They Might be Giants Concert Review #3!!

We arrived at the club at 6:30…doors didn’t open til 7:30 so we waited out in the very cold weather for an hour. There were about 20 or so people ahead of us (but mysteriously more appeared as it got closer to the time for the doors to open). I was having a wonderful time talking about them (it’s so rare that I find anyone to talk to about TMBG that actually knows more than what I’ve expressly told them!)…we got to talking about how Lincoln broke up and the girl in front of us said incredulously, “Lincoln broke up??” and she was very disappointed. Her friend turned out to be a really hardcore TMBG fan, and we started discussing different stuff like TDK’s page, amongst other things :-)

Finally at 7:30 they let us poor freezing folk into the club (which was quite cool at the time, I guess they’re smart and don’t turn the heat on very high when they have concerts), and we got a very nice spot smack dab in the center, about three people back.

Man…or Astroman? didn’t come on til around 8 or so, so we stood there for a while. We tried to sit down, along with many people next to us, only to have some angry looking 930 club worker come up and tell us that “This is not Woodstock! Stand up!” Gah. There was one guy behind us that we started talking to that really wanted them to play the Famous Polka…I thought it was possible cause I’d heard that they’d been playing it lately. I really wanted to hear Don’t Let’s Start and She’s An Angel. There was a group of people in front of us that were talking about the opening band…one guy would shout “MAN!” another “ASTROMAN!” and back and forth, until they finally decided that “Assman” was the name of the group and left it at that.

The stage was set up really neat-looking….there were lots of teevee sets and a satellite-dish looking thing that were playing scenes from NASA (there was a projector on the satellite dish), and this weird silver pole with a circle around it (a tesla coil? Is that what it’s called?). The person next to me commented that they were the perfect opening band for TMBG already without playing a note! I said “Maybe they’ll come out wearing space suits!” Man…or Astroman? finally came on stage…in space suits. The bass player had this neat helmet with tubes all over it and was wearing an orange space suit with duct tape all over it, and another had a silver suit…the drummer was the only one not really dressed up.

Their set was kind of like hard rock mixed with surfer…it was pretty much all instrumental, but when the guy finally did sing, you couldn’t even hear it over the instruments. The drummer was awesome to watch, he was getting really into it and throwing sticks into the audience. The bass player came out a little later without his guitar, but played a macintosh keyboard that he had fastened to a neck strap! He seemed to be really fascinated with this, and kept pressing different keys, and even had one guy in the audience press a key, just to show that it was really hooked up to the sound system. Then a few songs later, he had his bass back, and in the middle of one song, the duct tape that was holding the neck strap to the guitar fell off, and he had to play the guitar “like some folk singer” he commented later…this was only the first of a series of equipment failures for the night…he also said that it was cheap duct tape. He tried to put it back on, but it just fell off again during the next song, so he finally got out another roll and attached it much better. I enjoyed them, except for the most pit that broke out right behind me…Katie said she liked them better than Lincoln, but I wouldn’t go quite that far. In their last song, they all walked offstage, and brought the pole with a circle around it to the center of the stage, and it gave off all these neat blue lightening bolts…except the base of the thing kept catching on fire (Everything is catching on fire, yes everything is catching on fire). All in all, I’d say Man…or Astroman? were pretty good.

We were then subjected to 50 minutes of standing there waiting for TMBG to come on (I know it takes a while to set up the stage, but it didn’t take 50 minutes. It took about 30 minutes. And then the stage was empty and they just waited for something. I don’t know what.)

Finally…the Johns came running on, along with a Dan guitarist, a Dan bassist, and a Dan drummer. Setlist as well as I can remember it (NOT in order) and notes…Linnell played a bunch of songs at the start on his accordion…he sang a lot more than Flans did, and he appeared to be in quite a good mood, which made the concert really nice.

• Finished With Lies…lovely song. I had heard them play this on NPR today, and so I had been telling everyone that they would probably play it at the concert. Linnell commented that it was a nice quiet way to start off the show.

• after the next couple songs, a dan trombonist and a jim trumpeter came onstage, but as I can’t remember the order in which all the songs were played, I don’t know exactly when they came on. But it was really nice. I love those horns!

• Meet James Ensor…Linnell (?) talked about the holidays and how you want to avoid your parents…which segued into the best James Ensor I’ve ever heard…peppy and bouncy and just amazing.

• Particle Man…but of course.

• She’s an Angel…ohh…I’m still trying to recover. I loved it…I’m so happy they played it, and everyone was singing along, almost louder than Linnell. He didn’t do his “like now” bit, but the audience did it for him :-)

• The Famous Polka…!! Wonderful!! They didn’t sing any of the lyrics though, just played the music. It was still great fun anyways.

• James K. Polk…I grabbed a big wad of the shredded money and some confetti for a souvenir.

• Why Does the Sun Shine? rock version (of course)…fun, except for the mosh pit that formed right behind me yet again.

• Ana Ng…with the “Somebody took my eye…it was the only one I had” intro.

• S~E~X~X~Y…fun stuff

• Battle of the Dans, Johns, and Jim…I guess they got a little tired of battle for the planet of the apes, so they changed it around…when the 4 dans played, everyone was to raise their left fists and shout “Dan!,” and raise their right fist for the Johns and shout “John!” and raise their left fist for Jim and shout “Jim!”…and at the end, by sheer numbers, Jim won :-)

• Spider…this has to be one of my favorite songs live. But the version they put on STD is so bad!

• She’s Actual Size…I like this one so much better live than on Apollo 18, and especially with an extra Dan guitarist

• Older…fun as always

• Mammal…Linnell commented “here’s another song we do where we tell you stuff you don’t really need to know about”…great live

• Twisting…the mosh pit was really wild for this one, I would have enjoyed it more if I wasn’t fearing for my life

• Pet Name…Flans said that they liked to turn off all the lights and groove to the light of the tee shirt stand

• At one point, the bass amp malfunctioned or something, and Flans asked if they were going to fix it. He got the answer that they were getting a new one, and Linnell made a joke about them having tons of bass amps…and so they had to pick a song without bass…and they played Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love!!! Wow!! Flans said afterwards that that was the first time Linnell had ever asked him “Do I sing this one?”…hehe…guess they don’t practice it much

• The Guitar…excellent bass solo…everyone cheered to have the bass player Dan back with his new amp

• New York City…”I’m SIX hours from new york city, and I’m six hours from you!”…in august, Flans sang “Five hours”…hmm :-)

• Spy… Amazing improv section…(much better than when they usually just play random notes) Flans sang a song about the first time they played at the 9:30 club. When the got to his dressing room, a woman was in it and she offered him heroin. He woke up in the back of his car which he realized later was in the back of Ford’s Theater and he “saw a rat that was thiiiis big (spreads arms out wide) I SWEAR TO GOD ...and that's when I knew rock and roll was the life for me.” He said later that he hoped the 930 club people weren’t mad at him and that it wasn’t all true.

• Whistling in the Dark…Flans: "Nothing throws off a song quite like several things going wrong at the same time....so if you could please hold your applause until the end of....the set."

• Shoehorn With Teeth…Flans sings a little song about their manager (?) who set up the glockenspiel…they start to play the song and linnell sings “He wants a shoehorn, the kind with teeth (*DING*) cause he knows…wait…” and they had to start over again :-)

• Dr. Worm…Best version I’ve ever heard. Wow.

  1st encore…
  

• Exquisite Dead Guy…complete with puppets! And I was watching…Linnell doesn’t even mouth the words while he’s moving the puppet’s mouth. But he had a huge grin on his face, so it was okay :-) Flans held his puppet head close to the audience and then at the end of the song scolded the audience for not letting him complete his "Peter Gabriel" trust moment thing, then realized that no one knew what he was talking about.

• They Got Lost…about average performance

  2nd encore…
  

• Birdhouse in Your Soul…I think it should be made a law that you have to jump up and down during the chorus of this song…(I was so tightly packed in that I was pretty much forced to jump anyways)

• No One Knows My Plan…I got in the conga line…it was great

  3rd (!!) encore
  

• Istanbul…lovely horn solo at the beginning, I ended up right next to the speaker after the conga line, so it was quite loud.

Flans let the audience play the guitar on about two songs

One guy behind me shouted out near the beginning “It’s my birthday, and I’m at a They Might be Giants concert!”…Linnell just kind of nodded like “yeah…oookay…” (but didn’t say anything)…

I _think_ that’s everything. No Don’t Let’s Start. Sigh. did they play Lie Still, Little Bottle? I remember seeing the stick come on stage while they were setting up for TMBG, but I don’t remember them playing it…this could be cause it’s two in the morning, though. But I don’t remember them playing it!

About halfway into the show, I moved totally stage linnell cause the mosh pit was getting really bad. I didn’t mind too much, though…I was enjoying watching linnell… There was a girl with long hair that was in front of me after I moved that looked as if she were on hallucinogens…very scary.

Flans wasn’t out signing autographs, either. Oh well…I’ve got his autograph already.

I bought the TMBG drinking birds shirt, with a special seasonal “Happy New Year!” message on the back.

But all I can say…WOW. This was only my 3rd concert, but definitely the best. Even though I got pushed around, dehydrated and deafened, THIS was why they’re my favorite band. Excellent job, Johns…truly. I can’t wait til they come around again.

Quote of the Week!
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"The most heroic word in all languages is revolution." ~Eugene Debs

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A Wompedy TMBG Page This is where I got this wallpaper...this page has tons of TMBG stuff though...check it out!