PrettyFakes

With bonus Morrissey action!

For my birthday this year, the consistently awesome Contessa got me the only electronic gadget I’ve been a-hankering for in recent years: a digital turntable. It’s a testament to how long we’ve been together and our almost telepathic level of intimacy that she was able to pick up on my little hints—hints I didn’t even know I was giving. Like, the fact that I kept buying vinyl records I had no way of playing and then sighing wistfully, or the way I kept saying things like, “I hear those digital turntables are pretty cheap nowadays. Easy to use, too!”

So I finally got the thing fired up this week and selected my first album to convert to MP3s—last year’s Mountain Goats/Kaki King EP Black Pear Tree, chosen partly to help me stave of the anticipation-shakes I’m dealing with in advance of the October release of the new all-Biblical Goats album. Now, the whole point of doing a limited-edition tour-only vinyl release is to make the artifact and the experience special, so I’m not going to rip a bunch of MP3s and put ‘em on the internets for everyone to download willy-nilly, no sir. But in honor of my great wife, of my swell gift, and of how tremendous these songs are, I’m going to post some YouTube videos of live performances of the songs from the tMG/KK tour that nearly destroyed America last year. (Because a live show isn’t a special, unique experience? OK, OK, my position is not without its paradoxes, I admit.)

But first! A staple of the tour that does not appear on the album—it’s a cover of “Suedehead.”

(I thought about posting this version, which is a little closer-up, but the vocals are pretty distorted in the mix. Alas, the same goes for this, the only video of “Supergenesis” that I could find, though it does answer the “How exactly was Kaki King making those sounds?” question.)

Here’s the video for the title track, featuring tragicomic anecdote:

Here’s “Mosquito Repellent,” with bonus guitar malfunctioning antics:

And to finish, here’s another non-EP tour staple, the Peter Hughes Franklin Bruno-penned encore “Houseguest,” performed in John Darnielle’s best slowly unraveling manner. Stick around until the 2:28 mark or so for the anxiety to set in.

Whee! In the on-deck position is the Mountain Goats/John Vanderslice collaboration Moon Colony Bloodbath, and then I’m finally going to get to hear Charlie McAlister’s Mississippi Luau, which I’ve had for almost 5 years now. Hurray!

This entry was posted on Friday, August 21st, 2009 at 4:33 pm and is filed under In Mississippi, Professor Fury, The Rock and The Roll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.