Set List Time Machine

I don't do this often, but I'm going to write a blog about a set list I played and what it means to me now.

I recently came across my set list for my last show pre-covid lockdown etc etc - Feb. 23, 2020 at Sean Michael Dargan's Rock n Roll Supper Club. A beautiful, complex production that was just getting off the ground and about to be aborted, like everything else.

Like a lot of my music, this set has ended up feeling really prescient. I had no idea things would unfold in the extreme ways they did, and continue to.

Gretel's Song - war (lyrics from Gravity's Rainbow, unauth.)
Birthright - war and the repetition of history, and our complicity
Who Are You? - repeatedly choosing one of two 'opposing' camps who provide similarly terrible results, letting the bullies take over the school, taking (or not) personal responsibility for your role in things
Up the Wall - where we were right then, it was time to sing "fasten all your safety belts and hold on for a freaky freaky fall/ but first this rollercoaster's gonna slow down to a creepy creepy crawl"
-and then of course we need to get into turning things around by choice, with
Make Believe - my musical version of 'a dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream we dream together is reality' -Yoko Ono
and Hymn, the 'let it be so' or 'amen' of the set, saying hold it together even when you learn everything is a lie, and everything you were counting on is gone, and keep our faith and understanding in one another in order to get through it.

There were a couple piano-focused songs in the very beginning, and a couple looper-casio songs at the end. but the heart of the set is what I included here, and how each song feels relevant to that moment and the ones subsequent. Still singing Hymn for us, seems we still really need it :)

you can see the whole set here
Thanks for reading!