They really are might be giants

Monday night I attended the They Might be Giants show, the existence of which I had completely forgotten about until a coworker presented me with the two tickets he’d procured on my behalf. It was one of those deals where a month ago a general call of “who wants They Might be Giants tickets” went up, and I responded in the affirmative and then promptly forgot about it. Monday afternoon I was scrambling to find someone willing to buy my other ticket, but didn’t have to look far before finding Roark.

The show at the Moore wasn’t exactly epic, since the band performing is goofy to the last riff, but was entertaining and well worth the price of entry. They opened for themselves, playing a series of songs they’d written about various venues at which they had performed earlier in the tour. In between each short song, John Roderick of Barsuk Records’ The Long Winters narrated a little story, written by The Giants, about each venue in order to set the scene. My personal favorite lyric: “So put away that crack pipe and put some makeup on that bruise / We’re going to the House of Blues.” The actual show was a good mix of classic hits and newer songs, such as the ones featured on their latest album, Here Come the ABC’s, which is a 27-song alphabet-themed offering. No other band could get away with that. Between songs the two Johns endlessly invited us to applaud their three temporary band mates and bantered with one another. I hadn’t ever seen them live before, and it’s clearer to me now that I have than ever before that their musical greatness derives immediately from their wry sense of humor. Roark enjoyed himself even more than I did, if such a thing were possible.

Two other things are worth noting. First, Roark and I went for an overly expensive drink in the downstairs bar during intermission. The bouncer subjected me to the singular most rigorous ID check I’ve ever experienced, holding my license up right next to my face and examining it with his flashlight, looking for differences in the live human before him for what seemed like hours. I felt very young afterwards. I had no preference on alcohol, so when Roark suggested rum and pineapple I readily agreed. For those of you who didn’t know, Roark is a die-hard heterosexual who is often mistaken upon first meeting for a lithe gay man. It’s a combination of factors. When he ordered two rum and pineapples for us, the bartender gave us a look that made me one hundred percent certain he had pictured us naked and spent, entangled in each other’s sweaty limbs. Second, the crowd at the show was a little older than I’m used to in Seattle, which I guess makes sense given that the band is decades old. Watching the audience file out of the theater after the show, I compared them to — Roark agrees this is apt — a Weezer crowd, but ten years later.

Finally, if you enjoy the zany musical stylings of They Might be Giants, I emphatically recommend The Magnetic Fields, which I’ve told several people is TMBG for a new generation. Start with their three-disc uber-album 69 Love Songs. It is readily available on the intarwebs for the cheapskates in the audience.