My wife and I saw TMBG a couple of months ago. I'm a big fan, but she mostly just listens when it's my turn to control the radio. Over the course of the concert, she kept shooting me these surprised and baffled looks. I asked her what was up with that afterwards.

"I thought those were weird songs you made up to sing to the cat! Who writes a song called Dr Worm?"

I can't imagine how surreal it must be to see a band play your spouse's silly cat songs in front of hundreds of cheering fans.

When I was in kindergarten or very early elementary school (maybe 1991/1992) there was an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures with animated music videos for Particle Man and Istanbul. It still lives in my head today.

I didn’t even know they were a real band until I was older and knew I recognized those songs from somewhere.

Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns): A Movie About They Might Be Giants is available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LaAgpV5UAM

I went to high school with Robin Goldwasser, who is married to John Flansburgh.

I’m really only bringing this up to say that my public high school in the 1980s fostered a creativity that I didn’t see when I was a teacher in high schools in the 1990s.

She was in my art class and my art teacher was excellent, but if I’m remembering right, she was also in my photography class where we had a dark room with unlimited access.

I also love the band by the way, even before I found out that her and John were married. Great lyrics and really imaginative compositions.

They are still going! Recent album 'Book' is brilliant. Heres a fan video made using Google Sheets for final track of Book - Less Than One

https://youtu.be/PP5bnfkQevo

If you know the song, you'll understand why charts and presentation slides work as a video for this

I've been to only one They Might Be Giants concert. Half the audience were little kids, and yet it's the only concert I've ever been too that was shut down by the cops.

It was hilarious to see one of the John's being hauled off stage by the police as he was playing Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein".

I remember listening to a small college radio station back in the day, around the time Flood landed, and the DJ comes on talking about his experience with TMBG. He talked about the time they were in town and stopped by the radio station to do an interview with him. He sees these two guys walking in carrying gear and says to them "Great! Wheres the band?" to which one of them replies "We are the band". Egg on face moment for sure, but I just love how they look like two normal guys not rock stars.

I was six when Flood came out. My brother had a bootleg copy, which I later "borrowed" and carried around with me in my walkman (also "borrowed"). It was so...different than anything any of my friends listened to, and I loved it.

But maybe the greatest thing about Flood was seeing Particle Man and Istanbul on Tiny Toons. It was as if all my favorite weird things in the world (at least for a kid) were part of the same pocket universe.

I still find myself humming different songs from Flood on the regular, unprompted. Thanks for posting this.

Saw these guys on JoCo a few weeks ago. Great set. Birdhouse in your soul was one of our wedding songs. Hard to believe Flood is 35 years old. Thanks for linking this.

TMBG was the first band I ever saw live. For some reason, they made a tour stop at the local women's college in my town and a few friends & I went. This was in 1993, in an auditorium that sat about 500. Super fun live and lots of crowd interaction. The songs are so short, too, that it felt like they played about fifty.

I went to see them again about twenty years later, at a larger venue, and it was just as fun. No one else in my family seems to really like them, though. :)

Just stopping by to say that pastry/coffee shop lasted for something like 100 years in the East Village before closing about a decade ago. I remember dropping in from time to time at night with friends when I was in my early 20s and new to the city -- it was these spots that always made the city feel like magic, but unfortunately we've lost a ton of them.

I saw them in Shepherds Bush for their last tour. Fantastic act, tiny arena, rammed full of people all singing the same silly songs.

Everyone around me was German, or spoke German, or had worked in Berlin at some point in their lives. I made a few friends.

I can't wait to see these guys perform again.

Played that album to death when it was new. I never knew this promo existed, thanks for sharing!

My daughter is a huge fan of TMBG. I like a few of their songs but honestly it's not my favorite music. BUT I went to a concert with her up and Cleveland and it was an *incredible* show. I loved every minute of it.

Curious why when they mention Instanbul (Not Constantinople) it's quiet when all of the other songs have little audio snippets. Is that a rights issue?

https://youtu.be/C-tQSFQ-ESY?si=9Ujs3-1nVjjeoncO&t=71

They toured for the Flood album a year or 2 ago and I missed it. It sold out real fast. They are on tour again, probably for new stuff. Reading everyone's comments here about how good their shows are, I think I'm going to check them out (if they are not sold out again)

to any fans of TMBG I recommend the two-part AV Club article on them that was just posted a few days ago https://www.avclub.com/they-might-be-giants-interview-set-li...

It is such an iconic album from the 90s. I highly recommend it if you haven't listened to it. It won't be everyone's thing, but there are a lot of great songs on it. I listen to Dead regularly.

Listened to Flood continuously in high school. In many ways, I felt it empowered me to embrace my own weirdness.

genius:

  I'm going down to Cowtown, cow's a friend to me
  Lives beneath the ocean so that's where I will be
  Beneath the waves, the waves, that's where I will be
  I'm gonna see the cow beneath the Sea

IMHO the funniest thing they do is refer to themselves unironically as a "rock and roll band"

Anybody here remember calling Dial-A-Song back in the day?

There's something so quaint and comforting in revisiting the world of peak post-modernist "sarcastic irony" that infused everything in this era. It was just so damned sure of itself.

The Istanbul song is still floating around in memes today but I totally forgot about Birdhouse in Your Soul. Listening to the Flood album now. Thanks for posting!

Should be the top post on here IMHO. These guys were the first social media influencers going viral (posting demos of songs on an answering machine): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5GFVP7MMeg&list=PLtTX1yXkqz...

edit: say something relevant to HN

I've been seeing them live since these days. I recently took my two teenage sons to see them. They're both fans. But, during the second encore, one son turned to me and said "Dad, I'm tired. Can we go?"

I pointed to John and John on stage who were working hard and said "You know, those two guys are senior citizens, right"

My wife knew their Drummer when she was a P.R. and Analyst relations executive with IBM. He was working for IBM research.

I started a TMBG fan club called Church of the Possible Giants around the time this album was released. One of the requirements for membership is that your given first name is John. If you want to join, drop me a line, convince me your name is John, and I will send you a CotPG pencil.

My favorite TMBG song (from Flood): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XlO39kCQ-8

(I don't know if they wrote it, but their performance is awesome).

I noticed the blank spot in the promo. Probably a rights thing. :(

I don't know what TMBG has to do with Hacker News but I dig it so much. It surprised me seeing such a cool band alongside a lot of tech articles for a bit :)

I feel like Jonathan Coulton, Tally Hall and Neil Cicierega are the TMBG equivalents for 2000s kids like me.

TMBG's "Older" track was included by default on some windows installs as part of the media player library circa early 2000s. That's how I found out about them anyway. I'm trying to find more info but seems it was specific to dell machines of the time.

EPK stands for Electronic Press Kit

They are just incredible live ... Flood was the soundtrack of my childhood. It's great to see how many fans on HN they have. If you have a chance to check them out in concert, do it!

I have a copy of Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson signed by They Might Be Giants, somewhere.

They were my favorite band as a kid. They're still my favorite band now.

I saw them in Toronto that year. 1990.

OK, wow, that was a long time ago.

Ah, yes, The color of infinity, inside an empty glass.

Sorry to be the debby downer, but this feels completely irrelevant to HN. Why on earth is this allowed to fly? Is there some context that I'm missing?

It's pretty cool that they "made it" touring colleges and getting airplay on their radio stations, then signed to a big label (maybe as part of the FOMO around 90's grunge/alternative?) then just kept cranking out innovative music and media projects, then win a Grammy for their kids work. With the next generation of TMBG fans queued up I'm excited to see what they do next - something that could be the sort of AI-fueled shift we've been waiting for?