Shows/2009-07-11

Fan Recaps and Comments:

SixtyeightState:

I had a really good time, and I really liked the venue, the biggest I've seen TMBG play at yet. I got a sweet new t-shirt, check it out!

Jason DeLima:

So this was a concert in New York City, my parents wanted to be cool and drive from Middletown, NY to Brooklyn, NY, rather than take the subway/train. So we spent way too much time looking for a parking space, and we got lost on the way there, and back.

Imma keep it short this time, I don't want people to tl;dr on me like with my Tarrytown recap.

I waved to Danny Weinkauf before the show and he looked back, smiled, and waved back!

Very entertaining opening acts, better than Jed Parrish or .357 Lover.

I waved to Stan Harrison numerous times before the show.

I met up with TDK, CapitalQ, Martycordova23, and Zondry Though Zondry seemed super shy and didn't run up to the front with the other wikians.

My parents are now fans of TMBG!

Favorite songs of the night: The Guitar, New York City, Brooklyn

Flansy sang the "I held your hand, you held mine" line!

CapitalQ and I did funny stuff in our videos.

I tried to film me giving Marty a high five, he just seemed super creeped out by it. Sorry Marty. :(

The stupid Celebrate Brooklyn crew shoved us out at the end, I didn't get a chance to get my setlist. Grrrr.

Kids shows are just as fun as adult shows!

This show seriously proved that they really are, might be giants.

Really fun show, once my internet stops acting like a Paleontologist, I'll get my 21 videos up.

blitzente:

This was kind of a special event for me (not only was it my first TMBG show and my first time visiting New York, but also the first real concert I'd ever attended and only the second time I'd been in the US at all) so I was a little worried about how to behave and whether it would live up to my expectations. I shouldn't have - it beat them!

The waiting was the worst part; it was slightly late starting, and there wasn't much to do except sit there and feel jealous of other people's T-shirts. Before the show began, I spotted Marty with his kids at one point, Danny wandering around the stage for some time and Dan lurking off to the side with a couple of tech guys, but I didn't see either of the Johns emerge until the whole band walked on.

I didn't care for the opening acts, which included a huge purple anteater with a very fake-sounding accent and readings of two children's stories. It looked like the target audience enjoyed them a lot, though. There was one funny moment when Claudia Marshall accidentally said "the Bronx" instead of "Brooklyn", which was probably a bad idea.

The setlist's main emphasis was on Here Come The 123s and No!. The only song I was really surprised to hear was Where Do They Make Balloons?, which I hadn't heard live before, but even that isn't a rare rare song. The other emphasis of the show was on confetti - lots and lots of confetti. The cannons were fired four times in total.

Right at the beginning, Flans entreated people to get out of their seats and crowd around the front of the stage. I didn't, because I was surrounded by immovable small children in all directions and I was reasonably near the stage anyway. The band then jumped into Fibber Island and Alphabet Of Nations, in between which the confetti cannons went off for the first time. A kid wandered onto the stage at the start of Fibber Island and had to be dragged away.

The horns were introduced right before Seven: Dan Levine on euphonium ("this is the last time you'll ever hear the word 'euphonium' at a concert"), Curt Ramm on the other euphonium ("Connecticut, as some of you might know, is a very long drive... spiritually") and Stan Harrison on saxophone.

The Guitar was kind of predictable but no less fun. Apparently Flans was unimpressed with the crowd at first, because halfway through the bass solo he said he could "only hear the kids", but everything picked up after that.

Around this time, the previously bright and sunny day was becoming noticeably overcast. Flans announced "If it starts to rain here... we'll carry on just the same", to lots of cheering, and then told everyone to pretend that the next song was their favourite song ever, even though it was unreleased and they'd never heard it before. He didn't need to get people to pretend, though, because the next song was Paleontologist! I loved it when I heard it for the first time on a shaky YouTube video, and hearing it at an actual show just cemented that. The following song was I Never Go To Work, dedicated to "the laziest member of the band" - Flans refused to name exactly who that was, but told people to "think about it". It clearly wasn't Stan Harrison, who pulled off a pretty sweet sax solo in the bridge.

One Dozen Monkeys featured MC Squiggles and DJ Backthatup on their respective "keyboards". It was in a different key to the studio version. Flans sang the altered lyrics beginning "I am a dude, 47 years old...", only he flubbed the numbers and made that "one more than 49". I got the feeling he did it on purpose. Next was Particle Man, one of the requisite crowd-pleasers - there wasn't really any wild improvisation, but during the last verse Linnell informed everybody that he was stretching out the middle of the song to make them clap more, and for no other reason.

Happy Birthday was sung to a five-year-old called Flora who was in the audience, and then segued into Pirate Girls Nine. Flans was at pains to point out that it was the only segue in the show.

Bed Bed Bed turned out to contain one of my favourite moments, even though it wasn't the greatest song played. In the middle, the cannons went off like normal. Unlike previous firings, though, a lot of the confetti landed on Linnell... and his expression didn't change at all, nor did he make any attempt to brush it away. He just continued with the song, sweeping confetti off his keyboard as he played, looking as stoic as ever. It was kind of adorable, really.

Alphabet Lost And Found contained awesome dance moves and the style of the boy bands of the early 21st century (while the rest of the band likes to rock out, Marty is only doing this job for the money). It didn't garner as much applause as I thought it deserved.

Afterwards, Marty, Dan and Danny left the stage briefly and Linnell suddenly came alive - up until then, he'd been pretty quiet between songs even for him. "Well, we've kind of made a mess of the stage... but I think I know a solution." Enter the broom broooooooom! (The sound was uncomfortably like booing.) The broom liked Linnell's songs but wanted to hear some others, like Smash Mouth's "All Star". Unfortunately, said Linnell, that Flansburgh wasn't going to allow it. They paused in the middle of I Am Not Your Broom to define the word "servitude" for the benefit of the audience, because "hey, who says 'servitude' at a kids' show?"; it is, of course, when a server has attitude.

Danny's introduction to Where Do They Make Balloons?: "Okay, if you know the words, help me." He didn't actually screw up any of lines, though.

For New York City, Flans sang "I held your hand, you held mine", but it was still King Kong and not Dylan. Following that song, he started talking about the worms living underneath the Bandshell and how some of them were graduates, which could only lead into the obvious song.

In the encore, Flans decided to talk in a fake accent for the rest of the show (he didn't stick to it). He did the introduction to the band again in that way; cute lines included "Danny Weinkauf on the superbass - in my country, we call it the bahss" and "Dan Miller from Brooklyn, which is a very long drive... spiritually". Of course, the band couldn't get away after that without playing the Celebrate Brooklyn venue song itself. "This song mentions Marty Markowitz! That's true! Controversially true, which just makes it truer: it's one minute long!"

The show ended on a high note with Istanbul. Throughout the song, the horns were duelling amongst themselves with their lungs of steel. It was an impressively energetic performance. The sad part was that it did have to end.

Once the concert was over, security shooed everybody away from the Bandshell with extreme alacrity, although I did manage to get Marty's autograph. The mother and I then got completely lost in the middle of Brooklyn and didn't find our way back to where we were staying until 8:30 PM. It was completely worth it.

I think I might have seen a few wiki people in the crowd, especially up nearer the front (you guys trying to film yourselves with Marty, I was standing right behind you), but I was too shy to ask... If you happened to notice you were being ogled by a long-haired midget in glasses and a black Jurassic Park t-shirt, sorry about that.