Photos and Review by Jeff Palmucci
They Might Be Giants played the Orpheum last Saturday, but in a shocking turn of events, chose not to highlight the Flood album. This is the fourth time[1] I’ve shot TMBG, and a good 50% of those shows were Flood shows, and of course I expected the same. However, with a slap in the face to all the old geezers (like me) that were actually alive when Flood came out, they chose to pander to slightly less old geezers by playing Mink Car.
With 23 studio albums and a bunch of singles and EPs, it’s not like they don’t have a ton of material to pull from. It’s just that after all the Flood shows, I was under the impression that they forgot about all that other stuff.
Like every TMBG show I’ve ever been to the band goofs around and has fun on the stage. Kind of like their music. They, at various points, confessed to flying all the Jersey mystery drones, fessed up that they had totally dropped a verse in one of their songs, and insisted that they “gave a large number of rats asses” about that screwup.
There were 2 sets to the show instead of an opening band. The first tended to be Mink Car, and the second tended to be all time hits. So, before you get too bent out of shape, you can be sure that they played Birdhouse in Your Soul, Why Does the Sun Shine, and others.
At the end of the show, the band prompted everyone to do a selfie with the band in the background so they could photo-bomb. Here is mine.
All in all it was a great show! The next night was their second in Boston, where they featured John Henry. So, you know, they are moving in the right direction.
[1] Well, this is actually the fifth time. Unfortunately during the fourth gig I was pretty stressed out and couldn’t do the band justice by writing a review. You have no business writing about a happy and fun show like TMBG when you are in a dark place. Too bad Slayer wasn’t playing.