Dan Miller Day

September 15, 2011 - Harro East Ballroom - Rochester, NY

Rochester, NY, birthplace of guitar god, Dan Miller. Flans declared it Dan Miller Day and Dan Miller Day it was. I was terribly pleased to see that someone followed through on the requests for baked goods for Dan Miller and brought him a cake since I was a million miles from my kitchen and could not.

We had a little trouble finding this place. I keep joking about putting a homing beacon on the tour bus to help me find venues and it would have been very useful in this case. Directions and parking instructions on the website were vague. We ended up parking on the street and wandering around trying to confirm we were in the right place.

This become clear when we turned a corner and found, not only the tour bus but also Jonathan Coulton and his All Stars unloading their van. Phew. TMBG was on stage for soundcheck as we passed the open side door to the venue and were once again practicing You Don't Like Me, which they again didn't play in the show. I sure hope it's ready for Cleveland and they don't roll it out in the week I'm not around.

At first glance, this venue looked like a gymnasium. It did turn out to be slightly classier than my original impression, but only to the level of school auditorium. It's basically a wedding and events hall and that was indeed exactly what it looked like.

I spent a good hour and a half in line outside desperately trying to finish the previous night's recap while my fingers slowly froze to icicles in the wind. I've forgotten what it's like being cold waiting for a show. I think I prefer sweltering in line to freezing.

I had decided before we arrived that the only appropriate place to watch a show on Dan Miller Day was at the feet of the man himself and that is exactly where we positioned ourselves, bathed in the aura of Dan Miller - lit from within. The down side of this was that it put me directly in front of a large speaker and I went almost immediately deaf in my right ear as soon as JoCo started playing. Everything coming in that ear is muffled, even now.

JoCo completely changed up his set today. He and Brandon commented part way through the show that they were playing the high energy Jonathan Coulton set. He didn't do a solo song at the beginning, starting right off with the band on Code Monkey. They followed it up with Shop Vac. (Side-note: we drive past a giant Shop-Vac building on our way to Pittsburgh and wished we could have taken a picture.) He pointed out that TMBG were playing tonight with the gleeful enthusiasm of an excited fanboy. Then a double set of Artificial Heart tracks with Sticking It To Myself and the title track. Jonathan said it felt good to have a new album out for the first time in 15 years. He also keeps talking about how the song Artificial Heart is a clever marketing ploy to get people to remember the name of the album.

They brought out Big Bad World One for the first time this tour. He said the song was about feeling awkward in social situations and when a bunch of people cheered he called them nerds.

Then Still Alive and Sucker Punch. JoCo teased Christian before the later song because he had to be reminded how the song went. I was really happy that made it back into the set as it's one of my favorites from the album.

And finally I Feel Fantastic. Great set, even if it did start me on the road to permanent hearing loss. When JoCo came back out for his stuff, the guy with the photo pass to our left asked him if he could photograph the setlist and JoCo gave it to him. But the guy totally didn't get it and then went to put it back after he got his picture. So another fan down the way ended up snagging it because none of the people in the front were big enough JoCo fans to care. It was a little silly.

Marty's drum has acquired a new drum head but it is blank, sad and completely void of alien life. I had never realized until I had the drum head in my hands that the alien and lettering are carefully applied pieces of tape put together to make the design. Apparently, no one had the time to reapply all that tape to the new one before the show. I'd gladly volunteer for that art project given the opportunity.

The Giants played the exact same set as Pittsburgh, right down to reusing the setlist. Two days on each setlist seems to be the pattern.

I'm not sure I had ever fully noticed before that when the intro starts and Marty bolts onto the stage in the dark as he always does, that Victor is actually standing next to the drum riser with a flash light shining it along his path so he doesn't trip over anything. He then flips it back to light up the floor for whoever approaches that side next, in this case Danny. Just one more funny little thing to add to my mental catalog.

Linnell handed out the signed Join Us vinyl this time, in a change of pass. There was a serious scrabble of hands reaching for it.

Flans started right off by announcing that it was Dan Miller Day and heaping some praise on Dan. He started off The Guitar like he was narrating the beginning of a biopic on Dan. "It all began here for Dan with..." And then he started the song. Instead of having Danny and Linnell take the solos, Flans surprised Dan by yelling "All I want to hear is the electric guitar!" Then he had all of us clap, spin around in circles and chant "Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan" while Dan played (not many people, myself included, could really execute the spinning in the crowd). Flans said that just like Ocean's 11, they were currently planning an elaborate raid on the nearby House of Guitars. "No one will suspect that while we are doing this show, we are also stealing all of the guitars for Dan."

In the middle of The Guitar, Danny completely thrilled some girl standing in the middle of the front row by leaning down and saying something to her while he played. I have no idea what he said, but it clearly made her night. (Another side note: Since I started writing I have seen the full story on this, which is really rather cool, but not my story to tell.)

This time it was Dan having monitor troubles and he spent a good portion of the next song or two with John Carter hanging off his back attempting to fix it while he played, moving around as he did. It was pretty ridiculous to watch. Eventually, John just got a new one and Dan went back stage briefly to change it out after shaking off John's offer to try to attach the new one while he played.

Sadly, all of my memory of any of the banter in the first break before We Live In A Dump is gone. It might come back to me later but for now it remains lost.

There were people doing some serious Birdhouse pogoing behind me. During Clap Your Hands, Flans yelled "Dan Miller, stomp your feet!"

For Battle of the Planet of the Apes they brought out a random trombone player to join the Johns and the apes. I didn't catch his full name but his first name was Rick and he was apparently a Rochester native. No more explanation was given than that.

The people versus apes war began even before they started the show, as we prepared for our rolls and it was loud and fierce. Flans, for once, was very clear about the instructions. I don't know if that was a factor or if it was the addition of the trombone but this battle was hugely successful and loud! And for the first time this tour, the apes (myself included) won! We were just too loud and over powering not to. As the trombone player left the stage, Flans yelled "Get that man a T-shirt!"

Flans said they've been doing the song for three weeks now and the people always win but he didn't feel he could just throw it to the people Halliburton style this time. Especially with the joie de vivre the apes had shown.

I think there was some additional banter here too but it's also lost in my memory.

Before The Mesopotamians, Linnell said the song was about a Near Eastern rock band who had a TV show in the 60s that he had been allowed to stay up late to watch for reasons he could not remember. There was a girl behind me who was VERY excited about this song. Linnell started joking that they weren't actually going to play the song, they were going to play it how he remembered it because he couldn't remember how the actual theme song from the show went.

The Avatars segment started with Flans welcoming us to Don Kircshner's Rock Concert and announcing tonight's guests: Sparks, David Bowie and The Commodores. (In restrospect, this is how they started the segment the night before too.)
After some stuff about being contractually obligated to sing a TMBG song, the Avatars went back and forth, both in a stage whisper, in a very aside about TMBG."Those guys are mean. They're really mean. We have to whisper or the parole bracelets will go off. At the end of the night they stick us in a suitcase. And who wants to be in a suitcase? No one! Just because we don't have arms. Or bodies." And then they suddenly went back to full volume with "Let's hear it for They Might Be Giants! Those guys are great!" At the end of the Avatars segment, Blue thanked the House of Guitars for sponsoring the show.

As Linnell went to get the accordion for Particle Man Flans told him to wait and asked him where the giant poster was. Linnell said he didn't know, but someone held it up back stage and he ran (yes, ran) back to get it. He helped Flans unroll it and Flans talked about it again. He once again talked about how they thought it was a brilliant idea at first but now it wasn't selling and it seemed like a terrible idea. He suggested it as excellent dorm room decoration and then at the end of the year you could sell it on eBay. People in the crowd really wanted him to give it away and he was obviously torn, but got out of it by presenting it as a gift to Dan. He said again that it was too expensive to give away.

Somewhere near the end they talked about some of their upcoming shows but all the nearest ones were sold out so Flans said nobody could go to them and they'd have to go to Detroit. He said they have a new video for Cloisonne coming out on Monday that will be released on RollingStone.com. It is apparently a live performance video featuring the entire band. "Faces! Places!" I found this announcement terribly exciting!

Flans made several jokes about finding them online at fountainsofwayne.com and on Twitter @fountainsofwayne. Linnell suggested we could check Jonathan Coulton's website for their tour schedule.

Have I mentioned yet that I figured out what Flans was having Marty program into the electronic pad for Istanbul several night back? Instead of the gong signaling the transition from Dan's solo to the song, Marty has started turning on the siren sound which often used to be part of the Avatar intro. So the siren now wails over the first few measures of the song proper.

After Lie Still, Little Bottle, Flans said he thought he heard some drunk guy in the crowd requesting Istanbul, which they had already played. Then he did a brief band intro that initially looked like it was going to resemble the crazy one from the night before but only Dan really did his crazy noise.

And the night got to appropriately close with Dan's screaming guitar solo in Damn Good Times.

We got completely trapped at the front of the stage during the sticker distribution, smooshed in by Marty's feet while people reached over our heads. This did give us the opportunity to note that Marty has a piece of tape on the end of his shoe that says "Hi!" Teehee.

Victor had to reach down and around behind Marty to give me my setlist and gave me a really funny look that was either "Why are you stuck over in the corner?" or "Why are you still here?" Either way, it was funny.

And thus ended Dan Miller Day. I definitely feel like I haven't retained as much of this show as some of the previous ones and I've remembered at least three things from the Pittsburgh show that I forgot to mention while I was writing this one. I'll definitely have to go back and do a follow up post of all the stuff I forgot. But I did get some great pictures from this one so hopefully that will make up for anything I've neglected to remember.