YOUTH CULTURE POLLED MY DOG: They Might Be Giants (first 21 years) POLL RESULTS

oh yay the first one i voted for. i still get surprised by the synth freakout when it comes in. it's such a nice traditional country song before then haha

also, this is one of my favorites of their stanzas:

We were once so close to heaven
Peter came out and gave us medals
Declaring us the nicest of the damned

yeah i love the lyrics on "road movie," especially that stanza. but oddly it's "time won't find the lost / it'll sweep up our skeleton bones" that pops into my mind the most. see, i don't just hate flans!

i was watching the berlin-obsessed wings of desire (1987) the other day and noticed ROAD MOVIES FILMPRODUKTION in the credits. could easily imagine that sparking something with these guys.

also now i really wanna see the nick cave concert scenes dubbed over with this song, could be great

71: Weep Day
374 points, 6 votes

a Dial-A-Song c. 1984, released on Then, 1997
1983 demo version

yesssssss

"samba time for Tambo and weep day for Urine Man" is such a great dumb inside-joke starting point for a lyric. and then it ends up with these weird little philosophy-101 reflections on the nonexistence of simultaneity. great.

also, shout out to sic for picking a great thread title. there were a billion options, but this feels like the right one.

yeah I'd like to think TMBW.net for explaining that one

I cant imagine anyone getting that when they actually hear the song

now that I'm reading the lyrics...a lot of the lines from Lincoln sorta originated here right? "Every man is made of two opinions/Every woman has a second half"

I know WFMU was regularly playing stuff by these guys no later than 1985; I first saw them in '87 at the Loop Lounge, Passaic NJ.

Was a huge fan at least up through Apollo 18, but i didn't vote.

I guess I've heard this song before, since I own "Then" but I have no memory or knowledge of it whatsoever.

first one I don't know, I'll bet there'll be more

ooh i like that reading of lincoln. i think i got "tambo-urine man" from the then liner notes back in the day.

one bummer of the ballot-playlist system for me: the then bonus stuff is not on spotify (though miscellaneous t is and covers most of the essentials). other big missing links: "sensurround," "mrs. train," and the unhelpfully-titled sequel song "she was a hotel detective."

"And it wasn't me you punched a hole in
At the west German protest march"

yeah this is very purple toupee somehow

also, shout out to sic for picking a great thread title. there were a billion options, but this feels like the right one.

thanks! the voting thread title was better, but the future tense needed to be used there. obvs there were loads of great options like Birdhouse In My Poll and I Polindrome I, but this had a definitive tone to it.

Morbs: some WFMU-exclusive versions coming up as links (and back in the voting thread)

DC: do you know there is now a trilogy song called She Was A Hotel Detective In The Future?

missed opportunity to call it (She Will Have Been A) Hotel Detective

70: Turn Around
378 points, 6 votes

on Apollo 18 album, 1992

I sort of see this as the Apollo 18 version of "Someone Keeps Moving My Chair" (which I like somewhat better.)

Think I didn't vote for this, probably should have.

69: Piece Of Dirt
406 points, 9 votes

on Lincoln LP, 1988
performed by The Avatars Of They, 2015

I voted for “Turn Around” downballot. I’ve always enjoyed the song though the chorus does fall a bit flat.

I like Turn Around. Their songs about the shadow of death are usually good. Where You're Eyes Don't Go is another one similar one.

The last verse about the train engineer with the paper-white mask of evil face is one of my favourite moments

68: A Self Called Nowhere
416 points, 6 votes, 1 #1

on John Henry album, 1994

piece of dirt was a late cut for me, i just couldn't vote for that vocal

"Or to fly... I'd fly away" is great tho

“A Self Called Nowhere” at #1? Wild. I have never once thought about this song, though I’ve heard nothing t dozens of times.

Wtf autocorrect “I’ve heard it dozens of times”

wow at that #1 vote. the joys of fandom, it takes all kinds!

i did once think the song sounded pretty dark and cool-sounding, and i think about it almost any time i encounter an electric organ. another one where i'd love to hear it in a pre-JH arrangement, perhaps a less ponderous one. "it's a thing named it, in a bottomless pit, you can't see it there" sounds cool to me.

apparently they made simple MIDI versions of all the john henry tracks and put them out as a hypercard stack?? you can hear them here though they're obviously not finished TMBG songs. this site supposedly emulates the hypercard stack, but requires Flash.

a 2007 podcast also unveiled full-band demos (follow link to MP3) which i'm just now skimming. they're not radically different but they sound better to my ears. i'm not enough of a production head to be precise about this but maybe what i'm hearing is the absence of compression? "no one knows my plan," one of my favorites from the album, sounds a little looser, and a little less cluttered without guitar overdubs (and no solo!) muddying up the mix. "out of jail" isn't better than the album version (another one of my favorites from that record) but something about the guitar attack makes it clearer how it belongs in the flans staccato-guitar canon going back to "ana ng" etc. "a self called nowhere's" chorus still lands hard but there's no effect on linnell's voice and that too is fairly refreshing i gotta say.

they're releasing a full remastered CD edition of the John Henry demos in December: https://tmbgifc.com/ -- sign up by midnight to also get two posters designed by the screenwriter of Antz, sign up any time to get downloads of three new albums from 2018, one not-available-to-the-public live album from 2018, a 7", a T-shirt, a keychain, two guitar picks and various other stuff.

https://tmbgifc.com/static/ifc2018/images/product_images/Poster_SaturdayEveningPost_ToddAlcott.jpg

67: I Should Be Allowed To Think
429 points, 7 votes

on John Henry album, 1994
earlier Dial-A-Song version

whoa thought that would be top 20

So far, not a lot of songs I voted for, but "For Science" is awesome

When I prepped my ballot, I first made a playlist of my indisputable all time top fave TMBG tracks. That ended up amounting to 26 songs. This is the first of those 26 to appear. I have to admit, I’m a bit sad to see it so low.

You've started! Re: albums, did the 1986 S/T "Pink" LP get no votes beside mine then?

(All the cool kids favour the demo, maybe? Or I'm amongst those those failing to grasp eligibility criteria? :) )

i also voted for the s/t album, in third place. wondering if maybe that got counted as a vote for the demo? not that many album ballots overall so it's no biggie imo.

hands up, who else's first introduction to "howl" was through the opening lines of "i should be allowed to think"?

really love the way these guys do those soaring background vocals on their choruses. this song is probably one of the best examples of that

I had Hide Away Folk Family in my top 5 I think, surprised it's so low

(All the cool kids favour the demo, maybe? Or I'm amongst those those failing to grasp eligibility criteria? :) )

you and I were the only two to vote for The Pink Album - as I hinted, I assume the five votes for They Might Be Giants meant to vote Pink, but it was funnier to run with the votes as submitted since nobody really cared about the EPs / albums element

66: South Carolina
431 points, 6 votes

on John Linnell's State Songs EP, 1994 & album, 1999

I love this song. Happy it made the list, it was in my top 25

this stuff about the s/t / pink album is going right over my head - it's called they might be giants right?

South Carolina SO GOOD, I was worried I was the only State Songs Stan here. "Lift that fork, eat that snail, garçon summon up a new cocktail" one of their very finest convoluted strings of syllables.

Somehow missed "Hide Away Folk Family," yes, that's surprisingly low! To me it's one of the defining songs on the debut.

AQUARIUS: ABANDON HOPE FOR FUTURE PLANNNNS

I think I like every song where the bridge consists of one John doing a megaphone declarative over some kind of chaotic musical interlude.

^ ha ha, otm

it's called they might be giants right?

yes, but so was the sold-for-money 1985 cassette (reissued in 1993), so I called the 1986 LP "The Pink Album" in all the eligibility lists

now if you'll excuse me I need to listen to Tractor for the literally 12th time today

I tried to get back on the TMBG train with Book, and it did nothing for me. Sure is pretty though.

this might be a 'guy who has only seen Boss Baby getting a lot of Boss Baby vibes from his second movie' thing, but I listened to some Lana Del Rey for the first time recently and it reminded me of TMBG in a weird way - preoccupation with death and dissociation and mid 20th century Americana, some other stuff that I struggle to identify. I need someone to write a comparative study of Lana and TMBG.

“Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd“ could be a TMBG lyric

also sponsored by my firm belief, created by listening to all their albums in chronological order, that The Else was the point where they became a great band. rogue opinion sure but I will defend it in court sir

― imago, Wednesday, January 24, 2024 5:52 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

as someone who saw the band live three times on this tour - they definitely sounded a lot tighter and more like a classic power-pop around that era, in fact I do remember thinking that they sounded better than they did on any of the full band live recordings I had, which often felt just a little off-time or out of tune somehow. the early shows they did with the DAT machine were totally classic though.

I will always have a soft spot for those first 6 albums but yeah I way more often reach for the "newer" ones (anything from The Else on). could be that I'm just burned out on the old ones which I listened to constantly as a teenager but I do think as songwriters they've remained incredibly clever. also these albums feel a lot more solid, TMBG's whole thing back in the day was each album had 19 songs but like 5-7 of them were kind of throwaways

What album was the cut-off point for this poll?

Reading this reminded me of something neat. A couple years ago I went to see a band that had a friend of a friend in it. They played on a pirate ship here in London and as soon as they started I was like ok someone really likes tmbg. After the set I asked who the big fan was. Turned out to be the lead singer who was from Norwalk CT anyway yadda yadda yadda she and I had been at the same TMBG show in said CT town something nuts like 27 years ago.

xp It went up through "No" (2002)

My first real Rock n' roll gig was seeing TMBG in 1990 at Toad's Place. It was a 21 and over show, but the doorman let me in anyway. Probably helped that my dad was with me. Flood had been out for a couple months, but there was not a big turnout.

a poll from The Spine on would be pretty interesting if enough people vote. according to TMBW the 10 best post-2002 songs are:

Lets Get This Over With
Erase
Brontosaurus
Unpronounceable
Mrs. Bluebeard
When Will You Die?
Can't Keep Johnny Down
Museum of Idiots
ECNALUBMA
I Love You For Psychological Reasons

Could go for a comp covering "Join Us" onwards. Looking at their discography, it looks like "Up To Date" and "Modern" are collections covering that stuff?

Up to Date seems okay, dunno wtf is going on with Modern

can and will come up with ten songs that absolutely smoke those ones xxp

here I put together an hours worth of TMBG from 2010 on, imo this is a lot of the best stuff

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7abcwqaZlDgULGKj6PsRBu

okay good, stone cold coup d'etat and i'll be haunting you are on there...

and some other good choices fine

tractor and like 5 other insane bangers off mmr safe from the spotify claw alas

I had to make a lot of cuts to get it to an hour, mostly taking out some similar-sounding stuff

I can't tell you how often "No one in the world ever gets what they want, and that is beautiful. Everybody dies frustrated and sad, and that is beautiful" pops into my head. One of the all-time great lyrics.

Xposts - Toad's place! I am not from CT but my best friend growing up was so I've been to a bunch of shows there. This was at The Globe in Norwalk.