Is that really the PA, or just somebody's radio left in the corner of the room?

[vovat]

The newest They Might Be Giants podcast continues the trend of not having much new to talk about, but it does include a demo of "Bed, Bed, Bed, Bed, Bed" (the slower version of "Bed, Bed, Bed") sung by John Flansburgh, and an unreleased instrumental called "No Left Turn." I also thought it was cool hearing a high quality version of a song I'd previously only heard on an umpteenth-generation tape of Dial-A-Song recordings. The fan name for it was "We Love All the People," but Flans said it's simply called "Rock Club" on the tape, and he can't remember if it had a real name. I get the impression that the Johns are pretty casual with their song titles. Speaking of which, am I the only one who's somewhat bothered by the fact that the official release of Venue Songs calls the songs by the names of the cities, even though a great many of them don't even include the city names in their lyrics? I'm sorry, but I'd rather not refer to the TLA song as "Philadelphia." Anyway, getting back to "Rock Club" (since I guess that's the closest thing it has to an official title), it doesn't seem to be very popular among the group of hardcore fans who've actually heard it, but I kind of like its forlorn sound. I think it's sort of a precursor to the better known but more annoying "Disappointing Show."

I listened to Mink Car today, and I have to say that it's still probably my least favorite TMBG album. I know a lot of people blamed the fact that fans had been hearing a lot of the songs on it for years before the actual album release, and there's probably some truth to that, but I don't think that would be as much of a problem if the songs had more replay value. Oh, well. "Older" really did suffer from overexposure, I would say, since I can't think of too many other songs that I loved more upon first listen, or hated more after the twenty thousand millionth listen. I actually didn't particularly mind hearing it again today, though, so maybe it's been long enough since the last time I did. Probably because I haven't been to any of their live shows recently, I would imagine.

Comments

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I remember that song! Man, a high-quality version of that?

I think it's the same version that was on DAS, but not played through a phone, which makes for a vast improvement in sound.

I kind of thought that "Bangs" was overrated by the band. It's cute, but really doesn't have enough zest to make a good opener or single (which I'm not sure it ever was, but I'm pretty sure there was discussion of that). Then again, while I like "So Loud" pretty well (it was better as a rock song, but still good as a dance number), I never thought it was hit material either. "Hovering Sombrero" is excellent, though.

I was actually planning on mentioning "Cyclops Rock" in the post, but I forgot. I listened to both the album and What We Did This Summer versions, and I think some of the changes made for the album version were good, and others not so much. Removing Nixon was criminal (even if he himself was not a crook :P), but I prefer "mess up my cyclops mind" to the simple "I've got a cyclops mind," and changing the number of glass eyes made sense. I mean, where's a cyclops going to keep a second glass eye? Maybe I'm taking it too literally, but I still think "one glass eye" works better. And I don't like the Cerys Matthews vocal, which I originally thought was Flans with his voice sped up. In fact, I liked it better back when I thought that, as the thought that someone's voice naturally sounds like that is kind of disturbing. Speaking of which, I recently briefly conversed with someone who was a fan of Matthews but didn't like her "Cyclops Rock" vocal.

[nova-one.livejournal.com]

Ha-ha, I kind of just sit through "Bangs" and wait for the rest of the album to kick in.