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The Mesopotamians

From This Might Be A Wiki
YouTube
Music video for "The Mesopotamians"
"The Mesopotamians" design, T-shirt back

song name The Mesopotamians
artist They Might Be Giants
releases The Else
year 2007
first played May 3, 2007 (224 known performances)
run time 2:57
sung by John Linnell

Trivia/Info

  • Sargon, Hammurabi, Ashurbanipal, and Gilgamesh are all famous Mesopotamians.
  • Much like "The Mesopotamians", TMBG toured during the Lincoln and Flood era in two white Ford Econoline vans, dubbed "Milli" and "Vanilli" by TMBG. (More info at Myspace.)
  • Sargon plays guitar left-handed, just like Flansy.
  • The bridge lyrics "I thought that you were dead, I thought you crashed your car/No, man, I've been right here this whole time playing bass guitar" refer to the rumour that Paul McCartney had died in a car accident in 1966 and was secretly replaced in the Beatles by a look-alike.
  • A Mohenjo-daren is someone from Mohenjo-daro, a city belonging to an ancient civilization in modern-day Pakistan that was contemporaneous with Bronze Age Mesopotamia.
  • A T-shirt featuring the four characters from this song was added to the TMBG Merchandise Store on July 10, 2007, to coincide with The Else's CD release.
  • A short animated teaser for the Mesopotamians video featuring the characters from the T-shirt, entitled "Mesopotamians Now", was posted on YouTube and theymightbegiants.com on July 30, 2007. The clip uses dialog sampled from the 1979 film Apocalypse Now. A follow-up video entitled "After the Audition" was posted to theymightbegiants.com on August 24, which sampled dialog from The Monkees TV series episode "Find The Monkees (The Audition)", which first aired in 1967. The music video, directed by David Cowles and animated by Chris Timmons, was finally released on October 2 on stereogum.com.

Song Themes

Accidents, Death, Food, Hair, History, Music, People (Real), Swear Words, Tongue-Twisters, Trade Names, Transportation

Videos

  • Watch it on Youtube.png - The Mesopotamians official music video
  • Watch it on Youtube.png - Live performance on Late Night with Craig Ferguson.
  • Watch it on Youtube.png - TMBGs last East coast performance on Conan O'Brien
  • Watch it on Youtube.png - The Mesopotamians teaser: "Mesopotamians Now"
  • Watch it on Youtube.png - The Mesopotamians teaser: "After the Audition"

Available for Purchaseedit

Site Format Price Download!
Amazon
MP3 99¢ Purchase!
MP3 49¢ Purchase!
AAC 99¢ Purchase!
MP3 99¢ Purchase!

Free Downloads

Site Format Price Download!
MP3
N/A
N/A


Current Rating

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The Mesopotamians is currently ranked #142 out of 710. (118 wikians have given it an average rating of 8.80)