Shows/2001-10-24
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Setlist:
- Wake Up Call
- Particle Man
- Elusive Butterfly interlude
- Doctor Worm
- Cyclops Rock
- James K. Polk
- Birdhouse In Your Soul
- Boss Of Me (power goes out at end of song)
Unplugged set:
After power is restored:
- Space Krickets
- Yeh Yeh
- Hovering Sombrero
- She's Actual Size
- Spin The Dial
- Older
- Twisting
- Man, It's So Loud In Here
- Robot Parade
- G-L-O-ckenspiel Intro
- Shoehorn With Teeth
- Pet Name
- Bangs
- The Guitar
- Why Does The Sun Shine?
- Working Undercover For The Man
Encore:
They Might Be Giants
— with OK Go opening —
Newport Music Hall in Columbus, OH
October 24, 2001
Fan Recaps and Comments:
review by Brent
Warning to everyone: This is a long and detailed account of some folks from Cincinnati's viewpoint on the Columbus TMBG show at Newport Music Hall.
Without a doubt, this was certainly the most interesting show that I've been to. This is my fifth TMBG concert, and the only concert I've ever attended outside of my hometown of Cincinnati. For some reason or another, the fabulous Johns have been avoiding our town for a couple years now, but I'm glad we made the drive to Columbus even if we didn't see the whole show.
Our little party consisted of myself and friends Joe, Ed (aka Bone Lord -don't ask-) and Ben, all of whom which I often join in the sport of Geocaching. We had been to Columbus many times earlier this year for that reason. We did not purchase tickets for the Preshow, mostly because we weren't sure if we'd make it in time. If only we had known that the preshow was starting forty-five minutes later than scheduled. I heard a rumor being passed around that said that TMBG was late from doing an interview with local radio station, 101.1. I can't confirm this, if you know for sure, please turn this rumor into fact or fiction.
Leaving the Greater Cincinnati area by 5:20 pm, we drove faster than any person should up 71, and found a good parking spot by 6:50 pm. The whole way blasting through They albums in no particular order. Needless to say, we were suprised to see a person walking by asking about 'Pre-Show Tickets' after we had been standing in line for a bit. After the doors opened for regular ticketholders, we passed by a very enthusiastic freestyle rapper (rappist?) but had no spare change to offer up. We had to wait for Ben while he got his ticket from Will Call, as he purchased it less than six hours beforehand.
The layout of Newport Music Hall was quite a bit different than our Bogarts or Electra back home. The most interesting detail being that the floor layout allowed people a little further away to still have a good vantage point. A U-shaped pit-like section rested against the stage while a larger raised section with handrails surrounded it. Myself being patial to Linnell over Flansburgh (just a little) we opted for the right side of this platform, as the pit area was quite full when we got inside.
While waiting for the Ok-Go to start, we noticed a few crowd members that beared resemblance to our own party.. mainly an evil-looking version of Ed, and a guy who had the same-style beard as Joe. The evil-Ed (dubbed Ted -aka Goat Lord-) ended up coming right next to us and standing nearly in our view.
Ok-Go was a definate improvement on our recent opinion of opening bands. We recently saw 'Ben Folds', whose opening act was 'Citizen Cope', which was a very poorly constructed act without any emotion of any kind. Ok-Go, on the other hand, was very electrified and synchronized. Some songs were very entertaining, and even a little amusing. Partucularly their cover of 'Kiss me, Son of God'. I think that's the first time I'd ever seen an opening band cover a song of the band it's opening for. TMBG has kept my opinion high with their opening bands, 'You Were Spiraling' has become a personal favorite. I hope their soon-to-be-released album does well.
At some point during the intermission, a glass of beer was spilled on the floor directly in front of us... this made sitting down impossible. This opened up a discussion about inventing a chair that's built into your pants.
Receiving vigorous and robust applause, the band we've all come to know and love stepped out onto the stage, and opened with the Flood favorite, Particle Man, which had an interlude of the chorus from Bob Lind's "Elusive Butterfly of Love". Afterwards followed Dr. Worm and Cyclops Rock. James K. Polk displayed to power of twin confetti canons (They only have ever needed one in Cincinnati, but our venues are a bit smaller) followed by Birdhouse in your Soul. During this time, the Johns discussed the Weather channel, and how a big yellow and orange line was moving directly towards us. They began to speak of the weather channel now had a symbol for 'the horsemen of the apocalypse.' We laughed and the show went on.
What happened next changed the course of the rest of the evening. At exactly the end of 'Boss of Me', all the power cut out. At first, it seemed intentional, but we quickly noted that all of the bar lights were out, and the emergency lights were on. People in the balcony (running the lights and such) whipped out flashlights, and soon people on stage were as well. The lights panned around all over, acting like they were searching for a faulty wire or lamp of some kind. During this time, the crowd made an attempt to sing 'Whistling in the Dark', which was pretty amusing.
After about ten minutes, John Flansburgh came out and said something, none of which we could hear because of all the commotion. He disappeared and came back a little bit later with Linnell and explained that the power had gone out on the block, and they were obtaining a generator that was supposed to be only twenty minutes away. We later learned that it was not.
The Johns played 'Istanbul', and from our point of view, it was the most surrealistic thing we'd ever witnessed. First of all, since they had no mics, you could barely hear them at all even when the audience was silent. And since EVERYONE knows Istanbul, they tried to sing along, which drowned out the Johns. So, onstage, you saw them playing instruments and mouthing words, but heard only the audience.
After Flansburgh exlaimed 'Shut Up!' (which was received with laughter and agreement) he said that they would play "'a song that you don't know the words to, so you can't sing along. But if you do know the words, don't sing along." Of course, they played 'Maybe I know', which I'm sure nearly everyone there knew, but silence remained. I think they may have played another song, but I can't recall, then dissappeared again for about fifteen minutes. By this time it was approaching 10:30pm.
"Thing appear to be more fucked up than we thought." was the statement made by Flansburgh after a long period of trying to shush the audience again. They played a song (I didn't know it, something about squirrells) and tried to hush the audience again... (where were the Mega-phones and Airhorns they needed??) It was mentioned that the Generator was a lot further away than expected, so we should all 'Go home and get drunk' and come back at midnight. They left us with a sentiment saying "We're going to play a song about our home town, which has seen far worse distasters, and recently" then played 'New York City' with complete attention from the audience.
After stepping outside into the pouring rain and running back to the car, we saw that it was 11:00 pm. Now, we debated for a bit, as I had to work at 7 am the next morning, and we had a two hour drive ahead of us. I really, really, really wanted to stay, but an already pressing urge to find my way into my bed seeped in and drove us homeward. I would love to have an audio copy of the last portion of this concert if someone has it. I'll probably regret doing so for a long time, as other people's accounts noted the vast energy of the music when the power was restored. Maybe they'll come back to Cincinnati someday, but if not, at least Columbus isn't very far away.
review by JamesEnsor
I enjoyed reading Brent's review above and I have to say that when I learned of this Wiki I came here specifically to comment on this show. The whole power outage experience was quite surreal and of the many TMBG shows I've attended since the late eighties, I have to say this was the most memorable and fun. The point I wanted to make however (and I realize it's a bit at odds with Brent's perspective) is that to this day I'm disapointed in John F. for his 'everyone shut the heck up!' attitude during the moments after the power went out and everyone started singing together. I respect Brent's opinion that it made it difficult to hear them and I certainly understand that it would have been annoying to anyone more interested in hearing the guys rather than singing along in the magical moment that I felt was happening right then as everyone sang together. I can also understand that John F. was frustrated in-the-moment at the technical difficulties but the tone of his dialog with the audience made it so that from then on I've only chanted on the "John" half of the "John! John! John! John!" alternating audience section chants at shows ever since (but I'll always be there to support one or more Johns and all Dans).
