I've got another show to go to in a couple hours, so I figured I better crank this out quick before I fall behind. I've got pictures, videoclips and scans now; no mp3s, but it's for sale by the band.

Here's what they played:
Orff intro / Clap Your Hands / Experimental Film / Twisting / Spine / Spine (again) / The End of the Tour / Birdhouse in Your Soul / The Guitar / Bastard Wants to Hit Me / Memo to Human Resources / Don't Let's Start / Spin the Dial / Older / Wearing a Raincoat / Robot Parade / Why Does the Sun Shine? / Drink! / Particle Man / The Famous Polka / Istanbul (not Constantinople) / Stalk of Wheat / John Lee Supertaster / Doctor Worm // James K. Polk / Fingertips / Sleepwalkers

It's Kickin' In and Prevenge were also on the written setlist (after Istanbul and Polk respectively) but both times Flans signaled the rest of the band to skip them. The second time Dan Miller shook his head and if he didn't actually say the word "pussy" it was pretty obvious he was thinking it.

I don't know why I thought it was only a couple hours' drive from Ann Arbor to Columbus. Wishful thinking, I guess. It was actually over three, what with the traffic around Columbus. So I didn't get to the PromoWest Pavilion until after the gates had opened. There were already several hundred people there, but many of them had chosen to sit up in the lawn section, so I ran around to stage right and got a decent spot in the second row. Then as the waiting progressed the people to my left actually started moving farther away from the center, so I ended up right in front anyway, and directly in front of where Dan Miller's pedalboard was eventually placed.

The weather forecasts had ranged from pleasant to miserable; it ended up somewhere in between. The first opener was an 80s cover band called the Reaganomics. They tried pretty hard, but the crowd wasn't terribly responsive. (It was kinda hot out after all.) After that there were the Irish dancers. You know, that Riverdance kind of stuff, but they were kids, not professionals. It was a group of sickeningly adorable girls with implausibly bouncy curly hair and one stoic boy whom the drunks (it was barely 6, but the drinkers had been working hard already) teased mercilessly. The Irish dance teacher who introduced her students pointed out that Irish dancing class would be a great place for boys to meet girls, but I was thinking, "What's the point of that if they all assume you're gay?" The teacher also said something flattering about the girls and then hastily added, "I should warn you that they're all under eighteen," which, regardless of whether it was meant to be a joke or whether it was based on sad personal experience, I found an extremely creepy thing to say.

Corn Mo came out a bit late. I'd never seen him before and had read mixed reviews. I liked him okay; I mean, I was amused but I wasn't blown away. I did like his lyrics and his stage presence, but after a while all the songs started sounding kind of the same. I will say this: the man has a damn fine singing voice.

Then he was done and TMBG's crew came out to start setting things up. The stage manager came down front to plug some stuff in and I asked him, "Does OK Go know that you're stealing their gear? But he said it was actually his and anyway they're all one big happy family. I noticed that Dan Miller has his own microphone now. It's blue. Bizarre. I mean, it's not bizarre that it's blue, but that Dan has one at all. [Now, if you're not interested in guitars, skip the rest of this paragraph.] Then the dude put out Dan's three guitars. The black Strat was back, which I found very comforting, but the other two were new (to me): this orange Burns and then a new acoustic. It's also an Epiphone like his usual, but man, it's absolutely fucking gorgeous. The woodgrain of the top is beautiful (the sides and back too, for that matter), there are snowflake inlays on the fretboard, ivroid binding and those lovely rings around the soundhole...very pretty.

I stared at the acoustic guitar for a while and then some DJ from CD 101 came out and yelled at us, and finally the show began. Marty came out first, drumming under the Orff intro, and then they started Clap Your Hands, except that when Flans started saying "uh huh" Dan wasn't ready yet, so Flans looked at him and asked "uh uh?" instead until they were all able to go.

Dan started using his new blue mic right away to sing backup for Experimental Film. His part was to sing "yeah" over and over again. He also sang in Twisting and Stalk of Wheat. And Fingertips of course. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

There was a guy in the crowd with a serious recording rig (I mean like an 8-foot mic stand) and after Twisting Flans looked out into the crowd and said, "You know, we don't have any big problem with home taping, in fact, we find it very exciting that somebody has such a complete rig. That is truly brazen, my friend. I guess since Phish broke up, you got a lot of free time?" After the show I talked to some people who had talked to that taper and they said he said this was the first time he'd taped TMBG and that he might be putting the show up on the internet...I will keep all of you posted on that.

They played Spine and then Flans said he wasn't pleased with his own personal performance on it so he wanted to play it again:
JF: This is the very first show of our tour and we've learned so many new songs—
JL: Or rather, we have started learning so many new songs...
Flans theorized that their playing the song again would throw the whole fireworks schedule off: "No, I didn't see the beginning of the fireworks thing. Those guys played too long. I couldn't look up."
They played it again and perhaps Flans did better but I thought Linnell's vocal wasn't as good. But it seemed like a lot of the new songs his vocals were more hesitant and he was having a bit of trouble hitting the very highest notes.

Dan Miller had a second sheet of paper taped down next to his setlist and it turned out that it was the chords for End of the Tour. He stared down at the sheet for the entire song, Flans played the solo, and when it was over the stage manager ran out and grabbed the sheet (to keep it for next time?), which disappointed me because I would have loved to get it myself to see how the song was laid out for him.

During the 2-guitar part of Birdhouse, Flans led Dan to the very front of the stage, just inches away from us in the front row. I think Dan sweated on me.

Flans had a whole long (new?) shtick to introduce the Future of Sound during the Guitar:
JF: Ladies, listen to the hi-hat of Mr Marty Beller for your rhythm! Don't speed up! Because in the future speed will be government-controlled. And Marty Beller is here as a representative of the government of the future. And we can assure you, it will be a far more groovy government than the government we have now.
Linnell played the Future of Sound for a while and then the Johns started getting goofy:
JF: But ladies and gentlemen, if we had a magic wand and we could go into the future, we would surely go into the future and take away that magic wand. But right now we've gotta get back to the original song.
JL: About the wand!
JF: How do we get back into this song, John?
JL: We need the wand! But we don't have the wand, 'cause we used the wand to take it away!
JF: [laughing] Somebody's taken away my magic wand!
JL: It was the magic of the wand that removed the wand!
Flans couldn't take it anymore: he counted back into the song at that point.

Before Bastard Wants to Hit Me Flans started talking about how there were children in the audience and that perhaps for the next three minutes the children should put their earmuffs on because of this new song.
JL: [helpfully] It has the word "bastard" in it. We don't like to resort to that kind of language. But certain bastards put us up to it.
JF: [shocked and offended] You kiss your mother with that mouth!
This was the only song that Dan Miller played his orange Burns on. He used it to make this pulsating kind of sound...I don't have the vocabulary to describe it. Linnell's vocals weren't as processed as they are on the recorded version of this song, but I think they'd done something to them. He sounded like he was straining a bit on the high notes.

When it was over Flans said "True story" and then told us the story he'd told us in Chicago (at Navy Pier) 2 summers ago, about how one day while he was driving down the highway he saw a car with a TMBG-theme vanity plate and at the next red light he got out of his car and went up to the other car and tapped the window and "totally scared the living shit out of these people." They drove off and he felt really bad.

Flans had his cheat sheet for Memo to Human Resources, with keywords from the lyrics written on the back of a paper plate. I was hoping he'd throw it out into the crowd like a frisbee when the song was over, but instead he tossed it back toward Marty, who I'm sure had no use for it. He explained that the song is about "the guy who you work with at your job who doesn't like you at all."

Spin the Dial (which was written "Radio" on the setlist) was moderately successful, if only for the performance of Tainted Love. Flans turned to 97.1 just as the DJ was announcing Friday 80s. Dan Miller looked really excited when he heard that. When a lady called in to request Tainted Love they all jumped on it and Flans did a passable job and the rest of the band did quite an impressive job and then they kept playing and Flans looked lost and said, "I've never actually done this before"—and he turned the mic around to the audience, who were, however, no help.
JF: What's the second verse?
JL: Same thing.
JF: [unconvinced] Where are the Reaganomics when you need them?!

They returned to Tainted Love during the bridge of Older (I still love this gimmick—in fact it's the only thing that makes Older bearable to me anymore), except that Linnell and Marty played and Flans sang (tentatively) and Dan and Danny started to play but stopped and looked around in confusion.
JL: [sheepishly] I changed the key.

Wearing a Raincoat:
JL: Here's another new song that you don't know so you can't tell that we don't know.
But Flans pointed out that they had put it on their free mp3 site, softcell.com.

Robot Parade was the new version, with full band but without the shredding. I hadn't heard it before and I really liked it. At the end:
JF: People, give me an R!
people: R!
JF: Give me another R!
people: R!
JF: Give me another R!
people: R!
JF: What's that spell?
people: Arrr!
JF: We can't hear you!
people: ARRR!!

During Particle Man, some guy started crowd surfing; when Linnell got to the last verse of the song, he started singing it quietly, but then Flans jumped on his mic and interrupted: "Put that man back down in the crowd, he's done nothing wrong! Put that man down back in the crowd, if he lands onstage we will tear him limb from limb." Wild cheers.

Dan Miller was playing his beautiful new acoustic for Particle Man, and then they went straight into The Famous Polka, so he kept it on. I don't know whether that was planned or not, but when it came time for his solo Flans seemed to be laughing at him. It still sounded good though.

It's Kickin' In was next on the setlist, but they skipped over it to Stalk of Wheat. This was in a new arrangement too, with drums and bass, Flans playing a maraca instead of the egg, and Dan Miller playing some kind of metallic thing that went clink-clink-clink and singing backup.

Before Doctor Worm Flans announced that they'd be playing in Ann Arbor the next night, eliciting many boos from the crowd.
JL: Now, are you booing us, or...
JF: It's all about the love, people! It's not too late to make friends, brand-new friends in Ann Arbor...[to someone in crowd] Young man, put your middle finger down and get some manners! Jesus fucking christ! People from Ann Arbor are sophisticated and they love the rock music.
JL: And they never give the finger.
JF: They don't speak with little symbols like their finger! They speak with their fists and their foreheads.
JL: So here's a song about Ann Arbor...
I don't know much about drumming, so I can't judge on Marty Beller, but I will say, it seemed like some of the songs were way faster than I'm used to. Particularly in Doctor Worm—you know that part on the Gigantic DVD where they're doing the soundcheck of Doctor Worm and Linnell stops and says, "Is that fast?" This was way faster.

Flans described Fingertips this way:
JF: Ladies and gentlemen, this next portion of the show is almost like seeing a Prince show. There's so many songs in one song. And yet, you wish we'd just settle down and play one.

And then they played Sleepwalkers (man, I love that song) and the show was over. It was kind of a short set, I guess because they had to stop before the fireworks (which were a city thing, not associated with this show). I waited around the stage a bit to see if Flans would come out that way (he'd promised to be at the t-shirt stand), and there were several of us standing there. Dan Miller came out to the side of the stage for a minute and the guys next to me yelled something like, "Dan, you rock!" and he smiled and said "thanks" (he's such a polite boy) but didn't get any closer and soon disappeared. Then the crew came out to clean up. There were some picks scattered around the stage and the guy next to me was like, "I want Dan's pick!" and he kept calling to the roadie to give him Dan's pick. It was kinda cute.

As far as I know Flans never did make an appearance, but I had a long drive back to Ann Arbor and I figured during one of the next five shows I'm attending I might get a chance to get him to sign something so I took off. Good times.

Parts II-VI of my TMBG road trip coming when I have them!