amused watching him repeatedly move the bongo until it was in exactly the right spot. He's nothing if not a perfectionist.

I spent the next couple of hours writing the re-cap of Friday's show, occasionally looking up to check on the activity on the stage. I watched Vince and Scott spend about 15 minutes trying to get the accordion mic'd up properly. They seemed to be having issues. At one point David came out holding something that was either a small mic or a piece of wire or connector and they all stared at it for a bit like they were either trying to figure out what it was and where it went or if it would help fix the accordion problem. I'm obviously speculating, but it made me want to write a bad joke about how many techs it takes to mic an accordion.

I was very surprised to see Scott going around and doing all the sound level checks on all the mics and instruments. Usually I just see him talking to people and laying out towels and water, but this trip he was much more active in the actual sound work. Turns out there was a reason for that, which I didn't realize until Sunday. But with Will not there, Scott was on monitors all weekend. How odd. Last time I saw the tour manager on monitors (different guy, back at LPR) it did not go well. This seemed to go much better, though he was getting a lot of direction from the stage. My favorite part of his sound check was that he kept saying the word "sibilance" into the microphones. I wanted to get a picture of him testing the drums to add to my collection of people other than Marty playing the drums but I wasn't fast enough.

As time went on, I saw lots of the band wander in. Both Flans and Linnell snuck in through the side at different times. Curt and Dan Levine wandered in the front with horns in tow. Danny came in past us still limping pretty badly. Marty reappeared from somewhere. Dan and Stan must have snuck in while I wasn't looking.

Sound check got going slowly. At first it was just Dan and Danny on the stage tuning up. Danny futzed around with Linnell's keyboard a bit. Then for a while the two of them were just chilling, sitting on the side of the drum platform while Dan practiced a little tune. I quite liked the image of them sitting side by side, hanging out while all the techs worked around them.

Eventually, the rest of the band came out. Linnell went over to his keyboard and started recreating the ever present casino noise with the Kaoss pad and the sound effects, with the ambient G note and the bells and ringing of the slot machines. It was remarkably accurate. Megan pointed out that Flans sampled a bit of the riff from Hotel Detective, which I didn't notice until she said it. Flans also turned on the camera for the Avatars to get it set at the right height and focus and was holding his bare hand in front of the camera as if it was in the sock puppet. This naked puppet was of course displayed on the giant screen above the club for all to see. Totally indecent.

To my surprise, they sound checked Canajoharie and Duende. I guess I don't really get to count those performances in the total number of times I've heard the new songs but it was still cool. They actually did  part of Canajoharie twice. They all milled around for a bit while Marty tested out the electric drums. Danny attempted to play something on Linnell's keyboard for Dan but it didn't come out very well. It wasn't anything I recognized but they seemed entertained by it. At Flans', instruction Marty started playing a pretty groovy little beat on the electric kit that seemed to meet Flans' approval. Then they all started to wander off. Linnell went exploring up to the top of the rocks that look down over the club and surveyed his surroundings.

Eventually, Marty was left all alone on the stage, still working out something on the electric drums. He plugged away at it for a while before Danny came out to check on him. It looked like he was waiting for him to go do something, probably get food, as he kept checking his watch. After a few more minutes, Marty finally left with him.

We were the highly entertained witnesses to Iggy trying to walk through the swinging half door that led into the sound and lighting station and accidently walking into the solid panel next to it. I'm sorry to say we got a good laugh at his expense but he was laughing too so I don't feel too bad. It really was quite funny.

Doors opened pretty promptly at 6:30. The stage in the Wolf Den is a half circle surrounded on all sides (well, except the back) by rows of tables. There is a ring of booths around the tables and then a second level with more tables above that. We were seated, with Megan, Stacy and Steve at table almost all the way over on the left side so we were looking across the stage rather than at the front. Unfortunately, all our other friends got seated at tables on the other side so we were about as far away from them as we could be. We also had one solo fan seated with us in our sixth seat, who seemed like a pretty nice guy but I never got his name.

It seemed like we were going to be at an unusual angle to the stage but with a pretty good view of everything on the left, namely, Linnell, Danny and Marty. It actually seemed like, from my seated view at the table, I might be able to actually see Marty without a cymbal obscuring his face for once. However, this was not to be the case. I'll get to that in a minute.

I finally bought one of the red 8 bit rock tote bags that I've been wanting. I'm not 100% sure what I am going to carry in it but I just knew I wanted one.

Somewhere in the hour and a half we waited inside the club before the show started, Danny walked past our table and said hey and asked how I was. I said, "Good. How are you?" "I've been better," he said as he hobbled up the stairs to the door to the stage. I said, "I can tell," which in retrospect is kind of a creepy thing to say but I only meant I could see that he was limping. Poor Danny. The man was hurting.

Before the show started, I went to go to the restroom which is just outside the back of the club. The employees give you a little pass to get back in as you leave. Curt was walking out just in front of me and the employee tried to stop him to give him a pass. He looked at her very confused and said, "Um, I'm in the band." She didn't seem to know what to make of that and let him go to the bathroom without a pass. I thought it was kind of funny.

Just before the band came on, David came out and started piling green foams fingers on the front of the stage and the drum platform. We were pretty surprised, given that the free fingers had been advertised for the Town Hall shows not Mohegan and have been largely reserved for family shows lately. The show started with the horns coming down some steps in the rock face at the back of the stage and playing a fanfare. The band came out on stage and unlike at Life is Good, Flans and Linnell both went immediately to the piles of foam fingers and started tossing them out into the crowd. David also came out and started passing out the piles on our side of the stage and I think someone was doing the same on the other side. This became kind of a cluster fuck as everyone got up from their tables and flooded in from the side to get fingers. Many of them were just thrown at random.

There was gradually a group of people who remained standing around the front edge of the stage rather than returning to their seats. Typical practice at Mohegan has been for everyone to remain seated. My first year there, there were a few people who stood at the first show but they were in the minority. The second night I think I did end up standing up because someone stood in front of me but most people stayed put. Last year no one stood around the stage. Personally, I am always for standing (and there were tables missing from right in front of the stage as if they had been removed for this purpose), but I was afraid that the people coming in from the back to get fingers were going to take advantage and stand in front of our table before we got up and block our view. I couldn't decide what to do.

Finger distribution on our side continued while the band started She's An Angel. Same wonderfully weird horn intro played from the steps and then the horns descended to the stage.

Flans ended my debate on standing versus not standing by calling everyone to stand up, come forward and get a better spot. We popped right up next to the stage in front of us. I found out later that our friend Emily, who had been among the first to remain standing at the stage after getting her finger, had been about to head back to her seat when she realized no one else was standing when Flans mouthed "don't leave" to her and she stayed put, basically starting the stage standing trend. Obviously, Flans was having none of this sit down show nonsense.

We did Clap Your Hands. I discovered that it is somewhat more embarrassing to be hopping up and down right next to the stage when you also happen to make eye contact with Danny while doing so. To quote Megan, "Don't look at me. I'm being undignified!"

Stage side, I ended up with a somewhat different view that I expected. I couldn't see Marty after all, except the front of his shirt because he was, once again, behind a cymbal. My view was dominated by Danny and Linnell's pants. I could see the rest of Linnell if I craned my neck up. I also had a pretty clear view to Dan when he was behind his keyboard but not when he moved forward. Flans moved in and out and I could see the horns only really when Danny moved out of the way. But I have definitely had worse. Far worse.



I don't remember the exact placement of the banter at the beginning of the show, but Flans did a very early mini round of introduce the band. He welcomed us all to the 5th Annual Audience Appreciation show at the Wolf Den and commented that they had only just realized they had been incorrectly calling it the Wolf's Den for years. There was some howling. He yelled, "I say Connecticut, you say Connecticut. Connecticut. Connecticut." He obviously wasn't satisfied with the amount of call back he got as he then yelled, "I don't think you people know where you are."

Linnell asked if the stuffed wolves outside the club had been moving last year because he was finding them distracting. (They were animatronic and their tails wagged.) Flans yelled, "No, they were real!" Linnell said, "No. When we were here last year," or something to that effect. To which Flans replied, "No. They were real. And I was winning!" So funny.

Flans gave kudos to David, their stage manager. He said that there were a lot of types of rock stage set-ups and theirs was known as the "too much shit to fit" configuration and that David did an excellent job cramming it all onto the very round stage.

They played The Guitar, Hey Mr. Dj, Birdhouse, Fingertips and Particle Man. If there was any notable banter in that run I've forgotten it. Linnell commented on the bridge of Particle Man moving to a minor key but just re-sang the verse slowly rather than inserting a song. He did mess up a Triangle Man and a Particle Man at the beginning though and was shaking his head at himself. Throughout the show Flans kept kneeling down at the front of the stage to play guitar and to sing, so he was right in the faces of the people in the front row. He did it during a number of songs but I know Birdhouse was one of them. He also did a spectacular ad lib in I'm Having A Heart Attack, that had me cackling like a looney.





They started using bits of Frankenstein to intro the Avatars segment this weekend. And I was repeatedly amused by Linnell using his hand with the puppet on it to adjust his mic so the puppets mouth was wrapped around it. For some reason though, the puppet segment at Mohegan is mostly a void in my mind. I know Blue Avatar mentioned his soul patch again. I'm pretty sure there was a joke about their 2013 album and possibly about Avatar the movie. Meg Ryan reappeared. Megan has just reminded me that Blue Avatar said that he and his soul patch would be hanging out in the poker room after the show. There was definite recitation of "It is our pleasure to serve you." I know there was at least one other thing in there that I laughed pretty hard at but unless one of you remembers what it was, it's probably lost in the bowels on my memory. They did Shooting Star. Danny took what looked like a welcome opportunity to sit down while he played. They did the Odd Couple music as the outro.

Flans left the camera on, pointed at the crowd while they played Whistling in the Dark. The image vibrated with each bang on the drum until the camera wobbled out of place and was pointed down at Flans. Scott popped up on stage and reset it.

I think I forgot to mention that the whole show was actually displayed on the giant screen above the club. So if you were in the back you could actually watch it on JumboTron. They used it for the puppets too, making them much larger than usual.

For reasons I don't remember, Flans at one point asked Iggy to turn the house lights on so he could see everyone in the crowd. But he had to ask several times before they actually went on. I guess Iggy was busy.

They did We Live in a Dump, which I am realizing is a wonderful song live. Then Flans said that the next song was from their upcoming album and they played Canajoharie. The sound quality was much better tonight and I could understand more of the lyrics. I found myself intently listening while Linnell sang trying to catch them. I still couldn't get a lot of them. But it is a pretty typical Linnell song. It's rather State Songs esque. And it's a total earworm. Even though I don't know the words and have only heard it the 2/3 times (plus the very poor audio quality YouTube video that has sparked so much controversy) I have had it lodged in my head ever since. Every second I am not actively thinking about something that tune is playing in my head. I laid down to go to sleep last night and it was blaring in my ears as if I was actually listening to it. I guess that is the mark of a good song, if it can get that driven into my brain. At this point I would pretty much kill for a version with better audio so I could at least hear the lyrics and stop driving myself crazy trying to figure them out. Oh, and Linnell sang the majority of the song while standing on his toes leaning into the mic which I thought was cute. The live performances did not help answer the debate over live or synthed accordion that arose after the clip video was posted because he played it on keyboard.



Memo to Human Resources. Withered Hope. Keyboard riff. Whee! Then they played Duende without even mentioning that it was a new song. At first I was impressed that Flans was doing it without his lyrics sheet, but then I realized that he was singing all crouched down again and he had the lyrics taped to the back side of one of the speakers on the front of the stage. Linnell had his glasses on again. I was so close to him that he was towering over me the whole show. Duende is less easy to compare to any of their other songs. It really is a march. Flans sings the first verse, then Linnell, then it's back to Flans with Linnell doing some harmony. I went back and rewatched the little clips of both songs that Flans posted on YouTube and they are both pretty instantly recognizable once you have heard the songs. Without weighing in on Canajohariegate, I will say I am sorry not to have a recording of Duende to listen to myself, because, while it did not make as much of an impression on me as Canajoharie, I did quite like it.

Finally, to our everlasting relief, they played Purple Toupee and Stacy finally, FINALLY, got to hear her song. Ok, now it's my turn, right? Yeah, I know. Keep dreaming.

Your Racist Friend. Horn crazy! Doctor Worm. Yup, still love that song. Ana Ng. Seriously, next to the keyboard part of Withered Hope, the bass part in Ana Ng is pretty much my most favorite thing ever played by a musician. Damn Good Times. Killer guitar solo. Dan nailed that one down.



Marty moved over to the electric kit for Nonagon. Flans said that this was almost the first performance of the song, that they had played it the night before but that didn't really count. He said they were reviving New Wave with a song about polygons. I don't know if I've ever mentioned it, but this song it actually one of my favorites from 123s but I always forget about it. I'm glad they've started playing it live.

Marty stayed at the electric kit after the song and started playing the beat he had been doing at sound check. They launched a whole new band intro thing with Marty kickin' it on the electric drums the whole time. I actually kind of missed Graveyard a little because I didn't feel like the guys got as much of a chance to show off but I really liked the rhythm Marty was playing. It would appear that that was what he was working on for so long after sound check; working out the rhythm and programming the effects in the electric drums. We cheered for Marty first instead of last. Then Danny, who was then joined by Dan Levine. Then Stan and lastly Curt. Dan Miller didn't get a go at all. Flans just introduced him with Linnell and then they played The Mesopotamians.

For the encore, the Avatars came back out and did Stalk of Wheat. They thanked TMBG for opening the show for them and made some comment about them eating all the food back stage. There were some particularly great puppet facial expressions during the song. Afterward, they pointed the camera back at Meg Ryan and Flans yelled, "I say Meg, you say Ryan" and we did some ridiculous call and repeat while he spun the camera back and forth between the Avatars and the cutout. It was kind of insane.

And very lastly, they did Istanbul, which is, probably, one of the most spectacular versions of it that I have seen. Flans made a last minute decision, on stage, to have Dan do the intro instead of the horns which he was indicating to them all just before they started. I don't know if he felt bad about skipping Dan in the band intros and wanted to give him some time to shine or what. Maybe he was just really digging Dan's guitar playing tonight. Dan seemed a little surprised but was game and turned out a fantastic performance. Most of the time he was playing, Flans stood with his back to the audience watching Dan on the giant screen, like he was watching from the audience instead of the stage.

The horns still got their chance to show off at the end with some phenomenal improv, particularly from Curt. And they did not one, not two, but THREE fake endings. Flans did his "we gotta go, we gotta go schtick" but just kept revving the guys up for another round. By the third go round, Curt had to briefly defer to Dan and Stan to take point for a minute while he took a second to breath. One thing is for certain, Flans certainly knows how to drive the guys to end a show on a high note. Literally. Wow!



We once again flunked at setlist obtaining. Megan got one though. David's really kind of a tease with the things, swooping them past people's hands while he picks someone to hand it to. I've been totally spoiled.

Damn, really good show.

Now I'll get to work on the Town Hall recaps. I think I remember those a bit more clearly, but we'll see.

The rest of the pictures are up in the usual spot. I've unofficially dubbed this album 1001 pictures of Danny Weinkauf. I also went back and added some pictures in to the Lupo's recap so go back and check those out too if you already read that one.