John F and John L keeping the crowd going with their wit. Long-time guitarist Dan Miller is laughing along.
Yet another fine They Might be Giants concert in Austin making this the sixth time I’ve seen them and their fourth appearance at Stubb’s: they now open the show with a song they wrote about the venue. This Spring the Johns are on tour to promote two albums, The Else from last summer, and a new kid record called Here Come the 123s. Last night’s set was a huge mix of music from their entire catalog as a band, at least one song from every album except John Henry, No! and Apollo 18 yet they chose two infamous B-sides. It didn’t really matter, TMBG always changes up the set list enough that I never find them repetitive live. Old favorites “Birdhouse in Your Soul,” “Particle Man,” “Istanbul,” “New York City,” “Ana Ng” and “Why Does the Sun Shine?” remained (most audiences would riot if these were removed) and they performed the stronger singles from The Else: “I’m Impressed,” “The Cap’m,” “The Shadow Government,” “Feign Amnesia,” and “The Mesopotamians.” Special concert shirts highlighting the last song were present. I was excited to see them perform three of the kid tunes because these are entertaining despite being for young children, primarily “One Dozen Monkeys,” the best of the trio.
The band’s current touring drummer was on paternity leave so John F didn’t do his crowd-pleasing phone-tree routine with current drummer Frank imitating different playing styles. Guitarist Dan Miller was around which meant he performed his awesome flamenco-like solo intro to “Instanbul.” I need to check their only live album Severe Tire Damage if this has ever been recorded.
Beyond the music, the Johns were humorous as always. They poked fun at Hannah Montana, Hilary Clinton (I suppose they’re Obama backers) and the recently imposed, earlier curfew on Stubb’s thanks to a new overpriced condo complex being built on 11th Street.
Opening act Oppenheimer did a great job warming up the crowd. These two gentlemen from Belfast were a solid match. They were like TMBG when the Johns first started out; having to play all the instruments and using technology to fill in the missing musicians. Oppenheimer’s material was good but it was more experimental and off the wall making them closer to an Irish version of Ween or pre-1988 Camper Van Beethoven. I still scored their CD since TMBG has only had one poor opener in the half-dozen times I’ve seen them, OK Go being the most famous of the batch.
The band probably conferring before the soundcheck and dinner.
I could’ve pushed my luck on meeting them. I arrived at Stubb’s pretty early and the Johns walked by me while I was killing time snacking at the bar. But I didn’t want to be a nuisance during their pre-show “me time.” I know how irked I feel when I’m interrupted in the middle of prepping. It wouldn’t have been fair to the paying attendees neither since I was there for free as an Ecology Action volunteer too. So much for good karma. I locked myself out of my car during the process of swapping batteries on the camera later. Poor Somara had to drive downtown in the middle of her baking to bail me out. I didn’t let it sour the entire evening, I originally thought I lost the additional battery which costs 50 bucks.