They Might Be Giants opened its Philadelphia concert at the Theater of the Living Arts with the aptly named, "How Do You Spell TLA?" The number exists because the band wrote customized venue songs for each stop on their 2004 Spine on the Hiway Tour. Of course they did.
TMBG has a song for everything. "Minimum Wage" uses only two words to express the band's views on labor laws, "Why Does The Sun Shine? " contains valuable and accurate information about nuclear fusion and "Man, It's So Loud In Here" tackles a tough scenario that everyone has experienced at some point (whether at a club or a train station).
However, after 30 years of capturing the absurd and mundane in alternative rock, TMBG shows no sign of slowing and still draws large crowds. The group publicized their new album, Join Us, throughout their set and foreshadowed upcoming projects.
The band's front men, John Flansburgh and John Linnell, embodied their established stage roles from the start. Flansburgh interacted with the audience, telling jokes and stories, while Linnell remained quiet, biding his time.
The band performed a mix of new material and classic favorites, and got equally positive responses for everything on their spectrum. The 1988 hit "Ana Ng" got cheers, but so did 2007's "The Mesopotamians" and songs from their new album like "Can't Keep Johnny Down" and "Old Pine Box."
About a third of the way into the show, Flansburgh led the audience in one of the band's "disreputable social experiments" called Ape Club. He took an industrial flashlight and shone it into the middle of the audience, dividing the group into two teams. The audience to stage right of the beam became the "people" and the other half became the "apes." The band members were also divided and the audience had to chant their team name when their corresponding musicians played.
The audience organized quickly and followed the experiment's instructions exactly, to Flansburgh's immense disappointment. They chanted at the right times, they were quiet and they jumped when Flansburgh said jump.
Later, the Johns performed as their sock puppet alter egos, The Avatars Of They. Both did voices and manipulated props (such as a cardboard cutout of Meg Ryan's head) to give the muppet-like characters personality.
Though The Avatars of They might have been offputting to another crowd, the audience had clearly been waiting for them and seemed to undertand the story behind their creation. This insight extended to all of the group's antics. Band t-shirts (including tour shirts) were everywhere and the general enthusiasm level was high.
In the 80s, the TMBG lineup consisted soley of the Johns accompanied by prerecorded loops and a drum machine. Flansburgh played guitar and Linnell doubled on keyboard, reeds and accordian. The group filled out in the 90s to include drums, bass and additional guitars, but the original emphasis on technology is still obvious.
"Artistically I think we always kind of knew what we wanted out of it," Flansburgh said in a 2010 NY1 interview.
TMBG has maintained a shockingly consistent sound over the last 30 years, and though some criticize them for a lack of growth, their fans have certainly remained loyal to their upbeat, off-topic material and rock steady sound. Even their forays into children's music have been popular with the adult crowd.
To be fair, TMBG isn't for everyone. The fanbase seems somwhat insular and it probably wouldn't be the best idea to attend a TMBG concert cold without knowing what to expect. The group uses humor to draw people in, though.
For example, at one point Flansburgh shone his enormous flashlight on a loudmouth at the venue bar. "This light has three settings," he said, "light, lasik and eject." The audience definitely bonded over laughing at the belligerent drunk.
Overall, the most amazing thing about TMBG is that it is still going strong and sounding awesome. Linnell continues to maintain his inexplicable good looks and every song the group performs is still out there in some way.
Basically, TMBG is still weird, which is actually a hard quality to maintain for three decades.
