THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS -- "All about the public acceptance of fragile ideas."

          Last Sunday, October 30, I saw They Might Be Giants perform at The Englert Theatre in Iowa City, Iowa. I am used to seeing bluegrass bands, where five or six people come out with acoustic instruments and blow the audience away with nothing more than their pure musical virtuosity. TMBG’s huge, rear – screen projections, dozens of colored light effects, disco mirror ball & dry ice fog struck me as a bit of culture shock. (I was a bit prepared for it, because their show was like this when I saw them in person ten years ago.) My unavoidable reaction – “is this about dazzling an audience with special effects, or is it about MUSIC & IDEAS?”  I enjoyed the show, but felt it was seriously lacking content. Happily, I would be proven wrong as the night progressed.

           Surprisingly, just as they had done ten years ago, the band played “Fingertips” in it’s entirety. “Fingertips” is 20 separate, utterly disjointed song fragments ranging from about 10 to 20 seconds in length. An audience member who has never heard the original  “Apollo 18” CD would have absolutely no idea what was going on during this. Hey – I’ve owned the album for something like 20 years, and I still have absolutely no idea what was going on during this.

            Well into the show, John Flansburgh made a valuable comment – “This show is about the public acceptance of fragile ideas.” Shortly after this, one of them stated that it was time for The (somebody?) and (somebody?) Show”. (the vocals during the music were perfectly amplified, but when the guys were speaking, their voices were often so distorted they were incomprehensible.) Anyway, the guys had a small camera they could use to project a live image of the audience on the huge rear screen. They turned this camera around and performed a puppet show projected on the screen, featuring a pair of somewhat linty looking, knitted, googly eyed puppets. Even though I couldn’t make out most of what they were saying, the concept itself was hilarious and charming, and it completely won me over for the rest of the show.

          NOW I understood what they were doing! They were using all their high – tech gadgetry to strong-arm a rock audience into accepting their “fragile ideas”. To perform a puppet show in the middle of a wild rock concert is “a fragile idea”. Their stubborn insistence on performing the utterly incoherent “Fingertips” was a “fragile idea”.

          Throughout the evening, They performed “Birdhouse In Your Soul”, “Snail Shell”, “Ana Ng”, “Dead” (remember, “I returned a bag of groceries accidentally taken off the shelf before the expiration date etc.”) and many others. At some point they performed their mind boggling new song “Cloisonné” with John Linnell playing a huge bass saxophone. Now, a week later, I don’t quite remember when certain songs were performed in the show. Hey, I go to a show to enjoy it, not to take notes! Anyway, towards the end of the show, Linnell finally got out the accordion, to joyous applause from all. They performed their classic “Triangle Man”. The show proper ended with the anthemic “The Mesopotamians”.    

            For the first of two encores, they performed “If I Was A Girl”, as a duet, with both guys on vocals and Linnell’s accordion the only instrument. (Most of the show had Linnell and Flansburgh backed by a four piece rock band.) They performed one of my all time favorites, the jazzy “Lie Still Little Bottle” with Linnell on bass sax, Flansburgh improvising on a portable little electronic noise making machine (fragile idea, anyone?), and another band member on keyboards. The first encore ended with the rather anti – climactic “Why Won’t You Die?’

           The second encore got off to a rousing start with the standard, “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”, and ended with an equally rousing “Hi, We’re The Replacements”. So, They Might Be Giants ended their show by introducing themselves as a different band! I think that would be yet another of this bands’ fragile ideas.