Shows: They Might Be Giants

TMBG@The Vogue 05/30/2013

They Might Be Giants will be playing The Vogue in Indianapolis on May 30th 2013.

After two kids albums, They Might Be Giants return to making music intended for gorps with their new album Nanobots released just this year. "They" are John Flansburgh and John Linnell and formed in Lincoln, Massachusetts in 1982. Their 15 studio albums have sold four million copies - not bad for an alternative band whose large following wasn't made on Top 40 radio and MTV. The bands name comes from a chapter in Don Quixote where the hero mistakenly believed that windmills were actually evil giants.

The band broke out of brainy obscurity in 1988 with the album Lincoln and their first hit song "Ana Ng". Their next album, Flood released in 1992, featured two hits. "Particle Man" and "Build A Birdhouse In Your Soul" both were featured in children's programming and commercial broadcasts due to the innate humor and unflinching good nature of the melodies that didn't wander into saccharine meaninglessness but instead created a kind of uplifting release from the repetitive and the mundane. This last bit was something that both kids and adults could enjoy.

After winning two Grammy Awards for scoring and song-writing for television, the band released a fresh and vastly entertaining double album reviewed here at Blog Foot called The Else. Today they are embarking on a new world tour in support of their new album Nanobots. They will also be appearing at the beautiful Madison Theatre in Cincinnati, Ohio on March 3rd 2013.

References:

• They Might Be Giants , Official Site
• Wikipedia, TMBG
• The Vogue, They Might Be Giants Tickets
• Rolling Stone, Nanobots

Deep Cuts From Bloggy's Vault: Nerdcore

Once a "Greatest Hits" album is released it's the final nail in an artist's creative coffin. TMBG released an anthology album, Then: The Earlier Years, in 1997 (three years after The Violent Femmes anthology was released) and then again in 2002 with Dial-A-Song that signaled the end of a nerdcore era that developed in the mid-eighties in Wisconsin and outside Chicago.

Two "greatest hits" albums later, the 2007 release The Else is amazing. The duo comes across as re-invigorated with a great versatility of sound. The double-album's 36 tracks deal oddly, sweetly, and melodically with subjects from singing in the drunk tank alone, stalking beloved authors, dreaming of becoming deranged millionaires, caressing home computers, and working dead end jobs at a "crumb factory". The album's eccentric style, especially on Disc Two, is a return to the offbeat roots that they've departed from while making albums for kids and scoring popular tv programs such as The Daily Show and Malcolm in the Middle. It's worth noting that TMBG recently won a Grammy for Best Musical Album For Children in 2009.

They Might Be Giants will be appearing October 13, 2009 at the The Vogue in Indianapolis, IN.

They Might Be Giants - Why Did You Grow A Beard?.mp3