Talk:ECNALUBMA

Medical

They've been doing a lot of medical-themed songs lately - Let Me Tell You About My Operation, Good To Be Alive, and now this one. Interesting. I wonder whether that's just coincidence or not. --Freakiosis (talk) 09:04, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

Not on Glean?

I'm really shocked this song didn't make it onto Glean. It definitely fits the general sound of the album, significantly more than I Can Help The Next In Line... This is probably one of my all time favorites on the DAS project. Sounds like classic TMBG, and the chorus sounds a bit Dirt-Bikey, with it's worship of a random object. Anyone else hear the creepy religious undertones? Especially in the video. -Sureliant

I can only echo the above poster's succinct review. How did this not make Glean? How? This has been happening for a while now, great songs being left off the main album and them put out later. Not Sure about Dirt Bike, but i can hear Vestibule a bit in the rhythm of the riff. It's a lot better than pretty much all of his other contributions on the Glean. Singing well, the confident lyric is Linnell looking on the bleak side as usual but with real verve and wit. After a pretty dismal set of lyrics on Glean, the first verse, is classic Linnell, and can stands on it's own as verse. Yet another example of song that you can imagine being worked out by Linnell alone in his home studio, it sounds almost like a solo track with the rest of the band just acting as session men. My main criticism is the production, it's over-produced and the mix is too dense. I'd love to hear a remix where the main riff is just muted on the chorus and bridge. It become monotonous when it's not broken up. This is clear to new ears and would have been obvious to Linnell and the producer normally. There's no space for the track to breathe. One wonders the gap between recording and release? Alternatively I'd love to hear an acoustic version with Linnell doing this on the accordion. Am I the only person who wishes he'd write at least a couple of songs per album on this instrument? You have to go back to Lincoln since it really was his instrument of choice. I like the synths, but I prefer the accordion. (Mr Tuck)

By Dirt-Bikey, I meant in ideas, not in sound at all. Just clarifying it a bit. And, of course, everybody wants more accordion! That was the best part about Good To Be Alive and Answer. -Sureliant

TMBG have been over-produced since the John Henry days, I doubt they'll ever go back to the leaner sound of the 1980s. Time to stop expecting that, guys. Just enjoy this fantastic song!!

I was a huge fan of the production on John Henry, and on this track as well. I'm just a huge sucker for Giants songs with a horn section! I just think thematically it fits into Glean perfectly well. -Sureliant

I wonder why they didn't put this on Glean as well. As I am not too keen on the new album myself, at first I thought that maybe they put the weaker songs on it in order to release the stronger material (e.g. ECNALUBMA) later this year, on another album. But then again, they referred to Glean as their best album of the last decade, so... --Freakiosis (talk) 05:23, 13 May 2015 (EDT)

Personally, I was a big fan of Glean overall, as it had, in my opinion, six fantastic songs (Erase, Music Jail, Lazy Boyfriends, Unpronounceable, Aaa, and Operation), which is significantly more than other recent albums, like Join Us and The Spine, which were really weak besides one or two standout songs. I'm hoping ECNALUBMA improves whatever the next album will be. Maybe a rarities album?

Ha, those exact six songs - on those I have to agree with you, but I still found Join Us (or even Spine and Else, which a lot of TMBG fans don't like) better than Glean. Whatever, there's no accounting for taste. I believe the Johns plan on releasing another rock album plus a children's album this year, so this song might make the next regular album. --Freakiosis (talk) 11:32, 13 May 2015 (EDT)

Disneyland

I'm almost positive the line "be by my side in the electric parade" is a reference to Disney's Main Street Electrical Parade. The theme song for the parade is "Baroque Hoedown," which TMBG recorded a cover of, so it's definitely something they're very aware of. Just wanted to get this being a reference seconded by other people before I add it to trivia--thoughts? Pretty sure they just killed their chances of going back and doing any more albums for Disney... --Self Called Nowhere (talk) 04:47, 16 May 2015 (EDT)

I noticed that too! I want to say that it's intentional, especially since the music video is a parade (and contains a shot of Mickey Mouse). Signs point to noteworthy (in my humble opinion). --Mosesofthecows (talk) 12:08, 17 May 2015 (EDT)

The video also includes superquick shots from Disney World's Enchanted Tikki Room and Jungle Cruise!

Oh man, I haven't watched the video yet (I've been getting lazy about them)--wow. I'm seriously soooooooo amused by this considering their Disney connection. --Self Called Nowhere (talk) 22:02, 17 May 2015 (EDT)

I'll put this here because I'm not the first to catch onto parts of this, but rather than it being oblique references, I'm 100% certain that this song is autobiographical - Linnell's bitter, angry autopsy of their entire Walt Disney Records career. Before we get to the lyrics, we know for a fact that they were disappointed and restricted during those 7 years by being locked into a pattern of 'Here Come...' LPs that they weren't allowed to divert from (remember Roy G Biv not being allowed on 123s?), and a cascade of uninspiring soundtrack obligations, when they had actually signed up to produce some bigger-budget sequels to the No! album. Linnell has fun in this song by paralleling the Disneyland parade with the company's infamous, quasi-religious power ladder and the way people like Bob Iger were expected to be treated with bootlicking genuflection. Also, TMBG signed to the company at the exact time Michael Eisner was being messily deposed, and also at the time when Pixar were basically divorcing from Disney. Horrible omens occurring around them when they inked they contract! Anyway - decoding ECNALUBMA (the "ambulance" title is a bit of a red herring I think):

- The effect of the video is of Disney iconography having been severely glitched, damaged and broken into something unrecognizable, with footage of 60s-Disney-esque Americana running in reverse and being destroyed by the projector.

- "I knew this would happen/Why does this always happen?" - they were less than a decade on from being dropped by Elektra and the years where they were essentially unsigned, and the financial hit of the Sept 11/Mink Car/Restless triangle was still recent. Clearly even in 2004 they didn't go into that contract without anxiety.

- "A day of impulsive fun" and "an evening of injury, blood and grieving" are metaphors for the casual, speculative, for-their-own-pleasure recording of No! and the seven years trapped in Disney Sound commitments respectively.

- The chorus about "behold the great one comes" is about the aforementioned genuflection to Eisner/Iger, amid a sea of sycophantic execs and shareholders, filtered wickedly through a prism of Disneyland iconography. The excellent book 'Disneywar' provides a good illustrative background to this, and the atmosphere of the song generally.

- Linnell clearly now regards the deal as being 'cutting off your nose to spite your face' and making their problems worse, a huge mistake which they went through with anyway.

- "Help me out I can't seem to get this window open" - they wanted out of that thing before they got to go. "You Are Old Father William" was the last thing wasn't it, in 2010? A year after Science? Yet they only got the No! rights back in 2012, when Idlewild did the download Special Edition. Not a clean break by the looks of it.

- "Never mind now it's open" - which of course they are. This song is cathartic closure of the most potent kind...

- "I think my hand is broken" - this chimes with a theory I've had about TMBG's undeniably unusual 2010-2014 era. I think Linnell was so dispirited he retreated slightly and fell into a spot of writer's block (relative for him, anyway). There was definitely a reduction in output, and after Linnell having taken the reins as the most active force in their noughties work, the period following Science was when Flansburgh very pointedly took charge for a while, becoming basically spokesman, MD and exec producer of the band all in one. The whole MO of the band changed in fact, with the still-controversial first two years of the IFC, the ending of the podcast, and the hugely increased focus on merchandise and tin-rattling. The sister albums Join Us and Nanobots are fractious, sonically experimental, a reversion to pre-John Henry in terms of song style and album sequencing, and lyrically dependent on free association, whimsy and surrealism which had been kept at a minimum before. You will notice how relatively few complete Linnell rock songs appear on either, replaced by experiments, collaborations and doodles. As much as I love Join Us and Nanobots (and I genuinely do!) I think they represent to a fair extent TMBG's engine stalling, and those years definitely represent the first ever friction between TMBG and their fanbase. The live hiatus in 2014 can't have been without backstory either. It's a testament to just how much had changed spiritually that last year's First Album Live being a free download came as *such* a big surprise, and I don't think it's overanalyzing to see that release as an olive branch. Certainly, 2015 and Dial-A-Song Direct (plus a COMPLETELY different iteration of the IFC) present a colossal and deliberate reboot of the band, a conscious rewind to the Spine/Else/Clock Radio/Free Tunes/podcast period in both musical style and intent. In other words, to just before the Disney deal became a noose. These three lines of ECNALUBMA say so much. The important thing is that he's back, fighting fit, and seems to write two out of every three TMBG songs at the moment.

So yeah, it would take a lot to convince me that this song is about anything else...! ~SirDarrell

I'd think if they hated Disney they wouldn't be so happy to keep coming back to the Anaheim House of Blues and hang out at Disneyland. Very creative interp though. Can I have some links to interviews where they denounce Disney? I thought they loved working for Disney. Guess I don't know anything. -- Sonderling (talk) 19:33, 31 May 2015 (EDT)

Just my extrapolation of little (false?) hints that have appeared to be honest, and more specifically about their contract and the Disney record label. I don't think They have ever badmouthed anyone professionally to their credit. Disney definitely intervened executively from time to time as "T-Shirt", "Roy G Biv", "Waves" and others were externally "rejected" from their original LPs, and I refuse to believe that a factory line of Here Comes CDs was their intention after Disney wanted in on No. Also, most of the other jobs Disney commissioned from them were pretty uninspiring ones. Look at No!, Danny Weinkauf's album and their very recent kids material, then compare it to the Here Comes trilogy - there's a gulf there in terms of creative intent. I also don't think the 2010-14 'weird years' power shift/boat rock is meaningless.

I'm happy to be wrong, it's just one of those interpretations I think fits the holes (like When Will You Die being about Rupert Murdoch, I can't hear it any other way!). If I'm wrong, then it's presumably about a fatal accident at Disneyland which is theoretically MORE inflammatory to their former paymasters!! ~SirDarrell

I'm not saying you're wrong, I just wanted to clarify your sources. Multiple fans have negative opinions of Disney and I don't believe such things pop out of nowhere, so someone's certainly unhappy with them.

I would like to say that I don't think references to a bloody accident or death occurring at Disneyland are necessarily negative toward Disney. Disney employs plenty of dark humor. Also the bulk of Disney's output is for entertainment over educational value and I think giving TMBG some educational themes probably helped them write, rather than, like, fit in with Disney's other stuff. TMBG likes themes. And most importantly it helped the records sell! Parents will buy anything educational.

I like Disney. They got TMBG Grammys, publicity and money. Also the band had really negative stuff to say about Tiny Toons and Power Rangers but they seemed genuinely happy with Disney to me. I'm still interested to hear evidence to the contrary though. -- Sonderling (talk) 20:35, 31 May 2015 (EDT)

I should probably add for context that I'm a huge Disney fan/nerd. The company really is a vicious tug of war between the execs and the creatives and has been for some time, sadly. Maybe I'm projecting what I assume to have happened to TMBG (as it happened to everybody else!) as though it were fact... :) ~SirDarrell

darrell; just wanted to say that while i'm not sure i believe everything you said, it's really interesting and thought-provoking—a perspective on things i hadn't encountered before. i love reading this type of stuff. the one question i do have relates to your mention of "still-controversial first two years of the IFC". could you expand on that? i feel like that is an apt description of the 2nd year, but not as much for the first. (and additionally, what significantly differentiates the first and third (current) years of the IFC? i feel they are fairly comparable).

Good question, long ranty answer! So... as you know first two years of the IFC featured the 'exclusive EPs' component, which unarguably segregated the fanbase by income bracket. Flansburgh literally telling members not to talk to non-members about it, dictating the content on this site, that sort of thing. I think it's the most horribly indefensible thing they have ever done (even moreso considering how cheap, nasty, semi-recycled and completely dispensable the material on all those 45s allegedly is - material that until that point was put on the podcast as a matter of course), and I know plenty of people (both in and out of those two IFCs) agree with me on that. It's sad but true I think that a few years down the line, it HAS irreversibly scarred TMBG fandom. It's still a little bit more of a ladder, a "race between the haves and the have-nots" as someone brilliantly described it.

Being a TMBG fan even just *ten* years ago you couldn't move for people sharing rarities, bootlegs etc, there was the podcast, there was the Clock Radio etc etc. You would buy up all the CDs in print you could, maybe see them live, and *then* you'd have countless likeminded fans making sure you had House Of Mayors or the Elektra B-sides, or the live boots, or the deleted Unlimited stuff, or this in FLAC, that in upgrade etc. Before that, it was CDRs. Before that, swapped and mailed C90s. This practice made fans, it sold tickets, it sold albums, it sold EPs, it sold T-shirts, it fostered loyalty. In fact, the rare TMBG fans with holier-than-thou attitudes towards sharing were widely pilloried for it back then. Now, people are a LOT shier than they used to be about their own stashes, and it's all an echo of that horrible meritocratic, cash-hungry mindset fostered within the 2011 and 2012 clubs. They became THAT band (that insulting Idlewild CD didn't help much either, nor the promos DVD which they spent weeks aggressively promoting but seemingly less than a second quality-checking). Actively insulting and bullying anyone who couldn't afford it - and threatening to cancel memberships if people leaked information or needledrops?! That is not this band. This band does not have 'good fans' and 'bad fans'. The 2011 and 2012 IFCs set out to claim it did, and that was the crime.

The third year, after a notable gap, has both cheap (Drip) and free (Youtube/app) levels which make sure no-one misses out, no dictatorial embargo on information (as far as I know - I don't really trust them enough again yet not to have a 'secret executive level' of this), and no discrimination based on people's income levels. TMBG was not built on a 'luxury fandom' model. They're not (the current incarnations of) Paul McCartney or Pink Floyd or Queen, aiming their releases at fleecing the upper middle class as grossly as possible. TMBG was built on a punky, home-taping, MP3-swapping, live-booting, fan-friendly, cheap-as-free ethos which the 2010-2014 era repeatedly violated in the most ungracious and violent way possible. Let's not forget how much of the first few albums are set against a backdrop of pennilessness and living hand-to-mouth. The choice of their band name is an ironic joke about their social/financial/professional status. By 2011 it appeared to be literal.

2015 is dragging the older ethos back somewhat and I personally have had proper enthusiasm again, but I'm not going to lie - there are points over the last few years where I've just wanted nothing to do with TMBG. And we're talking a band who I've obsessively adored in the past, they've got me through a lot. Yet when they played my part of the UK (very very rare) not too long ago, I wouldn't and couldn't make myself go. Multiply that by every single person who felt a bit pushed away by the EP stunts and you've suddenly got a very wounded army and a lost war.

This has become nothing to do with my fanciful interp of ECNALUBMA for which I apologise, but I still think this is an important issue that not enough fans went 'that's not right' about. I can still get censored for saying that there's an earlier version of ***** or that they made a studio version of *** ** **** ** **. Why? Why is any sane human being following these orders? There would still be uproar if someone put a rip of ****** **** on a blog. Again, why? There's still this lingering sense that it's a 'fact' that some fans are better than others according to their disposable incomes during set points in the summers of 2011 and 2012. I mean, read that sentence back. Mad much?

If I didn't care about They Might Be Giants and what being a fan means to a lot of people, then I wouldn't keep pressing this button, but I'm still *so* wounded and sad that it happened. I think we assume that TMBG fans are just the ones singing along at concerts, or writing on here, or posting on the Tumblr. There's a silent majority out there - fans who just like streaming to the records, or buying odd tracks on iTunes as and when, kids who don't even know what the band's called, desperately poor fans who torrent or stream every single track, people who just 'like the birdhouse one' or know how Boss Of Me goes. I would hate the idea to continue that these people aren't every bit the equal 'fan' of the vocal minority. Making rules and raising barriers just kills goodwill, until suddenly you're the Frank Zappa estate and you have no fans under 40, reduced to chasing an ever-shrinking consumer base with overpriced crap.

There is change in the air and I can't be happier for that, but if more people would have kicked up a stink about it four years ago I think it'd have happened a lot sooner. A lot of people allowed themselves to be walked over, especially the second time. And I don't think some of that damage is ever going to go away. TMBG fandom is just NOT as nice a place to kick around as it was. And that is unforgivable. ~SirDarrell

you know, i'd forgotten that there isn't any truly exclusive audio content from this year's IFC. how refreshing. (and indeed, maybe this is the result of enough fans saying "that's not right"!). -- 15:55, 2 June 2015 (EDT)

I'm one to defend people for doing whatever they want and the IFC was TMBG's choice so whatever, but I really don't think they get us sometimes. They give us free stuff so defenders can go "but they gave you so much free stuff," but I don't think they really understand what we want. I don't think John or John are truly big fans of any other artist enough to understand how important shitty demos and stuff are to us fans. Flans is a record collector but he seems pretty scattered and I don't think he gets the drive we have to collect EVERY recording by TMBG. I think if anything the Johns feel violated by how completist some of us are. That's their right too but it's really unfortunate that they just don't get it. They're also really proud, and I think if they look back at a song they made 20 years ago they could still be embarrassed over its quality, when another artist might think an older song of theirs is terrible but at least be able to laugh about it and share it anyway. I'm not saying this to criticize them because I think it's not something they can move past or resolve, I'm just saying I think TMBG may actually not at all understand how much the IFC offended certain people. But at least they've started listening again. Enjoyed your rant, by the way. -- Sonderling (talk) 17:06, 2 June 2015 (EDT)

Damn, Darrell, well said. You hit the nail right on the head with that one. The Zappa comparison was spot on, too. -- adamspektor (talk)

Wow! Can I just say how much I enjoyed all that? Fascinating. Though I feel I need a simpler version of it, as it's all new to me. Could I have a chronological version of what's happened/gone wrong with the Disney deal and where they are now. (Mr Tuck)

Impressive

The fact that they can still write one of their best songs at this point in their career is very impressive, and bodes very well for the future. Good to have proof that they're not declining with age.

Honk

The pulsing chords that open the song make me think of the honking of traffic or of the ambulance itself. --Nehushtan (talk) 05:28, 4 October 2019 (EDT)