i was there at the gig in san luis obispo last night. a good solid gig, but
there seemed to be a few problems, mainly with the laptop computer before
the gig started, then various little things here and there during the gig.
the new songs were the definite highlights of the night, especially 'killing
all the flies' (absolutely stunning) and 'ratts of the capital' (with barry
moving over to bass toward the end), which was brilliant. 'helicon 2' and
'ex-cowboy' were nice surprises. 'kids will be skeletons' went straight into
'mogwai fear satan' without a break between the two.
the laptop was unusable for the gig, so they had to change the initial setlist. 'my father my king' was added in place of 'stop coming to my house' and 'i know you are but
what am i?', which really sucked as those were two i was looking forward to
hearing. 'christmas steps' was moved from the encore into the main set.
stuart and john stayed out 4 or 5 minutes after 'mfmk' for quite a noise fest.
i was very impressed with the entire band, especially barry and dominic.
i got a chance to chat with barry for a minute or two before the gig while
they were trying to figure out what the problem was with the laptop, and
he's a real nice guy. we started out talking about what was going on with
the laptop, and john chimed in that it was "fucked up." as the guys were
working on it, barry turned to me and we talked a bit about the new album
(mainly me saying how good it is, and he seemed flattered and thanked me for
saying so), the missing sampler (saying that they paid extra yet british
airways still lost it!), his excellent vocal work with the vocal vocoder
(which he shrugged off, saying that it's just "random words" he's singing),
the make up gig in la (which he said was a good gig), and downloading albums
from the net before their actual release (he said "yeah, i do that too"
when i told him i'd been listening to the new album since early may). i saw
stuart before the gig at one of the computer stations in the student center,
and saw martin walking around a few times, but didn't get to talk to either
of them.
when i was told by the guy selling shirts that they were out of my size, he
said the band would be back in september, and said they'll definitely play
la and sf again, and maybe sacramento, so that's something to look forward
to.
