“This is what’s terrible, is like, I forget the first line of a song, and then I’ll do it, like, twice, and somebody’ll go, ‘Oh yeah, he did the thing where he forgets the first line.’ No, my friends. Would that I were doing the thing where I forget the first line. No, I’m doing the thing where he shot too much speed when he was a teenager. I’m doing the thing where he used to drink whole fifths of vodka as an impressive party trick. I’m doing the thing where I stay awake for three days at a time because it feels kind of awesome. Front row: can anybody up here give me the first line of Up The Wolves?”
- John Darnielle at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, May 16, 2008
I’m working on a cover album called Tallahassee Turns Ten to celebrate the tenth birthday of Tallahassee by the Mountain Goats. We’re raising the money to cover the licensing fees for the initial run on Kickstarter. Rewards include limited edition CD of the album, Tallahassee themed magnet poetry and more.
In addition, there are still some tracks that need to be filled and we’re accepting demo submissions on our website (deadline is Dec 20th).
If any of your followers would like to contribute either by backing the kickstarter or submitting a song, we’d love to have them.
JD: So, we’re going to do two more songs, then I am going to go sleep in my own bed. It’s very exciting.
Lady fan (shouting): Stay with us forever!
JD: What if that happened?! What if like, there was this decision: we’ll just do this, right? We’ll have them send us pizza and we’ll all do this until we die.
Crowd: *laughter, cheering*
JD: There’s plenty of good restaurants that deliver within a mile or two, so we can just sit here and eat and play music until we die or collapse or go insane… And I’ll tell you right now, that thing I said about sleeping in my own bed? That’s what’s actually going to happen… not, not, not the “Play music forever” scenario. I’ll tell you right now - I mean, it does, it has an appeal to me and I wish that like, Alfred Bester or like some other science fiction author had written some sort of alternate universe scenario about it… But I’ll tell ya, if you got your hopes up about the “Yes, we will spend the rest of our lives here and die, of old age, in this room…” That’s not going to happen.
Crowd: *sad noises*
JD: I know, I know! Reality is painful! (…) This is a song about how reality is painful - it’s called “Never Quite Free”
(They went on to play SEVEN more songs)
Torrent of the whole show
(via nelleish)
“You reach a certain point in the pursuit of desperation where everything seems funny. They say, “Oh, it looks as though you have no prospects” and you go “hahaha, yeah I know! It’s awesome, huh?” “I know but I’m worried about you, you’re going down the drain, your grades have slipped, and you have no money, and your folks don’t like you, what are you going to do?” and you go, “hehahaha, I know, it’s really insane huh?! ha! wow! what am I going to do, huh?” and they go, “right, well, I’ll stop by sometime next week then, you know, and maybe I’ll see you then, maybe you’ll be feeling better” and you go, “hahehaha, I honestly don’t think so!” -John Darnielle
Source: dft.ba/-desperation
(via lydioio)
John Darnielle: Anyway, this is a song off the next album… uh, the next album features absolutely *no* wounded party love songs, because— [guy in crowd boos], no, no, no! Because, when you’re in love, with peanut-butter crank, right—- [same guy in crowd cheers]. You don’t get wounded! You just ride, you know what I mean? So—-
Peter Peter Hughes: Everybody wins!
John Darnielle: Everybody wins with methemphetamine, that’s the message of the next album.
(Around 2:10, here.)
(via capslockdoesntexpressmyjoy)
![“I wrote “Palmcorder Yajna” and the way I wrote it was I had a chord progression, I liked the sound of it, didn’t have any words, so I just barked out an intersection of Pomona. It was the intersection that my dear friend Franz Writter always told us: If you ever get caught by the cops, and they ask you where did you score, tell them Holt Boulevard. They can’t touch you if you tell them the name of the street [where there are many drug dealers]. I barked out “Holt Boulevard!” and amused the shit out of myself just yelling the name of a random street that’s a part of my childhood. I felt like I was mythologizing this nothing area, and then I named the next two streets.”
-John Darnielle](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyu6bmhbPa1qzg0jzo1_1280.png)
