Show of hands: how many people know the oeuvre of Mister Jonathan Coulton? Seriously? Wow, that’s more than I thought. I was going to use his show on Friday night to observe how fandom must become fiercer in our Balkanized, web-driven culture. But all you code monkeys may provide counterpoint with your mere numbers.

My point is still valid, though, because even here, in an outer spiral of the Long Tail, the audience divided itself into insiders and inner-insiders. I’ve heard how the savvy artist these days has to hang their career on the latter, and I’m happy to see this strategy pay off so well for my man JC. He’s at that sweet spot where more casual fans like me will still buy a pair of tickets, even if we don’t dress up as pirates, attend PAX, or play that video game he wrote a song for.

I’m down with the geeks to a point. I get the LOLcat jokes, and I know why people were shouting “Whill Wheaton!” But I also use deodorant, and I’ve been known to enjoy a salad now and again. Well, live and let live, man. What matters is, we enjoyed the show tremendously, Karyn and me. Funny songs can be delicate things with short shelf lives, but like They Might Be Giants, Coulton’s songs aren’t just funny. They have heart, and wonderful, direct melodies. I can’t tell you how proud I felt to hear my wife singing along with “Skullcrusher Mountain.” And the TMBG reference isn’t just casual. I had heard they’d been covering “Birdhouse in Your Soul” recently; Friday night, they launched into the madcap and infinitely more difficult “Fingertips.”

Here’s a setlist cribbed from the JoCopedia:

Betty and Me
Ikea
Shop Vac
Code Monkey
Millionaire Girlfriend
Curl
Big Bad World One
Creepy Doll
My Monkey
Always the Moon
Bills, Bills, Bills
It All Makes Sense At The End (Molly Lewis solo)
Road Trip (Molly solo)
Fingertips
Mr. Fancy Pants
Skullcrusher Mountain
The Future Soon
Still Alive
Re: Your Brains
Encore: First of May

Karyn wanted to play “Ikea” for some people at work. Here it is for her and anyone else who needs a basic JC primer.
Jonathan Coulton: Ikea