TMBG Flood Show @ The Pageant St Louis, 10-9-09

let me start by saying that we had a GREAT time! TMBG just never disappoint.

it was one of the most entertaining shows i've ever been to. it was me & galoot's 5th. it was Noah's 5th. it was Nathan's 6th.

Natey drove, & we made excellent time. even with one minor traffic jam, we got there in just under 5 hours.

we are all over 21 now, so we got to enter through the Halo Bar, which meant no freezing outside in a big line. (did i mention it was frickin freezing? well, it was!)

i told em all before we went in to help me find woodsie. she was easy to find though. she was sitting right there at a table as soon as we walked in the door. she is great! smart, funny, cute, & one of the nicest people you would ever want to meet. she rocks. she knows all the ins & outs of the Pageant, & just how everything there works, so she was a big help.

we all got a drink, except for Noah, cuz he doesn't drink, & woodsie had already had her appletini before we got there, & got in line.

soundcheck went long, so we weren't let in till after 7, but we had no trouble getting the best spot right in front of the stage. we were leaning, which is what i've always wanted, so that was a happy. since we already knew that the Johns had switched sides, we took that into account. we were right in front of Flansy, with Linny closely to our left. the stage is a lot higher than it used to be. it hit me at right around my nose. my neck was so sore by the end of the night, but that's ok.

The Guggenheim Grotto opened the show. they did a 30 minute set, or thereabouts. they are 2 guys from Ireland. they're quite talented, but not really my kind of music, & Oppenheimer has kind of spoiled me, as far as Irish bands go. still, they were enjoyable.

after they were done, the roadies came out & got everything ready for TMBG. we thought about scrunching down & hiding, & then popping up after they hit the stage, but galoot & Nathan wouldn't do it. me & woodsie are both short, so i doubt they would've even noticed if just the 2 of us did it. still, it was a funny idea, & we laughed about it while we were waiting around.

anyhoo, they finally came out, & opened the show with Meet The Elements, immediately followed by James K Polk. i've never seen em to JKP so early in the show, so that was interesting. no confetti cannon... yet.

after that, they went into Flood. there is no way i'm ever gonna remember the setlist. they were gonna do Flood all in order, but they kept forgetting songs, & then Danny W would have to go up to Flans & tell him in his ear. it was pretty funny.

they would do a few songs from Flood, & then they'd take a break with some other songs, & then go back to Flood, & then another break, etc. they did a really cute bit called The Avatars, with sock puppets, but i don't want to tell too much about it until after T & lajoyce see their show at The Vic tonight, cuz i don't want to ruin it for them.

one song they accidentally skipped was We Want A Rock, which was the one Noah wanted the most. after we, & a bunch of other people shouted it out, & Danny told Flansy, they finally played it. it was worth the wait.

so yeah, they played all of Flood, eventually. they also did Damn Good Times, Clap Your Hands, & a bunch of other songs i can't remember at the moment. the horn guy was real good. for their last encore they did Fingertips, & that's when we got the confetti.

i haven't uploaded my pix & videos yet, but i am not expecting much. although leaning on the stage is a great way to watch TMBG, it's not a good place for taking pictures or making videos. it's hard to squish everything in when you're that close, & the perspective tends to make everyone look like they're wearing clown pants. also, i think i should've set my camera on a different mode, but i haven't got it all learned yet, so oh well.

at the very end of the show, when Flansy was thanking people for coming, he called Noah out first thing! it was the coolest thing. i looked back at him, & rubbed his bald head when Flans did that. he had stood behind me, cuz there woul've been an amp right in front of if he would have got on the end by Nate. i'm glad he was in that spot, cuz i got to tease with him a lot before & during the show.

oh, & it was by far the least obnoxious crowd i have ever experienced at a TMBG show. everybody was cool. nobody squished me. no drunk people bugged me. not one. it was great.

we were gonna get some shirts, but the line was horrendous. i figured i can just order some online in my jammies, & not have to freeze my butt off, cuz it was freakin COLD, like i said before. (they moved the merch stand to a little storefront next door, & the line filled the whole room & out the door. brr)

all in all, we had a really great time. i'm glad i got off the fence. it's something i wouldn't have wanted to miss. now for an Apollo 18 show!

oh, & don't even get me started on the drive home. we didn't get back to the house till like, 6 am. i feel like i got run over by a truck. next time, remind me to get us a room, seriously.

hopefully the setlist will show up at the wiki soon, or maybe woodsie will be able to tell you all better what order the songs were in. you know my sucky memory...

so yeah, like YaY TMBG. & YaY woodsie. meeting her was the hilight of the whole show for me.


i'm sure there's lots more stuff i'm forgetting to tell, but you get the jist.

Thanks for the awesome write-up!

I'm glad you had a great time and got to meet woodsie.

thanks GR. & thanks for thinking my review didn't suck.

i tend to write more about my personal experience than i do the actual show.

oh, & the shirt i made was the 3 wolf moon i tweaked up a while back. also, i wore my homemade John & John earrings. i never told anybody about them when i made em, cuz i didn't want anybody else to think of making some before i got to wear em to a show. they're really cool. i got a compliment from a stranger even.



i wish i woulda kept em in a box or something these last couple of years. as it was, i kept em on my earring rack in the bathroom, & they got a little yellowed from me always smoking in there. they still look pretty good though. (i scrubbed them with toothpaste a few times over the years. & i don't keep em on the rack anymore)

woodsie was wearing the black snowman sweatshirt. Noah borrowed my old THEY shirt with Pearly on the back. galoot wore his old Hayseed Johns shirt with the puppy on back. Natey's shirt wasn't TMBG related.

i love how it's not taboo to wear a TMBG shirt to a TMBG show, like it is with most bands.

Those earrings are so cute.

thanks. i also made some head ones. they're kinda huge though.

my pictures don't suck after all! (but my videos do)

here's my shirt...





now that i don't have to worry about possibly messing it up, i'm gonna try putting the new TMBG logo on the back. if i break it, i can just make a new one.

OMG! I love that shirt! Three wolf moon with the head!

thanks. it was a crazy idea i had one day when we were talking about three wolf moon. i don't know if anybody at the show noticed it, or if anybody there even knows what 3 wolf moon is, but we all thought it was pretty funny. (but you know, we're all weirdos in my family)

i still haven't had time to upload my pictures anywhere, but i will soon. they came out way better than i thought.

Thank you!

You said a lot of it, so I'll just give my version of the day..

First off, Friday was a LONG day. I have a student teacher, but I still got up for school at 5:45am and spent much of the day grading binders. I left school around 3pm, and then, I had to pack for a brief trip to Indiana as well as the show. In my rush, I decided to just get coffee (in honor of Them) and a sandwich on my way. Of course, I chose to go to Panera, so I just had to get an iced green tea. Since I almost NEVER have caffeine, I was REALLY wired by the time I got to the show.

The doors to Halo Bar opened at 5pm, and I made it a few minutes afterward. At the time, there were a couple of people waiting in line, and maybe ten other people in the entire place, so I decided to sit and wait for biff & her gang. Before too long, they made it, and I joined them all in line for the 90 minutes or so before the doors opened. Good times.

I can remember a previous show in which I waited until later to join the early entrance queue and ended up in the second row - which I hate, because you feel the pushers more. So, when the doors opened, our whole group rushed to the stage... and we were the entire first row for a few minutes. It was very nice, and biff is correct - this was an especially well-mannered (sell-out) crowd. I didn't have people slowly try to ease their way into my space. Though one guy (who scored a setlist) eased his way into the second row, he wasn't a jerk about it. He seemed a bit shy, but was a big fan of TMBG, though he has seen them only 3-4 times. Somehow, with his hair and wiry frame, he reminded me a bit of Linnell.

Anyway... the opening act, Guggenheim Grotto, wasn't too bad, though much of their setlist was a bit slow for my tastes. However, I really liked two of their songs, and they had a great pair of (Irish) accents, so I'll give them a pass. There are some TMBG openers that I truly loathed, and GG wasn't one of them.

There were some interesting tunes between the end of GG and the start of TMBG. While we were waiting for anyone to come on earlier, we'd noticed that there were a TON of plastic birds hidden around the stage - on the TMBG equipment anyway. The road crew had a fun time fixing up the full stage so that it was TMBG ready, and that was interesting to watch (two drum sets, two keyboards, random instruments)-> so interesting that I didn't even notice the removal of the random birds.

The last few songs before the show were interesting and made me rethink my hypothesis about where the pre-show music comes from at the Pageant. There was one base-filled pop song that played that sounded awfully familiar to me (from going to concerts), and then, I swear that the last song before TMBG came on was an oldies tune with some lyric about "Giants" in it.

Eventually, TMBG made it on, with much hurrah, and I realized just how stiff my back & neck would be with my angle at the front of the stage. I don't know if anyone noticed, but as he was getting ready at the very beginning of the show, Flans flashed a tiny bit of belly flesh. I only noticed that because he was so close to me. We had to watch our hands, because some of them (particularly Flans) were using the ENTIRE stage, including the part right by us.

When I'd seen them in KC, TMBG had done the Flood album truly in sequence, with no real gaps & not a ton of banter. That worked pretty well, but I wonder if the reason that they interjected some other bits was because of the new set-up & horn set-up. There were some parts where I noticed some preparations happening on stage - and not all them were due to forgetful rockers. Weinkauf being the band's short-term memory was a definite highlight. Not only was he whispering titles to Flans, but I noticed him mouthing a title to everyone else. And to think, so often, it looks like he's just in his own little bass world. I'll post a picture later of what looks like Danny giving me a death glare. I once saw him push a crazy guy off the stage (and almost on me), so I know not to mess with him

Cowtown was fun, though the clarinet part seemed slightly off, and soon after, they played another favorite oldie - Shoehorn with Teeth. Marty looked so serious hitting the bell during that, it still cracks me up.

I always wear earplugs to concerts (long-term damage from a concert will do that to you), but I could still hear a lot of singing along to the Flood songs, but unfortunately, due to my location up front, it didn't really come across in my videos.

There's already a setlist online, and biff has said a lot about the show already, so I'll just jump to the end. For whatever reason, TMBG had a TON of bumper stickers that Flans, Marty, and a random crew member were handing out directly after the show and at the front of the stage. This was the one time the crowd behind us was a bit pushy, but Flansburgh noticed and had the people back up. Still, they weren't too bad -> I was practically mauled by David Tennant fans in England when he came out after Hamlet.

I waited awhile for the road crew to hand out setlists, but I only saw the one handed out, so I said goodbye to biff and headed to the merch stand. Man, the waiting in freezing cold is the biggest negative of the merch stand move. I guess that if you go during the show, you can get in & out easily, but who wants to do that? By the time I made it to the line, it was swirled around the inside & around the corner of the building outside. I probably wasted my time, because they were sold out of most of the sizes, so I ended up getting a drinking TMBG shirt that was one size too big. Hello, work out shirt

I don't want to think about how long I was in line, but I ended up getting to my car at about midnight, and then, it was on to my hometown for a few hours of eating at the fall festival.

Well, that's all I can think of from my end. I have a ton of pictures that are coming up very shortly.

Here are the pictures!:


Opening Act:


Giants:


I don't know if you can tell, but Danny was wearing an OKGo shirt





I'm honestly not trying to replace Linnell's stalker - his photos just turned out better

Avatars - because what is a TMBG show without a WTF?! moment?



Unflattering photo of Flans

More Photos:



If you zoom in on JL and ignore the blurs, this is my favorite photo


Happy Danny

Evil Danny

And now, for some videos. After playing them on my camera, I was afraid that the sound hadn't turned out well, but it's not bad. The bass can sound a bit muffled, but that's because my camera apparently doesn't record the bass that you can feel too well.

those pix are great, woodsie!

i remember that kid who squished in by you. he looked really familiar to me, but i don't know why.

we skipped the merch altogether. i figured i'll pay the few bux shipping & get our shirts online.

it was frickin freezing!

that was a real good review.

your videos are so good! i love your camera.

mine are real buzzy.

i previewed all of em, but tomorrow when i have time, i'll watch em all the way through.

Great write-up, pics and videos, woodsie! Thanks for sharing.

Wow, awesome woodsie!


BTW, I have the OKgo shirt! got when I saw them open for the Johns my 2nd time to see them.

cool.

here's a link to the best of my show pix. sorry it took so long. i had to tweak a few of em.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21767235@N00/...57622443308141/

i have some more, but they aren't as good.

they're from almost the same perspective as woodsie's, so they're pretty similar to hers.

i barely got any of Danny W. i think she could see him better from her spot than i could from mine. it's funny how a foot or two can make so much of a difference.

& for some bizarre reason, i didn't get a family pic. i completely forgot.

Nice pics, biff!