Shows/2023-01-13
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Links:
Setlist:
Set 1:
- They Might Be Giants (Alt. Version) Intro
- Letterbox
- Synopsis For Latecomers
- Brontosaurus
- Birdhouse In Your Soul
- Twisting
- Someone Keeps Moving My Chair
- Women & Men
- Let Me Tell You About My Operation
- Whistling In The Dark
- Hot Cha
- Stillub
- Minimum Wage
- Moonbeam Rays
- Road Movie To Berlin
- Doctor Worm
Set 2:
- Video of Stillub reversed
- Dead
- Man, It's So Loud In Here
- Your Racist Friend
- We Want A Rock
- Number Three
- Don't Let's Start
- The Darlings Of Lumberland
- Lucky Ball & Chain
- Particle Man
- Museum Of Idiots
- Wicked Little Critta
- Damn Good Times
- Theme From Flood
- Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
Encore 1:
Encore 2:
They Might Be Giants
Bowery Ballroom in New York, NY
January 13, 2023
Fan Recaps and Comments:
j2:
- "I read this interesting podcast about how hydration is bullshit" - John Flansburgh
- Willa Paskin's Slate podcast Decoder Ring had an episode in 2021, "The Invention of Hydration." Pretty sure that's what Flans was talking about!
Review by Kate Bell, Full Time Aesthetic, Jan. 17, 2023:
Friday night began a three-night stand for TMBG at Bowery Ballroom that was celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of Flood. The shows had been originally scheduled for 2020, but due to the pandemic (and other complications—John Flansburgh suffered injuries in a car accident in 2022, but thankfully recovered), the celebration tour was postponed by almost three years. The fans began to line up outside the club early, and by the time They Might Be Giants took the stage for their first of two sets (no opener), the venue was packed with the sold-out adoring crowd, many of them wearing colorful headdress headbands spelling out “THEY” in bobbing letters over the fans’ heads.Among the many highlights of the night was the outstanding arrangement of “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” which closed out the second set and featured extended and delightful solos from the horn section. Both Dan Levine on trombone and Stan Harrison on saxophone gave introductory solos to the song, and a giddy call-and-response trumpet solo from Mark Pender concluded the song (the audience sang back everything he played—he essentially traded fours with around four hundred happy voices).
The Johns took the stage with their longtime band collaborators (Danny Weinkauf on bass, Dan Miller on guitar, and Marty Beller on drums), and were greeted with rapturous applause from the get-go. They launched into “Letterbox” (from Flood), followed by “Synopsis for Latecomers” and “Bronosaurus,” tracks from their most recent album Book (2021). And then, boom, the aforementioned “Birdhouse in Your Soul” came at us, and I sang along, and danced, and maybe got a little weepy. Forgive me…it was my first TMBG live experience, and long overdue!
The rest of the euphoric two-set evening featured every song from Flood, as well as other choice selections from Book (including “Moonbeam Rays”), and a variety of other early TMBG favorites, including 1998’s “Doctor Worm” (released on the live album, Severe Tire Damage, as a single, and on compilations), which closed out the first set. In the midst of the fun, between songs the Johns delivered snappy banter, including a bit about how they kidnapped the real They Might Be Giants, and were actually incredibly accurate TMBG impersonators. If so, I was happily fooled. The hijinks continued with “Stiloob,” a backwards version of Flood’s “Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love,” which TMBG recorded a video of during the first set (with a lot of audience shots), and then played back the video to kick off the second set.
