They Might Be Giants
They Might Be Giants played at Trees in Deep Ellum Saturday Night. The wife and I along with most of the gaming group went. This was the first concert we'd been to in a long time, if you don't count the "Down From the Mountain" concert I took my dad to.
I'm not sure what my expectations were for this event. I'm not a terribly big TMBG fan, though I do like quite a few of their songs. Since several members of the group are big fans I figured I could feed off of their excitement. I was excited as we made our way into the club, but the requisite standing around for an hour wasn't much fun...beers helped.
The concert started with an opening band whose name I never caught, which is a disappointment. They we're probably one of the best opening acts I've ever seen and I've been to quite a few concerts in my time. Their songs were clever and quirky, the band played well and with exuberance...I felt that they were a great lead in to TMBG (from my limited understanding of them anyway). When they went off stage I was pumped and excited, ready to see the main show...everything seemed to be going great.
Then the second opening act came out. An accordian player. Named Corn Mo...I think. I wanted to like this guy...I really did. He ended up annoying me though, and pretty much killing the momentum of the show. He was funny during the spoken parts of his act, but the accordian music and songs, while occasionally funny in a sixth grade kind of way, lacked and real substance and it became repetitive after awhile. He came up and played during one of the songs for TMBG and displayed some fine accordian skills...why he didn't do this during his set is beyond me.
By the time TMBG came on I was kind of in a bad mood. Some short guy next to me had complained about me being too tall and in the way...in a nice way, but it still irked me. The crowd had, by this time, packed in nice & tight which meant it was virtually impossible to get to the bar for more beer and it was incredibly hot. Combine all that with having stood on my feet since 8:00 PM, my endurance was quickly wearing out.
TMBG opened up with "Experimental Film" and that lifted my spirits a lot. I really like this song and if you haven't seen the video done by The Cheat & Strongsad at www.homestarrunner.com you're really missing out. Unfortunately, one of the banes of going to see a band that I'm not really familiar with is I have a difficult time getting into the show. This was true of TMBG. While I enjoy a handful of their songs, I just have trouble getting really pumped up about some of the stuff they do; which just seems silly and pointless or outlandisly absurd. I'm sure I just don't get it.
Overall, I felt this could have been a better experience. I think had we been smart and sat in the balcony, where there was easy access both to the bathrooms and the ever important bar we would have endured better. I enjoyed TMBG's music, if not always the lyrics, there was a lot of energy from the band & crowd and the show blended humor with good musicianship and quirky cleverness...I wouldn't mind seeing them again some day.