The Boys Are Back In Town

June 11, 2011 - Luminato Festival - Toronto, ON

After seven and a half long, painful months, the drought is finally over and I have been reunited with my favorite band. I had to renew my passport and drive 20 hours round trip to Canada for the reunion but it was worth every single minute of it. Only a few songs in and my face already hurt from the ear to ear grin I couldn't manage to wipe off. Standing outside in front of that stage, in a foreign country, on a day that threatened rain every minute but never delivered, I felt more at home than I do in my own living room. They say home is where your heart is and if that's true, my home lies somewhere between Marty's bongo and Dan Miller's mic stand.

This is Rebecca's photo of our group hours before the show began, when it was just us and the stage.

As you can see from the photo, our group arrived ridiculously early. In fact our friends, John and Rebecca and Heather and Jim, all got there even earlier than Gary and I did. We didn't leave our hotel on time and then it took us a lot longer to get into the city than I thought it would. Add in a wrong turn and a parking garage further away from the park than I intended and we were almost an hour late for the meet up. As Gary and I were approaching the square (appropriately located on John Street), I turned into a corner of the park I thought would lead to the stage only to realize it wasn't where I intended to enter. Walking back out to find the proper entrance I suddenly heard drums echoing off the buildings around us. "Is that Marty?" I asked. And sure enough, following the sound of the drums led us home, where Marty reigned from his drum throne testing out the sound on his rental kit. My excitement was barely contained.

There was Will laying out in-ear monitors, and Victor tuning up guitars. Someone shouted out to Adam across the field in the sound booth. Scott zipped behind us on some mission or other. (Iggy, I realized at some point, was not there, presumably because there was no need for lights outdoors.) And soon enough, from across the corner of the park, trooped Flans and Linnell and Dan and Danny headed in for soundcheck. Beard? Check. Red pants? Check. Striped shirt? Check. Dan's mere presence? Check. (Ask me sometime why I was worried about this.)

The guys meandered onto the stage, picking up instruments, checking out monitors and paying no attention to the half dozen crazy fans standing in front of them. Dan spent a good amount of time on his knees setting levels and pre-sets on pedals. Linnell messed about with the accordion and Dan's keyboard. Flans ran his hand through his hair so much he succeeded in getting it to stand straight up on top of his head. Some high quality comments could be over heard.

Flans: "Will, where are the in-ears?"

Will: "They're on your amp."

Flans: "They're on my amp?"

Will: "Yup."

*pause*

Flans: "Where's my amp?"

_______

Linnell: "This gear is so filthy in the light of day. It's kind of disgraceful."

______

They were plagued by a buzzing sound which they could not immediately identify. Danny seemed horrified to realize it was in all the monitors too. They played through Meet the Elements but the buzzing did not go away. I could actually hear it from out front too. After the song, someone in the (very small) crowd said "Best soundcheck ever" and Flans finally acknowledged the crowd by leaning into the mic and saying "Now all we need is some thunderstorms and it'll be perfect!" Rebecca, being bolder than I, captured much of this action on video.

There was some more milling about. Somebody must have said something really funny, giving Rebecca the opportunity to snap one of my favorite shots of the day.

Moments either before or after this, first Danny, then Marty waved at me, as if with soundcheck out of the way it was now safe to acknowledge the crazy girl in the crowd. As they picked up their stuff to exit the stage, Danny commented to me that they were cranky this morning (actually I'm not sure if he said that he was or they were). I wouldn't believe it from that picture, but I think it was in reference to the annoyance over the buzzing sound. Dan Miller stayed behind, afraid that the sound was coming from one of his pieces of equipment (he kept asking "Is that me?") and sure enough they identified it in some little box sitting on his amp. Dan Miller ruins everything yet again. But he also makes everything better.

Adam spent a good long while disassembling the accordion and putting it back together again. He actually had it in two separate pieces for a while which was a little terrifying but he knows what he's doing and had it all back in working order in plenty of time. 

The sound system briefly cycled through a sampling of 10 second clips of various pre-show playlist songs before settling on a kid song mix that I am not convinced was provided by the band. It may have been something the Festival provided. It was eventually replaced with some advertisements on the Jumbotrons for upcoming Luminato events, and finally, shortly before the show began, with the proper pre-show playlist mix.

The day threatened rain almost every minute and the forecast was for thunderstorms all afternoon. There was a very real possibility we were going to get drenched. At one point, a few scattered rain drops fell and guys rushed out to cover the keyboard and sound equipment with tarps. Danny came out front to say hi and asked if I'd brought an umbrella as the sky was looking very ominous. But the power of rock n' roll kept the thunderstorms at bay, and shortly before the show started festival employees came out to take the trash bags off the speakers and unwrap everything. Not a single drop of rain dared fall on this day after that.

We briefly thought our view was going to be completely obscured by a video camera man who was supposed to be shooting footage to show on the Jumbotron. He set up a box to stand on directly in front of us, and I was truly starting to panic about not being able to see. But a few minutes before the show he received new orders and disappeared never to return. Our assumption was that they couldn't figure out how to switch the feeds from the video camera to the Puppet Cam for the Jumbotron so just nixed the video feed in favor of puppets.

Right on time, the familiar drum roll and horn blast of the Sammy Intro blared out of the sound system and the guys took the stage for one of the most high-energy shows I have yet to see.

Setlist: Alphabet of Nations - Ana Ng - Birdhouse in Your Soul - Clap Your Hands - Damn Good Times - Doctor Worm - Don't Let's Start - The Guitar - I Am A Paleontologist - Meet the Elements - The Mesopotamians - New York City - Particle Man - Seven Days A Week - What Is A Shooting Star? - We Live In A Dump - Whistling in the Dark - 813 Mile Car Trip  Encore: Twisting - Fingertips

A few observations before I get into recap proper. Beardpocalypse 2011 continues, and it seems that Linnell has decided to join in on the fun. While his facial hair had no where near reached Flans' level, it had definitely been several days since he had shaved. The amount of gray in said beard growth was probably enough to settle the hair dye debate once and for all. Also, the striped red shirt over green T-shirt combo is something that only works for Linnell. On anyone else it would clash horribly. On Linnell, I expect nothing less.

As seen in photos from the Des Moines show, Dan has a new guitar. Well, at least new to the stage. It's the one Flans referred to as "super old" in that Facebook picture a few months back; a blond Gibson ES 335. It has a lovely tone to it. I wonder if it's going to permanently replace the Les Paul as the road guitar?



Danny has turned up the volume on the pants. These were newer, shinier and flat out redder red pants, not the faded denim pair of old. They were so bright I think they may have been single handedly keeping the rain at bay.



On to concert proper. There was some humorous gesturing and pointing between Dan and Linnell as Dan approached Linnell's keyboard upon entering the stage and was indicating that he was starting there and Linnell needed to start at the mic. It went back and forth for a minute and I'm honestly not sure if there was actual confusion about what they were playing first or if it was some sort of joke between the two of them. But they opened with Alphabet of Nations. Flans almost immediately moved his mic stand to the riser at the back of the stage and performed most of the rest of the song until the bridge from there which seemed to confuse Linnell a little but also gave him more room for humorous mic tilting and erratic arm gesturing. He paused for just a split second in the bridge, with a wicked glint in his eye, before saying Canada, because he knew the crowd was going to explode. And oh, boy did they. After the song, Flans remarked that they needed to write more songs with Canada in them. As Dan was playing the short keyboard solo after the bridge Flans walked behind him and reached over and plunked his elbow down on the end of the keyboard, making a nice little plinking/twanging sound. Dan just smiled and shook his head at him and worked the noise into the next musical phrase making it sound intentional. I laughed pretty hard.



Flans told everyone to stand up (most of the people behind us were sitting on the grass), had us do a little bit of the Sea of Hands routine on the Jumbotron (marked S.O.H on the setlist) and welcomed everyone to the show. He thanked Loreal for sponsoring the show and told us we should all go get make overs at their tent after the show. He claimed they had applied his fake beard for the performance.



Flans had indicated on Twitter before the show, that they would be playing Ana Ng as the second song, but he had Marty start up a drum beat that was not the start to Ana Ng and I thought maybe he had lied. He then proclaimed that the next song featured Marty and himself, and said something to Marty along the lines of "Don't stop, just go right into it." And Marty proceeded to change what he was playing mid-rhythm into the "bomp-ba-bomp-bomp-ba-bomp-bomp-bomp-bomp"of Ana Ng. Total fake out. Flans was really going nuts with the jumping around early in the show. He was bouncing on one foot, jumping in the air, swinging his arm around on the guitar. It was fantastic. And Danny was doing jumping jacks in time with the music. Like I said, super high energy show.



They slid right from Ana Ng into Birdhouse, with appropriate screaming from the crowd. The Canadian TMBG fans had turned out in droves. We briefly met guys who had flown in from Winnipeg to see the show. And they knew all the right places to scream. There is nothing like standing in the front of a crowd with the sound of hundreds of people yelling "who watches over you" pouring over you in a wave. Even Danny was yelling that part on stage. When it got to the guitar solo, Linnell yelled "Musicians!" Flans walked up to Dan and pressed the neck of his guitar into Dan's for a minute making an interesting noise before nailing the solo.



Flans introduced Marty for Clap Your Hands and said something I don't quite recall about following instructions. He did manage to say, "ah yeah, Clap Your Hands" instead of "ah shit" in consideration of all the kiddos. We were specifically told to stomp our feet on the grass. It didn't make much noise. But all of us jumping in the air must have been quite a sight from the stage. Somewhere right in here, though it might not have been this song, Marty briefly made the most ridiculously adorable facial expression in response to something at the beginning of a song. It was like a surprised "oh did you see that?" look that I really wished I had caught a picture of.



They blasted through Damn Good Times, with Dan turning in a particularly fine guitar solo at the end. Afterward, Flans said, "That was Mr. Dan Miller on the electric guitar, everybody. Evidence that with a little bit of practice...you can play the guitar." He followed it with one of his "perhaps the finest guitar player in They Might Be Giants" jokes. Linnell also took advantage of the opening of the song with no keyboard, to snap a picture of the crowd. He took another one later too during The Guitar while we were all clapping.



I feel like Flans said something funny about Doctor Worm before they started playing but I have no memory of what it was. He failed to join Danny for their typical pose during the guitar/bass solo but came over just afterward to stand behind him in kind of this criss-crossed raised guitar pose that looked pretty cool. I had been worried since last fall when Danny injured his leg that he wasn't going to be able to execute his signature leap in this song, since I hadn't seen him do it since. And I really wasn't sure he was going to today, but I had the camera ready anyway. It kind of reached the point that I thought he'd be bending his knees to go and he hadn't yet and I thought I was gonna be disappointed. But, I swear to god, he glanced out at me for a split second as if to say "Are you ready for this?" before shooting into the air in a full split. Actually, turned out I had the camera zoomed in too close and he leaped right out of the frame. But it was really and truly epic. (And made even funnier later by the comment he posted on said picture on Facebook.)



Dan left the stage for Don't Let's Start and chilled backstage with Victor. Flans really went nuts with the guitar twanging on this one, actually removing the guitar and plucking it in midair. He has a new guitar strap, by the way. It's cute. It has owls on it.



Next followed one of the greatest performances of The Guitar without horns I have ever seen. After each of the lion verses Linnell yelled "Roar!" Here follows Flansburgh's most excellent riff from the middle of the song:

Flans: "I want to hear the electric bass and all I want to hear is the bass. People of Toronto, put your hands together for Danny Weinkauf on the bass.

Ladies and gentlemen, Danny is suffering from long term hearing loss so he needs to hear everybody clapping to keep in time. Everybody clapping.

Folks, this is not like a discotheque where we can't see you. We can see you. And we can see the people who are not clapping. And we are here to scold them.

When I say Danny, you say Danny. Danny!"

Crowd: Danny!

*Danny stops playing to put his hand behind his ear and do a "what, what, I can't hear you."*

Flans: "I'm sorry Danny, we can only do that once.



Flans: "Ladies and gentlemen, on the electronic keyboards, Mr. John Linnell on the Future of Sound."

*At this point Linnell starts hopping up and down pounding his fists on the keyboard.*



Flans: "For the parents in the audience, this is exactly the kind of music that your kids are going to be playing for you. Get ready.

Five! Three!"

Linnell: "One!"

Flans: "Two! Four!"

And back into the song with an awesome fill from Marty. And everyone in the crowd waved at the appropriate time. At the last little bass solo at the end, Danny propped his foot on top of one of the speakers at the front of the stage and leaned back for an epic rock pose. (I failed to get a picture of this, but someone else did, thank goodness.) The whoop that escaped me was completely involuntary and can actually be heard on someone else's video on YouTube.  It was the best performance. THE BEST, I am telling you.

Next, Flans introduced a special guest who had flown in from New York City, just to sing this song for us. And here's Danny to sing for us. Danny said he had an announcement, that even though it was far away, if we were ever in Alberta at the Royal Tyrell Museum we could hear this song. Because they loved dinosaurs. Just like us. Flans interjected some amusing comment here as well that I have forgotten. Side note too, Danny actually re-recorded the song for that museum so it's a special version just for them. You know, in case you're ever in Alberta.



Linnell outdid himself on the dinosaurs this time. Albertasaurus. Manitobasaurus (which are really the same thing) and Ontariosaurus. He kept turning to ask Danny if these were what the dinosaur was and had Danny laughing so hard he could barely come back in to sing the song. Flans was also not prepared for his "diggin'" part and Dan briefly filled in for him while Flans ran up to the mic.

They had a long bit of banter before Meet the Elements about the two new elements that were just created. First Flans said they had a new album out that they would not stop promoting until they had another album out. He also addressed someone who asked if they took requests. "To the person who asked if we are taking requests. No." He then said they had not talked about this before the show, but asked Linnell if he had read the article about the discovery of two new elements. Linnell said he had. I found this even funnier later when I realized Flans had a note on his setlist to talk about the new elements. This part I can do verbatim, thanks to a couple of videos shot by other fans.

Flans: They've discovered, not discovered, they've created two more elements, I guess.

Linnell: And subsequently discovered. Cause they are real elements, they're not just...

Flans: Right, but they're man made. They do not exist in nature. They have to be created. They are two new elements to be added to the periodic table so you are going to have to throw all your old periodic tables away, people.

Linnell: All your T-shirts with the periodic table.

(This immediately made me think of Marty's T-shirt that he wear all the time.)

Flans: Right. No good anymore.

Linnell: Going to Goodwill.

Flans: Put those alongside your grunge T-shirts in the bottom drawer. They no longer apply. But ladies and gentlemen, of course there is the business of naming the two elements and I was thinking what better name than.... Well, I was actually thinking this would be a good pharmaceudical drug too: Pandor. Right? Pandor?

(This gets very little response from the crowd.)

Linnell: I think Ontariosaurus would be a good name for an element.

Flans: Well, yeah. I was thinking Toronto would be the other one.

Linnell: Torontos?

Flans: Pandor and Toronto.

Linnell: Torontorium.

Flans: Torontorium?

Linnell: We're going to work on this idea, right now on stage and take up most of the show.

Flans: We're only here for two and a half hours, right John?

Linnell: That's correct. So we're going to get a lot of work done.

Flans: I think when we come back we can play at the new discotheque Torontorium. So here's the song that everyone's talking about right behind us and it's called Meet the Elements.

After the song, Linnell commented to Flans and Dan, that the next song was also one "where you guys sing at the very top of your range." Flans said something about "just as long as Miller's not" but I missed what he was not supposed to do. Flans had moved his mic away from Dan during the song and Dan looked a little sheepish so maybe he was just overpowering. "Now, that you guys are warmed up," said Linnell. And they went into The Mesopotamians, which is of course another song where Dan and Flans sing very high. Two back to back songs of the awesome Dan face. Wicked.



Flans introduced the next song as a song "about the Toronto of the United States: New York City." He also credited the Canadian band, cub, who wrote the song. He sang the original Dylan lyric AND the proper "I held your hand" in a true throwback performance.

Marty immediately pounded into Particle Man at the end of the song so of course we immediately started clapping. Linnell demonstrated briefly, clapping over his head. Flans said "Don't make us explain it, people. We know there is a fine public education system here. Cue up." It wasn't at this point, and damned if I can remember when it was, but there was some point where we had started clapping or some sort of audience participation before everyone else, when I swear Linnell gestured at us, like "yeah, do it like those people, they've got it right." It might have been during The Guitar. Or I might be making it up. Flans did continue to explain that what was complicated about this was that we had to keep clapping even after the music stopped. "This portion of the show has defeated over a half dozen cities in recent months. So don't let your city be numbered among them. We don't need another industrial musical accident in They Might Be Giants, ladies and gentlemen. So just keep on clapping until...uh...we say goodnight. At which point Linnell chimed in, "Which will be during the song."

Linnell decided in the middle of the song that he wanted to do the I Love to Sing routine and gestured emphatically at Danny to come play the Kaoss Pad. Danny ran over and asked if it was on. It was. Then Linnell was trying to get Flans to come over but Flans was at least playing like he didn't know why. Danny was gesturing at him that Linnell wanted him to play the keyboard. He finally came over and complained that he was trying to get the next part of the show set up. Linnell told him there would be plenty of time for that later and started singing I Love to Sing. But Flans, instead of playing the keyboard, decided to sing "ooooo" into the mic. This was absolutely hysterical. Danny cracked up. Linnell eventually gestured him over to the keyboard like, "will you get over here and play" but Flans kept leaning back into the mic to sing. He did eventually start playing the keyboard, leaning all the way over to play notes on the other side of Linnell. And all with this crazed look in his eye. It was pretty amazing.



The guys busted out Free Ride and Flans hollered for the Jumbotron to be turned on. We did Sea of Hands again and then Blue Avatar appeared on the screen. Except from where we were we could see him in person much more easily than on the screen. And Green Avatar's operator did not join him. He was still standing at the keyboard. Blue Avatar declared that it was now time for "puppet content." "By decree from the Canadian government every show must have a small amount of puppet content." At this point some guy behind me said something along the lines of "I thought that was our government" or something like that. He got a few comical "Ohhhh"s from the people around him.



Flans put down the puppet for a minute to ask Linnell why he wasn't joining him and Linnell said he was playing the next song there. Flans was like, "You are? That's not the way we rehear..... No, I guess that is the way we rehearsed it." Blue Avatar introduced himself and that the next song was from his solo album. Linnell chimed in. "This is the Avatar of They." Blue said his album is called Puppet Content and thanked everyone in the audience for letting TMBG open for him. Then they did Seven Days of the Week, a puppet first. With Linnell on keyboard. I guess they couldn't figure out a way to do it without him playing. Blue Avatar did remember to change the lyric to "practice guitar everyday" though, even though I forgot while singing along. Dan did some classic shredding in the bridge. I'm not positive, but I think that was the point at which it looked like Dan and Marty were having a ridiculous face making contest, each trying to out do each other with a more extreme one that the last.

We did another round of Sea of Hands. Blue Avatar laughed in the face of the stormy skies. He also had a very funny "Whoa, this camera is low" moment. And then Green Avatar finally joined him.



Green Avatar: I speak in a husky voice.

Blue Avatar: That's your North Western American menthol voice.

Blue Avatar showed off his hat then declared that they should give themselves names. He selected Pandormonium for himself, while Green Avatar chose Alberto. Soul patch. Then Blue introduced Dan for What Is a Shooting Star? "Let's give him a warm, menthol round of applause. Can you say menthol?" Incidentally, they still had Meg Ryan taped to the drum though she did not appear on camera.

Flans said the next song was "almost impossible to find.......the chord charts for us." He explained the podcast and said that it comes out every 10 days. (Does it really? I hadn't noticed it was that regular.) He also said that they would double the number of iTunes subscribers if anyone could hear the sound of his voice. I was enjoying the faces Dan was making singing "THEN" in We Live In A Dump almost as much as Danny singing along with the "Ba-bada-ba-ba"s.



Flans let us in on the secret he had been keeping from the band: that the entire setlist was in alphabetical order. I was clueless, though Heather had figured this out after Clap Your Hands. I don't know how many of the band members had figured this out but I could see Danny looking back at the setlist and going "Oh yeah!"

Flans: Just goes to show how impossibly bullet proof our repertoire is, ladies and gentlemen.

Linnell: Or maybe just, we don't care.

Flans: It really doesn't make a difference. But you know, when you've got over 30 good songs to chose from you can do a show in alphabetical order.

Flans explained that after one final song and band introductions they were moving on to numerals so they would like to bid farewell to the alphabet. And then they moved into Whistling in the Dark. Which is weird when played in the day light.



The band intros were pretty typical. We briefly screamed for Dan. Flans had a great bit of improv doing Danny's intro. "Now put your hands together again. Now put your hands together again. Now put your hands together again and get your deal together again, people!" The chanting portion was not really enforced though. And Marty wrecked his drums for the people of Toronto while we screamed enthusiastically. Then Flans thanked us all for coming and said they had just one more numeric song for us, before busting into 813 Mile Car Trip.



They left the stage pretty briefly then ran back out and started Twisting. I think they were running a bit over on their alloted time. There were songs written on the setlist for a second encore but they were crossed out before the setlist was even copied so I think they knew they were going to be pushing for time.

Flans thanked everyone for coming again. He said they never get to play Canada and they don't know why. Someone in the crowd shouted for them to come to Montreal and Flans said they would love to and started saying if anyone knew anyone with connections but then gave up and said forget it. He also thanked the kids for putting up with all the noise. He said they usually keep the kids shows and the rock shows segregated because the adults do not know how to behave in front of children but that this had been a very successful experiment in the family accessible show. "Perhaps it was the secret spine of the alphabetical order setlist that really held it all together and in place for the adults." He also thanked the folks at Loreal again, "for all the hair-dos."

And they closed with Fingertips. Flans did this goofy thing with the mic during I Don't Understand You, spinning it around while he was muttering the lyrics. He did part of the "heart attack to you girl" bit but not all of it. And Linnell did a really fantastic closing line to Darkened Corridors followed by a pretty excellent guitar solo from Dan. And then they all waved goodbye and left the stage. And thus concludes the return of TMBG to my life.



Not going to talk about what happened after the show, because honestly, I don't want to think about it anymore. Bad experience with some fans. We'll leave it at that. But we did get Flansburgh's setlist (which had been folded up in his pocket) from Will, which was pretty cool.



Spent the rest of the day hanging with our friends and rehashing the show. I would say that I can't even begin to describe how amazing this show was, except I think I just did. It is so reassuring to know that I only have to wait a month before the next one.

I took about a million pictures that are on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mynameisbluecanary/sets/72157626824230131/). Plus there are some fantastic pictures from other concert goers there as well if you go searching, as well as a lot of YouTube video (which I admit, I relied on heavily for accurate banter). This is one of those shows that will always stick out for me. I think, more for the emotional experience, even that the show itself.

(Throwing gratuitous pictures of Danny at the end of this just for the hell of it, because I got so many good ones of him.)







Also this picture of Linnell, because look at Marty's face in the background. Look at it!