They played at this free outdoor street festival thing in St Louis yesterday. The review starts now (and for those of you who may already have read it on alt.music.tmbg, I did add a few things which I forgot to put into that review); if you'd like to hear a bit about the bus trip, read on:

So, I decided to take Greyhound down to St Louis, leaving that morning and coming back that night after the show. I figured it would cost about as much as gas for driving anyway, and the reassuring feeling that I wouldn't be directly endangering my own life or that of others by driving while dozy was worth it too.

I'd never taken Greyhound anywhere before. One thing I learned: people who ride buses are really chatty, much more so than people on planes. Perhaps it's because you're on the bus for so much longer. On the way down I sat next to this guy who got on the bus in Joliet. For a while he talked to another lady who'd also gotten on at Joliet, and when she left the bus, he tried to talk to me instead.

Now, I hate trying to talk to people I don't know. Mostly because I'm really shy and bad at small talk, but also because they usually want to talk about things that don't interest me at all. Bus conversations (as I also discovered) generally begin with one person asking another where they're headed, and where they're coming from. This man volunteered the information that he was going to Georgia. I, having nothing better to say, observed that that was a long way. And he said yes, and he was never going back to Plainfield (I think it was Plainfield).

At that point, given the way he'd said it, I was definitely a little curious, but I don't feel right about questioning people I don't know, even when I've pretty much been invited to. So there was a silence, and then I thought, rather regretfully, "I should have asked him. I bet there's some romantic story about his leaving Plainfield, and now I'll never know."

Well, we still had three hours left in the bus, so I did know, and it didn't turn out to be very romantic; he was just taking a transfer in his job. (Something to do with electrical parts.) However, as a conversational partner he wasn't bad. I'd doze off for a bit, then we'd drive along and he'd make observations about the things we passed, and sometimes I asked him polite questions in response to things that he said. We saw a house that was under the ground, and we agreed that that was strange. He told me he'd been in the service, and some thoughts on his time in the service. We saw a house with an enormous, sloped yard and he said, "Man, I'd hate to have to mow that lawn." He asked me why I was going to St Louis, and, not wanting to explain that I was going down and coming back the same day to see a concert, I told him I was meeting some friends. (At the bus station back in Chicago, while we were waiting in line, this nice man in front of me—he was going with his wife to Oklahoma—had seemed very surprised that I had brought no luggage, and asked me about it. I also told him I was meeting some friends, although that reason really couldn't explain my lack of a change of clothes.) He asked me what I do, and I told him I'm a student, and that I'm studying French, and he was surprised (as people usually are when I tell them I'm a student of French), but I was equally surprised when he said, "I learned a little bit of French when I was in culinary school." He certainly didn't look like a former culinary school student. So I learned a valuable lesson myself about judging by appearances. And he offered me starlight mints periodically during the trip, which was certainly a heartwarming gesture.

We finally arrived in St Louis, and I bid my new friend good luck in Georgia. I'd determined beforehand that the bus station was only about half a mile from the concert site, but as I was walking over there I wasn't too encouraged by the looks of the neighborhood (not helped by my hearing of the conversation of two guys behind me on the way in; one of them, a St Louis native, loudly explained that the bus station was in the worst part of town and there were crimes there every night). I decided maybe I'd take a cab back from the concert to the bus station. But that comes later...

I got to the corner of Washington & Tucker at about 6. TMBG were scheduled to come at 8:30, after three openers. The 2nd opener, Lucky Boys Confusion, were still on when I got there. I'd never heard of them before, but they weren't bad. The 3rd opener was Eve 6, and let me say that between those two bands' crews I'd never seen so many shirtless, tattooed, baggy-panted roadies in one area before. (The lead singer of Lucky Boys Confusion was also bare-chested and tattooed.)

The name Eve 6 sounded familiar, but I wasn't sure I knew them. It turns out they do that "I wanna put my tender/heart in a blender" song. I figured that out when they played it. The lead singer, who with his red-headed seriousness reminded me of that guy in Simply Red, kept doing these weird poses on one leg, and the guitar player looked about sixteen years old. I wasn't really into their set, but I'd gotten up to the very front and was not going to leave that spot, even though, after Eve 6 had finished their set and gone away, I could see all the members of TMBG wandering around the edges of the stage (the venue was outdoors, so the backstage area was basically a street intersection, not really enclosed) and bystanders talking to Them, all of them, including Linnell, who, as far as I could tell, was even responding to the bystanders. I decided being in the front row was more important to me and stayed put.

The people around me were busy getting drunk and having annoying conversations, but eventually the music started and drowned them out.

Setlist:

Orff intro / Clap Your Hands / Birdhouse in Your Soul / Wicked Little Critta / John Lee Supertaster / James K. Polk / Your Racist Friend / In the Middle / Au Contraire / Drink! / Dr Worm / The Famous Polka / The Statue Got Me High / Doom->Spin the Dial / Older / Why Does the Sun Shine? / Battle for the Planet of the Apes / Cyclops Rock / Ana Ng / No! // Istanbul (not Constantinople) / Fingertips // Monkees theme / New York City

As usual, scan of the setlist, photos, and a couple 10-second videos available on my site.

Hypnotist of Ladies was on the setlist but not played, and the two encores were quite different than written: encore 1 was to be Violin/We're the Replacements/NYC, encore 2 Monkees/Sleepwalkers.

The show was sponsored by José Cuervo and Budweiser, so there were a lot of loud drunks in the audience. I was surrounded by women screaming at the top of their lungs at random moments and this guy who sang drunkenly along at incredible volume, and kept shouting "Danny [sic], you're so hot!" whenever Dan Miller played a solo.

Nonetheless, I had a great time. The weather was gorgeous and just right for an outdoor show, not too hot, not too cold. The sun went down as TMBG's set proceeded, which I thought was great staging. The band had a lot of technical problems, though—Miller's guitar wasn't on when they started the first song, and Flans kept complaining that he couldn't hear himself or Linnell. Eventually Miller took out his earpieces and just left them off.

So, banter and stuff:

The end of Clap Your Hands: "Everybody scream!" (everybody screams) "Everybody swear!" (everybody swears) "Everybody swear again!" (everybody swears again) "Lemme hear you say 'bullshit'!" (everybody screams "bullshit")

Wicked Little Critta was great. I hadn't seen it live before.

John Lee Supertaster is one of my favorite songs. Dan Miller did that thing where he's playing two guitars for it—the intro on the Danelectro, the rest of the song on the Strat (he just had those two and his acoustic, for those of you who, like me, like to keep track). Two guitars at once! (I have pictures.) Then when Dan was doing his solo, Flans came up behind him and looked over his shoulder as if to study what Dan was doing.

Sadly, James K Polk had no confetti (perhaps they thought blasting confetti into a Cuervo-soaked crowd was too dangerous), but on the last note all the guys bowed in unison (carefully holding up their respective instruments), which I had not seen before and thought was mighty cute.

Au Contraire:
JL: This is a brand-new song, you can't buy it anywhere, but you can download it off the internet. And we don't make any money off that, which is cool.

Someone had turned in a lost wallet and Flans made an announcement about it. He held the wallet up, read the name off the driver's license, described the guy's picture, and then proceeded to rifle through it and tell us all about the contents. I assume the guy got his wallet back eventually.

Drink:
JF: This song features the acoustic guitar stylings of Mr Stormy Black. [aside: Flans has really latched onto this Stormy Black joke, hasn't he?]
DM: [plays some cheesy 80s song]
JF: Stormy is an enabler, ladies and gentlemen. [to Dan] Play a little more.
DM: [plays some other cheesy 80s song]
crowd: Whoo!
JL: You know, we go "whoo," just privately, when he's playing, backstage.
JF & JL: Whoo!
JL: So it's cool that you do it, it's just a normal reaction to his playing.

As they were getting ready for Dr Worm, Flans said to the soundman, "I'd like to point out that Mr Linnell is now on the center mic." And Linnell, on the center mic: "I kind of feel like every mic I'm on is the center mic."

Before the Famous Polka, Dan Miller was way over at stage right, behind the speaker stacks and hidden from view from most of the audience; and as the song started, he motioned to the stage manager, like "look at me." And then during that little 1-2-3-hey! sort of intro, he did this weird little leaping dance in time to the beats (still wearing his guitar, even), then stepped back out from behind the stack to play his part. It was totally bizarre and hilarious. During the song, Flans held out his guitar out, but I was too short to reach it, and anyway the people over to my right kept pulling it in that direction, away from me. Afterwards, Flans said to a girl over that way, "You know, we've done the audience-playing-the-guitar thing many times, but this is the first time we've had someone like, 'Give me the guitar. The red one. For meeee.' You know, you might have some entitlement issues."

Spin the Dial featured Missing You (John Waite), which came back in Older. I love that gimmick, by the way. Dan Miller did that two-guitars-at-the-same-time thing again for the Doom music, using the Danelectro to make a sitar-like sound.

Why Does the Sun Shine: it's caused by the nuclear reactions between various cities in the St Louis area, but I was amused to hear Flans include Sauget. I think they were in Sauget almost two years ago, but the last time They played St Louis (last March), Flans was still talking about their traumatic experience there. (He'd also mentioned it at the show in Chicago a couple days afterward.) Apparently the place they played in Sauget was basically a strip club, and Flans had found that upsetting and depressing.

Battle for the Planet of the Apes: the robots won. I'd never seen this song performed before either.

Before No! They did the thank-you song. Flans sang, "Hey, that really really tall guy, we want to thank the woman standing behind you for coming to the show. She couldn't see anything, and she's really resentful..."

Dan Miller's Istanbul solo was definitely shorter than usual. When he was finished he turned abruptly away and put the acoustic back in its stand, as if declaring that his work here was done. He put it away with such finality, in fact, that it fell backward onto the ground and the stage manager hastily ran up there and straightened it up again. Dan played the rest of the song on the Strat, which was something new for me.

After Istanbul, Flans said, "We've got just 18 more songs for you now...this song is called Fingertips." During the Darkened Corridors bit, I saw the stage manager motioning questioningly to Dan Miller. Dan nodded "okay" and a minute later, finally coming into his own as a guitar god, he jumped up on top of a stack of speakers for his solo. (Again, yes, I have pictures. Toward the end.) Okay, it was kind of a small stack, but still. I feel if Dan could have found a taller one, he would have.

After the first encore, people kept screaming "one more song! one more song!" (mixed in with shouts of "robot! robot! robot!"). When they came back out Flans shouted "Four more songs! Four more songs! Eight more songs!" but then he explained that there was a curfew in four minutes, so they would be giving us just exactly four minutes more of music. (That was a lie, of course.)

People had been tossing this beach ball around the whole show; Flans, Miller and Weinkauf each kicked it off the stage at least once, but people kept picking it back up and throwing it back on the stage. During New York City, it came back onstage one last time. Danny kicked it really high into the air as the song ended, and—I couldn't tell if this was planned or not, but I hope so—they all ended together just as the ball hit the ground.

After the show I waited to see if Flans would come out to the crowd, but he didn't. However, I did see Miller around the back, so I went around to ask him to sign my setlist. We talked about Don Lennon for a minute, and Dan signed my setlist, and I was very satisfied with the whole experience.

I have a recording which is not excellent, but which is far from bad, so email me if you're interested in trading.

Apparently they don't use cabs in St Louis. I asked some of the festival volunteers about the possibility, and they seemed utterly stumped. I saw a couple of cops, so I went over and told them I needed to get to the bus station, and asked was it safe. And they said, "You better run. Nothing around here is safe." Yet when I suggested taking a cab, they said, "You don't need that. Just don't hang around on street corners on the way."

As if I would do that anyway. On the walk back the street was absolutely deserted, which was reassuring in one way and rather frightening in another. But I got back to the bus station and on the bus and everybody was sleeping so there wasn't much conversation. The bus rolled into Chicago at an ungodly hour and I hit my front doorstep again about twenty-one hours after I'd left.

It was a good trip.