They Might be Giants Concert Review #2!!

For my second They might be Giants concert experience on 8-28-98, I went to the 9:30 club show with two of my friends (one whom I had to drag there cause I didn’t think I could get anyone else to go, but then another guy told me he wanted to go, so I ended up going with two people :-) ) Doors opened at 9, the first opening act was to go on at 9:30, the second at 10:30, and TMBG finally at 11:30! (yeesh! And I had to be up by 7:15 this morning?? Ack!) We arrived there late, cause my friend didn’t want to miss band camp and have our director angry at us (he does get angry, but I still would have skipped if I could have found someone to go with me at 8 o'clock!) Ah well. We went via metro, which took about 45 minutes :-P

We got there about ten and our spots were in the very back of the club, but by the time the show was over, we had maneuvered our way to having only 3 /4 of the people in front of us! Yeah! :-) But I had a great view of both Johns, and the club was small, so we weren’t really THAT far away! But when we finally got there, we had missed the first opening act…which probably was a blessing in disguise. Her name was Mary Prankster, and I've heard from others who were there that she was extremly vulgar and just plain bad as well.

The second opening act, Michael Shelley, although personally endorsed by John Flansburgh, were not highly regarded by the audience and got booed by a few people! They were cool about it, though…they called for a spotlight on the guy who had done it, asked his name (Dave), and asked everyone to applaud who thought Dave was mean. Hee hee. They weren’t a very typical band to open for TMBG, though…seemed rather boring…I don’t know, maybe just cause I hadn’t heard any of their songs before, but all their songs sounded exactly the same. They played for a half-hour, and the half-hour afterwards from 11-11:30 was one of the longest in my life!! Ack!

But finally after the long wait…TMBG came onstage!!! Not just John and John + bass and drums, but with horns too!! And the Johns were outnumbered for once!! There was Dan Hickey on the drums, Dan Levine on trombone, and yet another Dan on bass!! (can’t remember his last name, though, but he was new, and didn't know all the songs as well as Hal Cragin, the bass player who had formerly toured with TMBG) They opened with Dr. Worm…1st time I had heard it with horns live…pretty much like the CD, but it was neat! Other songs in order...

• No One Knows my Plan...(Flans didn’t tell anyone to conga, but people did anyways! :-) )

• Turn Around...this one was a pleasant surprise…I don’t think I’ve heard it on more than one bootleg before and definitely not recently...it’s really great live though! And when he sang “waving our arms out the window, of a fast moving passenger train”, everyone waved their arms above their heads, hopefully they'll be playing it more often

• Battle for the Planet of the Apes...they played this one last time they were in D.C., so I was hoping they’d play a different ape song this time. But, it's always fun to wave your fist in the air and shout something, so I'll forgive them this time :-) And Flans made a big deal that we had to shout "APE!" instead of "APES!", cause that's what the voices told him :-)

• They Got Lost...already becoming a concert staple…and made interesting by the fact that they said “Dan said to Dan”…multiple first names on the same stage are fun!

• Spy...improv was easily the best and most fun I’ve ever heard it, Flans sang lines from “Don’t You want me baby?”!!

• Lie Still Little Bottle...complete with stick…Flans said afterwards...”You know, this is something every musician should know...when you take a stick, and strap a mike to it to sing into, you should make sure it’s not sumac wood. Cause we learned a little while ago that sumac wood is actually poisonous!” meaning that Flansy had used a poisonous wood to make his stick. Oops. :-)

• Why Does The Sun Shine?...no interesting improvs on Linnell's part, but the rock version is always great

• Shoehorn with teeth...Dan the olympic glockenspiel player did awesomely yet again :-)

• Istanbul

• S-E-X-X-Y

• I Am Not Your Broom...this should have been on the live album!!

• Twisting

• She's Actual Size

• The Guitar...fun as always!

• Particle Man

• James K. Polk...Flans (?) talked about the disco ball hanging over us, and said it was the personal property of the lighting guy (he even brought him onstage!) and then said that the confetti cannon was pointed right at the disco ball...and that he was worried about this self-destructive behavior... :-)

• New York City…Great great great!! And instead of “Just 3 days away” they said “just 5 hours away”…cause D.C. is 5 hours from NYC!

• Dr Worm...again!!! They played it twice!! The second time was right before the first encore...Flans asked people later when he was signing autographs if it seemed too much like a mistake or something...I’m not sure why they played it twice, but during the concert they said it was for ‘HFS (the local radio station that they were interviewed on the same morning...I think they sponsored the concert, too...but I didn’t see any hfs banners or anything)

  1st encore

• Exquisite Dead Guy...complete with puppets

• Till My Head Falls Off…Linnell: “This is a song about my head” :::does strange head grabbing thing with his hand:::

• Dig My Grave

  2nd encore

• Older...should have been on the live album as well!
• Birdhouse In Your Soul...the very last song...lots of fun!! Everyone was jumping up and down and singing and cheering!! The horns danced onstage! I love that song!

I asked Flans “So what’s this about a children’s show?” hoping him to elaborate on the rumor I'd heard, and he said “yeah, we’re thinking about doing a children’s show”, and then someone asked him something else before he could say more...sigh.

And during the show, Flans talked a bunch, and Linnell barely said anything… He didn't talk much that morning on the radio interview, either. But Flans seemed _really_ talkative then, so maybe he just drowned Linnell out :-) AND Flans said in the autograph line that he loved playing here (at the 930 club) cause the audience was so great and they got into the show easily :-) !!! And he was so nice...you could tell he was in a hurry (said something like “It’s Miller Time!”) but he said that he would stay signing autographs until every last person was gone. I can’t wait till they come around again!!

Oh, and if anyone bootlegged the concert, Please email me!!! Thank you! :-)

Quote of the Week!
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"We like the music, but the music's not too fond of us" ~John Flansburgh 8-28-98

Link of the Week!
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The Official They Might be Giants site! For all of you who've read this review and don't know who TMBG are, this is where you can find out lots more about one of my favorite bands