The Mysterious Disappearance of Dan Miller

October 30, 2010 - Quick Center for the Arts - Fairfield, CT - Rock Show

Let's see. Now where were we.... Oh right, we had just left to get pizza with Kathy. I had read on the website for the venue that only the main entrance to Fairfield University was going to be open during the evening show so I was a little hesitant to leave campus because I wasn't sure how to get back in, having come in the other way. But Kathy drove so I figured we didn't have to worry about it. Fortunately, we decided to head back to the theater early because when we arrived at the main gate there was traffic backed up in both directions waiting to enter. I think we were lucky because we weren't coming from the direction of the interstate so there weren't too many cars in front of us. I couldn't even see the back of the line of cars coming the other way.

We could not figure out what was taking so long until we realized they were stopping every car at the security booth and IDing all the passengers. But we couldn't tell why. We were speculating that there was some event going on on campus for Halloween but that still didn't explain why they were checking IDs. It took us about 15 or 20 minutes of sitting in the traffic to get through the gate. Then when we got there Kathy told them we were there for the show and they just let us through without checking our IDs or tickets or anything. Quality security, that. "Oh, you're TMBG fans? In that case, go right on through."

We got around to the theater about a half hour before doors to find the place nearly deserted. There was one other couple waiting in the lobby, talking with the TMBG merch guy and a few theater employees discussing the traffic. It was clear from the moment we walked in that the traffic at the gate was causing big problems. It was already obvious to the staff that they were going to have to delay the show because half the audience wasn't going to be able to get in by 8:00pm. They were discussing possibly needing to go general admission (the place had assigned seats) because they only had two ushers as the rest were stuck out in traffic.

We got to overhear an entertaining cell phone conversation between the obviously panicked director of the theater and someone in the security office where he was trying to explain that he had 800 people coming to the theater in the next 45 minutes for two different shows that were happening at the same time and it was taking 2 minutes to check every car into the campus. I had to give the guy a lot of credit for remaining calm and not yelling when he was obviously FREAKING OUT. Apparently the director of the other show was out in the traffic along with all the ushers, causing even more problems. The guy was desperately trying to convince them to open another gate to allow the traffic to enter faster, meanwhile the few people who were trickling in were reporting that traffic was backed up all the way to the interstate.

We also learned from some of the students in the building, that the increased security was do to threats of gang activity on campus that they felt were probably bogus but had to react to anyway just in case. Really? Gang activity at a TMBG show? Now that's a first.

I was listening to all of this with half an ear, with the other ear tuned to the chatty merch guy who was gleefully spilling promising info about the new album to the other couple in the lobby. I'm not going to repeat here because I don't want to feed the rumor mill on that large a scale but I'll gladly share with anyone privately who cares to ask.

They let us into the theater about 10 minutes late and we slowly watched people trickle in every few minutes. I had had a horrible thought while standing in the lobby. "I hope the band didn't leave between the shows." Sure enough, we soon learned via Iggy that the Johns were in fact stuck out in the traffic with the rest of the fans. Guess there was no question about having to delay the show now. I have to admit, I was more amused by the whole situation at that point than anything else. There was a certain level of absurdity to it all.

When the theater was about half full and the show was about a half hour behind in starting, Scott and Iggy and Vince all appeared with arm loads of foam fingers. Because how to you appease a crowd of TMBG fans waiting for a delayed show? You give them free foam hands. Everybody got one. Even if you didn't want one you got one. Oh, and I fell out of my chair standing up to grab mine. Apparently those things collapse when you stand up. Actually went down on my ass on the floor. It was pretty embarrassing but I am reliving it here so my companions can have another good laugh about it at my expense :-P

They must have eventually opened that second gate the director was asking for because after about a half hour, there was a definite increase in the flow of people coming in. The show wasn't sold out but there were probably 200-300 people that had gotten held up by the security debacle.

Sitting in the theater, staring at the empty stage, I suddenly realized that Dan's keyboard was missing. Then I started looking around and realized his guitars were missing too. None of the guitars were on stage yet but even his stands weren't there and I could see the rack backstage and I couldn't see them on it. Then we started speculating wildly. Was Dan not going to be there? Why? He had been there earlier, where had he gone? How would they do a show without him? What would they play? Would Flans play his parts or would they play songs that they have alternate arrangements for without guitar? But most importantly, where was Dan?! I had actually worked myself into a pretty good panic about it by the time the show started. Somewhere in there I also realized that the electronic drums were gone too but that didn't phase me as much because I just assumed they weren't playing anything that used them. About the time the band took the stage, I was going through songs in my head that Dan doesn't play on ("Ok, they can do Don't Let's Start and Dead and James K. Polk...."), somehow still hoping that I was wrong and Dan would magically appear but actually knowing that he wasn't going to. By that point David had laid out the guitars and Dan's just weren't there.

Sure enough, when the lights went down and the intro music started, out popped Marty and Danny, then Flans and Linnell and that was it. Ok, says I, this is going to be interesting.

Flans started off with some jokes about the security issue. "Sorry about the delay folks. It wasn't your fault. Circumstances beyond our control. Everybody had their IDs checked? Everybody feel nice and safe?" Or something like that. I found it interesting that Flans thought that the audience might think they were at fault for the delay. I guess I can see thinking that people might believe they had held the show to allow time for the audience to get through traffic and thus people might blame themselves for the show being late because they were late. Anyway, interesting choice of words, Flansburgh.

They jumped into Meet the Elements. This wasn't so weird without Dan's guitar because they have so often done it with just the Johns and Marty on the radio and at in-stores and such. What was weird was hearing a mostly full band version without Dan's vocals. If there was ever any question of whether Dan's vocals are present on the recording you would only need to hear this version to say, "Oh hell yes, they are. That sounds totally different!" And I missed the funny face he makes while he sings.

They went straight from that into New York City. Jason yelled, "I love you John Flansburgh!" He replied, "I love you too dude. If there is time I want to tell every single person in the audience how much I love them over the course of the show."



Flans said there were a few songs off their upcoming album that they had learned to play but they were only going to do one of them for us tonight. Canajoharie, of course. I was very curious to see what they would do about the guitar solo. Linnell ended up making up something similar on the keyboard that wasn't too bad. He also either botched the first words of the song or purposefully changed them. Whatever he sang it wasn't what he has been singing. He changed another word here and there as he went through but he's been doing that every time. It hasn't been identical in any two performances. I have a pretty decent video of it and I can almost make out those last two missing lines but not quite. But damn, that is a good song.

Some general observations about the show before I go on. Thinking about it later, the band obviously knew that Dan wasn't going to be there for at least a little while before the show. All of his stuff had been packed up and either put away or taken with him before we ever even got in the theater. The setlist was obviously designed with the lack of Dan in mind so had been prepared knowing he wasn't there. Many of you have probably heard my theory on why Dan wasn't there but we will probably never actually know. They dealt with his absence in a variety of ways. They did play several songs that he doesn't play on anyway. Flans picked up the slack on some songs. They played a bunch that they have arrangements for with just the Johns and Marty for radio appearances and the like and just added the bass in. They covered up the lack of guitar with horns in a few cases. And on some songs they just played it like they always do, ignoring Dan's part and just letting it sound different. I do remember one moment in a song, something near the beginning, where there was a few bars of near silence where they had obviously forgotten to fill in something that Dan plays but other than that they did a really good job compensating.

I can't remember what it was in reference to, but at one point near the beginning Flansburgh said, "This show isn't just cursed, it's haunted." Aside from being a great quote, the fact that Flans was considering the show cursed leads me to believe that Dan's absence was being bundled in with the delay in his mind in the category of "Thing that have gone wrong with this show." Despite that, Flans seemed to be in pretty good spirits. I feared a Charlotte type scenario before they took the stage since Flans often does not react well to stuff going wrong, but he seemed to be finding the humor in the situation. And Linnell was being downright silly. Though he looks very tired in all of the pictures I took of him.

Whether he was trying to compensate for the missing man on stage, or just enjoying all the extra space to roam around in, Danny was rocking his butt off all night. I mean that pretty literally too. The man did not stand still all night long. He was jumping and bouncing and rocking back and forth from one side of the stage to the other and back again. I couldn't get a clear picture of him all night because he never, ever stopped moving. He certainly seems to have recovered from that leg injury that was plaguing him a month ago. And he definitely brought his A-game to the show. Withered Hope kind of blew my mind.

We were seated in the fourth row of the theater, left center. The seats were not bad at all because even right in front of the stage they were tiered. But I was still pretty bitter about not being in the front. I pre-ordered my tickets over the phone a month before they went on sale online and told them at the time that I wanted to be as close to the front as possible. Then the people who bought tickets later, when they did go on sale online, were able to select the front row seats. Tell me, how is that fair? There was no space between the front row and the stage for anyone to stand stage side except the people in those chairs so when we did stand up in was in our rows. All of that has no bearing on the show itself, but did serve to dampen my mood just a tiny bit.

Back to the actual setlist. Flans introduced Stan for Cowtown as Staniel Elliot Harrison, our 14th president who had returned from beyond the grave to play the clarinet (this very well may have been where the joke about the show being cursed and haunted came from). Flans asked Staniel to play a little and he played a short sequence of notes. Linnell leaned over and said something to him that I didn't catch but Stan replied that they had only had three notes back then. Flans then asked Linnell to play and he played one loud toot which Flans deemed perfect.



They breezed through We Live in a Dump (with Danny continuing to sing the ba-ba-bada-da part with no mic which amuses me to know end) and Birdhouse where Flans rocked as the solo guitar player.



Then Flans needed to stop and fix something on his guitar. He asked Linnell to talk about the next song. Linnell said there wasn't much to say about it. Flans said, "no really, what's the song about?" obviously trying to get Linnell to fill time. Linnell wasn't having it. "I think it's pretty self explanatory." Fortunately, someone in the audience saved him by yelling out, "Where's Dan Miller?" Linnell: "He's not here." Flans made some joke I didn't catch. Linnell: "He was throwing gang signs at the early show and they asked him to leave." They never did explain where he really was.

Flans said that this setlist was special because they were going to be playing one song off of each of their albums, including the new one, but that if we could figure out which album they skipped we would win a prize. He said something about all of us furiously thinking back on what they had already played. "Send us a message with the album we skipped to @kanyewest and you can win a brand new Sony iPad. Did I just make that up? I did, didn't I? Remember @kanyewest to win your fabulous Sony iPad." For the record, the album they skipped was 123s.

They played Turn Around, a fabulously Halloweeny song. I kept seeing peoples comments afterwards about how excited they were to hear it because it was pretty rare and I kept thinking, "Really? I don't think it's that rare. I've heard it a bunch." But then I realized that two of the times I heard it were at Apollo 18 shows and the other three before tonight were all on the spring tour down south so I guess for most people it is pretty rare. Huh. Go figure.

Then Stan came forward and they busted into Spy, which I was psyched about since they skipped it from the setlist in Port Washington. And oh, was this a glorious performance. Stan blew the roof off the intro at the beginning. Then, at the end, Linnell started directing the band to take turns making crazy music noises and then came out front and directed the band and the audience in a glorious cacophony of "woos" and music while making some incredibly ridiculous faces and hand gestures. He turned it over to Flans who took turns conducting the band and twanging his own guitar with this crazed look on his face.  It was epic. There is a video of it linked from the wiki. You should go watch it. It's really funny.





They played Meet James Ensor, double dipping on the John Henry tracks. Older took care of Mink Car. Flans made some more silly faces and very weird noises playing the beginning. They dumped about two tons of confetti on our heads and of course we were in the direct path of the cannon on our side and got blanketed. For a good portion of the beginning of the show I was plagued with a coughing attack (I get these stupid tickles in my throat sometimes, usually when I have a cold, that make me cough until I can't breath and my eyes water and I turn purple until I get some water but I wasn't about to leave the show to go find some) and let me tell you, having compressed air and tiny bits of paper blown at your face while you are already having trouble breathing is a kind of scary experience. Thankfully it cleared up soon after. By the end of the song Linnell had a piece of confetti stuck behind his ear which you can see in the picture below.





The Avatars came out, still with their colors all messed up. Meg Ryan came out and chatted for a minute until Flans told her it was time for her to go away. Blue Avatar asked Green Avatar what he was going to be for Halloween. Green said he was going to be a blur. "Not the band, the thing." Blue said he was going to go as pulp. "Blur and pulp. Those are great costumes." Blue said they had done the kids show earlier in the day and the swearing hadn't gone over too well. (I think he was kidding, I don't remember them accidently swearing at all.) He said what did go over was when he told them he was going to be a skeleton, then Flans ripped off the puppet again to show his bare hand on the screen again. He made some kind of joke about the kids being too sensitive. (The implication was, I guess, that the kids were traumatized by seeing that Blue was just a puppet on a hand.) Green cried, "Stupid kids." Then Blue said they only had one song to sing for us and asked Green what song they were going to do. "We're going to do a song from another They Might Be Giants album. I think it was called Fumbling Towards Ecstasy by Sarah McLachlan. That's the name of the They Might Be Giants album." They did Stalk of Wheat with a very rough, off-key start that made one of them laugh while singing. I think they were thrown off by Dan's missing keyboard cue.

Then we finally got to stand up for Clap Your Hands. We whooped it up for Marty, the next Lieutenant Governor of New York State then clapped and stomped and jumped like champs. And we stayed standing for the rest of the show which was a major energy booster.

They busted into Withered Hope and pretty much blew me away. As I said before, Curt blew the roof off and Danny was on fire. Jaw. Floor.



Don't Let's Start was kind of a given, being one of the few songs Dan doesn't play on anyway. Flans went kind of crazy with the guitar and at one point took it off and was strumming on it with it face down a couple inches from the floor. And both he and Danny were doing these exaggerated arm movements on the twangs on letters (D-world destruction, O-ver and overture, etc). The whole song totally rocked.

They surprised me by doing Au Contraire again. I wasn't expecting that. Then The Guitar, which was kind of ironic without the guitar player. Stan and Curt did some excellent wailing but they didn't drag it out as long as they did in Port Washington where the song just lasted forever.

Stan did another excellent sax solo on James K. Polk. We got one of those somewhat rare occasions of a show with both Don't Let's Start and Ana Ng. Fine by me. I will listen to the bass part in Ana Ng forever. It is my favorite.

Curt got another turn in the spotlight on Your Racist Friend. I didn't realize until I was writing it out now, how very horn heavy the show was.

What is labeled as Graveyard on the wiki was really the new tune Marty has concocted, played on the regular kit in lieu of the electric. They really need a name for that thing. It's groovy. My favorite part of the intros was while Marty was wrecking his kit with the lights flashing all over the place and Flans yelled, "We would like to report that Marty's shit is on fire."

Flans: "Here's a song we like to call...(to Linnell) just do it."

Linnell: "It's called Doctor Worm."

I definitely noticed the lack of Dan's vocals on this song too which was odd. They fled the stage after the song and when they came back Linnell and Danny crawled back in through the back of the horn stand just for the hell of it.

They introduced Alphabet of Nations with Linnell standing at the keyboard and my first thought was, "Oh no! He can't play that on the keyboard. I just listened to him try to do it on that radio show last year and he was messing up all over the place." And sure enough, Linnell should really not try to play keyboard on Alphabet of Nations. He is incredibly out of practice on it and was messing up chords left and right and having a hard time singing it and playing it at the same time. He accidently came in on one of Flansburgh's countries at the beginning. It was pretty funny though. And he had left his clarinet lying on the crowd in front of the keyboard and needed to use the sustain pedal so was having to stand at a kind of awkward angle over it until Danny came over and rescued the clarinet by moving it to the side.

Flans had this funny introduction before Asbury Park about how the song was about a club that they really enjoy playing in but you wouldn't know it from the song and he didn't want us to get the wrong impression.

Linnell picked up his accordion for Particle Man and Flans started telling everyone to clap but wasn't demonstrating because he was indicating to Linnell that he wanted to do the silly I Love to Sing keyboard/Kaoss Pad thing on the bridge, which was obvious from his miming of a finger on the Kaoss Pad. Thus the clapping was kind of all over the place and I was standing in the center clapping over my head feeling like it was my obligation to demonstrate proper Particle Man clapping to those behind me since no one on stage was. Flans eventually said, "It's on the back beat, people. The two and the four." They all got it eventually.

They played the song normally until the bridge when Flans and Danny moved to their positions on either side of the keyboard to await Linnell's directions. Linnell started to sing I Love to Sing but then stopped to say "Watch the clarinet" to Flansburgh who was stepping precariously close to it. This got a really good laugh from the audience. Megan leaned over to ask me if "watch the clarinet" was going to be the new "wait for Scott" in our circle. Yes, Megan, I think it is. Linnell then proceeded to direct the guys on one of the most ridiculous "I'm crazy" interludes I have ever seen. Flans was banging the keyboard with his fist and Linnell was making noises that sounded like he was choking to death while making the silliest faces. The horn players were just laughing at them. When Linnell finally moved on to the next line of the song, Danny stepped back from the keyboard so that when Linnell wanted them to go again he turned to Danny and did this exaggerated mime of putting his finger back on the pad. Then Flans started clapping again at the end and then, in my very favorite part of the whole thing, Danny started making fun of either Flans' clapping or someone in the audience I couldn't see. But he kind of clapped once and then was just smacking his hands all together. This got such a good reaction from the audience that he turned to face us and did it again. And I laughed forever. Thankfully, you do not need to rely on my description of this. It was all caught on a video that I'll include at the end. I keep watching it and laughing out loud every single time.









For the second encore they did Dead, other obligatory one as it's another one Dan doesn't play. And then they closed it all out with a pretty epic Istanbul with Stan on the intro, Curt on the outro, Flans on the "They say we have to go, but we don't want to go!" with the rest of the guys all shaking their heads, an ever so slightly botched beginning to the vocals and the confetti cannon drowning us forever so that there was confetti ankle deep on the left side of the room when they finished playing. Whee!



Total fail on getting the setlist again this time. David actually went so far as to "accidently" rip Linnell's in half before giving it to someone. Geez. But I got lots of confetti. Great show but I missed Dan. I actually kind of wish the last show of the year had been a little more familiar and routine so I'd feel a little better about the long gap between shows I'm about to have, but I can't really complain. The show rocked.

I'm including this fantastic video of highlights from the show taken by a couple I just connected with on YouTube and realized we have been to a ton of the same shows. Hi guys! There are a ton of great bits included but the Particle Man section is by far my favorite. It's towards the end.



If you go check out YouTube there is also another Particle Man video with more of the song but from the other side of the stage so you can't see the guys funny faces as well and a great Istanbul one from the same user.

I was not happy with the way any of my pictures from this day came out but there are a few additional ones on Flickr if you are interesting, including a few more in the Particle Man sequence.

Well, that's my last recap of the year. Who knows when the next show will be. I've pretty much decided at this point that I don't care where the next show is, I'm going even if it's in Alaska. I'm betting on March for the next tour but I still hope they might do something in January or February so I don't have to wait that long. We'll see. Until then I'll still be here doing my regular weekly entries whenever you need a TMBG fan fix. Cheers!