The Living Rockumentary

4/19/05
9 PM sharp
Bishop's Lounge
A guy who wasn't Rat Dog

"Songs I'm not good at":

-Cynical Girl
Hen's plan was to play non-School For The Dead songs. Technically, we did learn this song back during a weird period in our history when Henning was writer-blocky and digging into his back-canon for material. Eventually, it was pushed aside for Photobooth Curtain, etc.
-Henning's Song for Miranda Brown
Apparently Henning's real plan was to play all of his G-to-C-in-the-verses-songs.
-Motion Sickness
One of my favorite memories of recording "The Great White Lunchroom" with Humbert was doing this track, on which Ari, Henning and I all played lead guitars. Like Lynyrd Skynrd! It's just a lovely Hen song. From his cram-a-lotta-syllables-in songwriting era/phase that includes "Let You Go" and "The Bagel Song."
-Bees
Yup.
-This Time It Looks Good
Henning taught me the intro guitar part to this two hours before his show and it's all he could hear in his head so that he sang the lyrics to the notes of the guitar part more than the actual melody.
-Stereo Glow
New.
-Sitcom Theme
In order to honor a request, Henning broke with his no-SFTD tunes rule. Which was great because the show took off of at this point. A tad rusty but inspired and finally it seemed like the room was quiet and rapt throughout.
-Held His Gaze
Oh my God, just a perfect song. Sounded great live, too. Nice work transposing the solo into the chords. The Paul Simon influence brings out the best in Henning's songwriting. You have to hear this one.
-Periscope
Soon to be a SFTD rocker. This sounds like a hybrid of something Rob Pollard, Ari Vais and me in 1992 would write.
-Two Year Old Beast
Sixteen year-old song.
-Watertown
Invisible Cities cover.
-"Henning Hey Days"
That's just my title for it. It has no official title yet but it's clearly about Henning's first year(s) living in Northampton, playing in Humbert, playing stickball, etc.
-But We Did
First track off the solo album. Loses a little juice without the colorful keybo arrangements but a good upbeat way to end the show.

I spent Lesa's set outside on the veranda speaking with one of Hannah's preschool teachers and a collection of her friends so I didn't hear Lesa. Nonetheless, I'm aware of the new batch of songs she's been penning (Lived With It, Bored, Anyday, others I don't know the titles of) and they just demolish the songs she wrote for the first Fawns album, many of which were wonderful as well. The Fawns and SFTD both should do live-in-the-studio albums and release them as a lovingly packaged set of some kind.

Mark Schwaber, who Henning referred to at one point as his "psychic sidekick" (hold onto that poetic phrase for a line somewhere) , was across the room from me the entire time I was there and two thoughts struck me. First of all, he really should call his blog "Schwablog." And the other thought- if Henning, Lesa and I hadn't been out in Florence eating pizza in 2001 that night when we missed Mark's last chance to rehearse with SFTD as guitarist before SFTD's second performance, I may never have officially joined the band and he may have stayed on, or been replaced by someone else other than me. Fate. What are you gonna do? That slow Florence Pizza waitress made the decision for us. What are you gonna do? Fate.