Jordan Cooper, Knitting Factory, 6-4-2004

NOTE: THIS WILL BE DELETED AND REUPLOADED IN STEREO QUALITY SOON.

Me playing at the famous Knitting Factory! Or I should say in a tiny room somewhere within the famous Knitting Factory! I got this gig from my friend Yoko Kikuchi, who built a whole lineup that night and was kind enough to include me. You'll see her singing the final song of the set. By the way, she's an unbelievably great songwriter.

I didn't remember this show very well before watching it, but I do remember feeling extremely nervous about it and a bit off my game. The crowd was mostly people I did not know, which made me feel very tense and not in my element.

I really rushed through songs to get them over with. Around 2005 or 2006 I got a lot better at soaking in the song and letting things breathe more. I had a guitar teacher who basically told me to calm the hell down and get more "zen" about performing and that advice mostly worked. For example, Mean To Me, the first song performed, would work a lot better with time to breathe and played a bit calmer.

The second song, These New Pants, is a favorite of mine but here is a total disaster. I can't remember any of the lyrics and I'm playing the guitar so hard and way too fast, it's just a big ball of tension. I restart the song because I forget the words but then still forget the words. Basically my recurring anxiety nightmare that I actually have all the time, but played out for real. And oops, my performance is so shaky here that the videotape itself tries to kill itself, and there's a digital glitch on it, sorry about that.

Not Gonna Stop You (another personal favorite, simple but effective) sounds good and I keep thinking I should have put more mid-tempo songs in this set because when I'm nervous, those songs relax me. But stuff like Appliance Song and Give A Shit are way too insane and chaotic to play when I have awful stage fright. I do recall that playing Give A Shit was a kind of last attempt at giving the song another shot. I don't think I played it again after this, though I could be wrong. I do a kind of vocal version of a guitar solo I had done in a (never finished) demo for the song.

Thank goodness for If We Had No Moon, a nice slow and quiet song that is very relaxing to play. Of course I'm playing it in the wrong key here, woops. I usually sing it a lot better and almost an octave higher. I also burp during it which I suspect happened due to my anxiety. Again, I was really nervous. Not as funny as usual either (I mean not to toot my own horn, in other shows my stage banter is better, though.)

A Boy My Age is solid. In The Dumps is a real rare one of mine that I think I played two or three times and then never again. It's a fun fast punky breakup song. I forgot or intentionally did not sing the final words of the song, which is "from work", as in "I'm not going to pick you up...from work." Which is a joke too complicated to explain here.

Terrible Mistake is a huge favorite of mine and one I would love to end an album with one day. I made a vow after writing it that "I will play this at every show forever" and I've mostly kept that, except for the full band shows. Bowtie Guy appears again by request, as it often was. But I think even by this point I was wanting to do less jokey songs and more stuff like Terrible Mistake, which felt more satisfying. This show is kind of an in-between phase for me...I'm way better at singing and performing, but still not quite comfortable enough doing it, and still trying to prove how punk and fast and hard I can play.

Hey, Tom Dead makes an appearance (check out my music video of it here: https://youtu.be/BlXwqeptqKc ), and then we finish off the short two-song spectacular with Third Time's A Charm, a song I wrote for Yoko Kikuchi to sing and sing it she does. This song is part of my side project Sally, all love songs sung by a woman, who is now being performed by my girlfriend, Kristen Gudsnuk. We have a great recorded version of Third Time's A Charm that maybe will be released sometime in the next decade.
Setlist:

Mean To Me
These New Pants
Not Gonna Stop You
Appliance Song
Give A Shit
If We Had No Moon
A Boy My Age
In The Dumps
Terrible Mistake
Bowtie Guy
Tom Dead
Third Times A Charm (featuring Yoko Kikuchi)

Видео Jordan Cooper, Knitting Factory, 6-4-2004 канала Jordan Cooper Stuff