My wife and I saw TMBG a couple of months ago. I'm a big fan, but she mostly just listens when it's my turn to control the radio. Over the course of the concert, she kept shooting me these surprised and baffled looks. I asked her what was up with that afterwards.
"I thought those were weird songs you made up to sing to the cat! Who writes a song called Dr Worm?"
I can't imagine how surreal it must be to see a band play your spouse's silly cat songs in front of hundreds of cheering fans.
cantSpellSober · 34d ago
The live experience is something to be seen, it's not just the two Jons playing Birdhouse in Your Soul.
They have a very large band including a lot of wind instruments, and they really have fun with it. (Spoiler alert) they've taken to playing Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love in reverse, filming it live, then playing that recording in reverse for the audience (post-intermission).
VyseofArcadia · 34d ago
They did the Sapphire Bullets trick in the show I saw. It was pretty dang impressive. I love that they tour with a horn section now, and hearing new arrangements of old favorites that make use of the horn section was great. (And of course new favorites written with the horn section in mind from the get go were also great.)
I also enjoyed that they introduced Birdhouse with "Please rise for the They Might Be Giants national anthem."
tbyehl · 33d ago
> they really have fun with it.
Isn't that, like, everything? The first time I saw them it was because they were here, it was affordable, and I dug that Malcom in the Middle song, so why not? The second time was just because they're fun. There will be a next time and it will again be just because they're fun.
And I'm still not sure I could name another of their songs.
timtas · 32d ago
I saw their Flood tour. Variety Playhouse Atlanta 1990.
No band, just the two of them. Plus the metronome, and some prerecorded backup here and there.
nkozyra · 33d ago
Definitely one of the most unique bands to (kind of) "make it" and have some staying power.
My best friend and I saw them when we were 13. I don't know what TMBG concerts are like in the last 15-20 years, but there were maybe 100 people there. Great concert, my first, had a lot of fun.
The two of us both stayed around to meet the Johns. Waited 30 or 45 minutes in the newly brightened room as the place cleared out and all the roadies packed up. Finally they emerged, with the two of us the only ones left. We asked for their autographs and they said "sorry, kids, if we gave you autographs we'd have to give everyone an autograph" and laughed out the door.
We kind of instinctively looked around the room to indicate we _were_ everyone, but maybe that was the joke. To a 13 year old it didn't sour anything, but can't deny we weren't disappointed.
dsr_ · 33d ago
> I don't know what TMBG concerts are like in the last 15-20 years, but there were maybe 100 people there.
Like that, but bigger, and eventually with more people on stage.
And every so often, giant puppet heads.
devin · 34d ago
[Verse 1]
They call me Doctor Worm
Good morning, how are you? I'm Doctor Worm
I'm interested in things
I'm not a real doctor
But I am a real worm, I am an actual worm
I live like a worm
[Verse 2]
I like to play the drums
I think I'm getting good
But I can handle criticism
I'll show you what I know
And you can tell me if you think I'm getting better on the drums
I'll leave the front unlocked 'cause I can't hear the doorbell
JohnDeHope · 33d ago
> I'm interested in things
This song, and this particular line, are a part of my religion.
gopher_space · 33d ago
My “career arc” is scamming people into paying me to learn, and I’m good at it.
echelon · 33d ago
Best career arc. That's what work is supposed to be.
mrbluecoat · 34d ago
So true. My kids didn't believe me when I said I didn't make up "The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas" song:
This is amazing! Such an imaginative band, not 1000 of the same crap we hear today.
sophacles · 33d ago
In 1990 I was 10. The music you heard most of the time was "1000 of the same crap we hear every day".
I made a similar comment to my parents, about how music in the 60s and 70s was all so good, not like the crap today. They responded by telling me: "We were there, it was mostly crap".
I've paid attention since that conversation, and come to the conclusion that: most music for most time periods is crap. Some of it is good enough to be remembered. Some of it is nostoligic to a time/place/scene and will be remembered. But most of it, is just crap clones of crap songs.
The best music seems to come from relatively obscure/underground scenes and then grows outward from there. Sometimes the awareness cone may miss your own light cone for a while and you only learn about a song years later. That's ok, it happens to everyone. Sometimes you don't realize how good a song was because you didn't have some of the life experience or knowledge or perspective to see how great it was - that's ok too. Often you'll revist a song that just hit right for the moment and it turns out that you were wrong about it's greatness... it was awful after all (but you have a bit of guilty nostalgia about it anyway)... thats OK too.
Point being there's always good music being made, and if you want to catch it fresh you gotta expand your exposure to more music from different genres/scenes/etc. I'm 100% certain that there is incredible new music being made somewhere, right now, as you read this.
deater · 33d ago
it's funny how songs with ridiculous lyrics seem unbelievable (especially across generations) can turn out to be real. My father, whose name was Michael, would always sing the chorus from "Playground in my Mind" and we were convinced he was making it up.
Similarly if you ever get a chance you should read the Dave Barry book "Book of Bad Songs" where he relates singing "MacArthur Park" to his increasingly incredulous son.
jcalabro · 33d ago
I had a similar experience with my girlfriend and Dr. Worm - genuinely one of my favorite songs of all time!
msarnoff · 34d ago
When I was in kindergarten or very early elementary school (maybe 1991/1992) there was an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures with animated music videos for Particle Man and Istanbul. It still lives in my head today.
I didn’t even know they were a real band until I was older and knew I recognized those songs from somewhere.
That was a surreal episode and probably the one that was cemented in my head the most. I had a friend who was a big fan and had introduced me to them before that.
My copy of flood might have been the first music I ever bought with my own money.
Myself, went from causal to super fan after watching the above. Highly recommend.
FollowingTheDao · 34d ago
I went to high school with Robin Goldwasser, who is married to John Flansburgh.
I’m really only bringing this up to say that my public high school in the 1980s fostered a creativity that I didn’t see when I was a teacher in high schools in the 1990s.
She was in my art class and my art teacher was excellent, but if I’m remembering right, she was also in my photography class where we had a dark room with unlimited access.
I also love the band by the way, even before I found out that her and John were married. Great lyrics and really imaginative compositions.
codeulike · 34d ago
They are still going! Recent album 'Book' is brilliant. Heres a fan video made using Google Sheets for final track of Book - Less Than One
If you know the song, you'll understand why charts and presentation slides work as a video for this
greatquux · 33d ago
seconded, that's some classic linnell right there!
jyounker · 33d ago
I've been to only one They Might Be Giants concert. Half the audience were little kids, and yet it's the only concert I've ever been too that was shut down by the cops.
It was hilarious to see one of the John's being hauled off stage by the police as he was playing Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein".
I remember listening to a small college radio station back in the day, around the time Flood landed, and the DJ comes on talking about his experience with TMBG. He talked about the time they were in town and stopped by the radio station to do an interview with him. He sees these two guys walking in carrying gear and says to them "Great! Wheres the band?" to which one of them replies "We are the band". Egg on face moment for sure, but I just love how they look like two normal guys not rock stars.
No comments yet
akharris · 33d ago
I was six when Flood came out. My brother had a bootleg copy, which I later "borrowed" and carried around with me in my walkman (also "borrowed"). It was so...different than anything any of my friends listened to, and I loved it.
But maybe the greatest thing about Flood was seeing Particle Man and Istanbul on Tiny Toons. It was as if all my favorite weird things in the world (at least for a kid) were part of the same pocket universe.
I still find myself humming different songs from Flood on the regular, unprompted. Thanks for posting this.
nycdotnet · 34d ago
Saw these guys on JoCo a few weeks ago. Great set. Birdhouse in your soul was one of our wedding songs. Hard to believe Flood is 35 years old. Thanks for linking this.
eichin · 33d ago
It's amused me for years that among all the songs I listen to that "can't possibly be that old", the album leadin track is self-documenting: "our brand new record // for nineteen ninety"...
AgentK20 · 32d ago
Hi boat friend!
eitally · 34d ago
TMBG was the first band I ever saw live. For some reason, they made a tour stop at the local women's college in my town and a few friends & I went. This was in 1993, in an auditorium that sat about 500. Super fun live and lots of crowd interaction. The songs are so short, too, that it felt like they played about fifty.
I went to see them again about twenty years later, at a larger venue, and it was just as fun. No one else in my family seems to really like them, though. :)
mtalantikite · 33d ago
Just stopping by to say that pastry/coffee shop lasted for something like 100 years in the East Village before closing about a decade ago. I remember dropping in from time to time at night with friends when I was in my early 20s and new to the city -- it was these spots that always made the city feel like magic, but unfortunately we've lost a ton of them.
tetris11 · 34d ago
I saw them in Shepherds Bush for their last tour. Fantastic act, tiny arena, rammed full of people all singing the same silly songs.
Everyone around me was German, or spoke German, or had worked in Berlin at some point in their lives. I made a few friends.
I can't wait to see these guys perform again.
technothrasher · 34d ago
I haven't seen them in ages, but I must have seen them six or seven times on the college circuit back in the early 90's. Always a great show. I loved when they turned on a radio and searched around randomly for a song that the audience responded to, and then tried to play it. They tried Pink Floyd's "Money" and failed pretty spectacularly. It was hilarious.
Their old "dial a song" where you could call their phone number and hear a recording of them playing something new inspired me to hack unused voicemail boxes at college and record their songs as the greeting message. I then posted flyers by the public phones with the extensions and the song on the extension. It lasted for about a semester before the school got grumpy and locked down unused mailboxes.
adzm · 33d ago
Dial-a-Song felt like magic back when I was younger, thanks for the nostalgia hit!
mysterydip · 34d ago
Played that album to death when it was new. I never knew this promo existed, thanks for sharing!
jcims · 34d ago
My daughter is a huge fan of TMBG. I like a few of their songs but honestly it's not my favorite music. BUT I went to a concert with her up and Cleveland and it was an *incredible* show. I loved every minute of it.
skeeter2020 · 33d ago
If you are looking for another similar magical conert experience and get the chance, take your daughter to The Flaming Lips. Some of their music is pretty accessible, some of it quite challenging but the show was so much fun and there was a 8(ish) year old in a unicorn onesie perched on a riser near the stage for the entire show. The put on their own brand of arena show theatrics even for smaller venues. Highly recommended!
generj · 33d ago
The Aquabats are another band that are kooky magical fun for all ages.
Why don’t all concerts consist of a band of superheroes getting into fights against comic book villains?
jcims · 33d ago
Love it!!! Thank you!
flanbiscuit · 34d ago
Curious why when they mention Instanbul (Not Constantinople) it's quiet when all of the other songs have little audio snippets. Is that a rights issue?
They toured for the Flood album a year or 2 ago and I missed it. It sold out real fast. They are on tour again, probably for new stuff. Reading everyone's comments here about how good their shows are, I think I'm going to check them out (if they are not sold out again)
creeble · 33d ago
Probably, it's a cover of a Four Lads song written by Simon & Kennedy in the 50's.
It is such an iconic album from the 90s. I highly recommend it if you haven't listened to it. It won't be everyone's thing, but there are a lot of great songs on it. I listen to Dead regularly.
jojohack · 34d ago
Listened to Flood continuously in high school. In many ways, I felt it empowered me to embrace my own weirdness.
6LLvveMx2koXfwn · 33d ago
genius:
I'm going down to Cowtown, cow's a friend to me
Lives beneath the ocean so that's where I will be
Beneath the waves, the waves, that's where I will be
I'm gonna see the cow beneath the Sea
from memory, listening on loop as a teenager 35 years ago!
vlowther · 33d ago
From I Palindrome I, few albums later on Apollo 18:
Son, I am able, she said, though you scare me. Watch, said I. Beloved, I said, watch me scare you though. Said she, able am I, son.
Brilliant.
theonething · 33d ago
I don't really get the meaning. Would love an explanation.
Doxin · 33d ago
I feel like most TMBG songs don't really have a meaning as such. Sure is a fun sequence of words to sing though!
gorfian_robot · 33d ago
IMHO the funniest thing they do is refer to themselves unironically as a "rock and roll band"
wyclif · 34d ago
Anybody here remember calling Dial-A-Song back in the day?
There's something so quaint and comforting in revisiting the world of peak post-modernist "sarcastic irony" that infused everything in this era. It was just so damned sure of itself.
pan69 · 33d ago
The Istanbul song is still floating around in memes today but I totally forgot about Birdhouse in Your Soul. Listening to the Flood album now. Thanks for posting!
hinkley · 31d ago
There was a code coverage tool for node called Istanbul. When they did a new front end for it they called it nyc.
I've been seeing them live since these days. I recently took my two teenage sons to see them. They're both fans. But, during the second encore, one son turned to me and said "Dad, I'm tired. Can we go?"
I pointed to John and John on stage who were working hard and said "You know, those two guys are senior citizens, right"
rhelz · 34d ago
My wife knew their Drummer when she was a P.R. and Analyst relations executive with IBM. He was working for IBM research.
Gormo · 34d ago
Seems fitting, since their original drummer was an electronic drum machine.
iconjack · 33d ago
I started a TMBG fan club called Church of the Possible Giants around the time this album was released. One of the requirements for membership is that your given first name is John. If you want to join, drop me a line, convince me your name is John, and I will send you a CotPG pencil.
(I don't know if they wrote it, but their performance is awesome).
I noticed the blank spot in the promo. Probably a rights thing. :(
moon2 · 32d ago
I don't know what TMBG has to do with Hacker News but I dig it so much. It surprised me seeing such a cool band alongside a lot of tech articles for a bit :)
I feel like Jonathan Coulton, Tally Hall and Neil Cicierega are the TMBG equivalents for 2000s kids like me.
TMBG's "Older" track was included by default on some windows installs as part of the media player library circa early 2000s. That's how I found out about them anyway. I'm trying to find more info but seems it was specific to dell machines of the time.
raldi · 33d ago
EPK stands for Electronic Press Kit
nserrino · 33d ago
They are just incredible live ... Flood was the soundtrack of my childhood. It's great to see how many fans on HN they have. If you have a chance to check them out in concert, do it!
seliopou · 33d ago
I have a copy of Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson signed by They Might Be Giants, somewhere.
gryfft · 34d ago
They were my favorite band as a kid. They're still my favorite band now.
intrasight · 33d ago
I saw them in Toronto that year. 1990.
OK, wow, that was a long time ago.
disruptiveink · 33d ago
Ah, yes, The color of infinity, inside an empty glass.
arnorhs · 33d ago
Sorry to be the debby downer, but this feels completely irrelevant to HN. Why on earth is this allowed to fly? Is there some context that I'm missing?
JohnDeHope · 33d ago
Pff. HN has rebranded to become the DOGE News Network. If you want a more curated technical experience, I recommend https://lobste.rs. There's much less latitude for non-technical stuff.
skeeter2020 · 33d ago
It's pretty cool that they "made it" touring colleges and getting airplay on their radio stations, then signed to a big label (maybe as part of the FOMO around 90's grunge/alternative?) then just kept cranking out innovative music and media projects, then win a Grammy for their kids work. With the next generation of TMBG fans queued up I'm excited to see what they do next - something that could be the sort of AI-fueled shift we've been waiting for?
dsr_ · 33d ago
Nobody wants AI-fueled shit music.
I mean, nobody in the set of people who enjoy listening to music. I suppose there are a lot of record-industry companies who would prefer not having to deal with pesky artists.
"I thought those were weird songs you made up to sing to the cat! Who writes a song called Dr Worm?"
I can't imagine how surreal it must be to see a band play your spouse's silly cat songs in front of hundreds of cheering fans.
They have a very large band including a lot of wind instruments, and they really have fun with it. (Spoiler alert) they've taken to playing Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love in reverse, filming it live, then playing that recording in reverse for the audience (post-intermission).
I also enjoyed that they introduced Birdhouse with "Please rise for the They Might Be Giants national anthem."
Isn't that, like, everything? The first time I saw them it was because they were here, it was affordable, and I dug that Malcom in the Middle song, so why not? The second time was just because they're fun. There will be a next time and it will again be just because they're fun.
And I'm still not sure I could name another of their songs.
No band, just the two of them. Plus the metronome, and some prerecorded backup here and there.
My best friend and I saw them when we were 13. I don't know what TMBG concerts are like in the last 15-20 years, but there were maybe 100 people there. Great concert, my first, had a lot of fun.
The two of us both stayed around to meet the Johns. Waited 30 or 45 minutes in the newly brightened room as the place cleared out and all the roadies packed up. Finally they emerged, with the two of us the only ones left. We asked for their autographs and they said "sorry, kids, if we gave you autographs we'd have to give everyone an autograph" and laughed out the door.
We kind of instinctively looked around the room to indicate we _were_ everyone, but maybe that was the joke. To a 13 year old it didn't sour anything, but can't deny we weren't disappointed.
Like that, but bigger, and eventually with more people on stage.
And every so often, giant puppet heads.
They call me Doctor Worm
Good morning, how are you? I'm Doctor Worm
I'm interested in things
I'm not a real doctor
But I am a real worm, I am an actual worm
I live like a worm
[Verse 2]
I like to play the drums
I think I'm getting good
But I can handle criticism
I'll show you what I know
And you can tell me if you think I'm getting better on the drums
I'll leave the front unlocked 'cause I can't hear the doorbell
This song, and this particular line, are a part of my religion.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=3JdWlSF195Y
And the melody is a variation of the traditional song "The Girl I Left Behind" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_I_Left_Behind), which dates at least to the 17th century.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6q3s1MI6NE
I made a similar comment to my parents, about how music in the 60s and 70s was all so good, not like the crap today. They responded by telling me: "We were there, it was mostly crap".
I've paid attention since that conversation, and come to the conclusion that: most music for most time periods is crap. Some of it is good enough to be remembered. Some of it is nostoligic to a time/place/scene and will be remembered. But most of it, is just crap clones of crap songs.
The best music seems to come from relatively obscure/underground scenes and then grows outward from there. Sometimes the awareness cone may miss your own light cone for a while and you only learn about a song years later. That's ok, it happens to everyone. Sometimes you don't realize how good a song was because you didn't have some of the life experience or knowledge or perspective to see how great it was - that's ok too. Often you'll revist a song that just hit right for the moment and it turns out that you were wrong about it's greatness... it was awful after all (but you have a bit of guilty nostalgia about it anyway)... thats OK too.
Point being there's always good music being made, and if you want to catch it fresh you gotta expand your exposure to more music from different genres/scenes/etc. I'm 100% certain that there is incredible new music being made somewhere, right now, as you read this.
Similarly if you ever get a chance you should read the Dave Barry book "Book of Bad Songs" where he relates singing "MacArthur Park" to his increasingly incredulous son.
I didn’t even know they were a real band until I was older and knew I recognized those songs from somewhere.
Istanbul: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqJXxHi6RwQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkVHdUkMJdk&pp=ygUIZHIuIHdvc...
https://www.reddit.com/r/tmbg/comments/1f31sx5/hes_a_real_dr...
(I don't know if he plays the drums)
My copy of flood might have been the first music I ever bought with my own money.
I’m really only bringing this up to say that my public high school in the 1980s fostered a creativity that I didn’t see when I was a teacher in high schools in the 1990s.
She was in my art class and my art teacher was excellent, but if I’m remembering right, she was also in my photography class where we had a dark room with unlimited access.
I also love the band by the way, even before I found out that her and John were married. Great lyrics and really imaginative compositions.
https://youtu.be/PP5bnfkQevo
If you know the song, you'll understand why charts and presentation slides work as a video for this
It was hilarious to see one of the John's being hauled off stage by the police as he was playing Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein".
sounds like the concert in question
No comments yet
But maybe the greatest thing about Flood was seeing Particle Man and Istanbul on Tiny Toons. It was as if all my favorite weird things in the world (at least for a kid) were part of the same pocket universe.
I still find myself humming different songs from Flood on the regular, unprompted. Thanks for posting this.
I went to see them again about twenty years later, at a larger venue, and it was just as fun. No one else in my family seems to really like them, though. :)
Everyone around me was German, or spoke German, or had worked in Berlin at some point in their lives. I made a few friends.
I can't wait to see these guys perform again.
Their old "dial a song" where you could call their phone number and hear a recording of them playing something new inspired me to hack unused voicemail boxes at college and record their songs as the greeting message. I then posted flyers by the public phones with the extensions and the song on the extension. It lasted for about a semester before the school got grumpy and locked down unused mailboxes.
Why don’t all concerts consist of a band of superheroes getting into fights against comic book villains?
https://youtu.be/C-tQSFQ-ESY?si=9Ujs3-1nVjjeoncO&t=71
They toured for the Flood album a year or 2 ago and I missed it. It sold out real fast. They are on tour again, probably for new stuff. Reading everyone's comments here about how good their shows are, I think I'm going to check them out (if they are not sold out again)
Son, I am able, she said, though you scare me. Watch, said I. Beloved, I said, watch me scare you though. Said she, able am I, son.
Brilliant.
You still can
edit: say something relevant to HN
I pointed to John and John on stage who were working hard and said "You know, those two guys are senior citizens, right"
(I don't know if they wrote it, but their performance is awesome).
I noticed the blank spot in the promo. Probably a rights thing. :(
I feel like Jonathan Coulton, Tally Hall and Neil Cicierega are the TMBG equivalents for 2000s kids like me.
OK, wow, that was a long time ago.
I mean, nobody in the set of people who enjoy listening to music. I suppose there are a lot of record-industry companies who would prefer not having to deal with pesky artists.