Shows/1992-08-04
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Links:
Setlist: (incomplete and possibly out of order)
- The Guitar
- Whistling In The Dark
- Piece Of Dirt
- Lucky Ball & Chain
- They'll Need A Crane
- Ana Ng
- Don't Let's Start
- The Statue Got Me High
- Stump The Band
Encore:
They Might Be Giants
— with Freedy Johnston opening —
Toad's Place in New Haven, CT
August 4, 1992 at 8:30 PM
Fan Recaps and Comments:
All-ages show. Tickets were $13.50 in advance, $15 at the door.
"Giants topple sellout crowd at Toad's with monster-sized band" by Roger Catlin
The Hartford Courant, Aug. 6, 1992:
"Ye gods, I've created a monster!" The line might be from an old B-movie, such as "They Might Be Giants," from which John Linnell and John Flansburgh borrowed the title to name their own band.
Once, the two guys named John traveled as a duo, using all sorts of gadgets and gee-gaws to replicate the inventiveness of their studio sound — pop songs with a decisive skew to the bizarre. On the current tour, They Might Be Giants may have at long last lived up to their name. Not only did they attract a sellout crowd at Toad's Place in New Haven, for whom even the tables and chairs had to be removed to accommodate them, but they brought for the first time a full band of drummer, bassist and keyboardist — accompanied by three more guest stars through the night. The result was a monster.
The pinnacle came early in the set, on the song "Guitar," which grafts a bit of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" to their bouncy rock song. At the same time, the added musicians gave a full, throbbing sound to the wealth of great TMBG songs, giving the show the same sort of steamy mass ecstasy as the B-52's concert there two years ago.
Nearing the end of a U.S. tour, the Giants and their band are so tight by now that when the lights went off during "Whistling in the Dark" ("perfect!" said Linnell. "Why didn't we think of this before?") and stayed off for the next two songs, "Piece of Dirt" and "Lucky Ball & Chain," the group never missed a beat.
The fuller sound makes their straight rockers — from "They'll Need a Crane," "Ana Ng," and "Don't Let's Start" to the recent "The Statue Got Me High" — sound absolutely anthemic.
The "Stump the band" portion of the show was a disappointment, due perhaps to the crowd's lack of imagination. The resulting version of "I Walk the Line" wasn't a stretch for the band or the listener. Flansburgh, with guitar, and Linnell, with accordion, returned as a two piece for the start of their long encore. There they paid homage to the pop of the Lesley Gore hit "Maybe I Know" and deconstructed their biggest hit, "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)," itself a cover song of a mid-'50s novelty, so the young crowd couldn't sing along.
The band finally rejoined them so they could thrash through "I Palindrome I," "Birdhouse in Your Soul," and "Dig My Grave," in which they engaged in the wild abandon of Count Five-style grungy garage rock that was never previously allowed in their two-man home-studio nerd-rock.
Johnston got more ink in the current Musician magazine than did the Giants, but nobody told the trend happy crowd, who wouldn't stop gabbing to listen.
One of the Giants' guest singers, peerless Hoboken cowgirl singer Syd Straw, also turned up for the opening set of Freedy Johnston, a painfully sincere Kansas songwriter who provided a good set of pop songs of yearning harmony.
