And now, Part VII of VI (sic): TMBG in St Louis, or, No Sleep 'til Moline. I have pictures and the rest of it of course. The lighting in Mississippi Nights was pretty difficult, but I got some decent ones.

setlist:
Mississippi Nights / Doctor Worm / Stalk of Wheat / Drink! / Spine / Memo to Human Resources / Experimental Film / The Guitar / Birdhouse in Your Soul / It's Kickin' In / Bastard Wants to Hit Me / In the Middle, in the Middle, in the Middle / Violin / Prevenge / Wicked Little Critta / Older / Ana Ng / Damn Good Times / Wearing a Raincoat / Robot Parade / Robot Parade (reprise) -> Fingertips / Jazz Waltz / The End of the Tour // John Lee Supertaster / James K Polk / New York City // Clap Your Hands / Twisting / Sleepwalkers

It occurs to me that once They start selling their live shows on theymightbegiants.com, my recaps will really become superfluous 'cause everybody can just buy the shows and listen to them on their own. That probably won't stop me from writing them anyway, though.

So, seriously, after Minneapolis I was sure I was done. I mean, six shows, that was perfectly satisfying. Then Monday night I got an email from unsupervised (and I'm just gonna call her Jackie from now on, because I don't like the way the LJ link breaks the flow of my lines of prose and anyway she deleted her journal months ago). She still wanted to go and she outlined several very detailed plans of how we could get to St Louis with a minimum of inconvenience to me. She even offered to pay for my ticket as a late birthday present, but the clincher was when she said she'd do the driving down there. 'Cause, you see, it wasn't that I wouldn't have liked to see another show, but after four hours of sleep a night for the previous week and a half, I just didn't think I could make it—the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak.

Well, Monday night I bought the tickets online and Wednesday morning I went out to Moline to meet her. We got in her car and listened to her copy of The Spine Surfs Alone (since my preorder hadn't arrived yet) as we drove past miles and miles of corn and soybeans.

Jackie had never driven to St Louis before so we allowed plenty of time and got to the place quite early. It was in this area down near the river with a strange mix of nice restaurants, kitschy shops, riverboat casinos and (no offense meant to any St Louisians who are reading this) some kinda scary parts. We walked around a little and I looked over at the Arch and then at the Mississippi River and I said, "I can't fucking believe I'm in St Louis." Everything had happened so fast from between the moment I decided to go and the moment I actually arrived that it still didn't seem possible.

We stopped to look at a neighborhood map posted on a corner and saw the guys from Common Rotation pass by. Adam waved at me and Eric looked at me funny. Yeah, I've been going to too many shows.

It was still pretty early but we went over toward the club to check out what was happening. There were a couple other fans around (we'd just missed the soundcheck), but they left, and then we decided just to wait, because now we were first in line, and once you're first in line, you kinda don't want to leave, because if you do leave and come back then maybe you won't be first in line anymore when you return. So we sat down and were just chatting. People (club staff, TMBG's crew) kept coming in and out, mostly talking on their cell phones, and after a bit Dan Miller came out, also on his cell phone. He walked away from us, into the street, and we heard him saying something about "ten thousand dollars," and then he turned around and saw us.

He totally did a double-take. It was kinda funny. When Jackie and I were done laughing and he was done with his conversation he looked at me expectantly and I pointed to Jackie and said hastily, "She made me come." Jackie accepted that responsibility (because it was true, after all). Anyway he talked to us for a few minutes and then he asked us if we had tickets. When we said we did he said we should have told him we were coming, and then (this was the really exciting part) he said that next time we go to a show, we should let him know and he would put us on the list. Then he went back inside and Jackie asked me for the first of what would be many times that night, "Aren't you glad I 'made' you come?"

Yes, Jackie, thank you. That was enough right there to make the trip worthwhile, but we still had the whole show to look forward to.

Before I forget, I must mention that Corn Mo is totally cute when he's in street clothes and wearing his glasses.

When we got inside I ran to my usual spot. The pit filled up really fast and it got close in there real quick. We were afraid there'd be some serious shoving when the show started, but actually it turned out to be a quite polite, if tightly-packed, crowd (at least where we were). I was pretty amazed when I looked at the stage because the ceiling was incredibly low—low enough that there were fluorescent stripes painted on some of the beams to warn performers about the low clearance. There was a particularly low-hanging one over to stage right and I kept looking at it, very concerned that once Flans started leaping around like a jumping bean he was gonna brain himself good. (But you'll all be glad to know that he survived the show without incurring a head injury.)

Common Rotation was wonderful as usual. When Corn Mo came on the guy to my left kept yelling things in a very obnoxious manner. This upset me. For one thing, he kept asking for the song where "Jason peed on Mike" (sic) and when Corn Mo got ready to play it and said it was a song about how Jason peed on the other Jason this guy was like, "No, Jason peed on Mike!" and I'm like, dude, I think Corn Mo knows the content of his own song better than you do. There were also several people shouting "Freebird!" Corn Mo took it in good humor for a while, but finally, when he was about ready to play his song about his ex-girlfriend who used to support him but then finally broke up with him when he went to live his dream (I'm sorry I don't remember the title), the Freebird screaming became too much and he said he would play it. But he seemed genuinely pissed off about it and kept talking about the "stupid fucking clever guy" who was making him do it. And I was like, "right on, Corn Mo!" because I really wanted to hear the song he'd been planning to play, which I think is a really good song. He ended up not having time to play it. So, come on people, show some restraint next time.

The show was incredibly loud. I guess being right in front of Flans's "dirty" amp didn't help matters much. Jackie said she could hardly hear Linnell at all. I didn't have that problem; what I couldn't hear at all was Dan's acoustic. Although now that they've apparently stopped playing Istanbul he's not using it so much.

I was hoping they'd do another song about the venue and hooray! they did. I described Mississippi Nights somewhere as "bluesy," but in fact I don't think it is bluesy, but I can't think of how to describe it. It's kinda '50s and croony...um, you'll have to go buy the show and listen to it and then you can describe it however you like. Anyway it was really cute and I was glad we got to hear a theme song from Flans.

Then they launched into Doctor Worm. The crowd was also very loud and Linnell said, "It's been a little while since people screamed at our shows." (more ear-piercing screams) "I think it was our Ed Sullivan appearance that was the last time I can remember that happening."

I think Dan's flexatone has been permanently retired from Stalk of Wheat. I could see it sitting on his pedalboard, but he didn't pick it up. And there was a surprise for us at the end of this song because the confetti cannons went off just after the last repetition of "out of ideas." The cannons were aimed really, really low and there wasn't as much confetti as usual, and it seemed like an odd moment for confetti, kind of between beats of the song. Later Jackie told me she'd noticed Flans lurking around Linnell's keyboard at the end of the song and speculated that Flans, tired of Linnell always getting to fire the cannons, had decided to go renegade and shoot them off himself. I hope that was true.

After that Flans went over to introduce "my good friend Dan Miller on the acoustic guitar. You might remember him as the auxiliary guitarist in the Yes road show band." At which point Dan played the riff from "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and Flans started to sing it in a really high falsetto. Delightful.

Before Experimental Film Flans reminded us about the Homestar Runner video. More wild cheering.
JL: It's really an extra treat to hear you guys screaming for Homestar Runner. There's been a paradigm shift, or something. Things have changed.
JF: I was thinking "sea change."
JL: There's been a...what's the other one?
JF: "Impactful"?
JL: There's been an impactful.

Once again, the dance contest.
JF: This dance contest of course can't involve everyone in the club because we would just be overwhelmed. So it's really just the front perimeter people— [cheers from the front and boos from the back of the crowd] That's right, start booing the people in the front.
He showed us the prize, a plastic figurine of Dr Zaius from Planet of the Apes, still sealed in its original shrinkwrap.
JF: This turns any shelf into a showplace.

They ripped through a few more (It's Kickin' In is still sounding great) and then Flans looked out into the crowd and saw a guy holding up a "Bastard Wants to Hit Me" sign.
JF: Is this the same guy that was in Chicago? No? It's just the same sign.
JL: Is that the sign you used when you were hitchhiking here from Chicago?

Ah, the wave. I'd be so happy never to have to live through it again.
JF: It's just like being at a sporting event, but without the fighting.
Jackie turned to me then and said, "I like the fighting." (She's a hockey fan, so you have to make allowances for her.) And right before Linnell started the song he reminded us about the wave and then screamed "whoa!" in this really high voice. And I turned to Jackie and asked, "Did we just hear Linnell scream like a woman?" Oh, yes, we did.

Older was less annoying to me tonight than usual because it went all wacky at the beginning: Flans and Danny were doing their intro and people were clapping along and somehow it went faster and faster and faster, and Linnell started singing it way fast, but then Marty was back there banging the drum really slowly to get him back down to normal tempo, and then everybody was playing at different speeds. There was a lovely moment of suspense when I wasn't sure they were all gonna get back together and in time, but they did, and then the rest of the song was boring as always.

Damn Good Times? Worth the wait, especially that stuff from Dan at the end. (Thank you, Jackie.)

Flans told us how they'd given away Wearing a Raincoat for free on their website, and that we could get other free stuff:
JF: If you sign up on tmbg.com, we will notify you of free stuff for the rest of your life, liberating you from material things. And liberating us from any visible form of income.
JL: We've found that we can pretty much subsist on bar food. We don't need the money, it turns out.

After Robot Parade Linnell had a revelation that they could segue out of Robot Parade into the next song. (I still didn't know what the next song would be at this point, because I had bravely resisted looking too much at the setlist.) So they decided to try it out and rocked the end of Robot Parade again and then, marvelously, segued into Fingertips. That took me by surprise, and I think it took Dan by surprise too, because he was just a bit late into his Fingertip. As a side note, he seemed to have gotten a haircut since the last time we'd seen him. I mean, I say "haircut" but really it kinda looked like he'd taken out the clippers and set the guard on the second notch and then just run it all over his head until almost everything was gone. I'd never seen his hair so short before.

Um, where was I? After Fingertips Flans said they had just one song left and I turned to Jackie and was like, "It is not over!" Of course I knew there'd be two encores but I couldn't believe the show had gone by so fast. Flans did the thanks, ending with, "We'd like to thank some radio stations for playing our songs, but I don't think there are any." And then they got ready for the last song:
JF: We've got one more song. John, kick it!
JL: This song, um...
JF: Kick it, man, kick the song!
JL: This song is about to be kicked.
JF: Kick it!
JL: I hope this song is ready, it's gonna get severely kicked.

The last song was the End of the Tour, which has been all tarted up with some serious rockin'. I still couldn't hear Dan's acoustic at all, but it was almost irrelevant under Flans's guitar. I'll have to get used to this new version but I think I'm gonna end up loving it.

They went through the first encore without any chat and left the stage again. Flans took his wireless mic with him, though, and for the second encore, Marty came out and started a beat, and Flans hid back there somewhere and introduced the band with this sports-announcer voice. He called out Danny, who ran out onstage and raised his hands and waved them as he did a little spin before going to his place, and then Linnell, who also raised his hands and spun, and then Dan, who went straight to his spot and put on his guitar and stood there shaking his shaven head as if to say, "no fucking way am I going to spin like those other chumps."

After the show Flans made his appearance so Jackie went over to get in line, or rather, in mob. I was still standing by the stage trying to get the tape off the setlist (which I had already ripped in my impatience to get it off the rug—by the way, check out the little Gateway Arch Flans drew on it, I love that) and the stage manager came over and handed me a sticker. Um, weird. (He probably recognized me after seven shows, but still, it was weird.) Then I saw Danny coming through so I went over to him. The beginning of our conversation went something like this:
me: Danny, do you have a minute? Would you sign this?
Danny: Where do you live?

I'd lost sight of Jackie in the crowd around Flans so I went to see Dan instead. He greeted me with, "I just dropped my computer." So he was a little preoccupied with seeing whether it still worked but I asked him if they'll be touring more in the fall or not again until next year. He said they're going to Europe in September (I think) and then Australia and Japan. He didn't tell me when they'll be touring the U.S. again, or maybe he didn't know. And he shook my hand and reminded me to take him up on his offer next time I go to a show. Will do, Dan.

Finally, we saw Marty. I was going to wish him a happy belated birthday but I forgot. He signed the back of Jackie's shirt and I watched him and told her, "When you take it off and look at it you're gonna like it." (He'd written "rock on, sister" which I thought was adorable.)

All in all, a fantastically good trip. I'm seriously done for now, though. Especially if they're not touring anywhere near us later this year. Although Jackie and I decided that I should win the lottery, then I'll fly us to Japan and we'll tell Dan and he'll put us on the list for the show...in Japan.

Yeah, that works for me.

And, one more time: Thank you, Jackie!