Shows/1988-04-02
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Setlist:
- Number Three
- Purple Toupee
- Cowtown
- The World's Address
- Hide Away Folk Family
- They'll Need A Crane
- 32 Footsteps
- Where Your Eyes Don't Go
- Lie Still, Little Bottle
- I've Got A Match
- Shoehorn With Teeth
- (She Was A) Hotel Detective
- Don't Let's Start
Encore:
They Might Be Giants
— with Rotondi opening —
Club Lingerie in Los Angeles, CA
April 2, 1988
Fan Recaps and Comments:
Billed as "They Might Be Giants meet Rotondi" as well as the band's final L.A. appearance. Tickets were available in advance.
From Kevin Shattuck, Mar. 27, 2017:
The Johns were fabulous that night. Mr. Flansburgh handled the lion’s share of the vocals while bashing away on guitar, along with a bit of harmonica and a note or two on trombone. Mr. Linnell was surrounded by a cluster of keyboards, programmed with bass lines, drum beats and backing vocal tracks. He had an accordion hangin’ off his shoulders and a saxophone strapped ‘round his neck.
John L. is an astonishingly talented jack of all trades and kept jumping mid-song from one instrument to another like a mad scientist. John F. has a carnival barker’s élan and ran that two-man spectacle like he was hosting center ring at a flea circus. They were a hoot, tellin’ tall tales and flitting about like hummingbirds, playing their asses off, but there was still time for costume changes; switching from sombreros to oversized fezzes and dancing about behind cardboard, cutout heads of progressive politician/newspaper editor William Allen White.
Preview of the show from LA Weekly, Apr. 7, 1988:
They look like the kind of square pegs who never got laid in high school and were allergic to everything — which I think is incredibly sexy − and they sound like cerebral cabaret hell-raisers. New York's They Might Be Giants, a hearty rock duo, just might be the next big thang... okay, giants. They've got an accordion that pumps harder than Schwarzenegger and a sax that blows like...; lyrics ("Kiss me-e-e-e, son of God..."') heady enough to keep them off the bar mitzvah circuit; and videos ("Don't Let's Start"), directed by Jonathan Demme. [sic]
Why, after a little skiffle number like "Youth Culture Killed My Dog," you'll see that they're the wildest team to emerge from Gotham City since Batman and Robin. This is a grand night for squeeze boxes, as every mother's fave polka ensemble, Rotondi, joins the fun − at the hip.
