Live Music From Various Incarnations of Thanatos Below

Patrick Ogle Live At Beat Kitchen 2/9/11

Live at Beat Kitchen....!

I put this show up as one giant file? Why? Cause I am lazy #1. Secondly it really is just like if you were there. It isn't all perfect but the idea was (in my tiny brain) to do shows that are just like listening to me sit on my couch. I don't memorize a set. I just have my songs and other songs I think I want to do....and I do them...or decide not to...or stop playing because I fuck them up.
 
It is all very Zen.

I haven't played a lot recently but the Beat Kitchen is a super place to play. It made me want to play again (I will seek revenge for that)  It was FROZEN so there were not a lot of folks there but I'd think that same bill would do better if it were not five below zero out. The guys who played after me were all super...Tim Larson, Mikey Peterson and Brandon Harrod...

Thanatos Live At the OLD Bottom Lounge 2005

Cobra School of Happiness

Or more accurately about half of it. This recording starts in the middle of the song or thereabout.

A Feast of Snakes

Greg Lucas plays his first show with the band as does Tim Larson who plays slide, some guitar and maybe mandolin. Eric Polcyn, on crutches, played bass and Mr. Grech was drumming. As I mention in the blog this was the first time I had played, with a band in 7 years. Third time I had played in front of people at ALL in 7 years.

No Longer At Ease

I have nothing specific to say on this track....but I will note I was sick with a sore throat that night. It was so bad I was having trouble talking.

Oklahoma City Ballroom

I wrote this song while I was on a summer tour as the "merch boy" for Ween.  They played (I almost wrote "we" there cause those guys did make me feel like I was being useful) at the Will Rogers Theater in Oklahoma City. Wow. Oklahoma City is a pretty dismal place. People drove for hours to get there and then stood in the lobby drinking $6 Budweisers and not even watching the band (you couldn't bring drinks inside the theater proper). Where the basic idea of this song comes from I have no idea....but we did stop at a lot of truck stops. The track is from my fourth full length record, I Am Not Job.

Larger Than The Sky

I wrote this song in 1998-99, in the winter. I have numerous demos and if I can find and mix them I will also put them up here. It was a cold and exceptionally snowy winter that year, even for Chicago. This track  is also  from the I Am Not Job disc.

An Embassy To Gaius

The title track form my second record (on Projekt Records) . One of my favorite songs on that record. I gotta say, I have performed it better than this but I think the track has some charm to it.

I Am Not Job

Another track from the I Am Not Job disc. We never played this again! I don't think it was THAT bad. Really it has a very odd guitar tuning (curiously the same one Crosby, Stills Nash & Young used on the horrible, never-ending  hippy monstrosity  Suite: Judy Blue Eyes). The tuning  makes playing this a pain in the butt.

What Happens Next

Even I am not without shame. You will notice there is NO song beneath this note. We played something that was similar to the song What Happens Next, on my first record, in this spot. It is abysmal. It sounds like five people playing different songs and my singing sounds like I am wearing earmuffs. SO I am not including it...NEXT!!!

Blisters

This is another favorite--title track off my favorite Thanatos recording. It was always an issue playing it live because of the peculiar tuning. It is a tuning that was scrawled on a piece of paper by Tucker. Like the Holy Grail this paper would vanish and reappear. I am not sure where it is now. I believe Greg Lucas has it. Too bad the technology to copy a piece of paper doesn't exist. Quite often the bass and the guitar are not tuned together. A the beginning of this version you can hear Eric hastily re-tune.  This has been played worse and it has also been played better!

All I Have Left

Unsurprisingly the words to this were written after a bad breakup. I did get over it.

Necessities of Hell and Creation

From the first CD, This Endless Night Inside. I always liked it because it is easy to play and sing! Let me know what you think.

Splinters

Hard to escape this one. Tucker came up with the chord progression. I did the words. I remember recording the vocals to this, over and over, doing mult after mult. Then waiting on the Ashland bus to take me home at like 3 a.m.

Hebron

There was never a completed studio version of this song. We did a demo and when I decided to release the limited edition "Neighbor of the Beast" e.p. that unfinished track went on there. Tucker was not thrilled about that. I do not recall why we didn't complete it or use a different version of it on Blisters. This is a good version but the live one from Projekt Fest I was better.....!