“The End of the Tour” was a track I heard around the same time as I heard “AKA Driver“, “Dinner Bell“, “Ana Ng“, “Destination Moon“, and many other They Might Be Giants songs for the first time. And that was when, if you’ve read my posts on those few songs you will know, when I was on Yahoo’s Launch site.
I’ve never really cared to think about what this song is about, or what it could mean. I feel very sentimental when I listen to it. Even though I wasn’t alive when this song first came out in 1994, it somehow makes me want to reminisce about friends from the past and other unforgettable moments.
This song is about the end of something…. not just a tour. I think the whole ‘tour’ is a metaphor of life, actually. Whatever. Nothing to care that much about.
It’s a very relieving and comforting way to end the hour-long smorgasbord that is “John Henry”, especially as it comes after the monster “Stomp Box” where you wonder where the album could possibly go afterwards.
“The Edison Museum” is They Might Be Giants’ “endearing” tribute to the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, which is actually in New Jersey. I put endearing in quotation marks because the the track is quite the opposite. The lyrics and music make it out to be one of the creepiest and mysterious places to exist on the face of the Earth. The track even uses a line from the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film, which I only just realised and makes this track a bit more comedic than I thought it was.
The use of only horns, a keyboard and a vibraband mimicking the sound of a sped up voice recording give the track a very eerie and spooky atmosphere. That’s also emphasised by radio DJ Nick Hill’s vocal. He sang “I Hear the Wind Blow” in the “Fingertips” track on “Apollo 18”, if you didn’t know. His low voice guides the listener through the dusty corridors of the haunted building, which is apparently used as a threat to children if they don’t stop arguing and yet is still a wondrous place which amazes the many people that lay their eyes on it.
This track may be hard to talk about. It’s not one that would be regularly requested for the band to play at their shows that’s for sure. But it is still an interesting one to listen to nonetheless. It’s the last song on the band’s album “Long Tall Weekend“. It brings a very abrupt end to it; I can remember listening through the album for the first time when this song finished expecting something to follow it up. The last line is sung, and then it just stops – that is the end of the album. But that’s due to the fact that the track was originally much longer, but was cut down to the final version that was released.
It is unusual. But that’s what They Might Be Giants do occasionally.
This may be the first instrumental out of all the songs I’ve talked about so far. Huh. This is “Drinkin'”, a short track that introduces They Might Be Giants’ album “Long Tall Weekend“, the album that was released only for the Internet back in 1999. You can listen to 14 of its 15 tracks right here.
As it is only a minute and a half long, I can’t really go into depth about it. I listened to the album in 2011 when I really started to get into They Might Be Giants’ albums. “Drinkin'” has a pretty decent guitar phrase that leaps from one note to another and stuff. That got stuck in my head after listening to it, after a few days of listening to it I was able to hum the whole thing. Still can’t quite get the hang of it on the guitar, but I think a lot of people would be able to get it straight away.
It changes to 3/4 time in the middle with brief silences, switches back to regular time and the guitar and saxophone play the opening melody in unison until coming to a stop.
It’s an enjoyable little ditty to start off the album. That’s really all there is to it.
Wonderful news, I am now back in university after a three week break with the family. Will my style of writing change because of it? Probably not. And why would it?
That seems a strange way to begin this post. To be honest, I am just writing down whatever comes to my head because I didn’t plan what to write about “Don’t Let’s Start”, one of They Might Be Giants’ most popular songs which can be found on their debut album from 1986. I have never taken the time out to really think about what I would type for all the songs that have preceded this, but for some reason I have no clue where I could ‘start’ with this track.
It is definitely one of the group’s best. And one of Linnell’s, seeing as he wrote it. The thing is I couldn’t tell you what its subject matter is. Linnell vaguely stated that it is about ‘not let’s starting’ and also admitted that he wrote the music first, and the syllables in the lyrics were able to fit in with the melody. Maybe it’s not about anything important. Maybe it’s about nothing at all. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is how it’s all delivered to the listener, right?
Well, it’s pretty quick. But a lot happens in just under three minutes. This track contains one of Linnell’s most eccentric vocal takes, singing softly one second before passionately yelling the next and then throwing out a random tongue twister. It also contains the band’s most dramatic yet most memorable lyrics: “Everybody dies frustrated and sad, and that is beautiful” and “I don’t want to live in this world anymore”. A bit morbid, true. But the happy, stop-starting music makes them all sound hilarious and nonsensical.
The track got They Might Be Giants ‘noticed’ for obvious reasons, and they went on to dominate the world with their drum machine, and eventually their actual backing band. Still going strong today, too.
On This Might Be a Wiki – ‘the premier TMBG knowledge base’ – “Dog Walker” is the lowest rated track from “Join Us“. Out of the known 764 They Might Be Giants songs, “Dog Walker” is positioned right near the bottom at 731. I can kind of understand why. With its strange vocal manipulation and laid-back instrumentation, it is one that is hard to get your head around when listening to it for the first time. “Dog Walker” is weird.
Buuuuut there’s something oddly infectious about it. John Flansburgh sounds like he breathed in helium before doing the take but the vocals don’t sound as annoying or grating as they probably should. I think that is helped by the aforementioned instrumentation. Everything’s played at a cool rate. The keyboard, guitar and the rhythm section with extra percussion are all there, but are not overplayed to the extent of ruining the track’s groove.
“Dog Walker” is smooth, man. It took me a few listens to get into in. More so than any other track from “Join Us”. It has now been a favourite for a while, and is a very underrated song in a vast catalogue of material.
The Music in My Ears 