Shows/1990-03-31
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Links:
Setlist: (incomplete and possibly out of order)
- Lie Still, Little Bottle
- Ana Ng
- Your Racist Friend
- Hearing Aid
- Whistling In The Dark
- Purple Toupee
- The Famous Polka
- Where Your Eyes Don't Go
- Birdhouse In Your Soul
- Cowtown
- Shoehorn With Teeth
- Road Movie To Berlin
- Don't Let's Start
Encore:
They Might Be Giants
— with Galaxie 500 opening —
Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, CA
March 31, 1990 at 8:00 PM
Fan Recaps and Comments:
Tickets were $19.50.
THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS at the Wiltern Theater by Heidi Sigmund
LA Weekly, Apr. 12, 1990:
John Flansburgh and John Linnell are anti-cool. They don't sport ponytails and they dress like geeks. Yes, Linnell plays an expert accordion. And when Flansburgh straps on a bass drum, he marches with such intrepid proficiency you know he must've been in the high school band.
They don't write love songs, and they aren't trying to save the world. For all of this, we can be thankful. These are simply two guys from Brooklyn, who put out refreshingly good albums. They put out an even better show.
Saturday's almost-sold-out concert at the Wiltern proved the Giants are big enough to overcome serious performance obstacles — like playing the Wiltern. Certainly it's a beautiful forum for an act like the Bulgarian Women's Choir, but a Brooklyn-based club band? I suppose that given the success of their album Flood they should be playing theaters; the Wiltern, however, with all its formality, isn't the kind of place to get intimate.
Still, both Johns prevailed. From the opening "Lie Still, Little Bottle," featuring a metronome, Linnell on baritone sax and Flansburgh singing in his "big man's" voice, they rocked. For most of the songs, Flansburgh wailed on a Telecaster or a Stratocaster and Linnell played his accordion in sync with taped tracks. "Ana Ng" was even funnier live, and "Your Racist Friend" was a puff of fresh smoke.
Their energy never let up, though for a while the audience appeared to be watching TV. Both Flansburgh, 29, and Linnell, 30, were among the oldest people present. The audience was split between high schoolers who looked like the goody-two-shoes kids from a John Waters movie, and industry types in their late '20s. The turnaround came when Flansburgh let some kid play his guitar during a polka. "Sit down. Relax. This's L.A. So be cool. You're embarrassing everybody," said Flansburgh. Too late.
A little later, they even got people off their butts, dancing to "Birdhouse in Your Soul," a tune about a night light. They went from a badly choreographed version of "Shoehorn With Teeth" to a dreamlike "Road Movie To Berlin." They then attempted to end the show with their first indie hit, "Don't Let's Start," which thrust them into MTV fame for its low-budget, big-hatted video.
The Giants left them with their "power ballad," a generic heavy metal luv song, demanding the audience to scream as if in hell. Not some "candy-assed Melrose hell," Flansburgh warned. Not to worry. By the time the Wiltern's plush curtain sealed the show, the audience actually booed in unison.
A review of the show by Pat Lewis
Music Connection, Apr. 30, 1990:
No, They Might Be Giants is not a band that plays music for beanstalk climbers. It's the dynamic duo of accordionist John Linnell and guitarist John Flansburgh who together have been creating quite a stir on alternative music/college radio with their quirky and extremely catchy pop songs. The Johns' third LP, and their major label debut on Elektra, Flood, has even managed to crossover onto the Billboard charts − something that's probably disconcerting to some of their more die-hard fans.
John & John are a duo in the true sense of the word and, as in the past, they performed with no backing band as they stood on a barren stage and played to either backing tapes or a live metronome. Live metronome? Yes, and they actually miked it loud enough to suffice as on "Where Your Eyes Don't Go." But just because they used backing tapes, doesn't mean they were boring or predictable. On the contrary. You never knew what these Giant Johns had up their collective sleeve. From playing over-sized tubas and bass drums like they were still in the high school band during "Lie Still, Little Bottle" and "Whistling In The Dark," to letting a fan strum the guitar from his seat during "Cowtown", to jumping around the stage like a strip of frying bacon (Flansburgh) or singing like a clothespin was on his nose (Linnell) − They Might Be Giants showed the world that geeks are people, too.
