See Stew. See Stew link. Link, Stew, link!
Highlights from an interview with John Flansburgh of TMBG
There's a lot of good quotes from Flansburgh here... but don't be fooled into buying the magazine. It looks like everything Flans said in the magazine is also on this site. The magazine additionally has content from Sarah Vowell and AJ Schnack, though.
UGO interview with John Linnell of TMBG
This article has a lot of great comments from John, and just to pick one to comment on: I can't believe that people would actually ask them to autograph burned CDs. That's crazy talk. Anyway, good interview. Recommended reading.
Last night was TMBG concert #3, and while it was better than last night, it still wasn't as good as Monday. Just as I was leaving I had the great idea that I should borrow Mike's camera (the one we use to take snowboarding videos) to just record videos and capture the banter that way instead of scribbling notes like mad. But I called Mike and he wasn't home, and I didn't have time to walk any further away and pick up a camera, so I ended up filling up an entire sheet of paper (front and back) with notes, which was twice as much as last night. Hopefully by the next time TMBG comes around I'll have a nice new little camera which I can use for recording.
The opening band was Common Rotation, and when I first heard they were opening I thought the name sounded familiar. Before Common Rotation came on, Danny Weinkauf (TMBG's bass player) came out and plugged Common Rotation, and mentioned that Dan and Dan and John Linnell had played on the new album, and that it had been produced by Danny and TMBG's sound guy. But when they came on stage I was surprised to see Adam Busch (he played the character Warren on Buffy) standing there. Regardless of the fact that it was Adam Busch, Common Rotation was surprisingly good. I enjoyed them so much that they now have the honor of being the only opening band I've ever bought the CD of at the concert. I even got the insert signed by Busch and the rest of the band.
Anyway, I still don't know why the name was familiar, because I might have heard of them because of TMBG's involvement, or I might have heard of them as Busch's band. I have no idea.
They actually covered TMBG's Don't Let's Start in their set (they also covered it on the album), which I thought was a pretty damn brave thing to do when opening for TMBG, because if you fuck up a song like that, the fans will hate you. But the cover was well done, and all was well in Common Rotation land. Busch introduced the song by saying, "this song is about what it's like to open visually and sonically for tmbg."
A few other quotes from Common Rotation:
"This next song is about where we come from, which is Hollywood CA."
-- adam
cheers from the audience.
"There's no reason to applaud that. This song, like the others, is vaguely sarcastic."
-- adam
"I just wanted to comment that there are some very snappy hairstyles out there... and thanks for coming out for us."
-- common rotation's bass player
"So says the guy in the hat."
-- adam
I wore my earplugs for most of the first half of TMBG's set, taking them out at Ana Ng and leaving them out for most of the rest of the concert. Here was what they played, complete with a lot of quotes:
"Apparently we're listening to Eugenics radio..."
-- flansburgh
"KUgenics... We're playing there tomorrow, actually... in Eugene, OR..."
-- linnell
"Wasn't there a jam song released about 10 years ago that was basically a repackaged Tax Man?"
-- linnell
"I think Tax Man is rereleased by some band every 10 years or so labeled as an original composition."
-- flansburgh
"This is a Jam Song... yeah, this is a jam song... insert political commentary here..."
-- flansburgh
"Let's do this next song in the style of Tax Man... [discussion] C'mon, let's just try it."
-- linnell
"And you're working for no one but Triangle Man!" -- linnell, at the end of Particle Man
Okay, I might write more about all three concerts as a set later, but for now, I'm too tired to write much more. I did enjoy this concert more than Tuesday. By the end of the concert, my legs were completely dead, and I haven't been at all productive this week on account of being exhausted every day... but in the end, it was worth it.
Oh, and thank god they didn't play The Guitar or James K. Polk.
Ugh, I'm too tired to finish writing up my notes from tonight's TMBG concert right now, so I'm going to have to finish that tomorrow. In the meantime, check out the videos of TMBG's performance on Screen Savers from April 29th.
In the first video, they play Wicked Little Critta and have a conversation with the host, where they actually talk about Apple's Music Store some, and Flansburgh shares his opinions on that. They talk about other things, too, but the online music distribution was by far the most interesting piece of that.
In the second video, they play Another First Kiss and Au Contraire.
If you want music, watch the second video. If you want discussion about online music, watch the first video. Either way, they're windows media, so if you're using Safari, you're probably going to have to dig the mms url out of the source code and load the URL in Windows Media Player separately.
And now, I'm going to bed (bed bed bed bed bed...).
TMBG concert #2 of 3 was tonight, and I guess it was a little disappointing after last night... but honestly, how were they supposed to top playing 41 songs? They really should have booked the Sapphire Bullets to play Wednesday night instead of Monday, but what can be done?
At any rate, the opening act for the evening was the The Long Winters. They were were fairly likable, and I liked their name... Unfortunately, I was kind of dazed and confused while they were playing, so I don't feel qualified to say anything qualitative about them right now other than that they were my third favorite band I've seen open for TMBG after The Incredible Moses Leroy and You Were Spiraling.
So, for TMBG I was about 4-6 rows back, a little right of center. When The Long Winters came on, I realized my ears weren't up for the task at hand, and I went and bought myself some earplugs, which were a good investment, because now my left ear shouldn't still be ringing by the time tomorrow's show rolls around.
John and John were a lot more talkative tonight -- probably because they were only playing half as many songs -- but that means that I was scribbling notes like mad at some points and still only managing an approximation. I wrote so much that I filled up my piece of paper (which I only got halfway through filling up last night) and had to switch to using my Palm right around the encore.
Early in the show, they reminded us that they were going to play every song off of Apollo 18 that they felt comfortable playing in public. I'll italicize the Apollo 18 songs, and we'll review afterwards. Here was the set + quotes:
"Inside the prison the real saxophone is playing the shitty blues.
Deep inside the prison staring at four walls and playing the shitty blues.
Outside someone drives past in his Chrysler and reading the New Yorker.
It is the arch nemesis of the real saxophone.
It is the synthetic guitar and he is laughing and doesn't give a rat's ass
The synthetic guitar drives by the prison yard, care free
He takes his hands off the steering wheel to adjust the radio and listen to his own recording of the shitty blues.
Inside the prison the real saxophone is despondent and he is barely able to play the shitty blues.
-- flansburgh, backed up by linnell on the tenor sax...
"We left out the middle of this next song so the audience would have something to do instead of getting bored... It's like the wave, exactly. It goes like this... I'm going to do this off mike so I don't shock anyone. [oooOOOO!] It slowly goes through the audience until it reaches the back where the people that aren't enjoying the show at all are... Got it? No? Now I'm going to have to explain this again... It started in Africa with drums, and spread to Europe... some genre in Ireland... until finally we get to this song."
-- flansburgh
The other interesting things on the setlist was something that said DOOM! after Drink! (no idea what that was about) and they had listed CYCLOPS after Birdhouse, but they didn't end up playing that. I also mentioned above that Dig My Grave was sadly swapped for Hey Hey We're the Monkees.
As for their grand Apollo 18 plan, they only played 10 out of 18 of the songs on the album. And wouldn't it figure, most of the songs they didn't play were the ones I want to hear more than the ones they did play. In particular, Dig My Grave, I Palindrome I, Narrow Your Eyes, Hall of Heads, Which Describes, and If I Wasn't Shy would have all been preferred over most of the other things they played. I was actually kind of surprised that they didn't play Mammal, because I've heard them play that before. Oh well.
More problematic than that, however, was that they only performed 24 songs, and they played 13 (or 14, if you count Spin the Dial) of those songs last night. Thankfully, they didn't play Istanbul or Particle Man again, and instead opted for the much more enjoyable Birdhouse.
So, while I enjoyed the concert, I didn't have nearly as much fun as last night on account of being tired, being partially def (my ears were still ringing), still being really sore from snowboarding, and the set in general. Hopefully tomorrow night will be better. The main song I really want to hear tomorrow night is Ana Ng. I'd also like a lot of other stuff off of Lincoln or The Pink Album, or even John Henry, because all three of those albums have been really neglected (they've played 2 songs (Destination Moon and She's an Angel) off of them so far). But if about 2/3rds of the set are songs that weren't played on either other night, I'd be happy.
So I just got back from the first of the three TMBG concerts I'm going to, and boy are my ears ringing. And that's mainly because I ended up standing pretty much in front of the left speakers. The Great American Music Hall was much smaller venue than either the Fillmore or the Warfield, and the people standing in front could literally reach out and touch John or John if they moved too close to the edge of the stage. Tomorrow night my goal is to leave a little earlier and take up position front and center (or possibly a little right of center so I can peak at Linnell's copy of the set list (thus making my job much easier)).
The first opener was Amy Miles, and she was alright. I wouldn't go out of my way to listen to her again, but she was acceptable for the mere 20 minutes or so she played. I overheard someone behind me comparing her to Noe Venable (who opened for TMBG last July) and declaring that Amy was "much better." I'm not really going to take sides, though, because I didn't fall in love with either of them and neither of them made my ears bleed.
"Did you ever make out to TMBG... back in the day? I did."
"What song?"
"I'm not going to tell you that... that's too personal." -- Amy Miles / guy shouting from the audience / Amy Miles
The reason Amy only played for 20 minutes is because the second opening band was Sapphire Bullets. Sapphire Bullets (the only TMBG cover band that matters) is what TMBG calls themselves when they open for themselves, and they play all of Flood straight through. They have fake names and make a whole little act of being just a TMBG cover band. "We've dedicated our careers to this album." There was a lot of funny banter by the band, most of which I'm not even going to try to remember. They made several jokes about BNL, claiming they were working on a BNL set, and that [some song] was influenced by BNL.
After Twisting, something on "Corey's" drums "wore out," and the band left the stage for about five minutes while the roadies mucked around. Before they left the stage, the audience was shouting that Dan should come out to replace Corey, and Jared (Linnell) started talking about TMBG's ego, and how TMBG didn't want to even see the opening band. And so on.
Anyway, that was very cool. Highlights for me were Birdhouse, Dead, We Want a Rock, Someone Keeps Moving My Chair, and Road Movie to Berlin. In particular, I really liked Road Movie because they sang the King of Liars verse which isn't on the album. Everyone who was singing along immediately had to stop because they had no idea what was going on, but I didn't miss a beat because I know (and really like) that verse. I was disappointed in Whistling in the Dark, however, but that's probably because it didn't (and probably can't) live up to the way they opened the show with it the first time I saw TMBG.
For some reason tonight, I decided to take notes on paper again instead of on my Palm, and while that was good for just the set list (the light was good), it was hard to take notes on the banter. Also, it didn't seem like there wasn't actually much banter during the main set. It kind of felt like they were in a hurry. Or maybe they were just really tired from playing two sets. Anyway, point is I didn't get a lot of quotes from the main set:
So, tomorrow night will be Apollo 18 themed. Presumably they'll play the four Apollo 18 tracks they played tonight (Hypnotist, Dinner Bell, The Guitar, and Fingertips) again, but that sucks, because that means I have to hear The Guitar yet again. But, things to look forward to: Turn Around, Spider, Narrow Your Eyes, Dig my Grave, Palindrome, and Statue. And I predict that the two they won't play are My Evil Twin and Hall of Heads, based on... I don't know. I know for sure at least 2/3rds of the album that they've played before, and the others don't seem too hard. I guess it's an educated guess.
Ugh, I need to sleep now. My head hurts. And I have to do this again tomorrow night. And the next night.
I pretty much blew my entire entertainment fund for the month on Friday, when I bought tickets for three consecutive TMBG shows from April 28-30. Now, I've been to five TMBG concerts (in the last 4.5 years), and I've commented on the lack of diversity in those shows already, so you might think it strange that I spent so much money for three more shows -- especially shows that are more likely to have common material because they're so close together. But of course I had a good reason for buying tickets for all three nights. In a TMBG newsletter last month, Flans said:
[W]e're doing multiple nights in a number of cities including San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. These shows will be radically different from night to night with almost no repetition of songs, but we've chosen to keep our set lists variety-filled to reduce general audience confusion. We may choose to play a side from an album or all the songs we know in alphabetical order, but after playing shows dedicated to entire albums only to find half the crowd had no idea what we were doing or why, we're going to "keep the ball rolling" as they say in television.
So with that promise, I decided to go all three nights.
As it happened, Kevin IMd me on Friday night (no more than two hours after I bought my tickets), telling me that he was in line (and IMing me from his hiptop) to go to a free TMBG concert at CMU in about half an hour! That only fueled my excitement for the shows later this month, but looking at his mini-review of the concert, I've heard every song he listed (with the exception of Bangs and Supertaster, which I've only heard once and twice, respectively) at least three times live. And in fact, I've heard most of those songs at 4 or all 5 of the concerts I've been to.
So while I'm still excited, I'm kind of worried after looking at Kevin's set and some other recent shows, because I've still heard most of those songs live. While I've heard TMBG play (by my wc's quick estimate) 149 songs, I've only heard them play 73 different songs.
Basically, if the shows aren't as different as promised, I'm going to be a very unhappy camper. I want three completely different shows, hopefully with many songs I haven't heard before, and ideally with some unreleased material. You'll certainly hear how it goes. After I go to these conerts later this month, I think I'll post a list of what songs I've heard (and how many times), and what songs I still want to hear.
Oh, and you should go check out Kevin's mini-review -- he took a short video and a very funny audio recording about how bad the acoustics were with his d-cam.
And oh, if anyone is interested in meeting up with me at any of the three concerts, let me know, because right now I have no one to go with.
Here are entries that I was going to write in the last week, but were aborted for one reason or another:
So now that you know what I would have written about, aren't you glad I didn't write about it at length?
So I ultimately found the answers I was looking for, as both my newsgroup post and the mailing list archives yielded the information I wanted.
First, the name that included "bugs" that I thought was a rumored Factory Showroom name was "Insect Hospital," and it was actually the rumored title of the album after Factory Showroom.
Another rumored title of the album after Factory Showroom was "Thing," and other rumored titles included "Alien Autopsy" and "Jesus, Hitler, and Me." [1] Several of these were apparently titles that Flans just threw out at concerts.
As for Mink Car's "other" names, there was of course Unreliable Narrator. Other options in the emusic poll that I mentioned apparently included "Enter," "Our Name Is Called John," "Damage In Translation," "Gigantor," and "Human Sacrifice." Someone claimed that "Producer Adam Shlesinger (spelling?) also suggested that last years album should be called Yes! to make a kind of double-album thing with No!." Another TMBG name was apparently "Secret Mountain Laboratory." And finally, the TMBG mailing list's inside joke was to refer to the album as "Matt's Life Savings," though that apparently wasn't a John thing.
Tonight I got the bright idea to try to research rejected TMBG album titles, and frankly, this was probably the most frustrating thing I've ever tried to find on the web.
Of course, one of Mink Car's rumored titles was "Unreliable Narrator", and another rumored title was "Matt's Life Savings." But last spring on emusic, TMBG posted a poll with a few more possibilities, letting people vote on their favorite. I tried to find a reference to that list in the alt.music.tmbg archive at google groups, but more or less failed.
The other notable list I was looking for was some posts I thought I remembered from before the title of Factory Showroom was announced back in 1996. I found a post from flans that in addition to mentioning "Factory Showroom" also mentioned "Chimp," "At Large" (short for the previously rumored "At Large in New York"), and "Boro-Wide." The thing is, I remember originally reading that post, and I thought I remembered other rumored titles from before that post. And I could have sworn one of them included the word "bugs."
Anyway, I posted to alt.music.tmbg asking for help, and I'm in the process of downloading the archives of the tmbg mailing list that I was subscribed to at the time (thank god for foreach, cut, and wget) since their search widget is broken. I'll let you know what I find.
And please don't ask why I started researching this, because I honestly don't remember any more. It's become one of those itches I just have to scratch.
Okay, here's the transcription of what They Might Be Giants played tonight at the Fillmore. I used my Palm V tonight, and last night I used paper, and I find it interesting to contrast how much more I was able to take down as far as quotes go with the Palm. The main advantage was the backlight. Anyway, this is a fairly straight transcription of the set list and quotes. In the next couple of days, I might do some sort of compare and contrast thing of the concerts, and just ramble about how I felt about the concerts and so on.
The opening band, Noe Venable, played 2 more songs tonight than last night. Um, one of them was called Tinkerbell. What more immediately springs to my mind were the TMBG songs she mentioned, which tonight were Chess Piece Face and Turn Around, but she again mentioned the Conga Line. "I have one more song and then They Might Be Giants will come on, and then we'll all be congaing out there together."
It was nice that during the gap where they were setting up for TMBG after Noe Venable that they played some nice Tango/Salso music, as opposed to last night's irritating loud rap. Also, Alert caught me totally grooving to this music, and she called me on my claim that I can't dance. Heh.
Below is what I'm pretty sure is an accurate set list and a few quotes from tonight's TMBG concert at the Fillmore. I ran into numerous people I know in some capacity. I had some dinner with Zack (who I met first on the way tot the TMBG concert in September, and then in a few other places in the interim, and who I told about this concert when I ran into him at the Gaiman reading.) and his company before the concert at some japanese place that I ended up irritated with.
I find it interesting that I go to such lengths to document set lists of concerts I attend, even though someone who wasn't at the concert will never be able appreciate it. But here's why I think I do it: When I took CogSci 1, the instructor said that studies have suggested that people enjoy vacations more before (the anticipation) and after (the memories) than they enjoy actually being on vacation. I want to be able to remember my concert experiences, so that I can enjoy them later. The set list and quotes serve as a framework which will jog my memory later.
It's funny that the song that's stuck in my head this time is John Lee Supertaster, even though I'm not particularly fond of that song.
Expect another one of these after tomorrow night's concert.