They Might Be Giants - C/D, S/D, OPO etc

First set was probably a tech rehearsal, given some of the glitches still in the first few songs here.

yeah, it’s a mess, i bailed

I kept it on for background listening once the audio settled down, but gave up on looking at it almost immediately.

I put a playlist together of my favorite Glean/Phone Power songs:

1) Erase
2) Apophenia
3) I Love You for Psychological Reasons
4) Music Jail, Pt 1 & 2
5) Answer
6) ECNALUMBA
7) End of the Rope
8) All the Lazy Boyfriends
9) It Said Something
10) Impossibly New
11) Unpronounceable
12) I'll Be Haunting You
13) I'm a Coward
14) Aaa
15) Shape Shifter
16) Let Me Tell You About My Operation
17) I Wasn't Listening

I think, when listened to this way, it would be maybe their strongest single album ever?

don't suppose you've got that put together on a streaming service somewhere, do ya?

worth noting, i guess, that apparently TMBG has to move all its merch from one warehouse to another, and as a result they've put lots of stuff on mega-sale. some stuff 30% off, some 80%, some in between. i grabbed a couple of LPs and some stuff i don't really need (keychain, air freshener, etc), but was bummed because the FLOOD picture disc sold out while it was in my cart.

the shipping costs are expensive, but YMMV

if I can remember my Spotify login I could throw it in a playlist

I noticed that sale too, kinda funny cuz I just ordered the 2 LPs I was missing last week

for whatever reason they seem to be really overstocked on Nanobots, it was a free throw in with any other LP for a while and now it's just 10 bucks. its a really good album too, people should buy it

I ordered the John Henry demos and My Murdered Remains, but put back the reissue of the debut when I saw how much shipping was.

One of these days, I should really listen to the albums that came out between Factory Showroom and I Like Fun. I don't think I've ever listened to any of them, at least not more than a song or two.

see if this works for you:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6E4745G3aaX6shYJEazCZo

the band definitely stumbled around a bit after Factory Showroom, I think Mink Car & The Spine are probably their two weakest (excluding the kids albums which you can't really judge). Everything after that is pretty solid though. I like The Else a lot but I think for most fans Join Us is where they really came back

their first 3 releases are the best as are their label mates the dead milkmen first 3 releases!

Mink Car def a low point - probably the only TMBG album I never want to listen to again

They're still incredible songwriting machines after all this time though, still love 'em

when i was super into TMBG - 25 years ago, in my teens and early 20s - i didn't really differentiate between the two johns, who was singing what, who had obviously written what, etc. i just enjoyed the band.

these days, i approach their music differently and it has become clear to me that John Linnell is one of the greatest rock 'n' roll songwriters of the past half-century.

that playlist worked, frogbs, thanks! and thanks for the post-Factory pointers. i'll start with Join Us and The Else.

I used to listen to their albums nearly every day on my paper route and it never occurred to me that there were two singers

totally agree about John Linnell - I'd love to read an actual musician explain what makes his songwriting so unique, his progressions sound very distinct to me but I can't quite peg why. I remember some long article about Flood where a lot of their peers talked about how deceivingly complex "Birdhouse" was, that it had way more chords than your typical pop song and that's why it's so memorable. for example, a song like "Unpronounceable", it's not particularly experimental or strange but it's got his unique stamp on it. if any other artist did it I think I'd recognize it as being influenced by him.

totally agreed about john L's largely unappreciated genius. i spent a lot of time and words in the ballot poll threads realizing this and trying to articulate some of it... but yeah, would love to hear someone who really "gets" songwriting examine his stuff.

i'm not a theory expert, but even his songs without complex chord progressions have hyperactive, tricky melodies (i'm particularly thinking of "she's an angel," which only uses I IV V in E (the simplest guitar chords imaginable) but manages to use every note in the scale in many different interval combinations. it's also kind of weird how the intro and verse of the song is built around the V chord, which adds a mounting sense of unease and tension before the comedy of linnell's situation comes through with the tonic in the pre-chorus and chorus

i'm realizing now that there's a minor chord in the chorus of that song but whatever. the chorus melody could be a bach minuet.

If we're doing "John Linnell as unrecognized songwriting genius of the late 20th / early 21st c." then I am once again asking you to listen to his incredible solo record, State Songs

https://www.theymightbegiants.com/state-songs

oh i very much include State Songs in my assessment of him

literally once every six months i look up its release date so i can think about pitching a 20-year anniversary piece somewhere (to be rejected, of course). and every time, i realize (again) that i missed it.

apologies if this has been posted before, but i watched it a while back and really enjoyed it. the grainy quality gives it a serious "unearthed treasure" vibe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozYJ7zi8cyk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga9nI_qeQa8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6igO_fLQbSE

I assume he has been asked 100 times over the years if he will ever do another record of state songs. Anyone remember his answer?

I loved how he performed other "State Songs" during those shows like "North to Alaska" and "California Uber Alles"

my copy of I Like Fun arrived today, man does "By The Time You Get This" feel very relevant right now

new album finally came in the mail, only listened once but I really liked it. maybe the only TMBG album where I thought every song was good on the first spin.

I just found out that apparently if you join their fanclub at the highest tier they will record a custom ringtone for you with your name in it. I guess when you have the ability to write a tune in 15 minutes you might as well make some money off it

their first 3 releases are the best but they lost me after that pretty much except Can't Keep Johnny Down is good!

as usual the new album made me Google a bunch of stuff, "If Day for Winnipeg" is a pretty cool slice of history. weird to hear them doing overtly political stuff like this now

I think they're completely excellent up to and including John Henry, and there's lots of rad stuff in amongst the rest, but it's definitely an "in small doses" thing for me past that point.
I say that as someone with all the releases including bonus CDs and whatnot, and for some reason even a member of the current Instant Fan Club.
I've moved on, but they're still a nice place to visit.

thats all accurate

idk if I just burned myself out on the early stuff when I was younger but I actually get more mileage out of the newer albums these days. Join Us, Nanobots, Phone Power, I Like Fun, Book...maybe the high points aren't as great but overall I think these albums are more solid track-for-track. in part I think this is because I get to see them live a lot, and hearing the new songs alongside the old helps you appreciate how good some of them are. I actually don't think their songwriting has changed a whole lot in the last three decades.

that said getting into those first 4-5 albums as a teenager is the sort of thing you can't really replicate, idk if I'll ever again just slam an album on repeat for a few weeks the way I did with Flood and Apollo 18. but when I'm in the mood for them I always seem to pick something new

So I'm guessing you guys would say NOT to buy that package of BOOK

I have the BOOK of BOOK and it's very pretty and has recent lyrics and things in arty fashion.
It's definitely a fan thing. I am not quite at the level but enjoy the fun inherent in the Instant Fan Club.

this bit from a JL interview is fascinating (the getting pulled off YouTube part...I didn't know it could do that):

We seem to specialize in finding complicated things to do, although sometimes we do simple things, and that works really well. Last year we learned how to play one of our songs, “Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love,” backward. We taught the band to play all the notes in reverse order, and John and I learned to sing the song phonetically in reverse order. It took weeks. But not only did we pull it off, we played it live just just before the COVID lockdown started up. We were on tour and we got to play it a few times. Somebody took a video of it, and then whatever the robot is that figures out what songs are under copyright heard our backwards version and could tell what song it was, and tried to ban it from YouTube. Once we start touring again, we’re hoping to revive it, because we spent so long learning how to do it.

sheesh...right after their first post-pandemic show

An important message from John L. pic.twitter.com/S3YHMdrH7N

— They Might Be Giants (@tmbg) June 9, 2022

Oh no, poor John F. When I'm back in the US, I really hope to see these guys again

Oh man, that tour is cursed. I was going to see them Saturday for a show that had been postponed mutiple times due to COVID.

Feel so lucky I got to see them back in March of 2020, when it was just an uneasy air of “this may be the last thing we do for the next few weeks”

It was a great show by the way. The Flood set was good but the second set was even gooder. All the best to Flans.

Damn this sucks

I am thinking about their feelings and about fan disappointment, but my hard-headed son asked a good question; is this going to be OK for them financially? I have no concept of what the business of being They Might Be Giants looks like.

I kind of feel like Gloria from the Dial-A-Song answering machine: "But what kind of money does he make? It don't make no sense. Well, he don't make any money, right?"

I am purely speculating here, but I would hope/guess/think they will be fine. Smart guys, at it for many years (hopefully they learned long ago and have been doing it right for a long time), made many licensing / royalty deals, played many sold-out shows, etc.

The two Johns, I mean. The rest of the band obviously would be different.

They had already (re-)re-scheduled the 2020 Flood tour into a series of 2-3 week regional tours stretching into 2023, to limit the financial liability of any one mini-leg getting cancelled by covid. In that light, it seems plausible that this will be a major financial hit to the business and their band/crew seasonal employees.

They Might Be Broke

Sad to hear about John F, hope he recovers quickly

Someone uploaded the recent show to D1m3adozen, and included this link, which may be of interest -

"PS, I've got a google drive fulla older (mostly TMBG) cassette bootlegs I've recently obtained and digitized. I don't have enough time in the world to try and put all on here individually. Feel free to share these wherever. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1H9ICuR0cjVNBph3kbuqWzEomc2EGQAqQ "

very good link, thanks!

I'm listening to a Jan & Dean compilation I made years ago but never put on again until now...I grew much more familiar with They Might Be Giants in the interim, and listening to these Jan & Dean cuts now it sounds like they both could've been the same band had they never aged and left behind surf and California culture after moving to Brooklyn. Their musical sensibility and even the physical character of their voices sound eerily similar. It's even more amusing when I realize the biggest TMBG fan I personally know lives in Pasadena.