just a random mem'ry
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plastinum
- American Teen Robot
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just a random mem'ry
was just in the FTP listening to the Live at TT bears set Dave did..been awhile since I listened to it and I had forgotten all about the Tom and Jerry track....made me kinda sad to hear it cuz even before I had ever heard that clip I used to always talk about that episode to people and few knew it surprisingly..but ever since I have played guitar I thought about that cartoon EVERY time I tuned up....froggy went'a courtin and he did right....c-c-c-ccc-c-crambo
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Lord Nikon
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Jawa242
- Christ of the Abyss
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this is unedited with typos and all the flaws that make up a rough draft so please dont judge the quality of the book by this passage (it will be cleaned up for the releases), but here is the TTs show from the book:
The back door opened and David came out of the back and headed straight for the stage, no intro, no climax. The only way you knew a show was happening was the round of applause that erupted when people realized he was heading to the stage. I handed him the guitar and jumped off stage. He sat down and addressed the crowd as the soundman brought down the music he had been playing through the house speakers.
“How you guys doing?”
You could hear someone say, “Alright” in the back as if he was asking them directly.
“I’m David from God Lives Underwater. Um, this is gonna be mellow just so you know what you’re expecting. I know you’ve been at our other shows where, you know, people get pushed around and stuff. This is gonna be real mellow. So if you wanna sit down and stuff, that’s cool too.”
I had to laugh inside with this little speech cause I could see this was David, all of a sudden, being very unsure of himself and unsure how the fans were going to react to what he had planned. It seemed like at this moment he was rethinking this whole idea and this speech was a way to let everyone know what they were getting into so no one would be disappointed when it was over.
“Um, this song I’m gonna start off with is on an album that didn’t come out yet, it’s called ‘Miss You More Than Anything’.”
And with that announcment there were actually a round of applause. I didn’t know if the fans were so happy that they WERE going to get to hear songs off the new album, or just supporting the fact the show was starting. He started playing ‘Miss You More Than Anything’ from Up Off The Floor and played the song perfectly. The crowd was completely silent during the performance of the song, taking in every note. It felt like people were afraid to breathe. David’s voice sounded warm and strong right from the beginning. As the song went along you could hear him get his confidence and push a little more power into his voice hitting the bridge in the middle.
The song ended and there was a split second of silence and then not only did people clap enthusiastuically, they cheered! I knew at that moment everything was going to be okay. The crowd was there to hear David, they were there to support David, and they were there to let him know that what he was doing was important and they were thanking him for everything.
“Thanks.” He said and started tuning the guitar. “This is gonna be a patient show because, um, I tune my guitar for every song. I’m a prick like that.”
That got a few laughs from the audience.
“I mean I tune it to different tunings. It would be one thing if I had it tuned regular, I’d just have someone else do that.”
There is a long period of David tuning the guitar and no speaking. The crowd also has fallen slightly silent.
“You still there?” He asks and that gets a small rise from the crowd. “Alright,” is all he says and he starts immediately playing ‘Can’t Come Down’ from Life In The So-Called Space Age.
His voice cracks a few times in the beginning but it’s the kind of frailty that you want a show like this. It was so intimate with no barrier and just him sitting with an acoustic guitar I think if his voice wasn’t cracking it wouldn’t have had as much power.
Halfway through the song there are a few female voices that start to get loud during one of the softer parts and David says without stopping the song,
“No talking louder than the performer!”
Keeping the riff going for a few seconds his voice changes and lightens up and he says,
“It’s cool baby, I’m just kidding.”
And that was David 100% up there. That was healthy, happy David doing exactly what he was made to do. Never had I ever seen David’s humor on stage during a show. Shows were always “serious” and the fact that his eyes laughed when he said this made me realize that he was having the time of his life up there, stripped down playing the old songs he probably started to think that he may never play live again ever. This was good for his soul.
The song ended and he got a much louder response playing that song, a song that was known to every single person in the room.
“Thanks,” was all he said before going right into ‘Happy’ from Life In The So-Called Space Age.
When ‘Happy’ was finished the clapping seemed to go on even longer than the last 2 songs.
“Thanks. Um, this song, the name changes every year.”
David started to look around the club.
“So I guess that’s the bar over there and then this is The Show.” David actually chuckles after her says that. “You guys are interested, right?”
Claps and woos! erupt from the crowd.
“Okay. They’re probably like, ‘what a sappy #### up there on stage’.” He says looking at the people who are sitting at the bar watching him who clearly are not God Lives Underwater fans (probably have never even heard of them) but people who stumbled in for a drink at a bar where there is live music. Most of the audience on the floor looks back and the people at the bar and starts to laugh.
“Paaaaarty!” David says in a mocking-jock-frat-boy voice
And with that he starts playing the guitar and goes right into ‘23’ from Empty except when he gets to the “I’ve spent 23 years now trying to get by, other people make it day to day I still wonder why” part he changes the lyrics to “I’ve spent 30 years now trying to get by, other people make it day to day I still wonder why.”
The song ends and David says after the applause die down,
“Thanks. Let’s see…”
And starts flipping through the sheets of lyrics.
“Did you ever see that episode of Tom & Jerry where, um, Jerry’s uncle was over and he’s the guy from Texas and um he plays the guitar and he’s like,”
David here puts on his best cartoon voice and imitates the dialogue from Tom & Jerry and he gets everyone laughing.
“’Froggy went’a courting and he did right c-c-c-ccc-c-ccrambo!’ And then he goes after Jerry to use one of whiskers to use as a guitar string and he goes, ‘You know I can’t play my g-g-g-g-g-g-guitar without my g-g-g-g-g-g-g-guitar strings.’ You know that episode I’m talking about?”
Someone from the crowd yells,
“That’s my favorite episode.”
“That’s, oh ya mine too. Everyone’s. Every time I tune my guitar I think of that.” And then here he mimicks a guitar being down tuned. “Alright, um. This is from my first record ever.”
He starts to play ‘Lonely Again’ from GLU and gets through the first bar or 2 and then stops to retune the guitar and look at the lyrics. There is a long silence from David and then he says,
“Whew, this is what happens to you when you get old, me-han; gotta have cheat sheets. Alright, ready?”
He starts ‘Lonely Again’ from the first verse vocals instead and cuts out the intro. When it’s finished this gets a rowdy set of applause, being such a fan favorite.
“You guys doing alright?” He asks when the applause die down and there is a few seconds of silence. “Alright, um, this is my favorite title of any of the songs I have. This is ‘Medicated To The One I Love’.”
And here he starts to play ‘Medicated To The One I Love’ from Life In The So-Called Space Age for the 3rd time in the last 4 hours, and the 3rd time ever. Right at the end when he goes into the chorus for the last time, he went into it wrong so he stops, collects himself, and then continues to finish the song. That moment really drove home the fact that this show was so unscripted and uncalculated and you really felt like you were seeing something special.
“That was rough, I know.” He apologizes the second he is finished.
The crowd laughs for a second but then burst into applause to show their support that no matter what mistakes he makes, they are really WITH him through this.
“I only played it once before on guitar, but I couldn’t get a piano here, it wasn’t part of the budget, ya know?”
I started laughing at this, that asshole.
“Um, alright I’ll just go right for, right for the goods.”
He starts to play ‘No More Love’ from GLU with almost as much energy in his voice and emotion as if the rest of the band was behind him and everyone was plugged in.
“Sometimes I just get tired of playing guitar, could you tell? I’m so used to having people rocking around me so I can just grab the mic and jump around and have fun. You guys are very patient, I’ll give you that much.”
He continues tuning the guitar and then continues,
“Um, this is called ‘Take Whatever You Got’ its from the still-to-be-unreleased-record Up Off The Floor, um, which incidentally is not coming out because of legal #### and the record industry. Um…”
The crowd starts booing when he finishes that sentence.
“Yeah, they went bankrupt and now they want their money back that they gave me to record the album. They said, ‘Here’s the money, record an album, ught we’re out of business, can we have the money back? And then we’ll give you the rights to your record back.’ So you know what I’ve been doing? I’ve just been dubbing it and giving it to people.”
Someone yells “YEAH!” and the whole place starts to clap and cheer.
“#### ‘em, right? If I’m gonna get evicted anyway you guys might as well have my music. So um, this is called ‘Take Whatever You Got’ and um, some people are mislead because there are some train references in the song about the train. Um, it’s because I was riding the train and I thought of the song, it’s not about the death of my girlfriend cause she died by train in, like, November.”
My heart sank. I could not believe he was going there on stage in front of all these people. I was frozen where I standing.
“It’s not about that cause I’m not gonna write a song about that.”
And with that he begins the song and starts singing,
“I feel the train changing tracks, the sound of that, I reminisce…”
Now I know the song better than anyone in that club. I may possibly the only person in that club that has even heard the song before, and David clearly has gone past where his next line of lyrics should be and he just keeps strumming, and his strumming become weaker. Its now apparent to me that he isn’t going to sing the next line. He then stops all together and there is a deafening silence in the club. You could actually feel the air we were all breathing become like bricks as tears started to well up in his eyes. Glancing away from anyone looking at him, he takes a moment to collect himself, pretending that he doesn’t have a few hundred people staring at him.
“Started talking about the girlfriend, give me a minute.” He finally says into the microphone without looking at anyone.
“It’s alright, man.” Someone from the crowd says.
“It’s been a rough year.” David replies and on the last 2 words of the sentence he has clearly started to cry, at least inside, because his voice trembles.
It is the most honest and sincere moment I have ever experienced with David. I started to cry for him and I would be lying if I said no one else in that club wasn’t starting to have tears welling up in their eyes. I think if he had stood up and gotten off stage at that moment and didn’t finish the show no one would have cared. This went way beyond the singer of God Lives Underwater playing a solo-acoustic show. This was all of us inside that room and David, naked on stage, and we all became naked with him. You could feel whatever was left of the “musician/crowd wall” fall and the line disappeared and we were all David’s support system. And David was no longer “on stage” in a metaphorical sense anymore, he had let an entire room of strangers into his heart, and I think it made it a little less scary for him.
“Let it out!” Someone yelled from the back of the room.
“No, I’m not into that kind of therapy, me-han.” David chuckles quietly and then continues, “I’ve had that kind of therapy this year and you can see the lines on my face, it added a few years.”
He strikes his guitar once and says,
“Alright, I’ll get it this time.” And starts the song from the beginning, “I feel the train changing tracks, the sound of that, I reminisce,” he stumbled but tried to continue, “I tried so hard…”
And right there he just stops. No fading and missing the next lyrics, he just stops cold at the end of the word “hard”. He has clearly started crying again, he could barely even get out “I tried so hard.”
“I’m just gonna move on.” He says almost immediately after stopping, his voice now sounding exhausted and strained. “It’s a little too much for me to handle right now. Um, I’m gonna do something light hearted. I’ll get back to it.”
And with this last sentence it was like he had reset himself because he voice sounded strong again and he sounded emotionally healthy again, just like a switch was flipped.
“Do I have any light hearted tunes?” He joked. “My gosh, I’ll know what I’ll play ya.”
He takes a few seconds to work out a guitar piece quickly and then says,
“Yeah, I’m not about to start crying on stage, can’t do it, me-han. Alright, this is called ‘Ordinary Man’, I wrote this when I was 16.”
I had never heard of this song before and to my knowledge this song has never been recorded or played live before. I shot a glance at Mike and he gave me a nod as if to say “Oh ya!” David completely surprised me with playing something I had never heard of. I was starting to wonder if this was going to replace the Heavy song he was going to play.
“Alright, I’m gonna try that other song again.” He says with a heavy sigh when ‘Ordinary Man’ is finished. “Something about it just doesn’t want me to get through the first verse.”
And just like that he starts ‘Whatever You Got’ again for the 3rd time:
“I feel the train changing tracks, the sound of that, I reminisce…” and this time it’s perfect all the way to the end, all the way to the very last word, all the way to the very last note.
The crowd gives him a lengthy applause when he falls silent at the end of the song.
“I got a couple left,” he begins, “um, wow this has never been played live, for sure.”
And with that short introduction, he starts to play ‘Scared’ from Empty. When the song is over he starts flipping through his sheets of lyrics and said quietly, almost if he was talking to himself,
“I know I really only got one left, I just… um, let’s see here. I want to make it the right one, ya know?”
From the bar, the female bartender screamed as loud as she could, “LAST CALL!” and her voice was almost louder than David’s and he had a microphone.
He pauses for a moment, realizing this is the last song of the night, and makes a quick decision. He decides to not play a Heavy song, not play any of the God Lives Underwater radio “hits” that he hasn’t played yet, not play another song from the new album, in fact he decides to not even play a God Lives Underwater song at all.
He starts singing at the same time he starts playing guitar,
“Come with me into the trees, we’ll lay on the grass and let the hours pass…”
I looked at Mike and Dann and smiled so wide that I almost started to cry from excitement. David had decided to close his very first solo show with ‘Stripped’, the same song that I watched them physically learn how to play way back on the Empty tour at Axis during soundcheck.
I think it was fitting David closing his show with a Depeche Mode cover, his favorite band of all time and the reason why he started playing music in the first place. I guess he decided because he played ‘Ordinary Man’ there was no reason to play a Heavy song and add another non-God Lives Underwater song to the set, at least a cover people know.
The crowd goes nuts when he finishes and he waves to them and gets up from the chair. People start yelling “Encore!” and the applause lasts a few more moments. And with that, the show was over.
My bad... I thought you meant Jawa posting an insert of the book...