Black Francis "The Holiday Song" (10.4 MB) from Come On Pilgrim High Noon Saloon Madison, WI July 11, 2009 It's sort of fitting that this podcast should end with Frank Black playing an early Pixies song, since seeing the Pixies in late 2004 was what prompted me to get a small digital camera I could take into shows. This show provided as much excitement as that Pixies show, surprisingly, with so many songs I really wanted to hear ("Cactus" and "Bullet" were the highlights). Now I'm on sort of a permanent holiday. I hope to get back to something like this in the near future, but it'll be more irregular and a bit thicker. I'm thinking about getting into the show-booking business, and it might be tied to that. We'll see. Until then, it's been fun.

Black Francis "Angels Come to Comfort You" (19.1 MB) from Bluefinger High Noon Saloon Madison, WI July 11, 2009 It was an odd coincidence that our last two High Noon shows were of the intimate, semi-acoustic variety. Opening for Frank Black was Mark Waldoch of Milwaukee's Celebrated Working Man, kind of the mirror-image of Jon Auer. While playing he was supremely confident and poised, but between songs he seemed a little overwhelmed by opening for a legend and playing to a legend's crowd. He actually complimented the audience for their kindness and the weird thing was he was right -- it was the nicest High Noon crowd I've ever seen. But then I got to thinking, I've never heard of this supposed Milwaukee-based Celebrated Working Man, and I've never seen this guy before. He's kind of a big guy and his material is not terribly different from Frank Black's recent work. What if Mark Waldoch doesn't exist, but is a persona Frank takes on -- a wig, some make-up, an outfit just the negative of what he wears for his set -- and identifies as from a band in a nearby city? It would be like the time U2 opened for themselves way back when. Maybe Frank's next album would be called The Celebrated Working Man and include the songs he played as Waldoch, etc. Well, I just imagined it. Waldoch was in the audience during Frank's set, while Frank was clearly onstage. But still, I think this is something to think about for his next tour.

Black Francis Medley: "Brackish Boy," "Crackity Jones" and "Two Reelers" (34.8 MB) from Frank Black, Doolittle and Teenager of the Year High Noon Saloon Madison, WI July 11, 2009 I never would've guessed this show would be such a blast, especially considering how little I know of Frank Black's solo material (and yet, he'll always be Frank Black to me for some reason). Opening his bottle of wine and launching the show with this medley got the crowd going quick, and was a surprising burst of energy from the nearly empty stage.

The Hold Steady "Stevie Nix" (27.3 MB) from Separation Sunday Majestic Theatre Madison, WI July 10, 2009 One nice thing about Hold Steady is that they frequently pull out deep cuts from their first two albums, which were a little under the radar. Last time we saw them I recorded "Modesto Is Not That Sweet," an Australian bonus track from their first record; this time the highlight was probably this rollicking meditation on age from Separation Sunday, which they followed immediately with "Multitude of Casualties" and later with "How a Resurrection Really Feels." The showcase of older songs was certainly appreciated by the sell-out crowd, many of whom were probably also at last year's sold-out Stay Positive tour stop.

The Hold Steady "Yeah Sapphire" (18.1 MB) from Stay Positive Majestic Theatre Madison, WI July 10, 2009 If I'd ever gotten around to writing up my top albums of 2008, the Hold Steady's Stay Positive would've been their second-straight #1. Though not as instantly enthralling and masterwork-level as their previous effort, it was a hugely engaging, progressive step for the band and a victory lap of sorts after the success of Boys and Girls in America. The opener, "Constructive Summer," is the most viscerally inspiring song I've heard in years, while the title track is the band's salute to its scene and its fans, and the positive rage that fuels them both. Elsewhere they add some new flourishes to their sound, particularly on "Navy Sheets." This song is very much in the classic Hold Steady mold, launching with competing guitar and piano lines and giving Craig Finn's poetry some room to stretch; "If I cross myself when I cum/would you maybe receive me?" is one of those lines that implicates love, lust, religion and insecurity the way few other songwriters ever have. I was particularly excited to catch it live because it's one of the songs from Stay Positive that I didn't react strongly to at first, but that's grown on me a lot since the record came out and we saw them last.

The Hold Steady "Girls Like Status" (16.7 MB) from Boys and Girls in America Majestic Theatre Madison, WI July 10, 2009 I hate the Majestic and I love the Hold Steady, and love always wins. I'd wanted to shoot video from the main floor for this show, but for a variety of reasons (mainly the woman in front of us who kept whipping her arm back into my face) it didn't happen. But no matter, the show was great as always. It was the second time in the last three shows that they played this somewhat obscure tune -- a bonus track from the Australian and iTunes releases of Boys and Girls in America. Oddly, I think I still haven't seen them do "Ask Her For Adderall" live.

Fountains of Wayne "Hey Julie" (13.9 MB) from Welcome Interstate Managers High Noon Saloon Madison, WI July 8, 2009 What do you do when you bring people up out of the audience to play incidental percussion parts, but then one of them starts singing unsolicited back-up vocals? Apparently, you just go with it. The guy on the right sang, I think, the entire song, and I don't think the band actually noticed. Meanwhile, the scarf-wearer on the left was on stage for the second time of the night -- he was also picked to come up and play a piano line during Jon Auer's solo opening set. About that set: wow, so weird. Auer is best known as the guy from the Posies, and there were a handful of Posies fans in the otherwise inattentive crowd. This is pretty par for the course at the High Noon -- openers get talked over, and that goes double for solo acoustic openers. This makes Auer's decision to play a song unamplified, from the middle of the floor, and facing the stage, all the more inexplicable. He stopped during the song twice to shout at the crowd to shut up (it didn't work, obviously), and even standing right behind him I couldn't hear any of it. He ended his set by covering Joe Jackson's "Is She Really Going Out With Him," which he mocked repeatedly. The whole thing was quite a big fail, which is why the headliners got episode #500 and he didn't.

Fountains of Wayne "Cold Comfort Flowers" (23.1 MB) High Noon Saloon Madison, WI July 8, 2009 I liked this one the best of the new songs that they played, and everything seemed to get a positive response from the crowd. The only one that was really a miss to my ears was the last one they played, "A Road Song," which, despite name-checking Wisconsin, felt really forced and seemed to borrow a lot lyrically and musically from "Valley Winter Song." Their last album was their first I didn't like, so hopefully the new one draws more from this song than the other -- or maybe the new songs are totally different in their regular versions, and all my speculation is for naught.

Fountains of Wayne "The Summer Place" (18.6 MB) High Noon Saloon Madison, WI July 8, 2009 I wondered before this show if Fountains of Wayne had ever played Madison before -- I knew they hadn't since I've been here -- and Chris Collingwood remarked during the set that he thought they hadn't. So it's kind of odd that their first visit, a decade and a half into their career, would be a stripped-down, semi-acoustic set. Making it even a little odder, they played several new songs, which could sound totally different when they're released on the next FoW record sometime in the near-ish future. The new stuff was mostly enjoyable but not especially great. This one really drove home what a bougie band this is, and I kept hearing it all of a sudden in other songs throughout the set. It got me re-evaluating songs like "Hackensack" and "Valley Winter Song," and even "Stacy's Mom," which got a really nice, slow rendition in the encore that belied its "Just What I Needed"-ganking origins.

White Rabbits "Company I Keep" (19.2 MB) from It's Frightening High Noon Saloon Madison, WI June 30, 2009 This is a song where you can really hear the difference the band's two albums. Fort Nightly didn't have anything this stripped-down -- even the slow, ballad-y stuff was deeply layered. It's actually kind of odd to see, because on stage there are still six guys, but they're doubling each other, or doing nothing but tapping a tambourine and generally not adding much to the sound.