Shows/1987-11-26

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Setlist: (Incomplete!)

• Lie Still, Little Bottle

They Might Be Giants
Luxor in Cologne, Germany
November 26, 1987

Fan Recaps and Comments:

From EB/Metro-Nom, January/February 1988;
Review by Bobby Vox:
(Translated from German)

They Must Be Giants

Yes, they really must be giants. It looked quite empty a few minutes before the concert in the Luxor; one of the friendly Americans actually greeted his audience individually with a handshake, really nice. The Two Johns (John Flansburgh and John Linnell) come from Massachusetts and deliberately forgo the usual appearance of a guitar band, although one might get that impression from the duo's first LP. There, they sound at times like an American version of the Jazz Butcher, with lyrics like "I hope that I get old before I die," who doesn't hope so? The instrumentation consists mainly of a guitar and an accordion, at one point the accordion is replaced by a saxophone. It goes without saying, then, that the rhythm section and keyboards came from a tape; one of the songs is humorously called "Rhythm Section Want Ad".

They make up for this apparent disadvantage with a comedy-like stage show, tremendous joy in playing, and a lot of wit and charm. A swinging song was performed with only vocals and the beat being played by a wooden log on a wooden board. The two shared lead vocals on the songs. Both, by the way, are very confident. The guitarist, when he grinned, which he usually did, was somewhat reminiscent of Jerry Lewis. He parodied the guitar jumping jack so skillfully that one of the statues set up as decoration fell over.

The insanely minimal set drove the audience to incessant demands for encores, even when the Giants had long since run out of rhythm tracks on tape, but they carried on without. A successful concert with a delightful mix of country, folk and guitar pop that thrilled more than just me.