In 2003 The Belgian Waffles! had been a band for 17 years. Variations of this lineup, the Louisville Sextet, had been working together since the early 90s. By this time, the tug of war that always existed over artistic direction was starting to pull on the threads weaving the band together, and within three years the cloth would unravel. In 2003, however, TBW! was at the height of its power as a live band. Songs were shelved & sets were circumscribed, and nobody was totally happy with everything that was going on, but the focus seemed to snap into place when the band hit the stage. Welsh poet David Jones (not the singer for The Monkees) (or the guy who changed his name and had a minor hit with "Space Oddity") said that a language becomes most fertile right before it dies; this is almost never true of rock bands, who always plunk around far past the point of usefulness, but it is true of TBW!. It was always about the music for everyone involved, and once we reached the point where the machine maxed out the possibilities available to it at the time, everyone decided to move along.

This was not exactly the end of the band. There was plenty of good material in the three years after this: the 20th anniversary show (which turned out to be the final show not counting the later reunion) is as powerful as the three shows documented here, other shows messed around with concepts and lineups and worked well, and even the unfinished studio album *Songs Dick Cheney Taught Us* holds up better than we would have thought at the time. Still, these achievements seemed to be in spite of the machine, rather than because of it. When it became clear that the machine was something to be subverted rather than embraced, it was time to park it. 2003 was the last year the machine truly worked.

Songs 1-5 were recorded 2/21/2003 at the Kentucky Theater as part of the Kentucky Eye and Ear Control Festival. The lineup included luminaries such as Sapat, Paul Flaherty with Chris Corsano, and Roy Campbell with William Parker. Song 6 was recorded 3/28/2003 at the Rudyard Kipling as part of the Mother Lodge Festival/Benefit along with scores of other local bands (the logistical nightmare led to TBW!'s decision to use a borrowed drum kit and bass amp for the rhythm section, and have the rest of the band just blow horns). Songs 7-14 were recorded 9/10/2003 at Uncle Pleasants, opening for Nien and the Cold Sides. For reasons not entirely clear - but most likely to have some mechanism to cut back on the endless bickering about what belonged on the set list - we decided to do only our songs that started with the letter "F".

All recordings here were previously posted on the Indiana Musical Family Tree website. "Punk Jazz" was previously released as a 3" CD single - yes, they did exist - and Byron Coley said he liked it in "The Wire".