Hope That I Get Polled Before I Die: THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS 1982-2002 POLL - Voting, Campaigning, Discussing

posting from the intermission at the TMBG show:

next level commitment imo

ok done.

just woke up with "extra savoir faire," a song I pointedly do not like, stuck in my head. a sad legacy of being a teenager and listening to albums over and over and over when i first got them: apparently i know all the words. what's a man like me supposed to do?

if there's one band good at getting songs you don't like in your head....

popping in to say this is my favorite poll thread title ever

xp haha yep. Since I was reminded of "Turn Around" a couple weeks, that irritating last chorus has been in my head on and off

"Wicked Little Critta" is perhaps the best example of this but eventually I grew to actually like it

the verses of "turn around" have some great lyrics ("he had the same obsequious manner that was the reason i had him killed"; "and his face which was a paper-white mask of evil") but yeah that chorus really drags

it also figured prominently in my attempt to construct a "paul is dead"-esque conspiracy in which flansburgh and the record company murdered linnell and replaced him with a robot double circa 1993, which i'm sure i've posted about here before

I don't even mind the chorus much until that last one when they add those ear-piercing backing vocals, god. I don't think I've ever seen this conspiracy of yours, DC

"Wicked Little Critta" is perhaps the best example of this but eventually I grew to actually like it

I had exactly this reaction and struggled really hard with whether to vote for it. In the end, no, I just can't get past the dialect comedy.

looking at my musty old documents the conspiracy is pretty long and convoluted with all the clues, but the basic idea is that flans murdered linnell and replaced him with a robot double in late 1992 or early 1993, frustrated with his partner's unwillingness to compromise artistic integrity for the sake of commercial success. unusually for this kind of rock conspiracy, both linnell and flans had a foreboding sense that it would come to this, long before it in fact did, so even their earlier discography is rife with themes of fame/success, mechanization, and impending doom. a discussion of career versus art animates "put your hand inside the puppet head" but even this opens with a dead body on a city street. linnell's starving-artist integrity, and recognition that this will lead him to his doom, is clearly stated: "everybody dies frustrated and sad, and that is beautiful"; "abandon hope for future plans"; "nothing's gonna change my clothes [in the grave - read also as, nothing's gonna change my style]"; "when you're following an angel [...] you have to throw your body off a building." i'm missing notes for lincoln but the they'll need a crane material is quite revealing: the title track is about the impossibility of restoring a partnership, while flans is willing to "sacrifice friends" and "sink manhattan" (that is, east village cred) for the sake of fame. linnell is beginning to have more specific visions of death: people lunge out at him, and maybe this isn't so bad: "it's not necessary to breathe." and of course: "we're the replacements" - frauds and duplicates, "playing in a rock and roll band."

by flood the tensions in the band have grown open and bitter. linnell now feels no difference between being "dead" and being alive without artistic freedom ("there's nothing i want to do [within this partnership]"). flans for his part is insistent on the need to build on their commercial success: "to make the merry-go-round go faster [...] everyone needs to hang on tight just to keep from being thrown to the wolves." their love-hate relationship is perfectly encapsulated in the very title of "sapphire bullets of pure love," but in the text, flans mockingly roleplays his future victim: "john, i'm in bed, and they're coming after me." apollo 18 was recorded on the eve of the murder and culminates of course in the fingertips medley, which is saturated with imagery of surprise attacks, accidents and death, in particular the car accident that would indeed prove to be the modus operandi. see also the cowritten "dig my grave," and the automaton replacing a human in "the statue got me high." "turn around" is linnell outright attempting to provoke flans with a tale of an arbitrary murderer haunted by death from that point on. obviously "my evil twin" and the debating voices in "spider" factor in here too but the subtlest clue is linnell recognizing that in terms of the band's success, it was his own stubborn believe in an art deeply restorative and pure (a "glass of milk") which stood "in between extinction and the cold, and explosive radiating growth."

the robot linnell was evidently test-driven on their 1993 EPs but gets its proper debut on back to skull (where flans turns his "back" on the crime and the robot thanks him for giving him his artificial "snail shell" body). the "missing head" of mrs train, the rise of the obscure hotel detective to "run the world" and the savagely-treated corpse of "ondine" all factor in. by john henry, the robot has begun to model the original, asserting his own voice ("i should be allowed to think," "no one knows my plan") and both daring flans to "kill kill kill kill kill me now" and taunting him with images of the car crash on "subliminal" and "the end of the tour." on factory showroom, however, the robot linnell is tormented by his origins and complicity in the crime ("exquisite dead guy," "til my head falls off," "your own worst enemy") and flans feels compelled to allegorize the entire struggle to unburden himself ("xtc versus adam ant"). around the same time, the ostensibly older, unreleased tracks on then similarly trope on guilt and duplication: "the mirror on the wall won't talk to me at all now that i have everything." it's a good time for one partner ("samba time for tambo") but bad for another ("weep day for urine man"). one genuine 80s relic: an extended display of anxiety about the "big big whoredom" of success. and an emboldened flans, apparently having beaten down the double's spirit ("counterfeit fake"), is ready to mock his dead bandmate: "here's hoping you don't become a robot!" all guilt is thus banished by the time of malcolm in the middle, with flans standing front and center in the rock-star video, triumphantly declaring once and for all that "you're not the boss of me now!"

the failure to deal with lincoln reflects mainly my running out of energy for this thing and losing interest rather than being unable to incorporate it - seems like there's plenty of meat there though. this and flood are the high synthesis albums where the brimming hostility criss-crosses with their collaborative synergy. in terms of flans's crass commercialism shading into violence ("shoehorn with teeth"), and eager search for mass audiences ("i'm going down to cowtown"). "cage and aquarium" finds him formulating his plan: to "steal back your best ideas" (echoed later in the album: "i can see your secrets") and crush the iconoclast: "used to be different, now you're the same." linnell's repeated pleas for autonomy ("gimme some skin to call my own"; "i've got a match: your embrace, and my collapse"). a preoccupation with doppelgangers is already there too ("a filthy scarecrow waves its arms and does a parody of each unconscious thing you do"). in a rare lapse into pique, he even expresses frustration that his genius is carrying along this lesser talent, portraying him as "buil(ding) a little empire" through exploitation and deception. "stand on your own head!" he cries. and of course, as linnell sees ahead to the inevitable, it's not "me" but "mr. me" - a simulacrum - who will "end up sad."

FUCK, i only just realised i forgot to include 'join us' because it's not on apple music

there's seriously like eight incredible songs on that one

I like Wicked little critta! I put it in my ballot! Mr Xcitement, too.

...'join us' is from 2011

this is why i should not post the second i wake up

worth nothing that Join Us was the start of a career renaissance for them and it kicked off with a song called "Can't Keep Johnny Down"....perhaps the real Linnell was not dead after all? perhaps he was spared by some Lady & the Tiger type scheme?

'the else' is better imo

it is an admitted weakness of my theory that it cannot account for the possibility that john was only placed in suspended animation, not killed, after the "car accident."

man, "can't keep johnny down" rules, even with the serious "here comes my baby" bite. would certainly be in the top half of my ballot if this was an all-career poll.

Well, I'm convinced, DC

Now I think we should have had one poll for real Linnell TMBG and a separate one for robot Linnell TMBG.

Clearly, the natives are getting restless awaiting the poll results.

which Linnell recorded which version of Robot Parade?

huh, I thought that was Flans!

does the robot Linnell not play keyboards?

btw eephus I emailed you 12 days ago to clarify your ballot, if you don't check that address often

holy shit those are some solid DC posts

is my ballot OK now sic

Yep, thanks!

I shouldn't have looked at my ballot, I'm already second-guessing my rankings (but no I am not changing anything!)

yeah mine's insane. but a good selection of songs. made it into a playlist and it's already given me some weird/provocative juxtapositions. also has sharpened my sense of what happened/changed when the robot came in they went to the full band.

frogbs you also have a ballot-clarifying question languishing in your inbox

i'm seeing these dudes tomorrow night in Madison. probably the fifth or sixth time overall, but first time in at least 20 years. stoked!

you should be! I'd seen Them in 2001 (a show and an instore) and 2013 (a regular show and a Reverse Flood Show in a much smaller, very crammed venue), but last week was the best by far. Including the intermission - they're playing without an opener, and with a trumpet (+ other horns) player in the band - the show ran for two hours fifty. I'm sure that less than half of it was stage banter, but they were loquacious and loopy, having just flown back from a European tour, and then across North America.

It was the start of their first ever Canadian tour, as opposed to playing Vancouver or Toronto when nearby: they repeatedly pleaded to let "anyone you know in... Canada" about it, as they were spending two days driving to Edmonton and evidently expected v few people to show up. (The Vancouver venue was nowhere near capacity.) Also asked for volunteers, as they were expecting the road crew to resign at midnight, when weed became legal nationally.

Dunno if this is representative of the tour, but they played half of Flood, and only three songs released between 1998 and 2018 (but two released in the last month).

Set 1:

The Communists Have The Music [released 11 September 2018]
Damn Good Times [The Spine 2004]
Hey, Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had A Deal [1980s B-side]
Particle Man [Flood 1990]
[incorporating Chandelier by Sia]
The Famous Polka [1980s B-side]
Birdhouse In Your Soul [Flood]
Doctor Worm [single 1998]
The Guitar [Apollo 18 1992]
Why Does The Sun Shine? [cover played since 1980s]
Don't Let's Start [The Pink Album 1986]
All Time What [released January 2018]
Mrs. Bluebeard [I Like Fun 2018]
Which Describes How You're Feeling [Apollo 18]
Spy [John Henry 1994]

Set 2:

"Quiet Storm" section - acoustic with electronic drums:
- How Can I Sing Like A Girl? [Factory Showroom 1996]
- I Like Fun [I Like Fun]
- Applause Applause Applause [released 20 September 2018]
- Letterbox [Flood]
Istanbul (Not Constantinople) [Flood]
The Mesopotamians [The Else 2007]
Twisting [Flood]
Let's Get This Over With [I Like Fun]
Your Racist Friend [Flood]
Whistling In The Dark [Flood]
Let Me Tell You About My Operation [Dial-A-Song Direct 2015]
Ana Ng [Lincoln 1988]
She's An Angel [The Pink Album]
Fingertips [Apollo 18]

Encore 1:

The End Of The Tour [JH]
They Might Be Giants [Flood]

Encore 2:

New York City [FS]
Dead [Flood]

anyway, results rolling out over here: YOUTH CULTURE POLLED MY DOG: They Might Be Giants (first 21 years) POLL RESULTS

holy shit that setlist! i was wrong, the Madison show is tonight, not last night. still stoked.

a fun song about being intimidated by the sheer songwriting power of john & john: https://theparanoidstyle.bandcamp.com/track/the-peculiar-case-of-the-human-song-generator

aw