Shows/1992-04-11

Fan Recaps and Comments:

From Tartan: "They Might Be Giants conquer its large audience with their unique style." (Photo by Thomas Nichols)

Pittsburghmuggle:

This was my first time seeing They Might Be Giants. I was a Senior in High School and had heard from friends (literally ringing my phone off the hook), that TMBG would be playing a free preformance at Carnegie Mellon University at their Spring Carnival. My friends and I piled into a car too small for all of us and arrived, only to run into a van full of our friends there also. The campus was crowded with people who were there for the Festival.

It turned out that the concert was in the gymnasium and for CMU students only, but there was a huge crowd of non-students who had arrived also. I joined a group of about forty which was climbing in an open window on the back of the building to gain access, and we made it as far as a stairwell before being chased back out the window by security. Finally, a student who we knew snuck a few of us (including me), into the concert one by one by washing off her hand-stamp each time she came back out. The concert started soon after. The Johns were on a raised stage at the end of the gym. Eventually security gave up on only letting students in and the rest of our group had come in and found us not long after.

I was a little too hyped up from dancing, singing, and the adventure getting in to remember a great deal (this was fourteen years ago, after all), but I remember the HUGE conga lines to Purple Toupee, and Flans singing Shoehorn with Teeth and raising his arms with his hands in a "C", one after the other. The gym was pretty full - but no so full that it seemed overcrowded. It was a wonderfully exciting time.

"They Might Be Giants stomps on crowd with massive sound" by Derek Wahila
Tartan, Apr. 13, 1992:

After what had seemed like an eternity (approximately 25 minutes), the background music stopped, and a new version of "Up, Up, And Away" was played. The stage lights began to flash and the spotlights lit up. A new song began, and off to the right a door opened, and John Flansburgh and John Linnell came running onto the stage.

My first reaction, since this was the first time I had seen them in concert was, "they're so plain." The band members were dressed in jeans and t-shirts ("street clothes" as they refer to them). They grabbed their respective instruments: Linnell, his accordion, and Flansburgh, his electric guitar − which wasn't plugged in for the first song although he motioned as if he was playing it. They jumped right into "She's Actual Size," a song off their new album Apollo 18. In rapid succession they completed four or five songs from their various albums. After these songs, they paused to greet everyone and took note of the tremendous storm taking place outside (NOT!) and the excellent acoustics of Thistle Hall.

In the next batch of songs, they played another song from the new album, "Narrow Your Eyes" and midway through the song, the PA system went out. Linnell and Flansburgh began conversing on stage and reached an agreement to perform a song from the '50s [sic] that they sang on a street corner and received $10 [sic] from "a relative of the person who wrote the song." The concert continued on with them performing songs like "Boat Of Car," "Ana Ng," "Purple Toupee," and "Birdhouse in Your Soul," off their older albums, as well as "Space Suit" and "I Palindrome I" from Apollo 18. These were mixed with conversations with the audience and each other. At one point they even conversed with the technicians over the placement of the lights (which were moved soon after.)

The stage show was a minimal performance, consisting of John and John with an electric guitar, an accordion, a bass clarinet, a snare drum, a cymbal, and a pedal-controlled synthesizer. The synthesizer had the drum tracks and some bass lines recorded in it. The synthesizer is a necessary portion of the show because they play and record all their own music. Towards the end of the show, they announced the next song as "Nothing Can Change My Chair" − interestingly enough, they don't have a song by this name (but I think this was intentional). They did however, play "Nothing's Gonna Change My Clothes" followed immediately by "Someone Keeps Moving My Chair." This is a perfect example of the style and personality that makes They Might Be Giants the unique band it is.

The concert lasted only an hour, but even this was a respectable amount since the majority of songs are less than two minutes long. They closed the show by "thanking everyone in the known universe" and playing "Dig My Grave." No one was ready for the concert to end here, and the crowd began to chant "IS−TAN−BUL! IS−TAN−BUL!" (instigated by yours truly). The chant went strong for the first couple of minutes or so, but began to fade as people grew weary of screaming and stomping. Just when almost all hope was lost they came back, performing a very interesting version of "Istanbul" complete with echo effects and vocal alterations, giving the perfect Flansburgh and Linnell ending to a perfect They Might Be Giants concert. The duo made a concert in the Gym better than anyone could expect. One could only hope that a group like this will be at next year's exciting Spring Carnival.