March 14 2008: The Mountain Goats, the Moaners - Remis Auditorium, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA

Big story of the night, far as I'm concerned, was "Jeff Davis County Blues," solo acoustic, halfway through the set. Hadn't seen it live since New York in '06, when some asshole was singing along in my ear. Tonight, though! Tonight! The MFA crowd was as polite as they could be. And like John was just daring them to be assholes, he goes into "Jeff Davis County Blues" to start out the solo set that's apparently SOP these days. And he starts playing the song, and it's ridiculously quiet, and there's not one fucking peep until the final chords are fading away. I couldn't believe it. Not if I saw it with my own eyes. And that was all followed up with "Sign of the Crow," which I really like and had forgotten about, and a cover of a Rodney Crowell tune called "I Ain't Living Long Like This." What a great little string of songs.

"Marduk T-Shirt Men's Room Incident" opened the show, but it definitely lost something with the drums. "New Zion" into "Wild Sage" was really nice, and, as I said to Caitlin afterwards, "that's about the best performance of 'Love, Love, Love' you're most likely ever gonna see." "Lion's Teeth" led into "Sept 15 1983" to close the set, and I was happy.

Caitlin's friend Matt had come out with us, and it was fun to hang out with him and he said he really enjoyed it. And we had these Front of House tickets, which guaranteed us seating in the first three rows of an otherwise GA show, so we were able to watch from right in front of John's face.

And the show was over by 1030 so we finished the night with BBCs at some awful Somerville bar with songs like "Don't Cry" playing as loud as the show had been, watching people play the big game hunting video game. Good times.