medical/academic: a tour
dear reader,
before i truly wake up, it’s easier to set aside the headaches, worries, and mountain of phone calls and e-mails that instantly buries me when i return home. granted, it’s harder to form complete sentences; but everything’s a trade-off, right?
first of all, let me say that we had a great weekend overall. we had a wonderful time meeting and listening to the bloodsugars, and can only hope that relationship continues. in cincinnati we played at this club, were treated very well by their gentlemanly sound guy, dwight, and got to play (and share an apartment with!) seattle’s joy wants eternity. (their website is great.)
the only real spot on the weekend, of course, was my unfortunate allergic reaction and the resulting cancellation of our show at brillobox in pittsburgh. good night, states has never before cancelled a show, and i was particularly sad to have done so this past weekend. we appreciate so much the support of everyone who attended and chose not to receive the offered refund; please come see us in october. it’s not too far away.
although this clearly doesn’t make up for the missed set, i thought i’d offer a brief tour of our stage set-up, in pictures and words, as a peace offering. this is maybe sorta what you might have possibly seen at b-box.
clockwise from rear stage left:
TREVOR
t-dog stands RIGHT THERE, people. that’s his ’70s bassman 135 that gives him such a deep, woody tone (thanks, tubes!), his venerable fulltone ‘69 (the first of two and only remaining ‘69 owned by gn,s) used to great effect on “not come around” & “family dark,” and his fender jaguar baritone (tuned to low E, like a bass). he plays it on the aforementioned “family dark” and on “far side of the boulevard,” which truthfully has been out of the set for a while. had we played on saturday night, you would have seen trevor bop hard, rock his silver j-bass (not pictured–it’s actually fused to his waist at this point, so photographing it without him is just not possible) authoritatively with fingers, pick, and thumb, and sing a bunch o’ harmonies. the low end, as they say, would have been held down.
JOE
i get really excited when i see joe’s set-up, because i know there are just so many great sounds that are going to happen here. unfortunately, my amateur photograph does not include joe’s pro junior, and his blond strat is just barely visible as a voluptuous curve leaning on the x-stand; this shot is more from joe’s perspective as he stands like a pablo-honey-era-jonny-greenwood-haired giant at the front of stage left. the synth is the nord lead 2 that joe plays on “i am the loser,” “only thing,” and “far side of the boulevard.” (megan actually stands here and plays it on “there is a treasure” as well.) this is the first clavia product we bought. the pedals are entirely for joe’s intricate guitar work, and there are clearer shots of them in some of the recording photos. if we had managed to mount the stage at brillobox, you would have seen joe pick his guitar literally thousands of times–many of them furiously–, often whammying (not a word) dramatically, cooly lay down some fat mono lines, adroitly play the knobs of his pedals (especially on “long coats, no energy,”), sing intently, and play acoustic guitar on “sometimes i see you on the lawn.” joe = sangfroid.
ME (STEVE)
well, not much to say here. in fact, i play acoustic guitar ~60% of each show, so this picture is a bit misleading. what’s interesting about these shots to me is how little space we each actually have to stand in, and my position on stage is no exception. lately i’ve been setting up just slightly forward of the dead center of the stage, between and very slightly set back from joe and megan. so… my tiny pedalboard [80% homemade (i’m all about the percentages suddenly)] featuring the delay for “there is a treasure” that i control with my feet, and the fuzz i use for leads on “only thing,” “killer of the one,” and “sometimes i see you on the lawn”; my awesome coiled guitar cable; the gibson les paul deluxe i bought in highschool as my first real electric guitar (and play on “there is a treasure” and “only thing”); and my re-issue twin reverb that i’ve used with few exceptions for the entire short life (so far!) of gn,s. not pictured: ‘65 gibson sg junior (for the rest of the electric songs) and ‘68 gibson b-25. the set list from friday night is visible at the bottom of this photo–joe and i almost always share a set list. had i not been an idiot and eaten bleu cheese on saturday, you would have seen me say stupid, slightly unintelligible things, sing my heart out, thoroughly abuse my beloved acoustic guitar (probably smashing the headstock into one of dan’s cymbals at some point), squint cross-eyed at the mic, and walk around to the jup for the end of “long coats, no energy.”
MEGAN
we’ve never played with a band that had more keyboards than us, and unless we start opening for wilco or potentially jean-michel jarre, probably never will. i’m not proud.
this is where the proverbial magic happens. it would not be easy to describe everything that actually takes place behind these ‘boards, probably not even for megan. off the top of my head, i believe she currently uses 5 electro patches, 5 x-station sounds, and i think 11 jup sounds in the course of a set. (that’s actually like 275 possible combinations!) but i’m getting ahead of myself. the top right synth is a roland jupiter 6, made sometime around 1983. it’s been in gn,s just as long as any of us, and is prominently featured throughout “short films on self-control” and the internet singles. our website is modeled after the thing because we love it to death. it weighs like 10,000 lbs. or something and is 100% analog. i could talk about it all day. the little silver guy in the upper left is a novation x-station 25. it’s got a great little touchpad and joystick that megan uses pretty extensively in “long coats, no energy” and “killer of the one,” a bunch of onboard effects, and the ability to sync just about anything to tempo (in terms of bpm) which we really like. (that’s how those blips on “not come around” always fall right with the beat!) megan actually sits the x-station on a music stand these days, mostly because no one can figure out how else to mount it so it’s within easy reach. the third keyboard is a nord electro 73 that megan uses for all the non-synth sounds in our set: acoustic piano, rhodes, wurlitzer, and organs (except for the trashy ’60s organ sounds on “killer” and “she wrote a letter,” which are the jup). this a just a really great ‘board all the way around, and in contrast to the jup weighs like <1 lb. and is 0% analog. joe actually stands here and plays the electro on “there is a treasure.” among the things you cannot see in this photo are the two sustain pedals megan uses for the jup and electro, and the secret chinese-herb voodoo she must certainly be using to be able to step on both pedals while standing up. scary stuff, folks. notice the set list taped to the electro.
had our little band been able to play on saturday, you would have seen megan play maybe a trillion notes (192 of them 16th notes), constantly change patches, bop almost as hard as trevor but with a little more femininity, somehow direct nearly all of her voluminous vocal stylings in the direction of the microphone floating ominously above the sea of keys (25 + 61 + 73 = 159), and maybe, if you’re really lucky, tuck her hair behind her ears.
DAN
dan’s drums are really beautiful. although megan’s rig has approximately as many buttons, switches, lights, visual displays and control sticks as the cockpit of a commercial aircraft, the real helm of the gn,s live show is arguably right here at the skins. before i orient you to the inner workings of this command center, let me impress you with my drum knowledge by talking for a second about dan’s kit itself:
two cymbals: old. i think they’re zildjian, probably made by actual turkish people in actual turkey. they’re definitely different sizes or something. brass-colored.
hi-hats: definitely two of those.
rack tom: it’s small; it’s awesome; it has a moon gel.
snare: the head features two or three moon gels, usually some marker doodlings or drawings of robots, and one note reminding dan to put the lightbulb in his kick drum that backlights our logo on the kick drum head (thanks to emily kane–go, kanes!). there are somehow “wires” involved with this drum but i don’t know what they’re connected to. maybe dan.
floor tom: big. i know that i like when dan hits this and that it is hard to mic. two moon gels!
bass drum: also called the “kick.” i am NOT allowed to stand on this drum.
well, i think we’ve all learned something here. this photo does not show the hat trick that dan mounts on his hi-hats for some songs, or his stick bag (he uses mallets on “there is a treasure”). what you can see clearly are his yamaha clickstation metronome, his one-shot shakers (two of i think 4 shakers he uses in the course of a set), the briefcase in which those items live, dan’s roland spd-s sampler and trigger pad bank, and his in-ears that allow him to actually hear all of these things (they’re sitting on the floor tom–see?). dan somehow installed hardware on the underside of that briefcase that allows him to secure it on a stand, so he can grab things out of it and toss them back in without worrying about knocking it over. the spd-s is the source of many extra arpeggiators (”i am the loser,” “killer of the one,” “spring is the winter’s end,”), noises (”i am the loser”), drum loops (”sometimes i see you on the lawn”), and the glockenspiel and xylophone sounds dan plays on “family dark,” “long coats, no energy,” and “she wrote a letter.” although dan plays an actual glockenspiel in songwriting and recording, programming individual notes into each individual spd-s pad is easier for live work because, besides being one or two fewer instruments to lug around, it allows dan to play mallet instruments with regular drumsticks. dan’s role in live shows is special because we play to a click, but trevor, joe, and i (and sometimes megan) can’t hear it at all. it’s only in dan’s ears, so he has to somehow keep us all from going horribly off-course. the cruel dynamics of rock ‘n roll are such that, if one of us does go way off, it generally appears to be dan’s fault. it’s also his job to start the click at the correct tempo for each song, and then begin the intro or song at the appropriate time and when all the other involved members are ready. if one of us is for some reason not ready to begin a song (which happens all the time), of course we also find a way to make that dan’s fault. such is the life of a drummer. had my body produced the enzymes to digest casein, you would have seen dan make -1 or -2 mistakes, play his drums with a wide and thrilling range of dynamics and expression and often with one hand, yell effusively at at least one point in the set, have roughly 2x as much fun as anyone else in the band, make a series of inimitable faces, and probably mouth the words to several songs.
or something like that.