Show’s over for this year, kids.
I played my first set of 2010 on January 2, alongside Sleep and Cecil Otter, and the itinerary never looked back after that. All in all the schedule said I’d play 101 shows this year. I ended up making it to 93 of them before life intervened.
This year has been an absolutely unrelenting gauntlet of work, love, loss and tragedy. It included the release of my most ambitious album yet, and the most substantial platform and success I’ve ever gained as an artist. It also included the long sickness and eventual death of my father on October 26, the exact day I was set to return from the final leg of touring. These things were happening simultaneously all year long, and needless to say I haven’t quite caught up to any of it yet.
Through much of it though, the only place I found peace was during the minutes I shared on stage with you all every night. It’s corny to say ‘all of the shows were special,’ but all of the shows were special this year. To thank you for that, here’s a tune on the house.
B. Dolan – 50 Ways (Paper Planes Remix) – live in London by Strange Famous Records
This is the live version of “50 Ways to Bleed Your Customer,” performed over M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” beat. The recording is from this summer’s London show. I’ve had many requests for a recording of this, and now you’ve got it, internet. Merry Thankschristmas to ya.
To leave things on a positive note, I thought I’d hurt some feelings and alienate important people while romanticizing some of the good times. Here then, in no particular order and with no particular accuracy, are my top 3 shows of the year!
3. Missoula, Montana
A surprising choice for the #3 spot, no doubt. But when your life becomes a nearly constant string of shows, you develop a tolerance to the drug’s more common effects. You start to need harder stuff. Weirder stuff. Sure we played a great show in your city. Sure the sound was excellent. The crowd was live. Sure some kid heckled and I tore him a new asshole from stage. What else happened?
Well, in Missoula Montana I watched some guy named Pistol Dave take his shirt off and keep 5 bouncers at bay for like 10 minutes using nothing but an imaginary knife in his back pocket! Then our tour manager Jess flipped a foosball table over on him and it took an additional 4 uniformed cops to take him down! He was a goddamn cobra! Sage Francis was onstage with Free Moral Agents at the time and didn’t miss a beat. I watched all of this after playing one of the rowdiest, most chaotic sets of the U.S. tour, balanced precariously on a shaky subwoofer with my head two inches from the stage lights. At one point I reached out and pulled the disco ball off the ceiling. The crowd was losing it. The walls were sweating.
Shit got scary and out of control in Montana. That’s what I call a show!
2. Belfast, Ireland
Another room that seemed dangerously overpacked, this time on the final night of my UK / Ireland tour with Dan le sac vs. Scroobius Pip. This was a great, super hype crowd like only the Irish can provide on a Saturday night, but something happened towards the end of the night that will forever cement this one as legend:
They crowdsurfed me.
No bullshit, I have been certain all my life that this could never happen. But it did. It did happen. In Belfast. What started as a joke Scroobius Pip made from stage ended in one of the most heroic feats I have ever seen a mass of people perform. As far as I’m concerned, this is proof that the Irish could have built the pyramids. The photographic evidence is attached.
1. Providence, RI
To celebrate the release of Fallen House, Sunken City, we threw a show in Providence that felt like the culmination of all the years I’ve been at it. Sage Francis opened with as-then unheard material from his Li(f)e album, followed by a monstrous set by the 16 piece marching band known as the What Cheer? Brigade. I was then joined onstage by Alias, who dj’d my set, which culminated in the first (and only, so far) performance of the song “Border Crossing,” backed by the entire What Cheer? Brigade.
A pair of fans traveled over 15 hours from Detroit to be at this show! In a lot of ways this performance says everything about the triumph that was half of this year’s story. So let’s end with the triumph.
Thanks to URB for their support, and also to the fans, and to those I’ve shared trains, planes, and automobiles with this year: Sage Francis, Dan le Sac, Scroobius Pip, Jess Brown, Becca Lewis, Sleep, DJ Zone, Cecil, Steve, James, Leigh and the Free Moral Agents. We are road fam, y’heard. Love to you all.
See you in the new year.
B. Dolan
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