Shows/1988-03-01b
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Setlist: (incomplete and possibly out of order)
They Might Be Giants
Toad's Place in New Haven, CT
March 1, 1988
Fan Recaps and Comments:
"They Might Be Giants make club appearance a scream" by Jim Zebora
Record Journal, Mar. 4, 1988:
Take They Might Be Giants (hereinafter ferred to as Giants), a New York duo who made a pile of music Tuesday night at Toad's Place.
The Giants are a band that sets out to have fun, and to twist listeners around with thoughtful lyrics. The music is a far cry from the parodies of Weird Al Yankovic or the screaming satire of Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper. Rather, John Linnell and John Flansburgh paint little vignettes, some cozy and some positively frightening, that make you smile and frown, respectively, and muse over the meanings.
Of course, the initial impact of the band on stage is a scream. Literally. On one song, the band asked the audience to scream for 16 bars because a spoken-word section from the record can't be reproduced on stage. It was quite a sound, as if a Pee-wee Herman record got stuck on the word of the day.
Musically, the Giants proved better than you'd expect. Flansburgh played a hot guitar, carrying on like a slammer on second and a power chord maniac the next. Linnell spent most of the show squeezing his accordion, introducting such world wonders as a waltz with four notes per measure. Just try dancing to that.
The Giants were serious in one way, and poked fun at themselves in another. "Don't Let's Start" was a song that did the former, quirkily detaing a troublesome relationship with references to cat food and Deputy Dog. But the song's tomfoolery couldn't conceal the sadness that made the singer conclude, "I don't want to live in this world anymore."
As for the fun-poking, well, how about the set opener, "Number Three:"
"There's only two songs in me and I just wrote the third/Don't know where I got the knowledge or how I wrote the words..."
That's really not too bad. Suppose all the rock was the self-important seriousness of Bono, or the severe nostalgia of Springsteen. We'd go nuts sooner or later. The Giants even had an answer for that: "People should get beat up for stating their beliefs," they sang in one song, an odd parallel to Father Guido Sarducci's Five Minute University.
Yes, they were strange, but the Giants had a lot to say in their songs, and a lot of songs to sing in their 80 minutes onstage at Toad's. They might be giants, someday. And they might not. They'll please their audiences either way.
