Tonight, or rather last night, it was time to do a makeup show. As the tale goes, I had to cut one show short a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t make it to another one altogether. Put that together with low attendence at some recent shows and my low energy for doing Marc With a C shows recently… add in the small crowd that gathered for the makeup show – barely enough to fill the room – and you had a recipe for disaster.
Instead? We ended up with one of my favorite shows in Marc With a C history. Seriously. And even though the tapes of the event are shaky for reasons that will become obvious in a moment, it might make for one of the best “official bootlegs” I’ll ever offer up. One day.
Candlelight Vinyl opened the show with a nice and quiet set… but it was obvious early on that the PA at Stardust was barely holding up. Mike tends to play and sing really quietly, and every attempt to boost the sound system was met with more humming and low end distortion. He soldiered on and the crowd loved him.
My setlist went something like this (and I’ll probably have some of this out of order, because I haven’t converted all of the tapes yet):
We’re All Gonna Die
Classic Country Wasn’t Multitracked in ‘61
Song Song
Satellite
RetroLowFi
God Save The Queen From Navy Seals
Breakin’ Out
Good Enough For Now
Freezing In Florida
I’m In Love With Everyone I Know
A Womans Duty
No London In Brazil
Stuck With Me
Jessica, I Heard You Like The Who (aborted when the PA blew up)
(sung completely unplugged in the middle of the room):
Lullaby
The Problem Is Me
Billie Jean
(short pause to cobble together a makeshift PA, and then…):
A Tale To Tell
Human Slushy
San Diego Doorways
Born Vintage
Game Of Pricks
A Very Special Episode
In My Own Way
There’s A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis
Pinball Wizard
What The Hell Were You On?
Now, it needs to be said: the harder it got to use the onstage equipment at Stardust, the more supportive the already great audience became. It’ll sound trite, but the less juice the PA was giving me, the louder the crowd got with the singalongs. The vibe just got better and better as the night went on, and I can’t thank the attendees enough for that. The tape sounds awful and overdriven when it was rolling through the PA, but as we got more lo-fi and inventive with the sound… everything fell right into place. You’ll have to hear it for yourself, but it ended up being *exactly* the type of show I needed to play. For myself. And I’m so glad that the people in attendence seemed to have such a good time to boot!
So, I’ve got an interview to do on a podcast tonight. It’s called the “Super Drunken Colon Tour”. It’s on tonight – Monday, September 22nd at 11 PM EST and you can tune in at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Completely_Naked_Productions/2008/09/23/Super-Drunken-Colon-Tour-Ep-5. Should be an interesting time, and it;s the last thing I’ll be doing for awhile. Hiatus time for Marc With a C. Don’t worry, I’ll still be available for communication, booking things in the future, blogging and I’ll still be putting out some new official bootlegs very soon. Just… shows are on the backburner for a bit. Until Halloween? Or maybe beyond. We’ll see how this pans out… but I haven’t really taken a break since 2005. I think I’ve earned this one 
Thank you all for being so wonderful. I’ll see you really soon. Don’t be a stranger. You know how your mother and I worry about you.
Love on ya,
Marc
PS: I saw quite a few people taking pictures in the crowd tonight. Would you please be so kind as to send them to me? I can make it worth your while, if need be…
