They Might Be Giants

As I noted last week, we had the TMBG documentary, Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns from Netflix. I have to confess, I couldn't resist watching it one more time before I returned it. Man, I like these guys. It's one of the great tragedies of my life that the one time I was going to see them, in a free outdoor show at the University of Miami, the skies opened up as only South Florida skies can a scant hour before the show, which was understandably called off.

But the Johns play a lot, and a recent review at Popmatters caught my attention.

Early on during They Might Be Giants's show at Boulder's Fox Theatre, keyboardist/accordionist/vocalist John Linnell called a song to a premature halt, waving his hands frantically at his bandmates.

"Whoa, hold it guys," he croaked. "I don't know what's wrong-my voice is all messed up."

Though the band is known for its onstage pranks, this wasn't one of them. Holding his throat, it appeared that Linnell really was having trouble with his vocal chords.

"It's the altitude," suggested an audience member.

"No, it's not the altitude," Linnell answered. "It must be the latitude. What is this-the 40th parallel? We can't play shows at the 40th parallel!"

I also really recommend Gigantic, especially for the inadvertently revealing scenes in which John Linnell allows himself to be upstage by his toddler. I swore he was pushing the kid between himself and the camera.

Thersites and I used to think we were ingenious, because we regularly used "Istanbul, Not Constantinople" for breaking through kid crankiness: a better song for dancing around the house of jumping on the bed would be hard to find. But apparently others have copped onto this: the Johns have two albums just for kids: No! and Here Come the ABC's They also have a cool website just for kids. Proof positive: it is never really necessary to patronize Raffi.