TOFOG in Portland (Part 4)
Aug. 21st, 2001 01:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperEdited 8/22/01 8:58pm and 8/23/01 6:55pm, and added to LJ as a backdated entry 5/15/03 -- herein being the description of the Grunts' performance
The Grunts, or, "Austin Was Great, Can We Have The Unedited Version?"
Wow.
I mean, wow.
As I write this, I have a pretty jumbled impression of the order of things throughout the Grunts' performance, so I'm going to organize my thoughts here in categories of what I remember observing rather than actual chronological order.
Visual Impressions of the Band
Cyn and Rhiannon and I were, as I mention, about 7 or 8 bodies' worth of distance back from the stage. I stink at judging distance, so all I can say is that that was somewhere between 10 and 20 feet. But it was certainly close enough to get a fine view of the Grunts.
Dave Wilkins had on his signature cowboy hat, a cream-colored chapeau which had apparently survived rumored abuse given it in shows earlier on the tour. He is a lean fellow, with long dark hair, and had on one of the black Grunts jerseys as well.
Dean Cochran is also lean, but with close-cropped hair. His shirt was pretty darned impressive. And pretty darned colorful. Under the lighting at the Roseland it looked like its base color was white, but it was splashed all over with streaks of color going this way and that, red and orange and green and who knows what else.
I could barely see Stewart Kirwan or Dave Kelly from my vantage point. Stewart was too far back, behind Dean, for me to see more of him than his face and his trumpet when he played; Dave was behind his red drumset, but I tried to get a look at him once or twice. If nothing else, because Rhiannon had pretty much point-blank ordered me to write his hair its own sonnet. I'd shared with her, you see, that I'd done that for the hair of Alan Doyle of Great Big Sea, and she was mightily amused. And mightily convinced that Dave's hair needed its own sonnet, too!
Garth Adam I didn't notice much, but then again that seems to be in character for him from what I've heard: a nice quiet guy who just kicks back and plays his bass. I do remember, though, that he had on a black shirt with red flames licking around the bottom. He appears to share tastes in shirts with Bob Hallett of Great Big Sea -- who, I note, had been wearing a black bowling shirt with red fireballs along the bottom when I saw GBS at the Showbox this past St. Paddy's Day.
And then of course there was Russell. He came out all dressed in black, a basic flannel shirt unbuttoned just enough to permit a glimpse of the top of another of the Grunts jerseys. I also noticed that he was wearing something on a cord around his neck, and only later on in the concert did this reveal itself to be a wooden cross, another detail about which I'd already heard from the Gruntlanders. In the stage lighting, his eyes looked gray. I'd already seen what his hair looked like thanks to the Leno show on the 16th, and it looked pretty much the same here: a slightly longer edition of the haircut he'd had at the Oscars, generally short, long enough in front to flop fetchingly over his brow, but not long enough to get into his eyes.
Performance Impressions of the Band
Short form summary: everybody who has said that the Grunts are significantly better live is dead on accurate.
Russell's voice is better -- and it was extremely pleasurable to see the vigor and energy with which he cut loose on his guitar. He was a notably better guitarist than I expected, proving that he's there to do more than just be the charismatic front man. He even played the opening bars on one of the songs. And the rumors I'd heard that he had a habit of waggling his southern regions in decidedly Elvis-like fashions were also accurate. Mrowr!
Dave Wilkins came more to the fore for me, live. Every time Russell came over to sing harmony with him, I got full-force evidence that the two of them sing very well together, and that Dave does in fact have, as Russell describes in the band intro in the live version of "Nowhere" that got onto the Net, a "f---in' fabulous voice".
Stewart was definitely impressive on his trumpet, but then again I'd already known I loved his contributions to the band.
Billy Dean Cochran -- words like "spectacular" and "amazing" come to mind, thinking of his guitar playing. He pulled some tricks that Kathryn told me, later, were the work of something called an "ebow", which is apparently an electronic gadget that you use to touch the guitar strings to make them hold out a note. Effectively bowing them, like you use a bow to play the strings of a fiddle. I didn't notice the device in action, but then, its results were unmistakable. Billy's guitar snarled forth some noises I had no idea a guitar could make, and of which I'd had only a taste, thanks to the aforementioned live version of "Nowhere".
They did two encores, and I was surprised to note that each encore consisted of multiple songs and not just one, which was a very pleasant surprise indeed. Russell Gilbert made appearances again both times to get us psyched up to bring them back out, yelling, "Let's get those bastards back out here!" Which we did, screaming "GRUNTS GRUNTS GRUNTS GRUNTS" at the top of our lungs!
General Impressions of Russell
This man is a complete and utter ham on stage, and he was quite, quite funny. Raucous, yes. Rough-mouthed, absolutely. He was pretty much constantly chugging back beer, and when he wasn't doing that he had a cigarette in hand and was smoking like a chimney. I saw him go off to the right, just offstage, and come back with a cloud of smoke surrounding his head.
He is a born storyteller, too, unsurprisingly considering that they gave him a pretty gold statue for his acting talents. More than once he went off into silly voices to tell a story behind a song, though listening to him telling the stories behind various songs was delightful all on its own. The fact that a lot of TOFOG's music does have so much Story behind it is one of the reasons I admire it, after all.
Nor was he afraid to get cranky at the audience if they did something he didn't like -- see my notes on the intro to "What You Want Me to Forget", below. Someone up in the balcony actually threw something down at him; I didn't see it, and there are conflicting accounts of whether it was a bra or panties. But I saw Russell's reaction, which was to the effect of, "Keep your f---in' underwear to your f---in' selves" and "You're gonna need those, honey" and "If there isn't a law against this in Portland, there f---in' oughtta be!"
Did I mention he swore like a sailor?
He even warned us about that, too, pointing out that he was in fact going to be using the f-word in various colorful fashions, and that "if you read your tickets, it says he's gonna f---in' SWEAR!" Apparently, this caused him a bit of personal consternation in Austin, since he had to rein in his language for the 15-year-old daughter of the Texas governor and her bevy of teenaged friends -- and, apparently, word of this had gotten to the Portland crowd, for some of the chicks in front of us held up a sign that said "Austin Was Great, Can We Have the Unedited Version?"
Another sign that got his attention asked him to sing "Happy Birthday" to a nearby companion of the sign-holder. When said companion was pointed out to him, Russell looked her way and said, "Here's the deuce, honey -- we don't do 'Happy Birthday'! But consider yourself sung to!" Then he made a funny little face and muttersang "Happy birthday?!" as if he couldn't quite believe he'd been asked to do that. Heh.
A girl with a tattoo got his attention and he had her turn around so that he could show the tattoo to Billy Dean.
And although he didn't want people throwing things at him, Russell frequently threw things into the audience. Carnations, for example. A shower of them came our way -- and we got some! He threw out towels he'd used to mop his face, and once when he tossed one out he devilishly grinned and yelled, "Fight, girls, FIGHT!"
(He wasn't the only one throwing things out, either. I saw Dave Wilkins throwing things as well, though they were too small to be seen from my vantage point; I suspected he was throwing out guitar picks, though.)
Every so often Russell would pause, crouch down, and offer one of his cigarettes to one of the girls up front. I have less of a hard time believing he'd do such a thing -- it does seem in character for him -- than I do believing that there are women who would actually take them! I mean, the man's cute and all, but eew, I wouldn't want his cigarettes. Now if he'd decided to, oh, say, throw out his shirt, that would have been another matter entirely! ;)
He interacted a lot with the band members, as well, and made a point of giving them all an opportunity to shine; this, I consider extremely cool of him. He introduced everyone not once but twice, and the first time through got us all chanting BIL-LY, BIL-LY, BIL-LY as he introduced Billy Dean! During solos, he'd walk offstage to keep attention on whoever was playing, though frequently when he came back he'd pretend to bump into the others and horse around with them.
Garth gets major points, too, for being able to continue to play his instrument while Russell in fact POURED BEER ON HIM and tickled him!
Billy got ragged on at least twice, once when Russell was telling us all how they were all now no longer young and sprightly, old enough to know better -- and to learn from their mistakes. And how Billy's shirt was his mistake of the day. Later, Russell wandered back over and pretended to 'consult' with him, holding the mike at him while Billy said -- well, nothing, from what I could see, he merely grinned. And Russell kept taking back the mike and informing us all of what Billy allegedly said.
Dave Wilkins got ragged on, too, when he wandered out of his appointed place during one of Russell's stories. At which point Russell promptly ordered him back, reminding him that it was his job to stand over there, look sexy, and play the guitar.
(Dave, it should be noted, contributed some to the horseplay. I spotted him sneaking back to Dave Kelly's drumset at one point and playing the cymbals with the end of his guitar. Snicker.)
Towards the end, Russell finally gave in to audience shouts for him to take off his shirt. With this sort of 'oh ALL RIGHT' expression, he started unbuttoning the black flannel -- and with each button the audience got more nuts. Finally he pulled the shirt off just enough to turn around and flash us his shoulders. Again I say, mrowr!
General Impressions of the Audience
It was a bit sad that a significant portion of this audience was obviously there just to gawk at Russell -- and not to hear the band perform. The balcony was particularly bad about this, making a lot of noise and causing others in the audience to yell at them, which only resulted in a feedback loop of noise. Mimi and Kathryn later told those of us who'd been on the floor how they'd tried to get some people behind them to shut up, only to be answered with, "What's the problem? You can see him!"
Down on the floor, at least early on in the show, I could still hear myself singing when I sang along with the songs. And Cyn and Rhiannon and I had an incident with a girl who was obviously seven sheets to the wind. She muscled in front of us, probably trying to make her way to the stage, and refused to be budged when asked politely. Cyn was gearing up to punch her -- I didn't think to try to do anything. But fortunately, the others with whom we'd gotten chummy after spending hours with them bodychecked her out of the way, and pulled us back forward into our rightful place.
The drunk chick wound up right behind me, and for a little while she kept bellowing things like "TAKE ME I'M YOURS" and "30 ODD FOOT OF GRUNTS I LOVE YOU" and "I WANT TO HAVE YOUR BABY" and such. But, thankfully, she either wandered off on her own before the tail end of the show, or got dragged off.
By the time the Grunts got to their encores, most of the Russell Groupies must have left the floor -- because now many more of the people around me were singing along with the words and dancing and enjoying themselves. So even though it was obvious that a good portion of the audience didn't care about the band, it was equally obvious that a good portion of it did.
The Set List
I tried to see if I would be able to write down the set list, since I had a pen in my fanny pack and various and sundry papers in my wallet on which I could scribble. But under no circumstances was I able to see in the dim lighting, so Cyn and Rhiannon and I agreed to each to try to remember a portion of the set of songs performed. This didn't quite work out, but here's as much of the set list as I can reconstruct, with song-specific recollections where I can pull 'em up from memory:
The Grunts, or, "Austin Was Great, Can We Have The Unedited Version?"
Wow.
I mean, wow.
As I write this, I have a pretty jumbled impression of the order of things throughout the Grunts' performance, so I'm going to organize my thoughts here in categories of what I remember observing rather than actual chronological order.
Visual Impressions of the Band
Cyn and Rhiannon and I were, as I mention, about 7 or 8 bodies' worth of distance back from the stage. I stink at judging distance, so all I can say is that that was somewhere between 10 and 20 feet. But it was certainly close enough to get a fine view of the Grunts.
Dave Wilkins had on his signature cowboy hat, a cream-colored chapeau which had apparently survived rumored abuse given it in shows earlier on the tour. He is a lean fellow, with long dark hair, and had on one of the black Grunts jerseys as well.
Dean Cochran is also lean, but with close-cropped hair. His shirt was pretty darned impressive. And pretty darned colorful. Under the lighting at the Roseland it looked like its base color was white, but it was splashed all over with streaks of color going this way and that, red and orange and green and who knows what else.
I could barely see Stewart Kirwan or Dave Kelly from my vantage point. Stewart was too far back, behind Dean, for me to see more of him than his face and his trumpet when he played; Dave was behind his red drumset, but I tried to get a look at him once or twice. If nothing else, because Rhiannon had pretty much point-blank ordered me to write his hair its own sonnet. I'd shared with her, you see, that I'd done that for the hair of Alan Doyle of Great Big Sea, and she was mightily amused. And mightily convinced that Dave's hair needed its own sonnet, too!
Garth Adam I didn't notice much, but then again that seems to be in character for him from what I've heard: a nice quiet guy who just kicks back and plays his bass. I do remember, though, that he had on a black shirt with red flames licking around the bottom. He appears to share tastes in shirts with Bob Hallett of Great Big Sea -- who, I note, had been wearing a black bowling shirt with red fireballs along the bottom when I saw GBS at the Showbox this past St. Paddy's Day.
And then of course there was Russell. He came out all dressed in black, a basic flannel shirt unbuttoned just enough to permit a glimpse of the top of another of the Grunts jerseys. I also noticed that he was wearing something on a cord around his neck, and only later on in the concert did this reveal itself to be a wooden cross, another detail about which I'd already heard from the Gruntlanders. In the stage lighting, his eyes looked gray. I'd already seen what his hair looked like thanks to the Leno show on the 16th, and it looked pretty much the same here: a slightly longer edition of the haircut he'd had at the Oscars, generally short, long enough in front to flop fetchingly over his brow, but not long enough to get into his eyes.
Performance Impressions of the Band
Short form summary: everybody who has said that the Grunts are significantly better live is dead on accurate.
Russell's voice is better -- and it was extremely pleasurable to see the vigor and energy with which he cut loose on his guitar. He was a notably better guitarist than I expected, proving that he's there to do more than just be the charismatic front man. He even played the opening bars on one of the songs. And the rumors I'd heard that he had a habit of waggling his southern regions in decidedly Elvis-like fashions were also accurate. Mrowr!
Dave Wilkins came more to the fore for me, live. Every time Russell came over to sing harmony with him, I got full-force evidence that the two of them sing very well together, and that Dave does in fact have, as Russell describes in the band intro in the live version of "Nowhere" that got onto the Net, a "f---in' fabulous voice".
Stewart was definitely impressive on his trumpet, but then again I'd already known I loved his contributions to the band.
Billy Dean Cochran -- words like "spectacular" and "amazing" come to mind, thinking of his guitar playing. He pulled some tricks that Kathryn told me, later, were the work of something called an "ebow", which is apparently an electronic gadget that you use to touch the guitar strings to make them hold out a note. Effectively bowing them, like you use a bow to play the strings of a fiddle. I didn't notice the device in action, but then, its results were unmistakable. Billy's guitar snarled forth some noises I had no idea a guitar could make, and of which I'd had only a taste, thanks to the aforementioned live version of "Nowhere".
They did two encores, and I was surprised to note that each encore consisted of multiple songs and not just one, which was a very pleasant surprise indeed. Russell Gilbert made appearances again both times to get us psyched up to bring them back out, yelling, "Let's get those bastards back out here!" Which we did, screaming "GRUNTS GRUNTS GRUNTS GRUNTS" at the top of our lungs!
General Impressions of Russell
This man is a complete and utter ham on stage, and he was quite, quite funny. Raucous, yes. Rough-mouthed, absolutely. He was pretty much constantly chugging back beer, and when he wasn't doing that he had a cigarette in hand and was smoking like a chimney. I saw him go off to the right, just offstage, and come back with a cloud of smoke surrounding his head.
He is a born storyteller, too, unsurprisingly considering that they gave him a pretty gold statue for his acting talents. More than once he went off into silly voices to tell a story behind a song, though listening to him telling the stories behind various songs was delightful all on its own. The fact that a lot of TOFOG's music does have so much Story behind it is one of the reasons I admire it, after all.
Nor was he afraid to get cranky at the audience if they did something he didn't like -- see my notes on the intro to "What You Want Me to Forget", below. Someone up in the balcony actually threw something down at him; I didn't see it, and there are conflicting accounts of whether it was a bra or panties. But I saw Russell's reaction, which was to the effect of, "Keep your f---in' underwear to your f---in' selves" and "You're gonna need those, honey" and "If there isn't a law against this in Portland, there f---in' oughtta be!"
Did I mention he swore like a sailor?
He even warned us about that, too, pointing out that he was in fact going to be using the f-word in various colorful fashions, and that "if you read your tickets, it says he's gonna f---in' SWEAR!" Apparently, this caused him a bit of personal consternation in Austin, since he had to rein in his language for the 15-year-old daughter of the Texas governor and her bevy of teenaged friends -- and, apparently, word of this had gotten to the Portland crowd, for some of the chicks in front of us held up a sign that said "Austin Was Great, Can We Have the Unedited Version?"
Another sign that got his attention asked him to sing "Happy Birthday" to a nearby companion of the sign-holder. When said companion was pointed out to him, Russell looked her way and said, "Here's the deuce, honey -- we don't do 'Happy Birthday'! But consider yourself sung to!" Then he made a funny little face and muttersang "Happy birthday?!" as if he couldn't quite believe he'd been asked to do that. Heh.
A girl with a tattoo got his attention and he had her turn around so that he could show the tattoo to Billy Dean.
And although he didn't want people throwing things at him, Russell frequently threw things into the audience. Carnations, for example. A shower of them came our way -- and we got some! He threw out towels he'd used to mop his face, and once when he tossed one out he devilishly grinned and yelled, "Fight, girls, FIGHT!"
(He wasn't the only one throwing things out, either. I saw Dave Wilkins throwing things as well, though they were too small to be seen from my vantage point; I suspected he was throwing out guitar picks, though.)
Every so often Russell would pause, crouch down, and offer one of his cigarettes to one of the girls up front. I have less of a hard time believing he'd do such a thing -- it does seem in character for him -- than I do believing that there are women who would actually take them! I mean, the man's cute and all, but eew, I wouldn't want his cigarettes. Now if he'd decided to, oh, say, throw out his shirt, that would have been another matter entirely! ;)
He interacted a lot with the band members, as well, and made a point of giving them all an opportunity to shine; this, I consider extremely cool of him. He introduced everyone not once but twice, and the first time through got us all chanting BIL-LY, BIL-LY, BIL-LY as he introduced Billy Dean! During solos, he'd walk offstage to keep attention on whoever was playing, though frequently when he came back he'd pretend to bump into the others and horse around with them.
Garth gets major points, too, for being able to continue to play his instrument while Russell in fact POURED BEER ON HIM and tickled him!
Billy got ragged on at least twice, once when Russell was telling us all how they were all now no longer young and sprightly, old enough to know better -- and to learn from their mistakes. And how Billy's shirt was his mistake of the day. Later, Russell wandered back over and pretended to 'consult' with him, holding the mike at him while Billy said -- well, nothing, from what I could see, he merely grinned. And Russell kept taking back the mike and informing us all of what Billy allegedly said.
Dave Wilkins got ragged on, too, when he wandered out of his appointed place during one of Russell's stories. At which point Russell promptly ordered him back, reminding him that it was his job to stand over there, look sexy, and play the guitar.
(Dave, it should be noted, contributed some to the horseplay. I spotted him sneaking back to Dave Kelly's drumset at one point and playing the cymbals with the end of his guitar. Snicker.)
Towards the end, Russell finally gave in to audience shouts for him to take off his shirt. With this sort of 'oh ALL RIGHT' expression, he started unbuttoning the black flannel -- and with each button the audience got more nuts. Finally he pulled the shirt off just enough to turn around and flash us his shoulders. Again I say, mrowr!
General Impressions of the Audience
It was a bit sad that a significant portion of this audience was obviously there just to gawk at Russell -- and not to hear the band perform. The balcony was particularly bad about this, making a lot of noise and causing others in the audience to yell at them, which only resulted in a feedback loop of noise. Mimi and Kathryn later told those of us who'd been on the floor how they'd tried to get some people behind them to shut up, only to be answered with, "What's the problem? You can see him!"
Down on the floor, at least early on in the show, I could still hear myself singing when I sang along with the songs. And Cyn and Rhiannon and I had an incident with a girl who was obviously seven sheets to the wind. She muscled in front of us, probably trying to make her way to the stage, and refused to be budged when asked politely. Cyn was gearing up to punch her -- I didn't think to try to do anything. But fortunately, the others with whom we'd gotten chummy after spending hours with them bodychecked her out of the way, and pulled us back forward into our rightful place.
The drunk chick wound up right behind me, and for a little while she kept bellowing things like "TAKE ME I'M YOURS" and "30 ODD FOOT OF GRUNTS I LOVE YOU" and "I WANT TO HAVE YOUR BABY" and such. But, thankfully, she either wandered off on her own before the tail end of the show, or got dragged off.
By the time the Grunts got to their encores, most of the Russell Groupies must have left the floor -- because now many more of the people around me were singing along with the words and dancing and enjoying themselves. So even though it was obvious that a good portion of the audience didn't care about the band, it was equally obvious that a good portion of it did.
The Set List
I tried to see if I would be able to write down the set list, since I had a pen in my fanny pack and various and sundry papers in my wallet on which I could scribble. But under no circumstances was I able to see in the dim lighting, so Cyn and Rhiannon and I agreed to each to try to remember a portion of the set of songs performed. This didn't quite work out, but here's as much of the set list as I can reconstruct, with song-specific recollections where I can pull 'em up from memory:
- The Photograph Kills
- This was the opening number, and the lighting brought up, behind the band, the silhouette of a figure leaning back grinning off the cover of that particular CD. I have a soft spot for this particular song, as although I know Virtuosity isn't exactly a good movie, I love the character SID 6.7 and the part that goes "I've committed most sins known to mankind, but I still believe in the essential goodness of my spirit!" I sang along with this ditty, and cheered when Russell reached that part.
- Things Have Got to Change
- I love this one, too. Russell's vocals were a bit off key at the beginning, but he got his act together pretty quickly.
- What You Want Me to Forget
- Russell introduced this one with a long story about his father losing his job. And by now, well into the set, the audience was hyped up and in many cases overly so. People in the balcony cheered pretty loudly at totally inappropriate points in this story -- enough that Russell looked up in their direction and barked out, "Well, that was f---in' relevant to what I was talkin' about!" Cyn says that a few sentences later he told them point-blank to shut the f--- up. Me, I figure that people were just blown away by the simple fact that he was talking and weren't paying proper attention to what he was saying; I have to admit to being a bit guilty of that myself! But after that, people seemed to settle down. At least in terms of inappropriate cheering during Russell's stories, at any rate. Regardless, the overall point of the story was that the song title comes from Russell's father being turned down for a job on the grounds that he was too experienced, and Mr. Crowe apparently retorted, "What do you want me to forget?"
Good song, too. - Sail Those Same Oceans
- Another one I sang along on! I think it was while introducing this song that Russell mentioned that the Grunts had signed a deal with Artemis Records, and he recounted the terms of said deal, claiming that Artemis wouldn't give them any money (because the Grunts didn't want it) and they wouldn't tell them how to sell records. Heh.
- How Did We Get From Saying I Love You
- The Great Big Sea song! I'd been asking people whether Russell had been mentioning Great Big Sea by name, and apparently sometimes he had and sometimes he hadn't. This time around he did in fact mention them by name, which got him a thunderous roar of approval from the crowd (including the voice of yours truly). This made him blink a bit and ask if this meant that there were a lot of Canadians in the audience.
When he got another roar in response, he quipped, "Let you out for the day, did they?"
I had to give him the finger on behalf of my Canadian friends, for that one! All in good fun -- because Russell seems to have the sort of sense of humor that invites you to share in the joke even if he says the most outrageous things. He didn't notice, but Cyn did and told me, "Good one, Anna!"
But it was all good, because Russell then proceeded to relate how Newfoundland was the equivalent of Tasmania in Australia, the sort of place reputed to be where one has sex with one's relatives and such... and then he asked us what the equivalent place was in the States. He got a whole slew of responses, and told us how when he'd told this joke in Texas, the initial vote was for Alabama. Which amused everybody down there -- except for one lady from Alabama who (as Russell proceeded to drawl) allegedly proclaimed, "Ah doan lahk you no moah!"
Apparently, that particular lady didn't quite get his sense of humor.
"And then," he added, "we decided on California."
That went over well with our crowd, too.
As for the song itself, the Grunts did a significantly more rocked-up version than Great Big Sea does. Although overall I like Great Big Sea better as a band, I think I have to say that I prefer the Grunts version of this song at least on the first live hearing. The Great Big Sea version is one of their earlier tracks, before Alan Doyle's voice had settled into its current (and to me, extremely fine) slightly rough tonality; he sounded kind of bland on that track. Russell, by contrast, is not as good a singer as Alan is, but even when he goes off key Russell Crowe can never been accused of sounding bland as he sings! - Wendy
- It took me a moment to recognize the opening bars of this one, but once I did, I sang on this one, too. This was early enough in the show, too, that I could still hear myself singing when I hit harmony on the choruses.
- All the White Circles
- I was quite delighted to hear this one for a second time, so close after the Onya Awards webcast! The lighting, I remember, changed to reflect the lyrics -- white circles on a deep dark blue background.
- The Night That Davey Hit the Train
- Afraid
- Afraid
- I didn't recognize this song -- and at the time, the only lyrics I thought I could make out were "so free". Which didn't sound familiar to any of my fellow TOFOG fans, consulted later! Only after watching the new DVD did I determine that I'd misheard what Russell was singing, and "Afraid" was in fact the song they did. I liked it, too! Kind of perky in melody for a song with a title like "Afraid", but well hey.
- Swept Away Bayou
- Russell introduced this one by pointing out that for those of us who had Bastard Life or Clarity, it was track 9. He got us clapping, too, which upped the energy level.
- Oblique is My Love
- She's Not Impressed
- Somebody Else's Princess
- She's Not Impressed
- YES! YES YES YES! I love this song on Bastard Life or Clarity and I loved it live, too. Russell lengthened out some of the parts towards the end where he growls the title words. Live, they became "Somebody else's sweet sweet sweet sweet princess!" Mrowr.
- Swallow My Gift
- I'd never heard this one before, though I'd heard it passingly referred to on Gruntland.com and had always kind of blinked at the title. I didn't catch enough of the lyrics to figure out what it was actually about.
- Full Length of the River
- This was a pleasure to listen to -- a new ditty that Russell and Dean had written, and for which I was on the lookout since I'd caught a fragment of the lyrics on Gruntland. Specifically, the part about "she hasn't been the same since her daddy died."
Which sort of made me start, since my own father passed away this past May and I still feel, every so often, weird about it. I'd wondered if I'd feel weird listening to this song performed; I didn't, but I'm not sure whether this is because I'm handling Dad's passing all right, or whether it was just because I didn't get to hear the song properly in a live setting, for purposes of becoming introduced to it and getting the impact of the lyrics.
I want to hear a studio version of this now. - The Legend of Barry Kable
- Russell started in on the intro to this one -- and again, the audience got a bit hyper. Since this is the one song on any of the current set of Grunts discs that comes with an introduction, it's the one everybody knows. So people started trying to shout out the story along with Russell. Except that one person got it wrong; when he got to the part about Barry's dad taking his mum's head down to the pub, there rose up a bellow out of the audience, "Just to show them he wasn't a man to be reckoned with!"
That got Russell's attention, and he cocked an eyebrow and corrected, "A man to be trifled with!" And proceeded on with the story, telling it with a bit more detail than the Gaslight version and doing a 'drunk' voice as he described some of the interactions Dean Cochran had had with Barry Kable.
And then into the song itself, which proved to be the faster version, as performed on Gaslight and on the single where it's paired up with "Inside Her Eyes".
Lots of people sang along on this one, and this time, I couldn't distinguish my own voice. - David
- This one was prefaced with Russell calling it a "country" song and telling us all he wanted to see some high-steppin'! I love "David", and it's one of the Grunts songs I know the best; I sing it in the car all the time when I get to it on my tapes. Live, it was done faster than the version on Gaslight. I sang along with the whole thing, though I couldn't quite manage proper harmony on the second verse since my voice was getting tired and it was too noisy to hear myself anyway. ;) So back to the melody I punted!
- Eternity
- Thought of Boudicca when they got to this one -- because she'd told me she'd cried in Austin when they did it. Very nice rendition of it in Portland, too.
- Folsom Prison Blues
- Wow.
I mean, WOW.
This was the closing number, introduced by Russell with the commentary that he'd noticed that there were boyfriends and husbands and cousins and second cousins who were at the show "under duress" -- and that this song was for them. Snicker. And in the words of Kathryn, who asked me to quote her, it "tore the roof off the sucka!"
To a man, the Grunts sizzled. For a good ten minutes. Russell blazed through his lyrics and his guitar playing, then left the stage entirely while Billy Dean and Stewart took turns picking up where he'd left off and hurling solo after solo out to our eager ears.
When the show roared to a close at last, with final droll chords from Billy Dean bidding us farewell, we were a happy bunch of Grunts fans indeed.