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

I just really like the weird way the words fall in the rhythm of the line

i genuinely prefer the last 21 years to the first 21 years. i would be extremely interested in a relevant poll

this idea sponsored by me listening to My Murdered Remains repeatedly this morning and just shaking my head at how great it is

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

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.