Shows/1996-12-06

4 wikians attended: Harringtonj85, Predator Ranger, Rockmarooned, Yorick

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Setlist:

• Older
• Sleeping In The Flowers
• James K. Polk
• XTC Vs. Adam Ant
• Particle Man
• Spider
• The Guitar
• Why Does The Sun Shine?
• Spy
• Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
• New York City
• No One Knows My Plan
• S-E-X-X-Y
• Twisting
• Till My Head Falls Off

Missing from the setlist, but played:

• Exquisite Dead Guy

Encore:

• Birdhouse In Your Soul
• Dig My Grave

They Might Be Giants
— with Patti Rothberg and Subduing Mara co-headlining —
Park West in Clifton Park, NY
December 6, 1996 at 9:00 PM

Fan Recaps and Comments:

WEQX-FM Holiday Concert for the Hungry. Tickets were $10 in advance and $12 at the door, with an additional donation of a non-perishable food item for the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York required to get in.

The day after this gig, TMBG suffered the theft of their van full of equipment and instruments. Several shows were canceled as a result.^[1]

John Linnell described the ordeal to Times-Union in March 1998:

"That was a really memorable week for us. It was December of '96, and what we were doing was flying up from the South just to do this one crazy show. We were playing in Cincinnati the night before, then we were supposed to fly up to Boston, drive to Albany to do the show. Then drive back to Boston and fly down to Nashville to get back on the tour and do a show the next night.

"Weeks before it happened, nobody thought this was a good idea. We kept asking everyone, 'Who thought of this?' As it turned out it was pretty much the worst week of our career.

"What happened was we got to Boston on our way to Albany, and we were exhausted. One of our people in New York City was supposed to be driving our brand-new van up to Boston to meet us. But there was this blizzard going on, and he got into an accident. So we had to rent a van and transfer all of our gear into that and get to Albany from there. "The night before, we had this whole discussion with the crew about how long it was going to take to get from Boston to Albany. One of the hotshot drivers insisted, 'I can do it in two and a half hours. No problem. Easy.' And somebody else was saying, No, it's definitely going to take three hours.' They asked me what I thought, and I said I thought it would take seven hours. And of course, as it turned out, it took us almost precisely seven hours to get from Boston to Albany that day.

"So we did the show. The show was actually pretty good, as I recall. It was a strange little room, but it was a good crowd. Fun show in Albany.

"Then we got back in the van, started driving to Boston, and we were really exhausted, so we decided that we were going to stop along the way. We drove almost all the way to the airport, but we stopped in Newton, Mass., and checked into a motel on I-95, where we slept for just a few hours.

"When we got up, the rental van with all of our gear in it had been stolen. Right out from under us, literally. We'd never really been ripped off before or since, and we've certainly been lucky about that. But we really got hit this time, and we never did really find out what happened. We took the keys back to the rental place and dropped them off.

"So at this point we realized that there was no point in rushing down to Nashville anymore because without our equipment there was no way that we were going to be able to play. Instead, I went into Boston, checking around at the music stores there to see if anyone had been trying to sell our stolen gear. We didn't find any of it, so we ended up buying all new duplicate equipment there in Boston.

"But it turned out that my wife was down in Nashville waiting for me, rather pointlessly as it turned out because there wasn't going to be a show. So I flew down there with the brand-new equipment. And then a crew member was supposed to drive me to Atlanta, where our next gig was, but he couldn't find me, and for some reason the hotel desk said I wasn't there, so he drove off without me. I ended up having to pretty much just crawl to Atlanta.

"The whole week was just completely miserable, and it seemed to all be radiating from that one crazy, crazy show. But, you know, we don't have any bad feelings about Albany. I think the one ray of sunshine in the whole experience was the gig that we did. The rest of it was just like a stupid logistics problem that was much more of a disaster than we ever could have anticipated.

"And you know, I don't know if we ever got our insurance money from the stolen equipment, either."