Shows/2007-09-18
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9 wikians attended: Admwrlk Afterward El Zilcho Geohawk Griffincat InterruptorJones Krueger LouRocco The stolker
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Setlist:
- Birdhouse In Your Soul
- Take Out The Trash
- Upside Down Frown
- New York City
- I'm Impressed
- Why Does The Sun Shine?
- The Guitar
- Withered Hope
- How Can I Sing Like A Girl?
- Alphabet Of Nations
- Phone Calls From The Dead (Merv Griffin)
- Older
- Ana Ng
- Bee of the Bird of the Moth
- Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
- Memo to Human Resources
- The Cap'm
- Twisting
- It's Not My Birthday
- Drink!
- The Mesopotamians
- With The Dark
- Particle Man
- Doctor Worm
- Damn Good Times
They Might Be Giants
— with Oppenheimer opening —
University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA
September 18, 2007 at 9:00 PM
Fan Recaps and Comments:
- This was my first ever TMBG show. I was rather pleased! Oppenheimer is a nice couple of guys with neat accents and good manners. Shaun said his two favorite things about touring were fireworks and air horns (only one of these was used during this indoor gig).
- The Johns seemed kind of bored at the beginning of their set, but as time went on they got into a groove. Speaking of grooves, Flansburgh's patter mostly had to do with the vinyl release of The Else and how nobody knows what vinyl is anymore. Linnell's speech during Why Does The Sun Shine? told us that the heat and light of the sun are caused by the nuclear reactions between "Hydrogen. Iron. Iron Man. A bunch of other guys." a long pause. "And helium!"
- I don't know if this show was the first time for this, but the opening theme for Phone Calls From The Dead featured a slideshow operated by Flansburgh on a plain old slide projector. One of the slides is the featured photo at theymightbegiants.com for September 19. The dead person for this particular phone call was Merv Griffin, which struck me as odd, as I had only a vague idea of who Merv Griffin is, and I didn't think most of the young persons at this show would identify him either. I suppose he was chosen because he just died about a month ago. The "call" was very, very short, and the first few slides of the introductory slideshow were reused during Older ("And time..." Slides of a slowly growing cemetery. "...Is still marching on!")
- I had heard about the "intervention" audience-participation version of Drink!, but I could never figure out how it worked. Well, now I know. It is so fun.
- Linnell introduced Particle Man by telling us to clap. "If you stop clapping, the song will end very quickly." So we clapped. He followed the final, minor-key Triangle Man section with another verse, telling us how Merv Griffin rises from the grave to face Triangle Man. They have a fight. But, of course, "Triangle Man is victorious." It seemed ad-libbed, and if it was, it was ad-libbed incredibly well. I'm Impressed.
Toma:
- This was my first TMBG show as well. Lots of fun.
- Oppenheimer seemed like very nice guys. They reminded me a lot of early TMBG in that there are only two of them and they rely quite a bit on a backing track. I loved the airhorn solo halfway through their act.
- And then They took the stage (with three William Alan White heads of course). I agree a lot with Afterward above - the Johns at first seemed a little bored - perhaps even a little grumpy.
- The mood picked up, though; the Johns seemed to be having a lot of fun with their echo-y mikes during "Alphabet".
- Merv Griffin was the subject of "Calls from the Dead". Parvarotti was mentioned as well. It was indeed very short, not to mention kind of awkward - this was probably due to the crowd's age. My friend summed it up pretty well after the show: "Who's Merv Griffin?"
- "Istanbul" was awesome, especially Dan's solo at the beginning. The typical snapping/clapping/fascist fist-pumping audience participation directions were given. Said Flansburgh: "This is the only part of the show you can cheat yourself out of."
- Banter highlights:
- Linnell: (after a bit of empty banter with Flansburgh) "Banter...full of...meaningless...pauses." (A few crowd members laugh and cheer.) "And judging from the 'woos', I think the audience likes the banter better than the songs."
- Flansburgh: We will be selling our brand new album 'The Else' on vinyl. And I know what your "woos" are trying to say. They're saying: "what the fuck is vinyl?"
- Flansburgh comes out plugging "The Else" on vinyl: "And if you look in the jacket...you'll see that there's no record inside. I guess we'll try to fix that in the second edition."
- Guy in Crowd: Can I have it?
- Flansburgh: No, sorry. I think it belongs to one of the guys in our crew.
- (I didn't actually hear what the guy in the crowd here, but Flansburgh responded with - to much applause:)
- Flansburgh: And what if I am lying?
- Overall, solid show, but the crowd was very "Tuesday night". I tried to buy a copy of The Else on vinyl but failed - Flans wasn't accepting debit.
- One girl who had bought the album was walking downstairs when it slipped out of its jacket and bounced down the staircase, leaving a bite-sized chunk out of the record. I later saw her outside of the tour bus talking to Marty - I hope they got things figured out.
