My TMBG Story

A year or so ago someone sent me a message out of the blue after having read a post I made on the TMBG MySpace page and we got to chatting. One of the things that struck me most about that initial conversation was that he didn't ask me where I first heard the band or how I became a fan. He asked, "what's your TMBG story?" Because, he explained, if you are a TMBG fan you MUST have a story.

This is mine:

I am a relative latecomer to TMBG land. I had several opportunities to become a fan much earlier than I did but for one reason or another I kept missing the boat. The first was in November of 2000, my sophomore year of college. Most of my friends went to a They Might Be Giants concert at the Avalon Ballroom in Boston but I didn't want to go because I had never heard of the band (still kicking myself, believe me). One of my friends, who was also new to the band, came back raving about the song James K. Polk. A few years later we were painting a bedroom in the house I shared with her for a year and she put on a CD she bought at that show which must have been Factory Showroom. I have no memory of the music, only of the conversation about how fantastic it was that a band had written a song about James K. Polk. In fact is wasn't until I heard the song at my first concert that I even put it together that TMBG had been the band my friends had gone to see years earlier.

I completely credit my boyfriend for actually introducing me to the band. He has been a FAN since 1992 when he was in high school and still needed his dad to take him and a friend to his first concert. For the first two years I knew him (before we were dating) I only knew the band by name because he so often wore one TMBG T-shirt or another. He invited me to another concert at the Avalon in 2004 but I couldn't go because I already had tickets to see The Lord Of The Rings Symphony (I have just raised my geek quotient about 10 fold). He also loaned me a mix he had made that had some relatively obscure TMBG songs on it but though I enjoyed the mix I can't say those songs particularly stood out for me. So it wasn't until the winter of 2005 that I had my first real taste of They Might Be Giants.

On February 21, 2005, I accompanied him and his girlfriend at the time, to an in-store performance at a Borders in Braintree, MA. They were touring in support of the recently released Here Comes the ABCs and it was just the two Johns and Marty. We got there early and had dinner at a nearby steakhouse where we spotted Flansburgh and Linnell also grabbing a bite to eat before the show. There was quite a good sized crowd at Borders, mostly sitting on the floor in front of the pseudo-stage and we found a spot to stand with a good view near the back. I remember being amused that when the band came out they asked all the adults and teenagers who were sitting at the front to move to the back so the kids could come forward and dance. Sadly, I don't remember the full setlist for the show (and it was never added to the Wiki) but I remember they played James K. Polk (because I recognized it, thanks to my friend) and Istanbul (which I had heard before, though whether I knew it was a TMBG song is debatable). I also remember there was a dad with a little boy standing beside me and the dad kept trying to get the boy to shout a request for Go For G which he wouldn't do. Poor little kid never did get to hear the song. Of the songs they played, Dr. Worm was the one I enjoyed most and it has remained a favorite of mine. There was a signing after the performance and my boyfriend had a few things signed and we all got some free stickers before we left. I'd love to be able to say that show was the turning point for me and I was a fan from then on but it wouldn't be true. It was actually another two years before I really started down that path.

I had a few more pushes in the right direction in the meantime. About a month after the show, when I was going on a two week trip to New Zealand (best vacation EVER!), my boyfriend (though he still wasn't my boyfriend yet) made me another mix with more TMBG, including Museum of Idiots which I loved from the moment I first heard it. He also loaned me his Dial-A-Song collection for the trip which was my first experience listening to most of their classics, though I listened to it on a noisy airplane so I don't think I got much out of it. About a year after that we started dating so I am sure there was a lot more TMBG on in the background of my life. There was brief discussion about going to the first of the free shows at Mohegan Sun in 2006 but it was nixed because the show was first-come-first-served and we weren't sure we would be able to get in. So it wasn't until the spring of 2007 that I had my next major TMBG experience.

My boyfriend forwarded me an email from the band announcing their warm-up tour for The Else with a note attached asking if I thought we could go to any of the shows. We ended up picking the first one on the list, the first of two shows at The Stone Church in Newmarket, NH. I believe I offered to go to both but he didn't think it was necessary. We had also initially planned to go to the show two days later at the Iron Horse in Northhampton, MA but it was sold out before I could get tickets. So on May 3, 2007 we trooped off into the woods of New Hampshire to a small club that actually used to be a church. It was standing room only and we did not have a good view. I could only see Flansburgh and part of Linnell's head, the rest of the band was completely obscured. I actually didn't even realize that Linnell was playing a keyboard for most of the show until it was over and I could see the stage. I was also fearful of being trampled as there was a guy next to me dancing erratically for the whole show and he only knew one dance move which involved a lot of flailing arms and legs. The show was especially enjoyable for my boyfriend because they were previewing The Else and played many of the tracks live for the first time. I was still enough of a newbie that I recognized virtually nothing but enjoyed the show anyway. By far the highlight for me was The Mesopotamians and I fully credit that song as being the song that made me a TMBG fan. Most of my friends in college were archeology students and I took a few courses in the field myself so we had lots of in-jokes involving various aspects of ancient Mesopotamia and Sargon in particular. When I heard the band launch into a song that featured the obscure Sumerian king I had spent years making jokes about I just about died. For months after The Else was released I would to hear The Mesopotamians so I could dance around the room like a loony.

From that point on I was definitely a fan. My boyfriend played each one of the albums for me in order of release in the car while we were traveling home for Thanksgiving that year. And I found song after song that I loved (that was when I discovered Man, It's So Loud In Here, which remains my favorite to this day). But it took the the release of Here Come the 123s and my next concert to move me from fan to FAN.

We listened to 123s for the first time in the car while I was driving my boyfriend to work. We only got about halfway through before I dropped him off but I kept it playing on the way home. I thought Seven was going to be my favorite song on the album until I got to Nine Bowls of Soup. I could not wait for him to get out of work so he could hear it. It was just about the silliest, most clever little song I had ever heard and when I saw the video I loved it even more. I was a goner after that. I borrowed the Dial-A-Song collection again and didn't give it back until I bought my own. I ritually listened to each of the albums again, twice each as if I was trying to commit them to memory. And when the next email came from the band announcing the East Coast tour, I was the one who insisted on going to both the kid show and the adult show at The Music Hall in Portsmouth, NH. By the end of that day I was a FAN. I announced that we were driving to Albany for a show in April and began devouring information on TMBW and across the internet. I watched Gigantic, joined MySpace and the mailing list, downloaded the podcasts (I especially love the puppet ones) and began dragging my boyfriend to shows all across the Northeast (not that he minds). I even got the tattoo of the little bird from the Nine Bowls of Soup video that you can see in my profile picture. And now I have started this blog. I may be a relatively new fan but I have come a long way in the last two years.

My boyfriend says I am trying to make up for his 16 years of fandom that I missed out on all at once and he may be right. The one thing that I am really jealous of him for is all the TMBG friends he has made over the years. I'm starting to make a few but I've got a long way to go. When he was first getting into the band there was a great newsgroup for him to join to meet other fans. These days it seems like there are some good informational sites but nowhere to meet people and chat. What we really need is a good forum but since I don't have the know-how to get one started I'm hoping a few people will want to read this blog and say hi.

In the coming week I'll deliver more tales of concerts I've been to, discussion of Here Comes Science, updates on The Great TMBG Road Trip 2009 (more on that soon) and anything else that comes to mind.

But for now you can start by telling me your TMBG story. I'd really love to hear it.