prog | Gigantic

I saw Gigantic with Cthulhia last night. Things learned:

Even though they've been giving concerts for something like 20 years, They Might Be Giants has observed that the predominant age of their concert attendees seems to have held steady (mostly 20somethings), as opposed to growing steadily older. This segued to Ira Glass theorizing that younger people, 14-15-year olds, are the most likely to discover TMBG and be completely knocked flat by it. At some point around here we see a high school debate team debating the meaning of "Particle Man".

The Johns chose the band's name in part because they thought it was funny to have a band name with an ambiguous pronoun in it. The 'They' is them pointing out in the distance, at who knows what? (And one of their songs is about this...) But of course, people usually assume that 'They' means themselves, the Johns. This segued to Ira Glass saying that he felt bad for the Johns because they can't be TMBG fans; they have to toil away making their own TMBG music before they can listen to it, unlike the rest of us. Not fair!

Ira Glass was segued to a number of other times, as were lots of other noteworthy people in the TMBGsphere. Not all of them were from This American Life but Sarah Vowell was, and she makes Cthulhia twitch in a comic fashion.

Dr. Evil's theme song from the Austin Power movies was composed (and possibly performed) by TMBG, and sung by Linnell's wife.

I can now confidently say which is Flansburgh and which is Linnell. But I cannot confidently spell either.

TMBG's videos from the late 80s-early 90s are fantastic, but the film showed only tantalizing little bits of them. I wonder if they're available on media anywhere. Will do web search when I'm feeling less lazy. (The Tiny Toons version of "Particle Man" was shown in its entirety as an animated short at the start; not sure if this was an intended attachment or something the theater threw in for fun.)

Maybe the most beautiful/funny moment of the film involved a typical-looking alterna-girl with the heavy braids and granny glasses and all who had just stepped away from an autograph table. She was clutching her new copy of John Henry and was bawling. She started to answer the interviewer's question by sobbing in a wonderful New York accent. Oh my gooahd, oh my gooahd...

When John Henry came out and TMBG stopped doing tape-backed shows and started touring with a band instead, some fans were so upset that they tried arranging boycotts, standing outside the concert halls and handing out fliers that told people not to attend. (I certainly remember all the rage on alt.music.tmbg at the time.) It was interesting to see a couple of TMBG's earlier producers and collaborators saying even today that they thought the Johns lost something when they went to a band.

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