Shows/1997-05-03

2 wikians attended: LouRocco Thatcrazybastard

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Setlist:

• Critic Intro
• New York City
• James K. Polk
• S-E-X-X-Y
• She's Actual Size
• Particle Man
• Sleeping In The Flowers
• Lie Still, Little Bottle
• Birdhouse In Your Soul
• Why Does The Sun Shine?
• Older
• Spy
• Stayin' Alive
• Pet Name
• Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
• Everybody Conga
• No One Knows My Plan
• The Guitar
• Shoehorn With Teeth
• Spider
• Snail Shell
• Till My Head Falls Off
• Dig My Grave
• Exquisite Dead Guy
• Twisting

They Might Be Giants
— with The Gravel Pit opening —
University of Kansas in Lawrence, KS
May 3, 1997

Fan Recaps and Comments:

Review by Joda:

Allright so it was Friday May 2nd a day before the show and i was in denver still deciding whether or not i should miss one of my finals and drive up to this concert. So at about 10:00AM we hopped in the car and headed east on I-70. We arrived in Lawrence, KS about 7-8 hours later, going, on average about 90-100mph (yes, radar detectors do come in handy).

So Saturday morning we chilled around campus and since we really didn't know the area too well we decided we'd head over to the concert. We got there around 11AM and watched all the other bands. (woo... i have never heard bands *this* bad). Now keep in mind this concert was free and located outdoors on a big hill... so everyone was just chilling on the hill until the gravel pit came on at which point everyone went up to the front. (Claudia and I were front row (against the barrier) center). There was some mild moshing going on during GP.

They left the stage and we soon heard the Critic Intro echoing off the hill... They Might Be Giants hit the stage (over and over again!). They started out with New York City and James K Polk with the confetti cannon that looked awesome cuz the wind was blowing a little bit (come on it's kansas!) and blew it all over the place.

Sleeping In The Flowers was cool cuz flans made fun of the people that were sitting in the trees. Spy was cool with part of stayin alive sung in there... and linnell successfully threw the whole band off during the improv.

At one point during the show someone threw a shoe on stage and just missed flansburgh. He told us the story of how he got hit in the head with a beer bottle and then calmly stated "if you wanna see the show end real fast, throw the other one." After the show, I saw the kid whose shoe got thrown on stage (it got taken off him while he was crowd surfing) and he was begging the security guard to let him go get it. i just laughed.

The Conga line during No One Knows My Plan was huge (with turnout at well over 9,000) flans said that it was probably the longest conga line ever at any of their shows.

Flans announced in the middle of the show that their stuff had just gotten stolen and that they wanted us all to buy T-shirts cuz they got all the money... i yelled out "You say that at every show" and linnell just looked down at me smiled and then chuckled to himself.

Anyways, they ended the show with "Twisting" something i assumed they did just cuz they were in kansas but who knows :)

After the show, we went over behind the gravel pits tour bus where we were told that They were... At this point it was just a bunch of us randomly yellling "LIST?" and what not. So Dan and Graham came out and Dan signed the drum stick that i got and my hat and graham did too asking if this hat was old or new (it's the JH tour "THEY" hat). saying he liked it better than the FS logo hat. Then they all signed my program (yes this concert had a program) so that was cool. So we waited for a long long time and most the people waiting over there by the bus had left and it was just about 8 of us standing there. When Linnell walked out of the bus and we were all asking him to sing stuff but he gave us an ugly sneer kinda look and went and sat in their car. He had his glasses on and we were all kinda like "whoa... linny wears glasses?" But Flans came off the bus and he signed our stuff and took a picture with me :)

all in all, the show was well worth the almost 20 hours of driving and missing my final :)

Review by Kris Maxwell:

My first TMBG show! Some friends and I piled into two cars and road-tripped up from Tulsa (and about half of the group started another full-day's drive away in Nacogdoches, TX). As a complete noob to their live show, I was giddy to see them bring their music to life on stage. I was also a college freshman, so I was pretty easily impressed, but still, the show was a lot of fun.

As Joda says above, the conga line was HUGE. My friends and I were also very much in love with "The Stick" that Flans used to keep tempo on Lie Still, Little Bottle.

To memorialize the occasion, I brought my craptastic tape recorder along. While I technically bootlegged the show, it was of phenomenally poor quality, and not worth listening to, except for stoking nostalgia for those who were there.

Oh, and after the show I got to meet Joda (again, see above), whom I knew from the mailing list... so that was fun. I also thought I remembered getting one of Dan Hickey's drumsticks, but now that I see that Joda actually got one, I'm thinking that I probably just co-opted that memory... or perhaps confused it with nabbing one of his sticks from another show. *shrug*