16 November 1987
Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium,
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
support: The dB's
Disc One 59:00
01. Finest Worksong
02. These Days
03. Welcome To The Occupation
04. Cuyahoga
05. Disturbance At The Heron House
06. MS talking
07. The Flowers Of Guatemala
08. Exhuming McCarthy
09. Orange Crush
10. Feeling Gravitys Pull
11. King Of Birds (cuts out immediately after)
12. I Believe (cuts in last words of I Believe tag)
13. Sitting Still
14. Driver 8
15. Superman
16. Auctioneer (Another Engine)
Disc Two 26:24
01. Oddfellows Local 151
02. MS talking
03. It's The End Of The World As We Know It (edited dropout)
04. Begin The Begin
encore 1:
05. Strange
06. MS Talking
07. Wolves, Lower
08. Pop Song 89 (dops out about a minute in)
Missing:
encore 2: The One I Love / What We All Want / See No Evil
encore 3: Harpers / Crazy / After Hours
Notes:
-MS before The Flowers Of Guatemala "We've been on tour for five weeks...six weeks. I haven't washed clothes since I left town--home. So I usually have this costume that I wear every night, but I decided not to wear it tonight because it smells like the Cuyahoga River. It is very stiff. The Cuyahoga is a river that runs through Ohio. If you're from around here maybe White Sands. It's very similar to clothes that maybe have been washed in a white sands type detergent, is the coloquial equivilent to the Cuyahoga. Nonetheless I went shopping today and wound up in this store that sells costumes, shut up it's my show. This store that sells costumes from the oddfellows line. Oddfellows is one of those Mason-type, quasi-religious that were formed before we had insurance companies. And what they did was they took the place of insurance companies by insuring, so to speak, that a man or a woman and their family would be taken care of after the death of the beadwinner, or the one that brought home the bacon so to speak. So these fine quasi-religious organizations were formed all these men initially I think, this is before the 1960s, which is where we all come from. Before the 1960s, men would get together in these large stone buildings similar to the monuments we've seen in the last example of a new establishment. They would put on these costumes similar to the one I'm wearing. I am wearing it backwards I'd like to point out. This is actually the front. (crowd cheers) That was a rhetorical statement that requires no respense. Please remember that throughout the evening. I did put it on backwards so that I can gain easy access to the clothes that I'm wearing underneath after this song is over. Now, the Oddfellows and the Masons in the large stone buildings have very little in common with the song we are going to play, which is also about something that came before the 60s. The 1960s, so to speak, which is where we all come in, most of us. I have friends who were born in the 70s ok? Now, I also have a few friends who were born in the 50s, but I am a child of the 60s. (crowd cheers) That was a rhetorical statement that requires no respense. Thank you. Anyway the next song is called Flowers Of Guatemala, and this outfit kind of reminded me of photographs I've seen of Guatemelan natives walking around. Of course the song has nothing to do with the clothes except that it's very colorful and beautiful. You really have no idea what's under here. As it is..well here's the song". After the song "This is the regular street wear. It's what you wear if you are a legend. It's simple, light, warm, a little hot. Let's just have a show of hands here, ho many people have seen this band perform before? (crowd cheer) You have very loud hands. That's what I thought (someone near the taper yells'nice towel') Well get ready for a roller coaster pal".
-MS before Driver 8 "Once upon a time there was this of poor, complacency people and all the poor complacency people got together and said 'God let's go get a (?) or something. So then the government didn't like it and formed the WPA, the Works Project Association and got everybody a job. So then everybody had jobs and they didn't know what to do except walk around the country using hammers and tools. So they did that and then everyone could move around really cheap. Think about it". After the song he invites "Anyone from Portland, Oregon please step to the front".
-Before ITEOTWAKI MS "I figured it all out about California and the earthquake. This is a long story, I'mjust gonna compress it because it came to me last night. I told Mike Mills Edwin about it (to Mike) Do you remember? You were really smashed (giggles). The thing about the earthquake and all. Well last night was the 15th of November so I was leaving Los Angeles so that's my last goodbye to Los Angeles and the most part southern California. Goodbye forever. Well I figured out that exactly six months from last night is May 15th next year. And then I figured out that the time that many of you buy our records that--this is not a promotional thing here. On the back of our records on some of them there's a thing that was recorded on a cassette player at a place called McCabes Guitar Shop, which is in Santa Monica, and we played that night on the 29th of November of last year. Is that right?...It was the 29th of May last year. No this year. So that was almost like 6 months ago, minus a little bit. But the 29th of may, and what happened is, if you read, then you know that whenever there's an earthquake I get this incredible headache and I fall down and get really sick and vomit. Well, the night that we played McCabe's Guitar Shop, which is recorded now on the cassette and on vinyl or wax so to speak, if you will, was the night that I had this monster headache and we were playing and I couldn't get out of it because there were all these people that were there and it was a benefit concert and so I had to do it. So I took all this aspirin and stuff, ginsing. I broke down and took a BC powder. Do you have BC Podwer here? BC Powder is a powder form of aspirin that comes in a little plasticene envelope and you pour it on your tongue and it has 32 milligrams of caffeine, so wether or not you have a headache any more, you don't give a shit because you're speeding your ass off. But anyway, that's what they take in the south when they have a headache or when you don't feel to good, you take a BC Powder. Well so I took a BC Powder, I took some ginsing, drank some tea, rubbed wintergreen on my forehead, you know I pulled out the rocks and laid them up and down on my body. None of it worked. This headache would not go away. No hangover kind of thing, I don't drink. None of this stuff would make my headach go away. So I figured out that May 29 of this year, which was when I had the headache and nothing happened there, and I was there, in southern California with the headache, nothing happened. Last night we said goodbye it was November 15. So that means next year on May 15, if there's any kind of warning at all it'll come on the 15th of May. If there's not a warning, that's when it's all gonna go poof, if there is a warning it'll be on the 15th. Then, on the 29th of May, which is exactly 6 months, exactly one year from my headache at McCabe's, California will, so to speak, as we know it, won't exactly drop, but it will disconnect itself from the continent as we know it and the weaqken all the wind that comes from it, which is something that we don't think about. (MM?) then all you people will be living on the beach! You can do like Lex Luther did in the Superman movie, which wasn't that bad except for number three that had that woman Faye Dunaway in it which was awful. Like really bad. Anyway, like Lex Luther said in the Superman movie, he bought up all of Nevada and other, the square states, not the vowel states. Not the honorary vowel states because nobody can remember what they are because they're all kind of square. But anyway he bought up all the land along the square states so that when California fell off into the ocean, the San Andreas Fault, which is an earthquake as we know, falling and happening to us, he would have all the beachfront property which would become condominiums and he would be a very rich man. Probably the richest bald man in the world (thankfully BB starts drum intro at this point) while MS is still talking.
-Before Strange, MS "I have a beer every now and then but it's not a problem at all. No problem involved here. I have one beer, maybe two a week. See I was a teenage speed freak. When I was 17 I was an incredible speed freak and I drank to try to bring myself down so I became an alcoholic at the age of 17. Then, yeah, then came all the funny stuff. But...how many christians do we have, raise your hand. Anybody of the Jewish persuasion? American Indian, at least one fourth? I'm one sixteenth. Homosexuals? Lats(?) I see you. How many people have been asleep all night? I can see you too. We have two balconies of people up here who haven't stood up once. I wouldn't either if I was at that angle I would not stand--ok thank you you can sit down now. If you fall down you know I have to pay for it. We have a lot of insurance, but I don't want to have to go through my life dealing with people falling down. So when I take up my pants so they don't fall down then we're going to rip into this lovely little cover song from 1976. Yeah see that's part of my usual thing when I was talking about the costumes earlier. I figured that if I didn't wear all of my suits tonight I wear about six of them at one time, take the off real slowly, feel sexy and beautiful, everyone gets off on it and everyone, even the boys and the girls. Even the security guards get excite-excited-excitement factors".
-Before Pop Song 89 MS "I'm going to show you my chest for one song. Get used to it, this is what it's going to be like in '89".
Grade: B
-This is the most talking I've heard MS do in one show