Shows/1982-07-18
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Setlist: (incomplete and out of order)
John Flansburgh & John Linnell
Central Park in New York, NY
July 18, 1982 at 12:00 PM
History
This show was John Flansburgh and John Linnell's first public performance together. The gig took place in Central Park, New York City, at an event organized by supporters of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) to commemorate the third anniversary of the 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution. Flansburgh: "We played a FSLN rally outside somewhere on the Great Lawn of Central Park for what one could safely assume was an entirely Spanish-speaking audience and mostly bona fide Sandinistas. We got a positive reaction, but they were already in a very good mood."[1] They played to a crowd of about 30 people,[2] and were the only English-speaking act on the bill.[3]
John Flansburgh recalled the show in a 2002 Mailing List email:
It seems like a very fuzzy yesterday to me that John and I were carrying the majestic but ponderously weighty Farfisa organ over the rock walls that border the cab route going through the middle of the park. I recall we played "Cowtown" and "Space Suit" (with Linnell playing the clarinet). Other songs I vaguely remember are "Penguin" (sample lyric: "penguin, penguin, all alone and lost, standing, sitting, looks for a place to park") and "Cabbagetown" (which ultimately became an Elektra b-side). It would be 1983 before we played out again (where we would incorporate the cutting edge technology of the 4-track reel-to-reel tape recorder).
The show was part of a three-day festival celebrating the Nicaraguan Revolution's anniversary. The festival was held annually by Casa Nicaragua, an organization that was dedicated to promoting solidarity and spreading Nicaraguan culture in the United States. The band got the gig through a friend from high school that worked for the New York office of the Liberation News Service. Flansburgh: "We thought it would be a hippie gathering kind of thing, but it was actually a meeting of Sandinistas."[4] Flansburgh and Linnell typically describe the show as a "Sandinista rally," but contemporary newspaper listings suggest it could be more accurately described as a picnic. A listing in Perspectiva Mundial (a Spanish-language socialist magazine) described the show as a "picnic and celebration, with music, dance, food and entertainment," on Central Park's Great Lawn, 85th St near Delacorte Theater. The show was free and ran from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. It was one of the hottest days of the year in New York City.[5] The band's next show took place seven months later, in the middle of a heavy snowstorm.
The band had not yet adopted the name They Might Be Giants, and they were introduced to the Spanish-speaking crowd as simply "El Grupo De Rock and Roll" ("The Rock and Roll Group").[6] Flansburgh has claimed that they did perform this show under a real name,[7] but he refuses to disclose it: "We first had a really bad name — a name so bad that John and I have made a vow that we will never tell anyone, even our children. We used it for our first show, a Sandinista rally in Central Park. We had this really terrible, terrible, embarrassing name."[8] He later added: "Some things are sacred and the secret of our first name will forever remain with me and John."[9] In other conflicting interviews, the band have claimed they performed the show either under the name Circle Gets the Square (a lyric from "Sally Boy Candy Bar"),[10] or The Pencils.[11]
"Space Suit" was the first song they played.[12] Flansburgh: "As we were doing the setlist, we had the foresight to realize that instrumentals would go over really well. I think we pulled out, like, the three instrumentals that were in our repertoire at that point."[13] Margaret Seiler, a friend of the band and later singer of "Boat Of Car", attended the show.[14] Linnell recalled in 1988: "It wasn't a very big rally. But a friend of ours who is like a leftie person had us come and do this thing, and nobody in the audience spoke any English. They were all recently arrived Nicaraguans, but they apparently really dug the show because they came back and tried to tell us how much they liked us in the few words of English that they knew."[15] A person working at the event took a color Polaroid photo of the band's performance and gave it to them afterward.[16] The photograph was later reproduced in the booklet of the 2002 compilation album Dial-A-Song: 20 Years Of They Might Be Giants.
The show's exact date was unknown to fans until June 2023, when a listing for the show was discovered in a July 1982 issue of The Militant, a socialist newsweekly. The finding was confirmed independently by John Flansburgh[17] and John Linnell, via his old calendar. The band celebrated the 20th anniversary of this show with a free gig in Central Park on August 15, 2002.
Newspaper Listings
The Guardian; July 14, 1982
The Village Voice; July 20, 1982
The Militant; July 23, 1982
Perspectiva Mundial; July 26, 1982
