Jordan Cooper, 6-23-2005 Sidewalk Cafe

The show opens with an instrumental I made. I made a CD of instrumentals to give away and I gave it to the sound guy to play a track from.

The first song is Boy My Age, and Yoko in the audience carries on the Whitest Kids U Know boys' tradition of yelling "HEY!" after the first line. On watching this now, compared to only a year earlier, my voice and performance is a lot stronger and more confident. I'm an old pro at this song already.

Next up is Family Curse, one of the more unpredictable songs of mine and a big favorite. The One Who's Dumb is next, a mean song about a girl I dated, who wasn't dumb, just kind of awful and weird. "Let's talk about her while she's waiting outside" is a true moment from life from inside of a bagel place. People in the audience are singing a harmony to this. Hey isn't it catchy though? I gotta get this on an album.

Suck It Up will debut on my second album out very soon. This one really was made better with my backing band later on, even though it's a quiet, subtle song. I sped through it a bit here. The audience claps thinking the song is over.

Icepick The Oracle is in a surprising number of these shows, as it's a weird, hard to enjoy song. Enjoy! That bridge REALLY pushed the range of my voice. The next song is a rare one called Stumped. I think I played this twice ever. It's an interesting song but so simple that I'm not sure I'll ever do anything with it. In this context it was about the girl I was in a 2-year relationship with who only a few months earlier broke up with me. This song features a yawn, which is hard to pull off.

Mary In Maryland is a nutty short little blast of a song. It has been a crowd favorite but it's one of those "what do I do with this?" songs. I remember a girl online hated it and thought it was sexist. It's about ONE specific girl I knew that we all disliked! That's it. Let they who does not dislike anybody cast the first stone.

Next is Mean To Me, about the same girl that One Who's Dumb is about. That was such an insane 2-month relationship but inspired great songs. Following that is a slow I Care About You. I still hadn't realized the insane rock potential of this song (hear it on my album Looking For Parking!) The audience had no clue when to clap, always a compliment.

The LIVE DEBUT of Heard You Laughing In The Other Room! Exciting. One of my best, also will be on my 2nd album soon. This one exploded with a full band but the solo version has a cool dark feel. I don't think I realized until on stage that the lyrics are impossible to remember.

If We Had No Moon is being strummed too hard and too fast. I've rarely nailed this song or the feeling it should have, but it has a lot of potential. Lucky One is a crazy song with a complex chord progression and played incredibly fast. It's also hard to sing so it has a lot going for it. Missed chance for a good rhyme here: "many have attempted" with "many have been tempted"...oops. "Your love it does not match your look for me" was about my ex. It's one of my favorite lyrics.

Shitty Stars is requested, with Yoko Kikuchi on vocals, unrehearsed and unplanned, as she sang this with me for our duo Sally. The fact that this was unplanned made the performance have even more energy, maybe the best one we ever did.

Next by request I do my alien song, Everyone Believes Me. That's Yoko's friend Dan Fishback, also a great musician, requesting all these songs in the audience...which years later is hitting me how nice and supportive that was and I should have appreciated that more. Thank you, Dan! Dan also requested Don't Be An Idiot, a very nutty song, but also personal and meaningful to me.

Then I play an out of tune You Say But You Don't Know, also by now very confident with this song. Next is Bowtie Guy and you can tell from my intro that I've played it 100 times and was a bit tired of it by then. 

Someone requests piano, so I perform Honest Guy (available on an EP I put out in 2016!) It's a simple song but I'm still amazed I was prepared enough to do this. Dust Town is next, which at the time was pretty new as this song is also about that recent breakup I had.

The final song is Crashing The Ball, an even more challenging song than Lucky One. I really pushed myself this show. To be honest, I don't think my voice is capable of this sort of thing again, so it's really special to me these videos exist.

This is the last show of mine I have on video that I could find. Though there's a lost tape or two out there still missing, so maybe one day more will be found (I know my first show ever is missing, which is kind of heartbreaking for me, though I do have the audio from it.)

Setlist:

Boy My Age
Family Curse
The One Who's Dumb
Suck it Up
Icepick the Oracle
Stumped
Mary in Maryland
Mean to Me
I Care About You
Heard You Laughing in the Other Room
If We Had No Moon
Lucky One
Shitty Stars
Everyone Believes Me
Don't be an Idiot
You Say But
Bowtie Guy
Honest Guy
Dust Town
Crashing the Ball

Видео Jordan Cooper, 6-23-2005 Sidewalk Cafe канала Jordan Cooper Stuff