TMBW:This Might Be A Zine/Issue 5

Welcome to Issue 5 of This Might Be A Zine, where you can get caught up on all the latest TMBG news and things, hosted on this very website, TMBW!

A demo has been found of the song I'm All You Can Think About after 20 years of it going unnoticed. The audio was discovered by TMBW admin CapitalQ as a disabled asset in the .FLA Flash project file for the music video, which was included on the data layer of the CD release of The Spine Surfs Alone.

You can listen to the demo alongside the music video for the song here.

What's your favorite TMBG album?[edit]

This month, I asked TMBG fans the question, what is your favorite TMBG album and why?

Here's what people have to say:

CapitalQ:

My favorite overall TMBG album used to change over time, but I landed a while ago on a sort of permanent tie between Lincoln and John Henry. But at the moment I am revisiting the excellent I Like Fun album from 2018, a remarkably cohesive selection of songs to suit all the moods: heartbreak, anxiety, existential dread, absurdism, death, and beauty in the macabre.

TitanicFog:

My personal favorite TMBG album has been Apollo 18 for quite some time. It's nostalgic for me and it's the first one I heard unless you count Miscellaneous T. Good memories listening to that album with family.

SunshineMar:

My personal favorite TMBG album at this moment and at every moment is Lincoln. I have a hard time articulating why though. I think it just has all the songs I like the best. Kiss Me, Son Of God is my single favorite TMBG song, and Lie Still, Little Bottle, I’ve Got A Match, and They’ll Need A Crane are all also 10s for me, plus the rest of it is good too. Just really consistently great sounding music, what more could you want?

Ap0phenia:

The go-to for me is (obviously) Phone Power, my favorite switches depending on how I feel though. I don’t really have a super sentimental reason, it didn’t save my life or anything, but since I bought it on vinyl last spring and made my TMBW username the opener I think it’s quite special to me. Even if there are some songs on the album that aren’t my favorite, and it’s not generally considered a top tier album, the highs are high enough to make up for that and I think that’s another reason why I like it so much. Plus, More songs for me! I do wish people liked it as much I do but there’s nothing I can really do about that. It helps that I made a character based on Phone Power back in October and they’ve been sloshing around in my brain ever since. Stream Apophenia and all that.

MoroboshiAtaru:

It’s tough because I love all of them for the most part, but my heart says John Henry. The band really let loose with their songwriting once they transitioned to the full band, and I think they put some of the greatest music they’d ever make into that album. Songs like End of the Tour, No One Knows My Plan, Out Of Jail and I Should Be Allowed To Think are iconic parts of TMBG’s repertoire and they still sound fresh and exciting 30 years on. I love the use of horns and the horn arrangements throughout John Henry as well - Dirt Bike, A Self Called Nowhere and Thermostat (my current favorite) are just some examples of their mastery of the rock band horn section. It’s such a fun album and I love it dearly.

Sam:

My personal favorite TMBG album right now is Lincoln - it is also one of my favorite albums of all time. I love this album because it's got the charm and wit of early TMBG that is timeless to me. There is an edgy yet warm quality about Lincoln that I can't fully describe, like an old friend that pokes fun at you in a way that you can only find endearing and playful. Shoutout to They'll Need A Crane, Purple Toupee, and Where Your Eyes Don't Go - three of my favorite songs from this awesome album!! #STREAMLINCOLN

Ruddy:

My favorite TMBG album has been The Pink Album for a while now. I adore the cheap sounding drum machines and synths they used throughout it. The album also has this sort of eerie but also whimsical feel on it, especially on Hide Away Folk Family and Rabid Child.

BowlONudel:

My personal favorite rn has been john henry, from beginning to end, it just fits so well to me. All the songs are catchy in their own unique ways! I've been catching myself humming it absent-mindedly too lol

FloridaFlamingoGirl:

I Like Fun, because it has the ideal balance of clever lyrics, well-crafted melodies, and relatable themes.

Cremetangerine:

Lately there's one TMBG album that I have not been able to get out of my head, and that's Join Us. I'm not even certain why it's had such a profound effect on me, but the mere thought of it makes my chest ache. A lot of the songs from Join Us deal with complex emotions, and the album as a whole has a very mature feel to it that makes it stand out from the others. I don't know what else to call it aside from a masterpiece. "Canajoharie" is a triumph of songwriting that mourns the death of who you once were and the fossils you left behind, confronts the feeling of your words being misunderstood--don't look at me. Look at where I'm pointing.

The album itself feels very balanced in terms of tone, as well. It has its heartrending tracks, its lighter tracks, and its more experimental ones. I feel like the Johns really showed off their writing chops here. Every song is intensely vivid. I could go one by one and explain why I love each track, and if I let myself, I would.

Valerie:

I've really been enjoying The Else lately. It was the first adult album that came out after I became a fan, so expectations were high. Back them I was a little put off by its dark intensity, but that is what I love most about it now! It's very sonically cohesive, and a great one to blast in the car. Really love Cast Your Pod to the Wind, its bonus disc, too. The podcast was the first big TMBG happening I experienced collectively/as a wikian, so very fond memories tied to those songs abound (of scrambling to transcribe a new song's lyrics, arguing over which John voiced Cecil, etc).

Mel:

My favorite album constantly changes, but I have been thinking about Apollo 18 a lot, specifically how nostalgic and atmospheric the midi experimentation is, and how perfectly the cover represents the project as a whole, intentionally or not. The whale and squid fighting is reminiscent of the macabe themes of murder and struggle like in I Palindrome I or Turn Around, while the nature documentary framing calls to mind the more vaguely didatic science-based songs Mammal and Dinner Bell. And, of course, the satelite and vast empty darkness represent the concept of space, alongside the songs Space Suit and See The Constellation, the lion's silver spaceship in The Guitar, and the album's connection to the International Space Year. I also can't get over how GENIUS of a choice closing the album with Space Suit was. It is so poetic that the last album they made as a duo would end on the first song they've ever played live.

A conversation with Alex Italics[edit]

Alex Italics is a director that has worked with TMBG on a few music videos, after becoming a winner of the Am I Awake music video contest.

1. I know that as well as working with the band, you are also a TMBG fan. How did you get into TMBG? What was your first song?

Like a lot of TMBG word-of-mouth fans, I knew one particularly hip kid when I was in the sixth grade that gave me a cassette dub of Flood. So my literal first song was "Theme From Flood," although I consider "Birdhouse in Your Soul" more accurately to be the song that hooked me. My first TMBG show was in Arizona on the tour supporting Severe Tire Damage.

2. How did you get into directing?

Only after burning through many, many other ambitions first including musician (which has been the main artistic passion of my life), lawyer (made it a good four semesters in pre-law before switching majors), and professional poker player (which usually gets the most attention when people hear about my previous lives. For example, Flans routinely asks me for poker advice whenever I talk to him). Filmmaking in general was never something I was particularly interested in before becoming a film major in undergrad, but once I gave it a shot I was like a square peg in a square hole.

3. What made you want to submit a video for the Am I Awake contest and what was the process like making that video? Did you have any kind of a budget for it?

There was a great deal of serendipity in play timing-wise. I had about a year in between finishing my undergrad and heading to grad school with nothing much to do other than travel to as many film festivals as I could with my undergraduate thesis film. When TMBG announced the contest, it seemed like a fun way to stay creatively active during my educational limbo. It was the first music video I'd ever made, and I immediately fell in love with the format. We shot tiny pieces of it at a time over a period of months (usually film shoots are about cramming as much as possible inside a day or two).

Believe it or not, the budget came from payments I received in two different scandalous class action lawsuits. One of which was from the infamous "Black Swan" internship lawsuits (I had interned with NBC a few years prior), and the other was the remainder of my player funds finally being returned to me from the Full Tilt Poker scandal.

4. What are some directors and other people who have greatly inspired you as a director?

Film Directors I like: Ari Aster, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, Hitchcock, Wes Anderson. The usual crew.

My favorite music video of all time is "Let Forever Be" by the Chemical Brothers (dir. by Michel Gondry)

My favorite film of all time is Head (1968, dir. by Bob Rafelson) which I didn't see until I was deep into graduate film school. It was almost like a religious experience, and it absolutely affected the film work I made thereafter. I remember it being kind of a big personal moment for me when I realized that my morning commute to the set of "By the Time You Get This" video took me right across the exact suspension bridge from the beginning of Head. If you have any interest in experiencing absurdist psychedelic comedy in the swinging '60s, I highly suggest giving it a look.

5. The music video for By The Time You Get This is the first real music video in years to actually include the Johns. How did that come about?

I had managed to convince my grad school to allow me to direct a series of music videos as my masters thesis, which was unprecedented for an otherwise very "Hollywood" film school. As soon as I got the green light, I immediately got in touch with Flans to see if I could incorporate any new TMBG vids into the project. He gave me two tracks, "The Greatest" and "By the Time You Get This," and had me start generating ideas. The real magic of the BTTYGT video is definitely the Johns' appearance. With a little finagling, our shoot dates lined up perfectly with when TMBG were stopping in LA on tour, so it was an easy cab ride from their venue in Hollywood down to San Pedro where we were shooting. I've talked before about what a difficult shoot that was logistically, but it was more than made up for with just how cool it felt to be directing John and John on set.

6. The videos for Am I Awake and I Can Help The Next In Line seem to both be period pieces. Is there anything specific from those periods that inspired those videos?

I feel like nearly everything I've made is either a period film or at least has a pretty firm foot inside a retro vibe. For "Am I Awake," the focus on the Kennedy Assassination pretty much dictated that it would be set specifically in November 1963. Even though it was only about ten years ago, it was noticeably easier back then to find vintage props from that era in thrift stores. All of the rotary telephones and typewriters in that video were bought at thrift stores within blocks of my house in Tucson, Arizona in March 2014. It feels like it would be much more difficult to rely on Goodwill for that kind of stuff now that they have their own auction app. "Next in Line" was a little looser, much more of a pastiche tapestry then rigorously adhering to a specific year. One of the things I love about those CD compilation album videos is how there is usually an element of retro WITHIN the commercial itself. Like, if the commercial was made in 1992 and they're selling a "Greatest Hits of the 70s" compilation, they will frequently use cheesy retro art direction inside their OWN cheesy non-retro art direction, which still looks and feels cheesy and retro because it was made in 1992. It's like a Russian nesting doll of hipster irony.

7. If you could pick any TMBG song to do a video to, what would it be?

Very tough call. Many, many years ago Flans asked me to develop a potential video concept for the song "Trouble Awful Devil Evil." I was pretty happy with what I came up with, but I think they just ran out of time before it could really come together so they ended up going with a more typographical concept. Other than that, if They ever decide to make some video content for the back catalog, I hope I get tapped for "Till My Head Falls Off."

8. Is your last name really Italics?

Yes, although, to quote a famous walrus..."Nothing is real."

9. Could we possibly see a new Alex Italics video with the new album?

I can neither confirm nor deny at this particular juncture. Stay tuned!

10. I want to ask you the big question of the month as well. What is your favorite TMBG album?

There's something particularly magical about the John Henry/Factory Showroom era to me, and proverbial gun to my proverbial head, I'd pick the latter. Maybe it's because they were making a play for mainstream success. Maybe it's because Factory Showroom is the TMBG that checks all the "Power Sphere" boxes with gusto (Melody, Fidelity, Quantity). Maybe it's because the mounting tension with Elektra produced more exciting and challenging work. Either way, any album that can have a song like "S-E-X-X-Y" followed a few tracks later by a song like "Exquisite Dead Guy" is groovy in my book.

YouTube Video Of The Month![edit]

Today's TMBG-related YouTube Video Of The Month is from the channel peter and is a new high quality upload of the music video for the Mono Puff song The Devil Went Down To Newport, with Matt Pinfield's introduction included. Check it out!