The Mountain Goats

i heard the show last night (wed) in williamsburg was really awesome. my good friend laura went who is a huge fan. said the electric guitar and drums worked well.

i really like heretic pride a lot.

Wishing John well, he's a real inspiration.

yeah get lonely & heretic pride have been spinning in my car for like 2 months now. get well soon dude.

Thank you everybody. Kind of in a really dark tunnel right now which keeps getting darker. It is kind of not my style to air this sort of thing out publicly online both for antiquated reasons of decor & because it's weird when I say something somewhere and it ends up as part of the generally-received bio or something. Sort of have to be prudent about saying "here's what's going on with me" too much.

Really can't tell you how much I appreciate your kind words. More than I can say!

Because I have had to cancel one tour and stop booking another in order to be home, you will all have the chance to get way tired of me & my strident ways over the next couple of months tho LOL awesome hit me back yo

j0hn!! i started spinning heretic pride again like literally 5 minutes ago lol. it is great. get better.

Very sorry to hear about your hard times. I hope you come through more or less intact. Though I don't really know most folks here too well, I'm pretty sure I speak for more than just me when I say, let us know if there's anything we do.

get better u are loved

:( get better J0hn. Haven't listened to the new album yet but I am going to!!!

yer a good dude, hope all turns upwards and well

Best wishes for you, J0hn, and whatever yr situation happens to be.

Earlier today, iTunes shuffled "This Year" into "Self-Destructive Zones" by the Drive-By Truckers. They have the same chord progression - an admittedly common one, but it was a cool reprise anyway.

Hope everything starts looking up for you.

Gah, I really wanted to see you in Philly tonight. Get well soon, JD.

was looking forward to catching one of your shows finally, but understand the circumstances for sure. as compensation, i'll keep spinning the discs.

John, saw you on Tuesday at Webster Hall, you played a great show. Get better soon. You're one of my favorites.

Get well and stay strong.

'Sax Rohmer #1' is perhaps my very favourite thing ever just now. Great video, too. I already liked the concept in the first few seconds, and then it KEPT GOING!!

Every time I listen to Heretic Pride I give myself another little kick in the ass for not shelling out to see TMG in Glasgow in December. Any future shouts I make for "J0hn Darn1elle shreds!" will be so much less topical than they would have been then. :'(

Get well soon, John.

get well soon, J0hn

All the best, John. Looking forward to sparring amicably real soon.

Best wishes, J0hn.

so that line in marduk t-shirt men's room incident about 'i let myself imagine she was you' is totally fucking devastating and awesome fyi.

get well john

Ugh, keep getting bad news lately. Good thoughts sent in your direction, J0hn.

Nice show in DC tonight. Loved the emo intro with the reference to Rites of Spring, and the Mr. Rogers story. Sorry about your health. Best wishes.

wishing u good stuff

Good luck, John, yr the bestest.

all health, j0hn - hope you get to make it down here soon enough.

thanks for the great show last night! you looked the picture of health, fwiw. all best wishes.

just got the PR about the resched - glad to hear you're still playing Manning, was really looking forward to seeing youse (and Wurster!) there

I am hearing them now, on last fm, a song called 'Source Decay'. It sounds like one fellow singing over one rough acoustic guitar. The recording sounds prety rough too, I don't know why that is.

maybe cuz it wasnt recorded v well

i think the early stuff is pretty much on the rough side.

yeah, man, start with Tallahassee and explore from there if yer at all interested.

"tallahassee" is the one about that couple breaking up, isn't it? that album is amazing. going into very dark regions of the soul.

yep. that one and the following two are my all-time faves by J0hn.

In true fickle form, my favorite MG album is the last one I played.

i just discovered "the black ice cream song" from zopilote machine on shuffle. i have a bunch of albums, but except for sunset tree, which i know front to back, i pay attention to one or two tracks for a long time and then keep finding what seem like new tracks.

I always recommend All Hail West Texas as a starting point for some reason, I've never really thought about why, just seemed reasonable. Maybe because the first thing they hear is the Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton and that track seems to appeal pretty bluntly to most people? Er...

Oh, and they sound rough because he recorded that early stuff on a boombox (multi-xpost)

yeah, but that album sounds pretty one-note.

in terms of...?

style, sound, 'production', song-writing, you name it.

I've never got much beyond Tallahassee (although I own about half-a-dozen), but by golly, Tallahassee is a fucking extraordinarily good record.

huh, my thoughts on it all were more along the lines of "cohesive" or "consistent", but I suppose I can see what you're saying (xpost)

well, yeah, that's exactly what i meant; it's all consistently one-note. th real problem for me, actually, is that it gets kinda hard to pay attention after the awesome opener. for me, it just ends up sinking into the background pretty much from that point on. i actually kinda wish J0hn would remake some of the stronger songs, or at least release live versions maybe.

In hindsight you might be right...if my memory is accurate (though it's been a few years, and it isn't), all my favorite tracks are in the first half of the disc.

it's a pretty great one-two punch to open all hail west texas. those just-slightly-poetic codas —"if you punish a person," etc., and "your grandfather rode the boat over from ireland"—really punctuate the suburban drama.

at least release live versions maybe

Been falling in love all over again with 'Tallahassee' and 'The Sunset Tree' lately. "I'm gonna make it through this year, if it kills me." *heart*

so this Last Night of Your Life tour with Kaki King, what's it like? taking turns, playing together, her material, his material, the collaborative songs? excited...