Whoa. Definitely a unique experience, and while I still love the full-band adult rock shows the best, I am very, very glad I didn't miss this one. Pictures and stuff, mp3s there and below.

setlist:
Older / Robot Parade / interview 1 / Meet James Ensor / Fingertips / (West Hollywood) L.A. House of Blues / interview 2 / Istanbul (not Constantinople) / Alphabet of Nations / Doctor Worm / interview 3 / James K. Polk / New York City // Flying V / Bed Bed Bed / Birdhouse in Your Soul

Well, we didn't at all know what to expect from this show, since there was hardly any information about it available beforehand. When we'd asked Marty about it in Ann Arbor, he didn't know anything either. It was billed as "a conversation, with music," and I was hoping it would be mostly music, but no. There was about an hour of interview (in three parts) and maybe forty-five minutes of music. But the interview parts were pretty fun and the music was interesting, particularly getting to hear songs like Fingertips and Birdhouse in Your Soul with just the three musicians.

We left really early, because we wanted to avoid afternoon rush-hour traffic out of Chicago. Okay, and because we wanted to be really early, which we were. Ridiculously early in fact, so early that all the people working the show kept looking at us like we were idiots for being there already. But we checked out the place, walked into the soundcheck (Marty was behind his drums and Linnell strolled by a few feet away from me, causing me to make a very hasty retreat), had some dinner, saw Them going off for their dinner, and were first in line. They opened the doors a bit early.

Luther's Blues is a really nice venue, much larger than than I'd expected based on the not-very-informative pictures on their webpage. There was an upper level with a bar, a slightly lower pit area (with another bar on the side) where they'd set up rows of chairs, and then this stage that had a kind of round protrusion in the middle. The instruments were set up in the rounded middle and there were three chairs at stage right for the interviewing. I'd really been hoping, against all probabilities, that this would be a full-band show, but there were only Flans's bass and guitar onstage, so I finally had to give up on that dream. Linnell did have a keyboard, though. It was not his usual and I assumed it was a rental.

We'd heard the show was sold out, but there were actually several empty seats, including one right next to me (in the front row! very sad that it went to waste). I guess that was the seat I was saving for unsupervised, who wasn't able to come because of work.

Anyway, the show started with some music. Older (ugh! but seeing Flans doing the intro all by himself was at least a bit of a change), then Robot Parade. Flans was working the crowd hard with his boom-shaka-lakas, but it was a weird scene, because we were all sitting down (the energy was good despite that, though). Oh, and the audience was really old, much older than the usual TMBG crowd. I guess the older people were the New Yorker component of the audience? I don't know, maybe they were there for Andy Borowitz, but if they were, they must have been disappointed, because (much to my personal relief), this show was totally all about the TMBG.

Flans introduced Andy and the three of them got into their director's chairs at stage right. They'd set up another chair behind the drums, onstage, for Marty, so he got up in there, and was kind of sitting back in this dark corner. It was a peculiar arrangement, and They remarked upon it at the beginning of the first interview:
AB: Who's on drums tonight?
JF: It is Mr Marty Beller. Marty is gonna be drinking in the corner during this Actor's Studio-like presentation.
JL: Marty's not allowed to leave the stage.
(During the other two interview segments Marty went down and stood by the bar instead.)

Then they got into the interview. It's really hard to recap this part, because a lot of the funny bits don't make sense without their full context and it would take too much time and space to transcribe everything. But Flans loves the E! True Hollywood Stories (particularly the one on Diff'rent Strokes). And, when talking of their experience working together on their high-school newspaper The Promethean:
JF: We were basically part of a very small, unloved sect of our high school. We were above the A/V kids and below the stoners.
AB: Where are you now?
JF: I think we're parallel to the stoners. It's that incremental growth.
AB: It only took you twenty-five years.

About the origins of Dial-a-Song:
JF: It's kind of impossible to think of phone machines as being new, but when we moved to New York City, you know, besides graffiti and the constant fires that were burning, one of the things that made New York an exciting place was that New Yorkers had phone machines before the rest of the country got them.

So they chatted for about twenty minutes and then they played a couple more songs. After Ensor Linnell started introducing the next song, but Flans was having some trouble with his pedal so he got down on his knees to fumble with it.
JL: We're going to try something that we've done only once before—
JF: Hold on a second, John—stall!
Linnell began to ramble while Flans struggled with his pedal, occasionally uttering groans of frustration.
JL: I'm gonna say it again, only slower...So, this is a composition that I call a composition, because "song" doesn't feel right...This was so hard to learn that we had a special rehearsal that lasted about a week, and I gotta say, this song still blows. But now that we've learned it, it can never leave the canon, because if we forget it, we'll have to start from scratch...We normally do this song with our entire full band, the Dans. There are these parts in the song where—you're gonna see this in about a minute—where everything stops and we're all looking at each other and then we realize that it's somebody who's not here who's supposed to be doing something.

At this point Flans, with the help of Marty, had replaced the battery in his pedal and declared himself ready. And I was still wondering what the song was going to be, but when Flans and Linnell had a quick conference and Linnell said to Flans, "You sing the title," I realized it was probably Fingertips. Flans then asked Linnell what key the song began in. Well, if it was Fingertips—"G," I said to hobbitgrrl; and a moment later, "G," Linnell said to Flans. I knew it! And the next thing Flans said was, "Everything is catching on fire." Whee!

The 3-man Fingertips was quite exciting, with Flans taking on Dan Miller's usual parts and acquitting himself rather nicely on the Darkened Corridors solo section.

After that, even more exciting, was the (West Hollywood) L.A. House of Blues. I love Linnell's goofy fake accent, and how Flans uses the same goofy accent in his backing vocals.

Okay, the second part of the interview. Ah, it's impossible to summarize this stuff! I apologize to my loyal readers for my inadequacy on this point. Here instead is a quick list of topics covered during these twenty minutes:

• writing the venue songs
  
• James K. Polk vs James Ensor
  
• Russell Crowe and al-Qaeda
  
• Colin Farrell and objective judgment of one's own importance/Flava Flav and New Kids on the Block
  
• how Birdhouse in Your Soul was composed
  
• U2, the World Bank, and Alan Greenspan
  
• on "quirky" and "nerd":
  JF: "Nerd," we think of that essentially as an insult.
  JL: We were doing this event in D.C. with Sarah Vowell, so we drove down with her, and she for some reason is really into the word "nerd," and thinks of it as a flag to wave. She was like, "Wow, imagine if the car crashed. It would be like the nerd version of the Day the Music Died." At which point we kicked her out of the car.
  JF: The "quirky" thing bugs me because I feel like it totally guts whatever musical ambition we have. I feel like it just puts it in a very small envelope and crumples it up. It's just not an interesting idea for a band, it's smaller than life.

Then they played a few more songs. The crazy Kaoss pad version of Istanbul, then the extended Alphabet of Nations. Linnell played the keyboard, and, um, not very well. I also noticed that his keyboard solo at the end of the bridge was not nearly as lovely as Dan Miller's was on Conan. But Linnell hasn't performed this song on the keyboard before, has he? I think it was always Miller. So it's not surprising that he's not very practiced at it.

Flans said "Suriname" with this really sassy intonation, and afterwards Linnell observed, "We started doing that 'Suriname' thing. I still don't know what the significance of that is, but we're waiting for the day that some Surinamese person is deeply offended."

For the last interview Flans and Linnell switched seats, because Linnell had been at stage right previously and they both found it weird to be in the opposite places from when they perform. They talked about the ABCs project; when they mentioned the No! record there was a smattering of clapping, and Flans said sternly, "Check their IDs." They also discussed the proper pronunciation of 50 Cent's name and whether Linnell tests his kids stuff out on his son, and they chatted a bit about the experience of doing the Malcolm in the Middle music (how it was a lot of work), Doctor Evil (I was the only person who "whoo"ed at the mention of Flans's wife, and I was like, "Am I the only Robin Goldwasser fan here?!?"), the death of the music video, and their work on the upcoming movie of Coraline. Andy said he likes Fountains of Wayne who remind him of TMBG, and Flans told us that the Fiery Furnaces are a band that are "definitely worth checking out." Them, and Ella Fitzgerald.

Finally they went back over to do some more songs. Marty and Flans started in on James K. Polk, and Linnell totally missed his cue.
JL: It would have been really cool if I'd started singing right then.
No confetti cannons, obviously.

Then it was time for the Jazz Waltz.
JF: Ladies and people, you know what the music means.
We did, and screamed "Noooooo!" But we couldn't stop the show from ending. Flans thanked a lady in a red shirt, then a guy with a beard. When he pointed to the guy with the beard, I was taking this picture, and the next thing I knew Flans was pointing at me, saying, "Lady with the camera..." I was really embarrassed, and he could obviously tell, because he went on, "...it's not a problem, thank you for coming to the show." Aww! No, thank you! ♥ Flans ♥

They were finishing up; Flans said, looking genuinely amused, "This has been totally weird," and it had been, what with the interview thing and the music thing all mixed together. So they did New York City, and left, and almost immediately the house music came on. But we were all standing up by now and yelling and all that, and they did come back. (And if you look at the setlist, you can see that they hadn't planned an encore, they really intended to stop after New York City, so this was probably the first show I've ever been at where we actually made them come back for a real encore.) "I feel like kind of a dork running out while the music is playing," Linnell said. "No, me, me!" And Flans said, "We're just gonna play kids songs so you all go home."

So they got up there and Flans started putting on his bass. Flying V was, I think, the only other song left that Flans plays bass on, so it pretty much had to be that; and then somebody yelled "Flying V!"
JL: Flying V? Is that what you said? [with mock reluctance] Oh, okay. We weren't gonna do that one...
JF: This is a song about the letter V, its relation to formations of birds and the shapes of guitars. I wish we had a Flying V to demonstrate the shape of a guitar.
JL: Or some geese.
JF: Next time we're back at the Barrymore and we've got a bigger budget we'll have some geese fly over.
Okay, that's a promise that they're going to come back and play at the Barrymore soon, right? Anyway, this song is delightful. I was kind of "meh" about it on the CD, but the accordion line is just so sprightly in performance, it's a lot of fun.

After that people started yelling for more songs. We yelled "Marty!" and he looked at us quizzically, so I pointed to the mic to indicate that we wanted him to sing for us, but he shook his head. I guess it wasn't up to him anyway. They did Bed Bed Bed and Marty had his heap of sound-effect makers, including, much to our delight, a Flexatone. He ended by standing up on his throne and ostentatiously clapping together an extremely small pair of cymbals (maybe about 6" in diameter). They did not make much noise.

They finished up with Birdhouse which was also delightful. One thing that this show really reminded me of, with Birdhouse and Fingertips especially, is that, as much as people may (lovingly) mock Flans's guitar playing (and I've done it myself often enough; but no more! I swear), the truth is that Flans really can do it all himself; he doesn't actually need Dan Miller most of the time. Not to say that Dan doesn't provide some really fabulous window-dressing. (And, seriously, I'm talking about the guitar playing here, not the man.)

Then it was over and the house music came back on for real this time, although the lights still stayed low. I leapt onstage and snagged Flansy's setlist, and we waited to see if he would come out. He didn't, but Marty did, so hobbitgrrl and I went over to show him the sequined initial wristbands that I'd mocked up with some sequins and glue that we were wearing in emulation of his (photo courtesy of hobbitgrrl). He looked pretty surprised, came over to admire them, and then told me that I needed to give credit to his sister-in-law for the idea. Which I freely do—all of you here are witness to that. He got his setlist for hobbitgrrl, signed mine and hers, and having recognized us as the ones who had been in Ann Arbor on Tuesday, approved of our devotion: "I'm in favor of your commitment," he said. Aw, thanks, Marty! (Wait—unless he meant, "I'm in favor of your commitment...to a mental institution for this insane behavior"?)

The place emptied pretty quickly and we realized that if Flans had wanted to come out and meet people he probably would have come out earlier when there were still people around, so we headed out. Not a typical show, but a good time as usual, and we heard a lot of interesting stuff in the interviews. So, yay! But I still want a regular adult rock show next!