Shows/1990-02-15
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Setlist: (incomplete and possibly out of order)
They Might Be Giants
Duchess of York in Leeds, UK
February 15, 1990
Fan Recaps and Comments:
John Linnell briefly recalled this show in a 2016 interview with Halifax Courier:
It was such a big crowd – a huge crowd for a tiny little pub and the sound guy was behind the mixing desk and he had to put his feet up against it because otherwise he would have been pinned to the wall by the mixing desk, the crush of the crowd was that big. That’s kind of a fond memory.
A review of the show from Dave Simpson
Melody Maker, Feb. 24, 1990:
CONGRATULATIONS are in order for They Might Be Giants, who break the Duchess' all-corners attendance record, set last year by Spacemen 3. The "full house" sign went up ages ago and it's all I can do to edge my way in and carve out my six inches.
Since I can't see a thing, "Your Racist Friend" filters through the crowd like hearing a hidden transistor radio drifting through trees, except the music on the radio isn't normally this good... twangy American voices, groovy toe-tapping rhythms and glorious lyrical melodies — syrup laced with arsenic, at first a mite inane yet laden with subliminal messages. TMBG's music is unique. They share a weirdness with the likes of Devo, a sense of the absurd in "normality" with David Byrne, and a musical approach like Elvis Costello singing Cope's "Sunspots" after a frontal lobotomy and a session on the laughing gas! I did say they were unique.
Craning onto tiptoes, I make out two Varsity lads: a crop with specs and a guitar and a floppy with an accordion. The rest of the "band" is on tape, except for when they rather charmingly use an amplified metronome as a drummer. Nice, that. Someone shouts for "Purple Toupee".
Every song radiates such a sense of fun and love of pop that it's impossible to fault them. "Dead" (the song that describes being reincarnated as a bag of groceries) is a particular gem, fine harmonies sung with (almost) a straight face over a simple piano. "Angel" is equally fab, a raw pop thrill that reaches for the sky and swoops into the clouds. Heavenly. Five people shout for "Purple Toupee".
"Birdhouse In Your Soul" sounds as good here as it has on Radio 1 recently. There's a crush. Fifty people shout for "Purple Toupee". They play it, and it's great. "Purple toupee and gold lamé will turn your brain around". And to think these men will soon be famous! Wonderful, wonderful stuff.
"BIG FUN" by Jason Dunne
Student, Feb. 23, 1990
Artists, even more than students, find it hard to introspect without veering toward morbidity, so it is indeed a blessing that TMBG cannot examine the human condition without giggling. They get big laughs out of the fact that, despite having only eighty years to play with, most of us find time to be jealous, hateful, bigoted, paranoid or conceited. It's a laugh, innit?
But tonight was no crass observation comedy. Their theatrical sense of the absurd, a fairly vital ingredient when mixing blistering rock guitar with a Polka accordion and a tuba, derives directly from their bemusement. Though the theme is obscured by their telegraphic delivery, the premise is that TMBG have shrugged their shoulders at all the Big Issues. The songs are happily clueless replies to favourite existential posers like "Why Am I Here?", or, "Should I Be Ethical?" Free from such concerns, they hop up and down in the realm of possibilities, that part of your head hasn't been numbed by everyday language or habitual experience. So, "Birdhouse In Your Soul" is a love song, but you'd have to be in the know to see it as such.
The song structures are anything but structures, quirky stop-go pirouettes that would bridge the shortest of attention spans. The duo themselves are equally as tangential, guitarist Flansburgh struggling with his instrument like he was hiding something embarrassing from the vicar. It's all glossed with the melodies that helped them to displace U2 from the top of the US college playlists, proving that there is justice in the world even if there is precious little logic or order. They Might Be Giants as the best rock alchemists since Pere Ubu? No trouble.
