They Might Be Mighty

[omorka]

The Longitudinal Line is an interesting space; I like it. DM wasn't kidding when he said it had "make-out nooks," though - there are these cushioned, half-curtained, very bed-like spaces in the smaller room. (Remember that party I described, a long time ago? This might be a good place to try holding a smaller version.) The larger room has a bar on each side, an interesting view of the Convention Center, and a reasonably large stage at one end of the room.

bibulb and I went with wren_chan and moongoddess73. We ran into SNiCk and her spouse and child in line, and I promised to chase her down someday relatively soon, force money into her hand, and relieve her of a copy of the Lager Rhythms' latest. Once there, we ran into and had a pleasant conversation with briareos - it's been far too long since we've seen him (the Weird Al show, I think, since we saw him in person?), and we should find a way to fix that.

The opening "band" was one guy from Denton with an accordion and a floor cymbal. I was unimpressed; Spouse had a somewhat more favorable impression. However, he did a decent cover of "We Are the Champions," which means I can't totally dismiss him as useless.

TMBG themselves were on, as always. Apparently on this tour, they're writing a song for each new venue they play; this one's was cute and boppy. They did a few more songs from their most recent album than perhaps the crowd would have chosen, but the songs sound better live than they do on the album, so it wasn't a problem. Watching the crowd go completely bugfuck on "Particle Man" and "Birdhouse In Your Soul" was quite enjoyable. I went somewhere else during "Ana Ng" - I usually don't do that during a live performance, but the crowd energy and the energy that was just rolling off of Linnell totally pulled me completely underwater and into the song. They didn't do "Snail Shell" or "Istanbul (not Constantinople)," but they played a full show and two encores; I guess they just didn't have space in the set list.

The last time we saw them, Linnell seemed as if he were not quite feeling well; at least, he wasn't putting as much of himself into the show. This time, he was fully there and holding down his half of the stage admirably - which is a tough job, considering Flans is all over his part, all the time. ("Yeah, I think the early-onset Alzheimer's is tougher on me than the Tourette's is;" from when he tripped over a chord on the ending of one song.)

They two guys and one girl ahead of us - college-aged or just out of college - were going to town the whole show, dancing as hard as the Spouse or harder. It's nice to see that the younger folk have some taste in music, then. (I guess these are the fans who first heard them on Malcolm in the Middle and eventually said "hey, I wonder what else these guys have done?")

Anyway, great show.

--

Game tomorrow, 7:30ish, here. Anyone not going to be able to make it (or will be way late), drop me an e-mail and let me know. Still time to jump in if anyone else wants to play . . .

Comments

[pinesandmaples]

i saw them in chicago.

i was totally unimpressed. totally.

they did "istanbul" in chiago. and i was rebuffed for remarking that another band did a better cover...despite "istanbul" being a tmbg song. oh well.

they also did two encores here. it sucked. hard. they talked too much, and most of the audience couldn't hear them. also, i don't like tmbg. i don't like counting crows (who played afterwards) or some stupid band that played before. i don't like hot sun when i feel sick...and i don't like big crowds. i also don't like live music outdoors unless we're talking symphonies or somesuch. which means i hated the whole tmbg experience. (outside, middle of a hot day, chicago, 50 million people...you get the idea.)

anyway, glad you enjoyed the show.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Gosh, what a downer to lay on someone still coming down from a concert high!

I like stage banter, and have been a fan of the band since 1986 or so; this was an indoor show, at night, in an air conditioned venue with at most about a thousand people. Obviously, YMMV. I think they're probably better in more intimate environments . . .

Why did you go if you didn't like any of the bands that were playing?

[pinesandmaples]

boyfriend. also it was taste of chicago weekend, and we wanted to hit up the art institute for a STELLAR exhibit so we decided to make a day of it to please his pop-music binge.

i think they would have been much better if i could have heard the banter, yes. also, they pulled some silly stunts that sorta frusterated us so i think the concert was a special situation. (trying to do something just in the vip section despite having several thousand people in the general seating section who couldn't hear/see/participate in what they were doing...)

the main complaints my boy had (besides the banter thing) were things like, they have better songs than "birdhouse in your soul" that they could have sang instead of rushing through that one...

i much prefer people who have liked bands from early on...something about their "fanishness" is much more genuine and usually gets me to conceed to not hating said band because of someone's fawning. sorry about the negative reply so fast!

[memeslayer.livejournal.com]

The college-aged people might have first heard TMBG the same place I did. Several years ago, there was an animated series based on Garfield and Jim Davis's other comic(!), U.S. Acres. One USA episode was a pair of music videos set to "Particle Man" and "Istanbul". I've seen several people on the net say that that's the first place they saw TMBG.

iirc

[pinesandmaples]

that would be tiny toons, which was a nickelodeon series which was picked up by usa which was actually based on looney tunes.

no one ever made the connection for me between tmbg and tiny toons, though...

(ps- the "other cartoon" was the BEST!! tons better than garfield!)

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Verifying that that was "Tiny Toons," not the Garfield show (the TMBG video collection we have has both of the cartoon 'videos' on it as well).

Interesting that so many people y'all's age would remember that, though. Then again, I frst saw them on a children's show, too - although in my case, it was "Nick Rocks" (gods, that dates me)!

[pinesandmaples]

you aren't that old, silly!

[memeslayer.livejournal.com]

Whoops! All those Saturday morning cartoons are starting to run together in my head...

[briareos.livejournal.com]

Ok, so I was gonna write up a concert review but I think you said just about everything I would have. Even that part about Linnell looking a lot more INTO IT than he did however many bazillion years ago it was when I saw them last. I killed my legs bouncing around (I did my leg workout on Monday so they were already hurting.) Accidentally wore my steel-toes instead of sneakers, so my feet felt like they had lead weights on them. Still, the steel-toes came in handy when people stepped on my feet. :) I think the song that I grooved to the hardest was New York City, but I really liked all the old stuff and like you said, the new stuff sounded better live than on the CD.
Really good to see you guys again, sorry I bugged out so quickly after the show - we had a 1 1/2 hour car trip back so we just jetted ASAP. Unfortunately, I work in Beaumont all week now, and my weekends are fairly scheduled (Friday/Saturday night gaming.) I understand you do this "Bagel's" thing on Sundays, though. I could probably show up to that occasionally, if I wouldn't be intruding.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Cool - as soon as we figure out where the new location will be, we'll make the information public (our last location for bagels recently closed up shop on us) . . .