Well, I thought I'd have some mp3s of the new songs after this show, but it looks like my mics are dead, which sucks because they're only about three years old. I'm gonna try to hack something together for the show tonight, but I doubt I'll get anything good.

Anyway, the setlist and a few remarks (and photos eventually) are in the cut to follow, but pretty much all you need to know is, if you were worried about Andy D leaving and being replaced by Andy R, here's how the relative hotness works out:

Andy R > Andy D > (Andy D + unfortunate pencil moustache)

The new Andy also plays guitar pretty well.

Not sure about all the titles of the new songs, since Damian abbreviated most of them on the setlist and I forget things immediately, but I guess it might have been:

Television / There's a Fire / Good Idea / Bye Bye Baby / No Sign (of Life?) / Don't Ask Me / Let It Rain / Here It Goes (Again?) / The Fix Is In / Oh No! / Invincible / Crash the Party / Get Over It / You're So Damn Hot / Do What You Want

They came out for an encore, but they didn't sing; instead, they did the C-C-C-Cinnamon Lips dance, during which Damian split his pants. I'm not kidding. I've got a picture.

Let's go back a couple of hours though. The opening band was called This Is Me Smiling and they were just adorable. Oh, and they sounded pretty good too, as far as I could tell, which actually was not very well since we were right in front. We had a good view though, and it didn't really seem possible that, with the addition of OK Go later, so much cuteness could take place on one stage on one night. The lead singer/guitarist was named Dan (yeah, and how many cute guitar players named Dan do I need to see anyway?) and later when we were in their t-shirt line a middle-aged lady came up and kissed him on the cheek and he was like, "Oh, hi, mom." Aww. Did I mention that he looked like he had to be at least ten years younger than me? Nice.

After their set ended and they'd moved most of their stuff off, the OK Go boys came out and started getting their stuff ready. Tim was wearing a track suit as usual and Damian still had his hair long. Dan was wearing a tie, weird. Then there was this fourth guy who came on and was messing around in the keyboard corner, and I turned to Jackie and was like, "Is that him?" (the new Andy) Yes, it was, and holy crap, he was attractive. He had this kind of beautiful male-model attitude; and you may think in the abstract that would be a bad thing, but in this case...not. He spent a long time fiddling with the keyboard and staring really hard at it with his male-model pout. This was not a painful thing to watch, if you understand what I mean.

Aaanyway, finally all the guys left and there was a brief delay and Dan came back out onstage, wearing a waistcoat now over his tie. He finally managed to catch the attention of the sound guy to turn the house music off, and off he went. The other guys came back on, all wearing suits & ties. Oh, rock bands in suits and ties! I could get used to that. The new Andy looked beautiful, and Damian, as usual, looked beautiful, and Tim, well, looked like Tim. He was wearing white shoes.

All right, enough about what they looked like! They rocked out. I found it odd that their first song was called (apparently) "Television"—I kept thinking about that Wilco song "Kicking Television." This song was a little harder than the usual OK Go stuff, like Wilco's song is to their usual...or...I don't actually remember very well, but I'm pretty sure that's what I was thinking at the time.

Anyway. I liked the new stuff but it didn't grab me immediately the way their previous songs mostly did the first time I heard them. At least twice Damian introduced the new ones as being "from my new album" (my emphasis). Ooh, way to dis your bandmates, dude! I mean, I know Damian pretty much writes all the songs by himself, but is it really necessary to make the rest of the guys feel completely expendable? Meanwhile the old songs sounded as good as ever. Andy R fitted in pretty seamlessly; his guitar solos were a bit different from Andy D's. I thought it was nice that he put his own touch on them.

There was one rather excruciating scene when, during what Damian said was the love song on the new album (Oh No! on the setlist), he called up a couple who had apparently been making out in plain view for a while before the show and told them to make out during the song. (He did the same thing last time I saw them, only it was during It's Tough to Have a Crush.) So this couple got up onstage and Damian ordered them to kiss while they played. The girl looked totally embarrassed, and at first I felt sorry for her, but then I thought, if you actually are so much of an attention whore that you'll climb up onstage when you've been specifically warned in advance that you're to make out up there, then you deserve the humiliation. Tim kept turning around to watch.

The set was pretty short; that annoyed me because even though the show was all ages, curfew's not until 1am on the weekend and it was barely 11, but then I thought perhaps Andy, being new, didn't know all the songs yet. I still would have liked more music. However, Andy made it up to us somewhat by participating in the C-C-C-Cinnamon Lips dance, which, if you haven't seen it...I pity you. I have a few video clips which I'll put up probably tomorrow, but it's not like being there.

So, I'm looking forward to the other show tonight, hoping they'll play a few songs they didn't last night, but not expecting. (I'd love to hear Return though; I love that one.) I'll let you know how it goes.