Shows/1985-09-27
No wikians attended this show.
You must be logged in to mark yourself for being at this show.
Setlist:
| We do not have a setlist for this show. If you have one, please add it! Thank you. |
They Might Be Giants
— with Details at Eleven, Wendy Wild & the Mad Violets co-headlining —
8BC in New York, NY
September 27, 1985 at 10:00 PM
Fan Recaps and Comments:
This was the band's final performance at 8BC, which closed on October 22, 1985. This show was part of the 1985 New Music Seminar, an annual music industry convention and festival designed to showcase emerging artists and attract interest from record labels. The four-day event ran from September 25 to 28, and involved more than 50 acts performing at venues across New York City.[1] The band also played the festival in 1986 and 1987.
John Flansburgh spoke about this show in a 2012 interview with Billboard:
One of the posters [I designed] I believe is a show we did that was part of either the New Music Seminar or the CMJ — they sort of morphed from one to the other — but it was some sort of showcase at the height of the East Village scene at this place called 8BC, which was strategically located on 8th St. between Avenues B and C — which is a very good place to get mugged.
I was putting the poster together at work and doing paste-ups. We worked with razor blades — this is pre-computer printing — and I actually cut one of my finger tips off with an exacto knife. Which, if you cut the tip of your finger off, it’s like some Will Ferrell skit of just blood going everywhere. I was surrounded by my co-workers, and I'm just like, "Ahhhhh what happened?!?" But we had the show two days later, or a day later, and it was so important that we do this show, that I actually got liquid skin — it's basically like pouring crazy glue in an open wound — and then I hammered a thimble flat and then duct taped it to my finger so I had like a mini-slide on the end of my finger tip. And we just played the show that way. There was never a question in my mind that we were not going to do the show — it wasn't like, "I've just cut of my finger tip, I guess I'm not doing the show." Now, if I cut my finger tip off, I'd be like, "We will not be doing shows in the foreseeable future."
Excerpt from "East Coastings" by Paul Iorio,
Cash Box, Sept. 28, 1985:
- WORLD FAMOUS IN THE EAST VILLAGE — With no apologies to George C. Scott, the two-man band They Might Be Giants performed with ferocious tape loop backing at the East Village club Neither/Nor. John Flansburgh and John Linnell are the prolific singing/songwriting duo who play highly entertaining original tunes like "She Was a Hotel Detective" and "32 Footsteps." They will also be playing a New Music Seminar showcase at 8 B.C. on September 27. For a sample of this appealing, eccentric mix, call their Dial-a-Song service at 718-387-6962.
Excerpt from "New Tunes or Same Old Song?" by Glenn Kenny,
High Times, Jan. 1986:
- The Seminar proper was held on three floors of the Marquis, of which Levels Six and Seven were the sites of a vast array of panel discussions. [...] Level Five boasted the Exhibit Hall, where majors, independents, hardware dealers, management firms, video firms and, of all things, a robot manufacturer got to hawk their wares. Exhibit stands didn't come cheap (cost: about a grand) but some folks were able to exploit their potential to the fullest. [...]
- If having an exhibit stand made life easier for some, not having one made life exciting and dangerous for others. John Flansburgh and Bill Krauss, of the delightfully funny and inventive New York band They Might Be Giants, paid their registration fees and then hunted people down, with mixed success. They enthusiastically pitched a tape to Seymour Stein, president of Sire records, who mumbled "I'm always looking for new artists" as he gazed at his shoes, but got a much more enthusiastic response from Entertainment Tonight's Dixie Whatley, who gave Flansburgh a vaguely salacious autograph based on the band's claim to Giantdom, and informed this reporter that he's on "the cutting edge of popular culture."