They Might Be Giants
November 9, 2011
Showbox SoDo, Seattle, USA
(review by Pete)
Nearly 13 years after They Might Be Giants became my favourite band, I finally got to see them live in Seattle, a city whose ‘grunge’ heyday may be long gone but still knows how to rock, as I was soon to discover. Standing ten metres from the stage, I enjoyed opening act Jonathan Coulton and his TMBG-ish (and John Flansburgh-produced) quirky songs. Weirdly, he even looked like Flans, with his beard.
“We
are very, very happy to be back here,” he went on. “Just getting
through Customs was enough for us today, but this has really been the
icing on the cake. Thanks for comin’ out – we have a brand new album
out, it’s called Join Us.
We have a very dynamic programme. I use the word ‘programme’ like it’s
not a crazy bullshit word to describe a rock show. Shall we get to the
prepared portion of the evening John?” With that, they played ‘Can’t
Keep Johnny Down’, ‘Celebration’, and ‘Why Does The Sun Shine?’.
After the song, he said “So how are you, John? What did you do today?”
“I don’t remember,” said John L. “Being here has shattered my memory – it’s like electroshock therapy.”
John
F said “We’re glad you’re all here, because all day it was just us and a
bunch of guys on meth, and it was pretty scary. It’s good to have some
normal people around.”
“We’re assuming you’re not on meth,” said John L. “Because you like us.”
“But, hey, meth is cool. Whatever, you know. We’re not here to judge. We like meth,” said John F.
“As long as you do,” John L said.
‘Snail Shell’ was next, introduced by Flans saying “We have these really old albums that are still on sale in record stores that closed years ago.” Next came ‘Fingertips’, Dan’s guitar in the outro starting off the pogoing in the crowd.
“We
just did a show in Vancouver,” John F said after the song. “It’s
very...Canadian. And I don’t know if you know this, but they have a
music store there called ‘London Drugs’.” He said it was a very
“persuasive” name, and said “I’m surprised there hasn’t been a novelty
song called ‘London Drugs’; you could use it as a cover. ‘No man, it’s
not about drugs, it’s a music store!’”
‘Old
Pine Box’, a new song, was next and then ‘Birdhouse In Your Soul’,
which was greeted with unrestrained yelling and a hearty singalong.
‘Damn Good Times’ followed, and then came the song I was most hoping
for, and the highlight of the show: everyone up the front was singing
their hearts out to ‘Ana Ng’. It was given an extended intro, repeating
the riff, and the video screen at the back of the stage, which until
this point had been showing grainy footage of random objects floating in
water, now showed black and white TV static creating a strange visual
effect as it ‘painted’ the band via a ceiling-mounted projector. Singing
the chorus with hundreds of other fans was a blast!
The
lights went down and Flans stood centre stage with a powerful torch in
his hand, which he shone over the audience. “For 90 to however many
minutes this show goes, we are trying to bridge huge cultural chasms,
and build tolerance and acceptance for all kinds of fragile and
unacceptable musical ideas,” he said. “We’re going to have to take a
brief departure from that agenda, and move to what is usually a hidden
agenda, and actually something that we try to bury deep inside
ourselves, which is to create an atmosphere of total intolerance, ladies
and gentlemen. For the next three minutes, we are going to have a noble
experiment, because we are interested in maximum performance, ladies
and gentlemen. We are going to harness the powers of intolerance within
this room – specifically, within this audience. Listen very closely to
the words I’m saying. Until you do what I say, I’m not gonna stop
turning this light on you.”
He
shone the torch down the middle of the audience and divided us into two
sides. My side was the People; we would be represented by Marty, Dan
and Danny and whenever they were playing, we had to rase our right fists
and chant “People! People!” for four bars. The other side was the Apes;
whenever the Johns were playing, they had to raise their fists and
chant “Ape! Ape! Ape! Ape!” for four bars.
Thus,
‘Battle For The Planet Of The Apes’ began as the two sides vied to
chant louder. The battle went back and forth three of four times and as
soon as it was over, John F said “The People win.” A great cheer went up
from the left side of the audience. The Johns looked disappointed.
“Every night, the People win – why?” said John F. “You gotta ask
yourself, why do the People get to win, when the Apes are so awesome?
Ape! Ape! Ape! Ape!”
“Night after night, Apes lose,” John L said. “Punish me more.”
“We
love you, you dirty Apes,” John F said. The Apes cheered, but he was
keen to move on: “The experimental portion of the show is over.”
Almost
from the start, someone in the crowd near the front of the stage had
been waving a broom in the air with a nametag on it that said ‘Not
Yours’ (referencing the song ‘I Am Not Your Broom’). He began trying to
push his way to the front, still waving the broom over people’s heads.
Danny Weinkauf gestured to him to put it down, which he did, but started
waving it again during ‘Planet Of The Apes’, so Danny came over and
just grabbed it out of his hands.
After the ‘90s-rock of ‘Judy Is Your Viet Nam’ and a rousing ‘Withered Hope’, John F stopped to talk to the audience again. He said the band felt Join Us was lonely, so they put out a companion album with other songs from the same sessions, called Album Raises New And Troubling Questions. “I know the ratio of rock musicians to civilians in Seattle is roughly two to one,” he said, “so you’ll know that managers don’t like album titles like that. It’s too long and ponderous, and hard to deal with.” He said the next song, ‘Marty Beller Mask’, was on this new CD and they recorded it for Hallowe’en, but weren’t able to release it in time. “But in a way, every day is Hallowe’en for They Might Be Giants,” he said.
After
‘We Live In A Dump’ and ‘You Probably Get That A Lot’ came another
highlight – the Avatars Of They! The stage camera came on, and a shot of
the audience filled the video screen. The camera rotated to reveal two
knitted hand-puppets, operated by each of the Johns. They began talking
about Seattle: “Occupy the Experience Music Project,” John F’s puppet
said. “That’s what Jimi would have wanted.”
“We
wanna thank They Might Be Giants for warmin’ you guys up,” he
continued. “We were workin’ on a bunch of tunes with James Cameron. It
was comin’ out super good, he’s quite a bass player, he’s extremely
talented. And then somehow the guys in the Giants got a hold of the
deets and they just, like, kiped all our ideas. It’s creepy.”
“They think puppets don’t have lawyers,” John L’s puppet said.
“We don’t have lawyers,” John F’s said. “But, ladies and gentlemen, sometimes puppets do have soul patches.” The camera showed a black square on the puppet’s chin. “Fellas, I got a tip – duct tape. It really works.”
The
puppets then sang ‘Spoiler Alert’, with the Johns holding their puppets
up to the camera. Linnell played bass clarinet on the next song,
‘Cloisonné’, with Flans saying they broke into a public school to get
it, then came ‘Alphabet Of Nations’, with extra verse.
Several
people were yelling out requests – someone apparently yelled “Chess
Piece Face” and John F said “We would play ‘Chess Piece Face’ at this
point if we wanted to dust, like, 90% of the audience.” About six people
near me simultaneously shouted “Doctor Worm!” but John ignored them, as
he had the last two times this happened. John L said “We’re entering a
request K-hole,” referring to the hallucinations from taking the drug
ketamine. ‘Particle Man’ was next, with accordion shredding at the end.
Then
it was time to polka! The moshers, who had been slowly gathering
momentum, now bounced away as ‘The Famous Polka’ began, and there was a
mad rush to get in front of Flans' guitar. Several people who had
arrived early had been given Marty Beller masks, and during this song
they put them on. This was the song that caused a stage collapse in 1992
due to moshing. When it’s performed, they don’t always sing the lyrics;
this time they didn’t, but at the end Marty just looked at all the people wearing masks of his face and looked confused.
‘Careful
What You Pack’ was next, followed by the final song of the main set,
and plenty of people belting out the lyrics to ‘The Mesopotamians’. The
first encore was a Johns-only version of ‘How Can I Sing Like A Girl?’
followed by the eighth and final song from Join Us, ‘When Will You Die’. Incidentally, Join Us gave TMBG their highest ever position on the Billboard chart – it peaked at number 32.
The
second encore opened with the song that got the most jumping around and
arm-waving – ‘The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)’, always a live
fave, before winding down with the final song ‘Dead’. By the end, I was
five metres closer to the stage. As the band left, so did most of the
audience, who failed to see Flans grab a stack of square Join Us
stickers. He was doing it very fast, so I was lucky to stick my hand
out in time. I found two more someone had left on the stage, and a guy
next to me who had been handed a setlist signed by Marty Beller let me
take a photo of it.
After the show, a man I talked to called Dylan (who wasn't a TMBG fan but had come with a friend), introduced me to the guy who had brought the broom. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to meet the Johns. They had to rush to their hotel, as it seemed they weren’t feeling well at all. Still, professionals that they are, they still went ahead with the show, gave an amazing performance and gave no hint that they were feeling ill.
Just
under a month later I went to Vancouver myself and found the famous
‘London Drugs’, but Flans was mistaken; it’s not a music store, only a
pharmacy. But it would still make a great music store name. And later, I
did write a song about Vancouver and titled it 'London Drugs', so look
out for it on the sixth China 5 album real soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment