Shows/2004-08-15

Venue: The Catalyst	City: Santa Cruz, CA
Date: 2004-08-15	Artist: They Might Be Giants
Time:	Opening Acts: Corn Mo

[edit] Fan Recaps and Comments:

Dan Miller wrote:

Following our triumph at the Fillmore we set up shop in The Catalyst - which surprisingly had installed a brand new sound system. The room sounded great and the tape came out really well.

The club tune "The Catalyst" is a classic. Weirdly Goth and Art Rock combined. Very fun to play and even more to practice. This may have been the first gig where no technical blibs cursed the stage. Smooth flowing with some long, good speeches from the Johns, this show is the band at it's touring best. Well rehearsed and excited about playing, this show has great musicality with a well tested selection of songs. It's at this point that I'll mention in the near future were going to put a collection of these venue tunes available for download - something I'm super excited about.

Melissa Hasty

This was the first time I actually drove Highway 17. I was accompanied by my best friend and TMBG roadtrip traveling companion Becky.

Highway 17 also goes by the delightful nicknames of "blood highway" and "death highway." It goes through the Santa Cruz mountains and is extremely winding and horrible, as well as being multiple car accident prone. I was so nervous while driving it that I stopped speaking for the entire duration of highway 17.

After getting off in one piece, Becky and I stopped for lunch at Santa Cruz diner and I had one of the best chocolate milkshakes that I've had in my entire life. Yum. I wish I had that milkshake right now, it was that good. Anyhoo.

We overestimated the time it would take to get there, so we wandered around downtown Santa Cruz for a bit, since it was a really nice day. We were going in and out of stores and when we came out of Streetlight records, we saw John Linnell and Danny Weinkauf across the street walking towards the tour bus.

Later, while we were waiting in front of the Catalyst, we saw Corn Mo pass by, then later, John Flansburg and Marty Beller came outside and Flans asked one of the sullen looking security guards where were good places to eat in the area and then the two of them got into a short discussion about the moveon.org cd. Then Miller appeared a few minutes later and headed off down the street.

The catalyst is more of a nightclub than the Fillmore and therefore had that more danky, beer soaked atmosphere. The stage was also really sticky and six feet high.(!) Though not as sticky as the First Avenue stage in Minneapolis. The crowd seemed a lot more excited than the previous night's show and the band really seemed to be enjoying the energy. Some of the same songs were played as the night before, they also played a song of the upcoming "Here Come the ABC's": "Fake Believe". and the Catalyst's venue song was sort of a skate punk song. (The Fillmore's was kind of a funk number, where many SF streets were mentioned.)

At the end of the show, we saw Dan Miller sitting over in a corner typing on his ibook. (working on the download site, I think) we went over and asked if he could sign our copies of "The Spine" and he smiled and stood up. (It sounds funny, but I was really impressed by the fact that he stopped what he was doing and gave us his full attention. I think that's why I really love this band, they all seem like genuinely nice people.)

While signing Becky's cd, he said jokingly, "This should raise the resale value". Dan also said that he thought the Santa Cruz show was better in terms of the performance of the band, but that it was always exciting to play the Fillmore in San Francisco. He then asked us where we were from and when we said we had driven down from the Bay Area, he told us that they had rented a convertible and driven down the PCH. (Or as we locals call it, highway 1. :P "PCH" seems to be very much an east coast thing, since I've heard other people from New York call it that.)

I think Becky had said that it was a perfect day to do that and Dan had agreed that it was really great weather. It's a really stunning highway, you are right on the coast, with the Pacific Ocean for the whole ride. I thought it was really kind of sweet that guys from New York would want to have that kind of quintessential California experience. :)

(This also explained why Dan Miller had car keys when he passed by when were in line earlier..see above. So, my guess is Dan drove.) Then we thanked him and let him get back to his ibook and left for our long drive back to the Bay Area.

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