NYC’s They Might Be Giants headlined First Avenue, in Minneapolis, in celebration of Flood and Book. The Flood Anniversary tour literally took over two and a half years (and four reschedules) to finally land in Minneapolis on October 14 and St Paul on the 15th (at the Fitzgerald Theatre).
For those who couldn’t get a ticket, or unable to physically attend the sold out First Avenue show, TMBG generously offered to stream the show for free, via Flymachine.
The social livestream promised an experience in real life, anywhere, with either a virtual crowd in public spaces, or private rooms with your group of virtual friends (the later is appealing if you want to talk to your friends only).
At First Avenue, fans filled the dance floor eagerly waiting TMBG to take the stage. Most of them proudly wore their TMBG paper hats. Most of them also wore masks, per request from the two Johns (John Flansburgh and John Linnell).
The rest of They Might Be Giants featured a full band (Dan, Danny, Marty, Curt, Stan). The large band is needed, because so many of TMBG’s songs features horns.
Of course, since they were playing First Avenue, the band had to play the First Avenue song, “Minneapolis”. The song came out in 2004, and tells the story about how “all the guys were having a fight” but all their hatred was left behind when they “took command of the First Avenue Stage… Stage! First Avenue Stage!”
Since the band promised to play every song on Flood and also some songs from Book, it turns out that this is a massive undertaking. As you can see from the setlist, they had to break up the show into two full sets.
The other thing is that they decided to play Flood, but in completely random order and out of sequence. Which is fine, as I recently played the album on shuffle mode and it had the same effect. Each song stands on its own, they’re all good.
Even so-so song “Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love” had something new to offer. The band played this song backward, in real time. They would play back the video in reverse during the intermission and it sounded pretty good! Even though they jokingly said, all we would hear is “Satan Join Us”.
I thought I knew the Flood album from start to finish, so it was also a nice surprise and refreshing to hear a brand new set of lyrics for “Road Movie to Berlin”, featuring the line about “the king of liars”. It does throw you off to hear something new, and now that I’ve heard it, I wish that was the full song on the record.
The band ended the first set with The Four Lads cover, “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”, which is a great set ender.
They saved some of the fans favorite in set two, which included the sing along “Particle Man”, “Minimum Wage” (with extra “heeya!”), and, of course, the “Theme From Flood” medley with “Birdhouse in Your Soul”. “Birdhouse” remains TMBG’s biggest hit song to date. Some people call the band a one-hit-wonder band based on that song, simply because that’s the only song they know of TMBG. Still, it’s a good, solid song, that made Flood such a hit.
The double encore started with “She's an Angel” (I don’t think she knows I know!) and the wonderful Cub cover “New York City”. To be perfectly honest, I think TMBG’s cover songs sometime outshines the original artists. Take The Four Lads song, it’s now become synonymous with TMBG, same can be said with Cub’s song.
The second encore featured “When Will You Die” from their 2011 album Join Us.
So, yes, over two years in the making, four reschedules, a non-fatal car accident, COVID infections, etc., it was so good to finally see They Might Be Giants again.