Shows/1985-10-19

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Setlist: (incomplete and possibly out of order)

They Might Be Giants
— with The Jickets, Ethyl Eichelberger & Hapi Phace co-headlining —
Hallwalls in Buffalo, NY
October 19, 1985 at 9:00 PM

Photographer unknown, possibly Barbara Lattanzi

Fan Recaps and Comments:

Titled "Andy Warhol's 'Lower East Side Sampler'", this was a showcase organized by Interview magazine, featuring acts from New York's East Village performance art scene. The event was intended to coincide with a planned compilation LP of the same name, which was to include They Might Be Giants along with The Jickets, Mildred Pierce, Ethyl Eichelberger and Ann Magnuson. The record was scheduled for a fall 1985 release, but the project was never completed.[1] This show was also advertised as the opening date of the "American Spirit Tour", featuring the three headlining acts, although no further tour dates followed.

The performance was held in Hallwalls' gallery and green room, as the venue's main performance space was under construction at the time.[2][3] Partway through They Might Be Giants' set, the makeshift stage collapsed underneath them. John Flansburgh recalled in 2023: "The stage seemed to be made from a bunch of risers for a children's choir ganged up, very narrow and flimsy. It didn't collapse so much as just bend underneath us. Embarrassing!"[4] He elaborated in a 2018 interview:

It was a black-box art-theater kind of place, we were set up on these high chorus risers like if you were in a high-school chorus going to all-state, four or five feet high. We were really into jumping around, and in the middle of the show one of the chorus risers' legs in the middle bent out and the whole middle of the stage folded in on itself. It was a very early experience with a stage collapse.

Former Hallwalls film curator Steve Gallagher recalled the show in 2022: "I remember [visual artist] Paul Sharits hated They Might Be Giants. He stood up in the middle of their set and yelled "What the fuck is this?" I think he expected hardcore rock 'n' roll—not whimsical pop rock."[5] Longtime Hallwalls artist Ron Ehmke wrote in the September 2022 issue of Buffalo Spree:

It's been thirty-seven years since John Flansburgh and John Linnell first performed in Buffalo, playing accordion-driven songs about puppet heads, rabid children, and the awful fate of someone named "Chess Piece Face" before a small but enthusiastic audience in an early incarnation of Hallwalls. Back in 1985, they were an unsigned duo from Manhattan's Lower East Side, their debut album still a year away — but they had a secret weapon. That was Dial-A-Song, a phone number fans around the country could call to hear a brand new song every single day (at least for a few years) by a mysterious entity called They Might Be Giants. [...] As their original fans aged and became parents, the group pioneered a new subgenre of Hipster Children's Music, which enlarged their audience in ways that 1985 audience could never have imagined.

From the September/October 1985 Hallwalls calendar:

ANDY WARHOL'S "LOWER EAST SIDE SAMPLER" is the title of the forthcoming LP partially produced by Hallwalls and featuring The Jickets, Mildred Pierce, They Might Be Giants, Ethyl Eichelberger and Ann Magnuson.
The Jickets (Petee-Filips, Larry Lame, Chett Grant and Kipp Delburt) organized the "American Spirit Tour" in reaction to the unprecedented popularity of lead singer Chett Grant, star of motion pictures, television and radio. They invited their friends John Flansburgh and John Linnell of They Might Be Giants to join them (with their sound man Bill Krauss). The Giants, of course, are no strangers to many of you who have checked out their 24-hour "Dial-a-Song" service. Together with Ethyl Eichelberger, The Jickets and They Might Be Giants are the "American Spirit" of new music on tour!

Preview from the Buffalo News, Sept. 29, 1985:

They Might Be Giants, a group consisting of singers John Flansburgh and John Linnell and soundman Bill Krauss, are a humorous pop group that does songs like "Youth Culture Killed My Dog" and "I've Got Two Songs in Me and I Just Wrote the Third" to an elaborate prerecorded background. They are the kind of group that can start off in a Country-Western mode and suddenly shift into a polka or don gigantic hands as props for offbeat dances. Their Dial-A-Song line in New York City is currently their most famous contribution to the genre of performance art. You can get a song from They Might Be Giants by dialing (718) 387-6962 any time, day or night.
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