#ask 4) if Clari were a worm

[ask-awt]

would you still love clari if she was a worm?

Do humans do that?! Clari?! Clari are you going to turn into a worm?! Hold on, I have to go talk to my wife!

[…]

I have been informed that this is an internet joke and not something I need to panic about. Yes, I’d love her no matter what, but crikey mortal do you have to scare me like that?

[probableelf]

2/10/18 Detroit recap

I’m just going to state for the record that the show was awesome :D  I doubt if I can remember the order of all the songs but I will describe what I can remember under the cut.  Here’s a blurry picture to start things off!  (We got a little better later on, haha)

Ok, so we (my sister and I) had to drive a couple hours to get there, through roads that were predicted to be very snowy, so we tried to give ourselves a lot of time to get there… of course, life being the crazy thing it is, we ended up leaving later than we planned, so we were happy the roads turned out fine and we got there exactly at 7.  We queued for about 45 minutes before they let us into the venue.  It was cold but everyone was in good spirits!

We got inside, checked the winter gear, and hit the venue floor.  We were hoping to get a good position (it was standing room only and a sold out show) so we were pretty thrilled to stake out a spot about 4 people-rows from the front.  My sister had been to St. Andrews Hall for an Amanda Palmer concert, so she knew the room was tiny but the stage a bit tall, so this was actually more ideal than the front row.  Here we are in our DIY concert shirts waiting for the show to start!

We had about an hour to wait, and despite the piped-in music on the PA the audience got restless and started making shadow hand-puppets on the front screen.  There was a pretty funny melee between various shadow animals made by people in different rows, and some dude across the room threw up a Trekkie hand-sign so of course I joined him on that!

The band came out about 5 minutes after 9 and immediately started in on a high-energy couple of songs.  New York City followed by I Left My Body, which was, as you’d expect, rocking!

At the first major talking break, Flansburgh asked Linnell what he’d done that day.  Linnell said he’d gotten a chance to walk around a bit.  He said it was Mars Field or something but wasn’t sure where.  He and Flans settled on calling it the surface of Mars, and claimed it was littered with the corpses of aliens.

They pulled out Ana Ng fairly early in the first set, which I was thrilled for (that being in my top two favorite songs).  Linnell’s keyboard playing was fantastic, and Marty did a top notch job too.  Linnell sang the “I don’t want the world” lyric in our general direction and I couldn’t wipe the silly grin off my face!  This was about when I figured out that other people were singing along, so I did too but super quietly so I wouldn’t bother the people around me.  My sister didn’t let that worry her and ended up pretty much losing her voice, haha!  The energy was really good and I was glad I’d stretched this morning because everything was super-danceable.

They brought out Curt Ramm, I think first for Hey Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had a Deal, which is great live with horns.  They also capitalized on his talents for Racist Friend, which the audience (including us) got really into. 

They pulled out a couple Pink Album favorites in the first set–Don’t Let’s Start, of course, and Nothing’s Gonna Change My Clothes.  Both of these were great! They also did Mesopotamians, with a little lead-in about how it was historical stuff… everyone pretty much seemed to guess where they were going with that one!

Clippy got pulled out in the first set with a joke from Flans about how it was “the instrument that never came out of its box in your high school band”.  They did I Like Fun, of course, and Flans did his cute “I’m going to take off now” pose while singing about parkour.  Linnell looked over at him while he sang the line about being 58 like “I’m the one who’s 58, here.”  They also did Cloisonné, and Flans switched the order around so that Linnell wouldn’t have to switch to accordion but he’d already put the accordion on so he had to switch back.  Oh well, Flans tried!  I love the duet between horn and clarinet in Cloisonné.  And I love how happy Marty looks in this picture!

They rounded out the set with Particle Man and the Chandelier breakdown (getting the accordion out), Letterbox (with an intro from Flans about how they were going to sing lyrics with a lot of words in them) and When Will You Die.  Linnell managed to fit Curt in super-fast, more or less in rhythm, as “I’m John and he is also John (and that’s Curt) and all of us are wondering…” 

For the intermission, we waited restlessly for a bit, then they cued up the Last Wave video.  I’m pretty sure it started with the original music to the Aerosmith/Run-DMC song and then seamlessly merged into a slightly chip-tuned version of Last Wave.  The “antlers” line absolutely kills me.  I managed to confuse my sister as to whether the music was the original or the TMBG song; I guess I forgot to show it for her before-hand.

When they returned, Flans introduced the Quiet Storm section, telling us it would be quiet but emotionally stormy.  Since they played Self Called Nowhere, I guess that fits!  They led off with Older, which was lovely on the contra-alto clari (like, how does Linnell switch between singing it and playing so easily?! Talk about breath support!) and then introduced the songs from, and about the 1840′s.  People started yelling “Polk” but of course Tippecanoe comes first.  The Quiet Storm was a nice break for our burned-out eardrums.

Bringing back the full band, plus Curt, they made everyone’s night with a beautiful rendition of Istanbul, with Curt managing to play both the trumpet and the trombone in the same song.  Flans initially told us Curt was playing two trumpets, and after the song apologized to the one person in the audience with a music background who knew the difference between a trumpet and a trombone.  I’m embarrassed to admit that wasn’t me… I was too busy enjoying the awesome solos that got added on to the ending.  (My sister says she noticed, though.  So I guess it was her!)

Linnell introduced the next song as “a song I wrote about a woman who lives underwater, which is titled Underwater Woman”.

They next did Spider, and Flans’ introduction made everyone think he was introducing Fingertips, so some people (including me) were confused for a second or two.  Spider is really cute as a live song, particularly the way they sing the “uhnhhh”s.  I think this was also the song they told us to clap in rhythm to, even if they begged us to stop.  That led, of course, into The Guitar, which also holds up well live.

  Then we got Number 3, which seemed to be an audience-favorite, as well as Whistling in the Dark, which is an us-favorite.  Lots of clapping and stomping to that one!  I was glad that I’d listened to the new album a bunch so I could follow the lyrics to When the Lights Come On, which is very loud and very good.  They followed that immediately with Twisting, so I did my best to twist to that (not that I’m any great shakes at dancing, haha!)  Continuing the sequence, they gave us Man It’s So Loud, which is also very danceable!

And with a drum count-in from Marty, we got my absolute favorite, No One Knows My Plan!  No conga line, maybe Flans thought that would break the flow since we were all moving a lot anyway!  Linnell got some serious air on that one (if I recall correctly)… how does he jump a foot and a half and keep his hands in the right place on the keyboard?!!

For encores, we started out with This Microphone.  Flans apologized beforehand, telling us they’d just learned it and only played it successfully twice.  “..in the future,” Linnell added.  But it came off without a hitch, except I think Flans started the last chorus with “Killing is carting…” which made me laugh.  Then they played Dr. Worm, followed by Birdhouse, and by that time everybody was singing, so it was basically an audience singalong.  They waved goodbye and left, but the front screen camera on the audience clued us in that if we kept clapping we’d get a second encore, which turned out to be Dead, a warm and fuzzy ending (if songs about dying can be warm and fuzzy!) to a lovely night.

People started leaving, but I’d heard about the giving away of concert ephemera, so we worked our way forward and got a setlist and stickers for our trouble.

On our way out, we stopped to check out the t-shirt sales (I’ve been looking to grab the Science is Real shirt for a while) but it turned out they weren’t selling the women’s cut shirts.  However, the merch guy liked our DIY shirts and asked for a picture, then gave us Marty Time buttons since we weren’t able to buy shirts.

Such a fun night!  We got back thoroughly happy, very tired, and definitely interested in seeing their show again in the future!

EDIT:

Ok, here’s things I’m pretty sure I remembered wrong or missed when I wrote this out on like no sleep haha:

1.) We clapped in rhythm for Particle Man. Linnell at one point counted aloud a 3-against-2 rhythm to see if he could mess everybody up!

2.) I think the song Linnell was basically levitating on was The Guitar, which makes more sense since he wasn’t actually singing it. Still, How. Does. He. Do. That.

3.) There was a Future of Sound bit in The Guitar. It was cute.

4.) At one point, during the Quiet Storm, Linnell asked if maybe there could be less pot smell right in front of him (it was wafting from somewhere in front of stage right, where they were grouped). Flans pointed out that it was basically legal most places now. Linnell gave him a super dirty look!

5.) I think I Like Fun was actually in set 2, the Quiet Storm, like the set list says, with the addition of Curt, because I remember Marty was on his electronic drum kit for that. That means All Time What was the song they pulled Clippy out for in set 1.

6.) Why Does the Sun Shine was somewhere in set 1 also. I couldn’t catch all of the spoken parts; the crowd was a bit too rowdy around me at that point. But Linnell claimed that the heat and light from the sun came from various elements “…and… Stuff!” and I got the impression his mind had blanked for a second. Flans teased him a bit about it afterward. Linnell claimed he was just reading the teleprompter where it said to fill in "stuff". Flans pointed out how helpful it was to have the venue name written out for them on the stage, because while it used to seem really silly, he now understands that when you're on tour eventually you no longer know your own names, let alone the venue's.