Human Shields, Vollmondbar, Basel, Sept. 23, 2010

My band Human Shields played the Vollmondbar in Basel last Thursday. It's the kind of place where some people come to hear the music, but most of the people have come to eat and drink and chat. I once had a terrible experience playing music at such a place, but at the Vollmondbar the sense that we were playing background music for most of the audience was actually pretty liberating, and we just relaxed and played and had a good time. I've rarely, if ever, had as much fun playing live music as I did there!

Setlist (all tunes by me unless otherwise noted)

First set

I Will Survive (the tune Gloria Gaynor made famous)

The Morning after the Night Before

Friend of the Devil (Garcia-Hunter; from the Grateful Dead)

Penny a Point

King Solomon

Raining (With the Sun in the Sky)

The Ferryman

Turned in Time (music by Markus Bachmann with my English version of his German lyrics)

Second set

Sundowning

Brain Damage (Roger Waters; from Pink Floyd)

Alisa's Bridge

Magpie

Land without Nightingales

Spring in My Step

Triolet on a Line Apocryphally Attributed to Martin Luther (lyrics by A. E. Stallings)

Tambourine

You Know I Know

Third set

Gingerbread Blues

Trinklied (lyrics by Paul Celan)

Long Enough

Hair of the Cat

It's All Right With Me (Cole Porter)

Pale Horse

If I Had Known

Rumpus

Better Never Than Late

You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Bob Dylan)

By the time we were done with our three sets, we had played two songs new to our repertoire (Brain Damage and Trinklied), and we had played all but four of the songs we have ever played live! I was tired, but I still could have played more, thanks to the most powerful drug I know: adrenalin.