TOUR DIARY: Setlist Philosophy & Finding Good Help In Europe With Marlon Williams

Meet Rose.

Rose is from Christchurch, New Zealand, but she's been in Europe the last few months living life, teaching German children the finer details of mini golf and making 250 soft toy dogs for a UK chain store. She and her friend made all 250 dogs over a period of a week, painstakingly cutting fabrics, stuffing and reversing, and ruining their sweet, sweet hands with caustic denim-softening chemicals.

At the last moment they were asked if they could somehow make the dogs' tails waggle. Their reply? No way. It's this kind of integrity that won Rose her job here at Marlon Williams Inc. as Senior Tour Manager for the tour period starting tonight, the nineteenth of October, in the suburb of Angel, London, and ending on the first of November in Berlin, Germany. We wish her every success with an artist who consistently disappoints his fans and loved ones and doesn't even write all his own songs.

Godspeed, Rose.

A found document ominously titled 'Setlist London'. People of nous will have already noticed that the song Strange Things is the only title written in lowercase. What are we to take away from this? Is it the flippant error of a traveler at his wearisome end before he's even begun? Perhaps. Or then again, maybe not.

Maybe we are here allowed some insight into 'another' reality, like in a Christopher Nolan film. One where the consistency of the type matters less than the real, honest work a man does, the changes he makes for the better.

Or maybe, just maybe, a third alternative? Let's think outside the square here. Perhaps the author has something to do with the more-than-half-empty bottle of Glenfiddich standing just outside the action.

Probably not, but we shall never know and it's rude to speculate.

Below, Williams appears completely oblivious to the fact that everyone has vacated the prestigious walls of the Lexington halfway through his set, leaving nothing but a pile of well-articulated complaints to the management burning by the bar.

A commonplace defence mechanism in failing artists, this was made all the more sad by Williams' insistence on a four-song encore at the conclusion of the night.