Shows/1988-12-18
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They Might Be Giants
The Malibu in Malibu Beach, NY
December 18, 1988
Fan Recaps and Comments:
"GIANT STEPS" by Peg Tyre
New York Magazine, Feb. 6, 1989:
On a bitterly cold Sunday night in December, about 2,000 young people are milling around a garishly decorated club called the Malibu, in Lido Beach. The occasion is the first birthday of WDRE, New York's biggest alternative radio station.Half of the kids are there to hear the kind of punk-rockers the radio station has always championed—people like the Ramones (who are skulking around backstage in black leather) and Lou Reed. The other half, though, seem to be here for two nerdy-looking guys called They Might Be Giants, just now taking the stage.
John Flansburgh, 28, who looks like a bit player in Leave It to Beaver, adjusts his guitar. John Linnell, a rail-thin 29-year-old with a long, wavy forelock, disappears momentarily behind his accordion.
Looking more like bewildered graduate students than a successful rock band, they blast through three high-energy songs—catchy pop tunes matched with difficult, sometimes bitterly ironic lyrics.
The first song, "Ana Ng", begins with the dissonant crash of three staccato chords and an almost military-sounding snare, produced by a drum machine. Linnell speeds through the lyrics, describing heartfelt longing for a woman on the other side of the Earth: "Make a hole with a gun perpendicular to the name of this town in a desktop globe/Exit wound in a foreign nation showing the home of the one this was written for."
"It's a new kind of crowd," says Linnell in a flat, professorial tone. "After spending years playing East Village performance spaces, it's hard for us to know who they are and why they come and see us."
The girls with big hair and men in leather jackets are rooted to the dance floor, looking confused. But the Giants' fans are electric—jumping up and down in time to the music. Linnell and Flansburgh play a dance number called "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head", swaying from side to side like overzealous Pips. They punctuate the beat by folding awkwardly from the waist, singing, "Put your hand inside, put your hand inside, put your hand inside the puppet h-e-e-ead."
The punks in the audience give in when the duo hits the opening bars of "Don't Let's Start", an MTV hit. Like "Ana Ng", "Let's Start" is almost impossibly catchy, full of melodic "hooks" that force the listener to go around singing them for weeks. Linnell grabs the microphone and stares at it like a mad professor scrutinizing a rolling test tube. He leans forward into the lights, blind to the fact that by now, almost everyone in the audience is mouthing the words along with him. His voice swoops as they all sing, "But don't let's start/I've got a weak heart/And I don't get around how you get around."
After the show, even Linnell and Flansburgh are curious about the crowd's reaction. "I can never gauge it from the stage," says Flansburgh, a revved-up talker who ends each sentence with a bright grin. "I always worry, 'Are they getting it?'"
