Talk:Tesla

Thulsa Doom

So heres a question most of you arent pondering. I know Tesla was a "scientist" (theres some debate about that) but this song always says "to the world". It reminds me heavy of a story called Delcardes's Cat by Robert Howard (eg., the creator of Conan The Barbarian) The bad person in that story if Thulsa Doom which sounds very similar to Tesla. I think there's a connection there even if no one else wants to admit.

Unless you can elaborate further on what you're referring to (for those that that have not read the book), I think you're just making a connection that doesn't necessarily exist.--JustinBoy 08:50, 4 March 2013 (EST)

I'm not too sure either what the heck W.T.H. Linnell is talking about but I think in the song "to the world" is just emphasized for grandiose effect of his positive impact on the world... "ushered the bladeless turbine into the world" speaks both to the spectacular civilization-advancing presence of the bladeless turbine (think of one of the first cars, shining on a pedestal at a world's fair expo and being called the future of life as we know it) and to the understatedness of such an invention, in Tesla's (and other scientists'/inventors') life and more importantly in ours, where we take technology, and the progress of mankind before us, for granted. The heroism attributed to him in the song is made to rub up against his evil mad scientist quality, but I don't think the positives of his innovations are supposed to be cast into doubt.

I did a quick little search to see what this Delcardes' Cat thing is and got a little relevant analysis: "There are many comments about savagry and barbarism being better than civilization: 'Kull is warned by some primal instinct,' 'elemental magic of the savage, the magic of decadency,' 'The rot of civilization has not yet entered your soul and our charms may not harm you.'" And I'd just disagree that this is what the song is going for. But then ya never know. ~ magbatz 13:24, 4 March 2013 (EST)

Here Comes Science outtake?

A song about Tesla was slated for HCS. Has it been confirmed if it's. This or not? It seems dark for a children's song. I assume it was rewritten, or perhaps it was left off BECAUSE it was deemed too adult?

Didn't Flans tell Ella in the Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child interview they did while they were working on HCS, that he had written a song about Tesla for the album? That's easy enough to check and would be confirmation, I think. --BlueCanary 01:08, 1 March 2013 (EST)

Yes, he did say it, but that doesn't remove the possibility that the version on Nanobots is vastly different than that version. --Self Called Nowhere 01:30, 1 March 2013 (EST)

As per the tumblr, this is quite a different version from the original. --MisterMe 08:10, 4 March 2013 (EST)

Birds Fly

The line "Out of the windows birds fly" sounds suspiciously similar to "Birds fly into my windshield". Coincidence? Is it worth a mention on the Recycled Material page? --Freakiosis 02:15, 1 March 2013 (EST)

i don't think so. birds tend to fly into solid things (like windshields) and out of open things (like windows). -Apollo (colloquia!) 10:24, 1 March 2013 (EST)

I concur. One of those times when the limited number of meaningful combinations of nouns catches up with the Johns. --MisterMe 11:09, 1 March 2013 (EST)

also toward the end of his life he would spend significant amounts of time feeding pigeons from his hotel room window. just more biography. -- 19:16, 8 March 2013 (EST)

A poignant and moving song, possibly their best biographical number. I did not know about the Mark Twain connection until I looked it up after hearing this song.

No love for Tesla?

This one is rated pretty low as well (see my comment on Talk:Sometimes A Lonely Way), and I can't understand why. It has got one of the most beautiful melodies ever written by Flans, plus the lyrics are great - the song almost makes me cry when listening to it, even though it's just a biographical piece about the life of Mr. Tesla. The second verse especially. It's just so sad. Now he's dead, and he couldn't even finish his death ray. Poor Nikola :-(
Maybe this song is rated so low because it's not what most people expected - a funny power pop tune or something like that. It's not typical TMBG. But it's still beautiful nonetheless! --Freakiosis 05:01, 12 March 2013 (EDT)

I think it's rated low because it's a) lyrically lame and b) cashing in on the Tesla community. If you think of all the great TMBG history songs, they are about obscure people who our society has largely forgotten about: James K. Polk, James Ensor, Tippecanoe and Tyler too. TMBG should have taken Tesla at one step removed and sung about something or someone that most people don't know about. Like when Edison electrocuted to death Topsy the elephant--but perhaps that's too well known. --B3

I think Tesla is rated so low, because of it's melody more than anything else. That's not to say it's a weak song (although I confess I'm not fan). The version of "First Kiss" that appears on Mink Car is really Tesla's most immediate ancestor. It's very middle of the road and They Might be Giants started life off as a much more left of centre band. It's impossible to imagine anything like Tesla on the first two albums. Take Snowball with Hell, the Flans ballad on Lincoln, it's resident inspired middle eight take's a conventional song on a left field tangent. On Flood, the nearest fit is Road Movie to Berlin - but Flans still had the typical Giant left field fingerprints all over it with the bombastic backing. Tesla has none of that and is the kind of easy going pop rock, that you could hear on a drive time show. Nothing wrong with that, but's it's the kind of thing that your giants fans reacted against when they first listened the Giants in the first place. I have a huge soft spot for Hovering Sombrero by Linnell, and I've seen it dismissed for not being Giants enough by fellow. Perhaps not fair, but a plausible explanation.

Why are songs like Tesla turning up on later Giants albums? I used to feel Flans wanted to move the band to be more hit motivated. Tesla stands more chance of making the radio than Snowball in Hell; but I also think he's become more conventional and muso as he's got older. The danger is that you lose the oddness that made you stand out in the first place. That he still writes left field stuff like Too Tall Girl gives me hope!

(Mr Tuck)

The song's rated low probably because it's boring and feels supremely lazily written. I love Tesla as much as the next nerd, but that doesn't mean I love every song about him.

It;s clealy the best song about Tesla, though. I can think of 11,364 songs about Mr. Tesla and none of them holds a candle to this one. They're all pretty putrid.--WhatTheHeckLinnell (talk) 12:56, 2 June 2014 (EDT)

My Back Pages

Does anyone else hear echoes of the Bob Dylan song My Back Pages in the melody here? For the life of me I cannot figure out if it's intentional on TMBG's part, if it's just them subconsciously riffing on a tune, or if I'm just making it up...

Death Ray

I get that the "death ray" line is about the teleforce device Tesla dreamed up. However, I recently came across this piece written by our Giants in 1988. The last question is, "When the mainstream press refers to you as wacky nerds, is your first reaction to pull out a gun and blow them away, or to go home and invent a death ray?" Makes me wonder if Flans had held onto that image for all these years and, when reading up on Tesla for the songwriting process, he suddenly remembered that silly question... --MisterMe (talk) 13:22, 11 March 2016 (EST)