Shows/1993-04-28
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Links:
Setlist:
- Don't Let's Start
- The Guitar
- Sleeping In The Flowers
- Dinner Bell
- Ana Ng
- Your Racist Friend
- A Self Called Nowhere
- Lucky Ball & Chain
- Purple Toupee
- The Famous Polka
- Dirt Bike
- I Palindrome I
- Ondine
- Mammal
- Everything Is Catching On Fire
- The Statue Got Me High
- Stump The Band
- Someone Keeps Moving My Chair
- Shoehorn With Teeth
- Lullabye To Nightmares
- Why Must I Be Sad?
- Particle Man
- Spy
- Birdhouse In Your Soul
- Dig My Grave
Encore:
They Might Be Giants
— with Brian Dewan opening —
Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, NJ
April 28, 1993
Fan Recaps and Comments:
"Two oddball rockers bring their 'big show' to Basie" by Matty Karas
Asbury Park Press, Apr. 30, 1993:
John Flansburgh and John Linnell, the guitarist and accordionist-saxophonist who are all of They Might Be Giants, kept referring Wednesday night to their "big rock show," the word "rock" rolling off both their tongues with notes of child-like disbelief. It was as if they were kids who had ruffled around in Mom's and Dad's things and come up with some rock 'n' roll clothes. And now they were parading in them for more than 1,000 people at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank.
These particular rock clothes came attached to a two-man rhythm section and a two-man horn section who for the past year have been performing live with Flansburgh and Linnell. That may not sound like much to brag about, except that in a career that stretched back nearly a decade before that, Flansburgh and Linnell had never had a band. They had made a name for them-selves playing oddball pop songs of considerable wit and melody (and non-rock rhythms such as oom-pahs and cha-chas), accompanied only by tape recordings.
Opener Brian Dewan sang off-the-wall story-songs, accompanying himself on steel-pedal guitar and Autoharp.
Wednesday, the wit and melody were still present and accounted for, as was the frantic energy level that propelled the Giants' old shows way beyond almost any other band that uses a lot of taped parts.
But the two Johns were still responsible for virtually all of it, even with four other people on stage. The big rock show was no bigger, really, than the old little one: Despite such seasoned individuals as Pere Ubu's Tony Maimone on bass and Band of Weeds' Kurt Hoffman on saxophone and clarinet, the hired band sounded like little more than a per-diem session band filling in parts on demand, only occasionally acting out the inspired whimsy that Flansburgh and Linnell themselves can pull off without trying.
And while it was hard to tell whether it was the band itself or the badly distorted sound in the theater that was to blame, one or the other gave the music the weight of lead. The bright-toned, herky-jerky electric guitar rhythm with which Flansburgh usually drives the song "Ana Ng," for example, was buried by the thud of the rhythm section, and the song went down with it.
But Flansburgh and Linnell are resilient wits, and with the former po-going about the stage and the latter letting fly with a few shredding accordion solos while hell refused to break loose behind them, the rock show blazed on. Twenty songs flew by in the first hour (which turned out to be most of the show), including several new, unrecorded numbers, one polka, one oom-pah, one impossibly catchy biology lesson ("Mammal") and one take-off on "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" that sent the lion soaring in a silver space ship.
"People ask us what our songs are about," Flansburgh said at one point, introducing a new song called "Spy." "This song is about - spy." "Dirt-bike," a short new ballad that grew from funereal[sic] horn vamp to epiphanic chorus, was introduced as "about a fake rock band called Dirtbike; this song is in praise of the fake rock band called Dirtbike." That's about as much lyrical explanation as They Might Be Giants' songs need; in them, Flansburgh and Linnell create scenarios that make sense only as long as you're listening, making up the details as they go but applying them with loving care and intricate thoughtfulness.
The band was exactingly faithful to some arrangements and compensatory of others. On "I Palindrome I," Hoffman played on tenor saxophone parts originally recorded on electric piano, and chimed in with the notes of a lost vocal harmony. Occasionally the drive of the horn section - particularly when Linnell added a second saxophone - gave the songs a punchy presence that made the band finally seem worth the effort.
And late in the show, Flansburgh and Linnell used the band for a gimmicky card they couldn't have played otherwise; Flansburgh brought a radio on stage and flipped around the FM dial looking for a song for the band to mimic and learn on the spot. The moment was only half realized, but fit in with the leaders' oddball presence. It resonated with the show's high concept: that of your own little rock band mimicking some real rock band somewhere.
