Tied For Last

Second band of a five-band night.

It had been raining hard for five days straight, and the Yankees had just lost in the playoffs, so the whole city seemed to be in a dismal funk. We, however, were psyched to play because we had taken a break from live shows for most of August and all of September so that we could get other business done. This show started it all up again as the first of three shows in under four weeks, and we were ready, if not a little sloppy.

In a way, we were looking for this show to be a warm-up for LebowskiFest (Oct 21). Tommy and I (with a lot of help from Rev. Caroline) had been trying to get TFL on the Lebowskifest bill for awhile, and we had recently received the good news that we were accepted. We chose most of our set list with that in mind, and actively chose a couple of songs that we hadn't played in awhile, to treat our friends who regularly show for the weeknight gigs to something a little different.

The first few songs sounded good, but a little hurried. For some reason, we played our songs a little faster than we normally do, and I think it resulted in our not being as tight as usual. That said, I think we played 'em well enough, and we had a great time.

The sped-up tempo of the songs, and the fact that I played guitar on all but two of the songs made it so that I couldn't really take a lot of water breaks. Also, some of the songs (Beautiful In Black, I'm Not Fine and Lead You On) are hard for me to sing, so I ended up having a few voice problems.

We all had our share of screw-ups here and there, but the audience was REALLY receptive to us, so that made it a lot better. Tommy, who was drunk, because he had come to the gig from a party, sounded great vocally, which helped me a lot. Maybe I should take up drinking?

We also tried out two new cover songs that we learned specifically for LebowskiFest. The first was Dead Flowers, originally by the Rolling Stones. We gave it a Social Distortion-like treatment, and it came out pretty well. The other cover, Elvis' Viva Las Vegas came out so well that we chose to close the set with it, and have already decided that it will become a permanent part of the TFL repertoire. All feedback on this cover has been amazingly positive.

All in all, it was a fun set, but not our best work. Now that we have our sea legs again, though, I'm looking for the upcoming shows to kick some major ass.
By the way, the band that followed us, The Trakes were damn good. They say they're from the future, but maybe they'll come back in time to play with us again. If I can get more info, or a website link, I'll post it.

Set List:
SAILOR
GOT NO LIFE
BLOODY TUESDAY
WE'RE ALRIGHT
DEAD FLOWERS
TAKE JANINE AWAY
I'M NOT FINE
BEAUTIFUL IN BLACK
BAGHDAD
ACHIEVER
LEAD YOU ON
VIVA LAS VEGAS