How bout that for a headline eh?

We're doing a long set at the Townie tonight after our support act cancelled.

After recent rehearsals a number of new candidate mutants were selected from the breeding vats and prodded electrically to stand in the arena and MAKE COMBAT!!

Err...I mean

5 song enter, some songs leave.

Yeah thats more like it

We loved Ron Teamers song "Sweet Mama Told Me' so much we wanted to cover it.

I asked Ron for the words, but he'd forgotten 'em and told me to make some up.

I used the 3rd verse I recorded on the video (see us tour videoblog 16) and took some notes on what he said the song was about and filled in the blanks.

So that one comes in. Plus Rock River gets a live run. Plus an instrumental by Rosie and a new cover.

Introducing 5 new songs into a set was a pretty decent effort, we thought.

Re-jigging the set, resting some songs, shifting the placement of others - we fricking agonise over this stuff. See those cards? See those leetle teeny tiny notes?

I dont want to talk about the notes.

Let's just say that to mod a set is a task. It's an art more than a science.

Nonetheless, after we had timed out our normal 2 set with a 3rd bracket opener we realised we were still potentially short for the long long show tonight. 

Despair!

Until we relooked at the Source Song pile again and realised we still had another 30 songs in the stack. 

Oh.

Ah.

Hmmm....what are all these in the pile...ah...I see

We have this whole raft of 'nice' songs that Mr Wizard doesn't want to play at night, in pubs, cos they're too...'nice'.

 I suggested to Mr Wizard that he thinks he's in a band with tough, tattooed, hard core blokes. (Hey Kingy, you still owe me for that website bro). 

The fact is I LIKE all that 'nice' stuff and I dont do the screamy raspy voice deal. That leads to Mr Wizards Darkest fear.

Which is, I think, kind of ironic in that I LIKE the Carpenters. I mean, Karen Carpenter had a knockout voice, yes?

As Mr Rebeck said when we added the Doo Wop to 'Push Me Away'

'Man, you guys are just fearless huh?'

Well, not quite. But we're plucky.

So, to wrap up, three hours of this sort of discussion with random segues led to a set list. As we concluded Mr Wizard said quite genuinely, 'Well that was easy', and for us, it was.