Shows/2003-04-11
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Setlist:
- Orff Intro
- Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
- James K. Polk
- Bed Bed Bed
- John Lee Supertaster
- No!
- Birdhouse In Your Soul
- Clap Your Hands
- She's Actual Size
- Older
- In The Middle
- Fingertips
- Doctor Worm
- Drink!
- Particle Man
- Elusive Butterfly interlude
- Cyclops Rock
- Why Does The Sun Shine?
- Spider
- The Guitar
- Everybody Conga
- No One Knows My Plan
- Robot Parade (Adult Version)
- Ana Ng
- New York City
Fan Recaps and Comments:
Review by Kelly Korber:
A few weeks ago, a friend called and said TMBG was playing a FREE show at Carnegie Mellon. After searching the site for confirmation of a show date, I was very skeptical. The show was originally supposed to be outdoors, but was moved inside because of inclement weather. After
trudging all over campus trying to find the correct gym, I spotted a line extending out a door.
Always the pessimist, at this point I was still thinking, "There's no way we're getting in", since current students were admitted first. We managed to get in and weasel our way to about the 3rd row, in clear view of where the Johns would stand.
Istanbul was great with the extended guitar intro. After James K. Polk, Flans, made apologies for the extremely poor acoustics of the gym, noting that freshmen who enter next fall will "still be enjoying this show" because of the reverb. The crowd seemed to be mostly non-tmbger's and this became apparent during No! when Flans pauses for the audience to respond. I think they realized some of the crowd wasn't "getting it", so we screamed and clapped louder. For the first time I've seen since about '96, a conga line was formed. There was crowd-surfing too, but it was mostly drunk frat boys.
The bright side of having mostly non-tmbgers at the show, NO one hung around after. After 12 shows, I managed to finally grab a setlist off of a very nice roadie. So, for a free show with poor acoutics, it was better than some shows I've paid for.
Review by Lawrence Solomon:
This show ... was not really publicly publicized, despite technically being open to the public. This was their first time back at CMU since 1997—it seems to be a regular thing approximately every 5 years.
The show was supposed to be outdoors, but it was cold and rainy on Friday, so they set up in the gym.
Because it was inside, they were checking IDs, since there was limited space. They let students (only current students, even!) in first, then everyone else. Fortunately, there was plenty of space, and the opener played as they let people in. By the time we got inside, the opener was almost done.
TMBG came on around 8:30.
The things in the lower right (of the written setlist) are towns around Pittsburgh (Oakland is actually a section of Pittsburgh... the section with CMU and Pitt in it) and were used to cause the nuclear reactions on the sun in WDTSS. (The gases on the sun this time were Iron, Copper, Aluminum... all kinds of wood...)
I don't know what ORFF means, but it was circled.
Ana Ng was introduced as being played much slower than the original recorded version, and started out extremely slowly with just Linnell playing. Like, we're talking 70bpm at most. But during the first verse, he sped it up to the normal pace, still slower than the original, though.
She's Actual Size included the dial-a-drum solo, with all the usual suspects, including Ringo, for which Dan played the drum part to Ticket to Ride.
Particle Man included the bit of Butterfly of Love that Linnell seems to really enjoy inserting in there. There was much confusion among the crowd.
The sound was horrendously bad, though. Gyms are not known for their acoustics. Flansburgh actually pointed this out very early in the set. And he seemd to keep having technical issues requiring him to leave the stage and come back.
The soundcheck was The Statue Got Me High and Women & Men (which I don't think they've played at a show in quite a while) and a whole lot of covers. They played Taking Care of Business, Baba O'Reilly, and Start Me Up, among others.
I think a lot of the No! stuff was lost on a good portion of the audience. A lot of people seemed to be standing around like "Huh? What is this?" The Flood songs, of course, were the best received songs of the set.
And there was quite a bit of pass the dude during NYC, the first time I've seen such an atrocity at a TMBG show since about 1997. Damn college kids.
