Now's the time on ILX where we admit thinking TMBG were awesome in junior high

"Serious grunge" was for shit!!

Dan, I always have the giggles when the Count is invoked :/

um, i still think they're awesome!

hi morbs! I like TMBG very much today, and not sure what I was talking about there.

I like them fine now (I'm 35) but I had never heard of them until I was in high school.

I feel old.

WFMU played em a lot in the pre-first album Dial-a-Song etc era.

I thought gabbneb was joking!

I thought Gabbnebb was joking too.

I always hated them - twee as fuck.

only he knows for sure

My 6th grade teacher told us that her favorite album of all time was Flood, which I'm only now realizing came out in the middle of that school year.

This thread is embarrassing. For me.

flood and before, classic.
after flood, some rough going, the schtick fraying into a million bits.
something occasionally ok, like maybe every two years or more.

I didn't attend a junior high school. But, if a junior high school had existed for me to attend, it would have been parallel in time with The Summer of Love(tm) and If You're Going to San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair) and Mellow Yellow.

This disqualfies me from getting the joke. Someone explain it to me, plz.

I don't get how junior high didn't exist in the '60s?

My 6th grade teacher told us that her favorite album of all time was Flood, which I'm only now realizing came out in the middle of that school year.

Feelin' ooooooooooooooooooold.

I wore this tape OUT when I was in jr. high, yessirreee:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/ba/TheyMightBeGiants-TheyMightBeGiants.jpg

Some people called junior high "middle school" for some stupid reason.

Jr. High existed elsewhere, but not my where.

Some schools just do grades 1-8 with no demarcation.

I guess the joke is that it's very likely that 12-year-old brainiacs were predisposed to love TMBG music.

Oh. Occupying the niche then filled by the Mothers of Invention?

Residents!

or Devo or the Association.

i am certain that i was not joking

maybe i wanted them to drop some more place names or something, i dunno

Massachusetts emigrants get no cred!

TMBG stay very good through _Factory Showroom_, then start producing fairly boring grownup records but great kids records. And of course casuistry is right that _State Songs_ is amazing and crushes recent TMBG.

Someday I will write a 50,000 word article about the great difficulty of being funny while playing rock, and explain why TMBG is great (though this is not recognized by all), PUSA were occasionally great, and Barenaked Ladies were as far as I know never great.

The movie _Gigantic_ is sort of indispensable for making sense of the beginning of TMBG -- what I had never understood before watching the doc, but which explains a lot about the band's charm, is that they were supposed to be conceptual artists doing a project where they pretended to be a rock band, but then they sort of inadvertently in some kind of crazy and gradual Galatea-without-Pygmalion transformation TURNED INTO a rock band somewhere between _Lincoln_ and _Flood_.

TMBG were always great and got greater exactly when John Henry was recorded. Even some tracks off The Else are good.

I know I saw them when I was in high school with a fake id at the Berkeley Square. I don't remember any of it except Don't Let's Start. I remember them looking really old too :), like maybe 30.

ha I was pushing 30 when I first heard TMBG! it's interesting that teenagers picked up on them so quick, their initial NYC following was these sorta artsy yuppies. I knew the girl who sings on their first album.

I remember talking to a friend about a mutual friend he was dating. "She likes They Might Be Giants," he despaired. "So do I," I responded. "Me, too," he replied, "but I like all music. She just likes They Might Be Giants."

― M Matos (M Matos), Monday, November 10, 2003 2:39 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I feel like this summarizes both my relationship with They Might Be Giants and my relationship with girls in general: I resent them for liking stuff that I like, only they like it in the wrong proportion. My life is doomed.

Flood remains anthemic for me.

maybe you and doctor casino should get together!

elmo's/jw's high school graduation speaker was a minister who talked about how each of us should try to cultivate a little birdhouse in our soul.

*gag*

hahahaha, I remember playing Flood for a dormmate in my freshman year of college, and he said "This is FAG music. This is music tailored made only for fags to listen to" in front of everybody.

I don't listen to TMBG anymore, but while I enjoy the occasional listen to "Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head", I can see how the band drives nails into people's skulls.

The weird revelation seeing them once live (for the Apollo 18 tour at the Coachhouse in Orange County CA) was seeing how masculine John F. was trying to act. "I just want to say FUCK. I hear we're on the radio right now, so FUCK I was wondering if there's anything I'm not allowed FUCK to say". Flex it, John. zzzzz. The show was alright otherwise.

Why is the world in love again?
Why are we marching hand in hand?
Why are the ocean levels rising up?
It's brand new record for 1990,
They Might be Giants' brand new album,
"Flood"

OOPS

I have no problem admitting that I was all about TMBG in high school. I saw them play a couple times too. I haven't really listened to them at all until recently when I realized that Ana Ng is actually a great song and sought out the video on YT.

teenage mutant bonsai gerbils

trans mutant bisexual gay

they weren't around until I was in high school and I thought they were stupid.

I remember reading a free weekly reader type newspaper interview with them and was a little shocked to see one of the Johns remarking "fuck Jesus" in reaction to supposedly having a Christian fan base. Having never seen this expressed anywhere again, I'm wondering if I imagined this or conflated them with Slayer or something.

'Fuck Jesus,' he sniffs

loved 'flood' to absolute shit when i was an early teen and drove my mum insane playing it constantly... i've warmed to it again recently, nostalgia softening its wackier moments. its melodically very charming, and inventive in a way i could see irritating many many people, but i like it.

Still love love TMBG. When these guys hit they hit dead centre.

i thought they were my sister's dorky music. now i like them lots, mostly on record.

Never heard TMBG until college. Downloaded a couple tracks and my dorm roommate and I had a laugh and I never really went back to 'em. Never encountered this teenage fanatic strawman, though I hear horror stories.

the spiraling shape will make you go insane

I was such a dweeb on this thread.

Still like TMBG though!

haha I was just thinking about this thread the other day while brushing my teeth for some reason?!

also, i thought it was started by tracer hand

It's been a long road from age 9 getting a tape from my uncle w/ Flood on one side and Lincoln on the other and loving the shit out of it to realizing when I was 15 that the Giants maybe weren't the coolest thing and keeping it on the d/l to being 23 and drunk-yelling "listen, if you can get down to Paper Thin Walls, you have to at least accept that TMBG has some goddamned merit."

Tbh from a personal developmental point of view it's a pretty straight line from TMBG to Ska to Punk to Everything I Like Ever.

Flood came out when I was in 8th grade, so there ya go.

When I saw them live in 2002 they did the whole Flood album, it was great. I may have mentioned this upthread.

Still live!
https://jonuleis.com/jh/