Shows/1990-05-24
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Links:
Setlist: (incomplete and possibly out of order)
- Siftin' Intro
- Hearing Aid
- Whistling In The Dark
- Someone Keeps Moving My Chair
- Lie Still, Little Bottle
- Where Your Eyes Don't Go
- Lucky Ball & Chain
- Your Racist Friend
- Particle Man
- Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
- Birdhouse In Your Soul
Encore:
They Might Be Giants
— with The Jack Rubies opening —
Peabody's Down Under in Cleveland, OH
May 24, 1990 at 11:00 PM
Fan Recaps and Comments:
Tickets were $8.
"Deadly Duo dim Peabody Stage" by Michael Heaton
The Plain Dealer, May. 26, 1990:
I hated They Might Be Giants' last album, "Flood" and I didn't think my opinion of the band would improve much seeing them live at Peabody's DownUnder in the Flats Thursday night. I was right.
The group finally arrived on stage at 11 p.m. following a set by a band called the Jack Rubies. There are only two guys comprising They Must Be Giants and most of the music is pre-recorded, so I don't know what the big delay was about. The stage was bare except for some big black and white postage stamp-type things in the background. The house was packed with white teen-agers and college students who think the band's polka-rock sound is "clever."
John Flansburgh and John Linnell came out on stage with a guitar and accordion and proceeded to play a lot of songs from the last album. They did "Whistling In The Dark," "Someone Keeps Moving My Chair," "Lucky Ball And Chain," "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)," "Your Racist Friend," "Particle Man" and their big hit, "Birdhouse In Your Soul." I think the key to their popularity with kids is that the songs are almost never more than a minute and half long. They are the perfect band for the zero-attention-span generation. And they have the knack of seeming to be mocking something out. What, we don't know, but they have a smarmy wise-guy attitude. They get up there and turn on a machine that elicits their ditty-bop computer music and do their vocal smirking into the microphone.
Being a well-known hater of this band and all that it stands for, I bent over backwards to find something nice to say about it in the interest of fairness. I liked the fact that their set was less than an hour long. And I like the band's name. They Might Be Giants is also the name of one of my favorite movies. The 1971 film starred George C. Scott and Joanne Woodward. Scott played an eccentric rich guy who thought he was Sherlock Holmes and who was forever in search of his evil nemesis, Moriarty. Scott's greedy brother was trying to get him sent to the loony bin so he could take over the family fortune. He hired psychiatrist Woodward, who's name happened to be Watson (Dr. Watson, get it?) to declare the guy nutso. Instead she fell in love with him. The final scene in an all night supermarket was very funny.
Look for it. They run it quite a bit on late-night television. You could probably rent the video, too. And it doesn't contain even one sophomoric 30-second polka-rock computer song.
A review of the show by Sandy Mansell
Cleveland Scene, May. 31, 1990:
How does one begin to describe the music of They Might Be Giants? The Brooklyn duo's main instruments consisted of a guitar and an accordion, while their songs combined the unlikely musical genres of rock, pop, country, marching tunes and even polkas.
Several minutes of pre-recorded intro music fueled the crowd's anticipation before TMBG unceremoniously took the stage for their first number. The overall audience was young, and they expressed their devotion to TMBG. John Flansburgh, who played guitar and (for sone song) a marching drum, and accordionist John Linnell, who sported a red, plaid shirt, appeared paradoxically clean-cut and plain − almost Richie Cunninghamish − compared to the punked-out clothes and hairstyles of their audience. But appearance was the only apparent difference between TMBG and their fans, who danced and bounced and sang back the words to every song." Particle Man" from FLOOD brought out deafening cheers, as did "Your Racist," while such off-the-wall songs as "Someone Keeps Moving My Chair" kept the crowd chanting the chorus.
TMBG got their messages across with some bizarre and sometimes esoteric − but always thought-provoking − lyrics. Their use of outrageous, offbeat melodies, unorthodox guitar riffs, a metronome rhythm section, and good, clean fun led the audience through a calliope of songs. TMBG's major "hits" like "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" and "Birdhouse In Your Soul" ended the show, with the encores of "Shoehorn" and "Don't Let's Start" completing the puzzle.
