This was a show from after The Wishing Chair album, in their hometown, at a local college. The songs are Everyone a Puzzle Lover (9:50) and Back O' the Moon (13:00), which is one of my favorite songs of theirs. They play them back to back (so he doesn't have to take off the mando, probably), which is convenient for listening purposes.
I think Robert Buck is playing a cheapo Harmony mandolin. I searched "pear shaped mandolin" and found something that looks just like it, a Harmony CF-003.
If that's the mando he used on the album, then the producer likely sweetened it quite a bit. The solos aren't quite what he played on the album either, but hey, he always seemed like an off the cuff kinda player anyway.
It's just cool to see that any performances of these songs survived, and it gives me some more songs besides R.E.M. to play around with.
I'll probably do lesson videos for them on YouTube at some point. I already made a custom playable version of EAPL in the guitar game Rocksmith, on PC (and got it to recognize the mandolin properly as a bass arrangement..... the neck looks close enough to a mando neck, but with 4 strings), so I'm doing my best to help out other learning mando peeps.
Just thought I'd share this in case there are any other alt rock mando fans out there!
Bookmarks