I kinda hate to say it, but Detroit was definitely the low point of this trip. The whole trip was good, so I don't mean that Detroit was bad, but it just wasn't as good, mainly because it was so hot and I was so exhausted from the previous two days that I couldn't really enjoy anything properly. But everything besides the boiling-hotness was pretty good.

Anyway we cruised into town in the afternoon and psyknife installed us in her awesome basement. We didn't stick around long, though, because we had to continue our tradition of being awkwardly early. This may have been the (relatively) earliest we had been yet; we wandered into the box office area (I peeked into the theatre and saw some guys playing basketball with a hoop set up in the middle of the floor) and then decided to go next door to the Majestic Café to eat before the show. This took a long, long time and we were a bit (okay, a lot) anxious, but the happy part of it was that we were able to hear the soundcheck going on inside the theatre. It was very loud. I wondered how people who might come by later just to have dinner were going to feel about the free concert they would undoubtedly get.

When we were finished up unsupervised left the table for a minute and we looked over and saw Dan peering through the glass doors that separated the restaurant from the box office. hobbitgrrl waved at him; he immediately grinned and came inside to visit with us. We all said hello and then he looked at psyknife in some confusion. "You changed out," he observed; but we assured him that unsupervised was still with us. We asked him when the show was supposed to start (besides the fact that the venue had changed, we had seen several different times posted) and he didn't know, so he asked the tour manager who had come in. The response was a smiling nod. Now, that wasn't helpful at all. Finally Dan managed to extract the information that the show would start at 9 and took his leave, and a bit later we went out to wait.

It was not a pleasant wait. It felt like the temperature was somewhere in the 90s, and we had the sun on us. nathew showed up shortly after we'd established ourselves at the door. I kept looking around for my friend John, who I was positive would be there; he was the one who brought his little brother (then 13) to the shows at the Vic and the Old Town School a couple years ago, and I see them with great pleasure every time I'm in Michigan for TMBG. However, he didn't appear before we went in.

Oh my god, I think it was hotter inside than outside. We got some water and worked on hydrating ourselves, sat around and tried to ignore the idiotic conversations going on all around us. It got hotter and hotter and more and more humid, and it was totally gross. I had an orange that I'd brought in, and after a bit hobbitgrrl and I munched on it; we considered, if they did venue songs tonight, throwing the peel at Linnell and screaming "Orange Peel!" by way of requesting that song, but then we thought better of it, deciding that pelting Linnell with garbage might well result in a penalty that even Dan Miller wouldn't be able to save me from.

When it was almost time for the show to start I felt a tap on my shoulder—happily, not security this time, but John, who had arrived later than us but managed to work his way up near the front. "Where's your brother?" I asked; and John pointed him out, wearing the No! t-shirt that he always does. That made me happy; it's adorable seeing the two of them together sharing the TMBG joy.

There was a guy over to our right, meanwhile, who really needed to be killed. I don't know whether he was drunk or just obnoxious, but when Corn Mo came on he started heckling him immediately. Corn Mo already looked a bit worn and the heckler didn't help; his set was really short, he drastically trimmed a lot of his raps, and he didn't seem quite on. I felt sad. And hot.

Anyway. The show started. They fired the cannons at the beginning of It's Kickin' In this time. Oh, and Flans is still getting the words mixed up. It's kind of fun to see how many new ways he can scramble them each time.

Man, I don't remember much about this show besides periodically feeling sick to my stomach from the heat and then feeling momentarily better. I'm pretty sure I was able to appreciate that Pictures of Pandas Painting was a new one for me. I know I kept staring at the wah-wah pedal.

After that Flans took a moment to reminisce about their last stop in Detroit, when the stage was covered in fake blood from the Skinny Puppy show the night before. Snail Shell is still fantastic. And they did Istanbul tonight without any intro at all. Dan's been playing electric guitar on that one recently, by the way. I still like it better the old way.

The maracas and flexatone for Stalk of Wheat are always material for discussion. First Linnell told us that Dan was going to stop playing guitar.
me: Boo!
JL: It wasn't our decision. He refuses to budge, he wants to only play the flexatone.
But Flans said it was just a phase and that Dan would come back to the guitar, much like George Harrison after his sitar phase. Linnell said Flans would only be playing maracas henceforth.
JF: I'm going through kind of a Jerome in the Bo Diddley band phase, where I've just pretty much given up on life itself.
Then Flans shook his maracas and opined that one of them had fewer beads inside it than the other.
JL: See, you got an extra bead, is what it is. 'Course that's the way I look at things. I'm the optimist: "There's an extra bead in one of those maracas. You got ripped off with the other maraca."
Meanwhile Flans had been studying them attentively, and now triumphantly announced:
JF: No, I was right. See, there was a hole in it for a while, and we covered it with tape.
JL: Optimists are usually wrong. But in the end, we are what's keeping the planet alive. Am I right? (Dan is laughing.) You're laughing, but I'm right.
Then when Dan left the stage for Don't Let's Start Flans explained that he was going off to work on his flexatone skills.

They made the first encore a bit longer (4 songs) which made me wonder later whether they had considered not coming back for a second one. No One Knows My Plan was pretty exciting though, although I didn't have enough energy to conga at that point even if I had wanted to leave my place.

They did indeed come back for a second encore, finishing once again with Hocus Pocus. While Flans played the opening guitar riff, Dan stood with both his hands in the air making the rock symbol, but to my disappointment I could not get a picture in time.

And then it was over and the room started to cool slightly as the crowd departed, though there was a heavy kind of mist filling the room, all the steam from the overheated bodies hanging in the air. Andy handed out some setlists; I could tell he was passing me over, handing one to somebody behind me, but then the piece of paper magically descended into my still-outstretched hand and I turned around to see that John had grabbed it to give it to me. Aww! I meet the nicest people at TMBG shows. After that I went back to talk to Dan because I wanted to ask him for a favor: John had told me he was going to be at the Cleveland show the next night, but that his brother, being underage, couldn't go; so I had the thought that, since Dan had offered to comp me for a show, perhaps I could pass the privilege on to somebody who really needed it.

This clever plan bombed, though, because Dan explained that the question of minors at shows is a very sticky one with TMBG, that it's in their contract that no minors are allowed in the pit, that they'd had quite a fight with the Majestic to allow the under-14s in at all, even in their own special section of exile at the back. I really tried though; I told him that John's brother is 15 (and quite tall), and he seemed to bend for a moment, saying that if the kid was 15 they might not check—but then that if anybody found out he was the one who'd let him in that he'd be in really big trouble. And when he said that I certainly couldn't push it anymore. But seeing my disappointment, he offered me "anything else" and I didn't even have to stop to think about it: I asked him to bring back the acoustic solo intro to Istanbul.

Well, the lesson is: never ask for anything, because he pretty much told me he was sick of doing it and that it would not be coming back. Oh well. It's not like I had the right to ask for anything in the first place, so I didn't really expect anything. I went back to report my failure to John and his brother. I felt pretty crappy for getting their hopes up and then not being able to deliver but they were sweet as ever despite the disappointment. Also I finally asked his brother what his name was—I've been seeing him for years but never knew; so he told me, but following the example of TMBG in protecting minors, I won't name him here but instead just continue to call him "John's brother." John gave me a hug and then I couldn't resist, I had to ask his brother for a hug too, which he cheerfully gave. Holy crap, that boy is a cutie. I'm sure I'll be seeing him again.

Anyway, we finally managed to get out into the cooling night and back to psyknife's house for a really refreshing, well air-conditioned night of sleep which we desperately needed. I wasn't even bothered by the life-size cutout of Eowen staring at me from across the room, and I woke up ready for more adventures in Cleveland.

And check out the pictures and all that.

* foreword
* St Louis
* Indy
> Detroit
* Cleveland – Odeon
* Cleveland – KidsFest
* Lebowski Fest