this gig was super-memorable. although they were opening for Clap Your Hands And Say Yeah, they played a full set on this other leg of the Alligator tour. being the nice people they are, and me being a “set list thiever”**, they signed it after the show with the rare attention that is unusually given (“let me find the rest of the band”). the most memorable before-gig day, however, was for the early leg of the album tour, when they played San Francisco’s Cafe Du Nord. as typical, I would get up at 5am to avoid Los Angeles traffic, and drive 5.5 hours to San Francisco… and that night, it was the gig, and I arrived early (it was 3 or 4 bands, as it turned out), and the band went on at 1am— so it must have been a Friday night. no camera, thus perhaps I recorded the gig, and it is a terrible venue for photographing (more so as an amateur with not-so-great equipment for low-light photography).

**this was to be a moniker given to me by one Bill Callahan… as noted in what was to be a simple autograph.

MIX.17: I find it impossible to just do a 17 song playlist, or maybe too lazy, thus here is the early-The National playlist.