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.
Whilst browsing through game websites and looking for anything good to pass the time; I came across this “Worm” game. It is essentially “Snake”, the popular game that everyone had on their Nokia phones. But instead of circling around in a square trying to eat the object as a snake… you’re a worm.
A thirty second or so sample of music played before coming to an abrupt end and then started all over again as I played. The opening lyrics were from the perspective of a worm who is called “Doctor Worm” by people but isn’t an actual doctor, though it insists that it is an actual worm. I loved this short sample. To me it was jolly music that made playing the ‘Worm’ game more fun.
However, with every listen came a suspicion that the voice who was singing these lyrics sounded familiar…….. The silly, nonsensical but funny subject matter with the upbeat music and blaring horns. There was no way. It couldn’t be.
I searched up the lyrics in Google, and sure enough….. the song was indeed by They Might Be Giants. A song about a fictional worm who plays the drums in a band? What else couldn’t these people write about?
It was first released as a new studio song on the band’s live album “Severe Tire Damage“, released back in 1998.
If it wasn’t for this track…. I would not be listening to They Might Be Giants today. “Dinner Bell” was the first song of theirs I heard, and I was instantly hooked. Maybe that’s why I hold such a fondness for “Apollo 18”. The thought that without hearing “Dinner Bell” I probably wouldn’t have bothered to find more TMBG songs is quite mind-blowing, and I am very grateful that I did play when I was listening to Internet radio.
Written and sung mostly by John Linnell, with John Flansburgh providing the unusual backward vocal of the bridge, “Dinner Bell” ‘indirectly refers to Pavlov‘s famous experiment involving a dog’s reaction to the ringing of a bell after associating the sound with food.’ Thank you TMBW. But I had no idea that it was about that when it came on about ten years ago. I just thought it was someone waiting for dinner. Anyway, the topic of the song wasn’t what attracted me. It was the likable melody which changes against the major and minor key changes during the verses. The multi-tracked vocals panning from one ear to the other, one syllable falls right into the next becoming something of a tongue-twister. Its 2/4 signature, which keeps the track on a steady pace with every chord change occurring at the beat. And obviously the lyrics that seem to mean nothing at all, but sound right because they fit in with the song’s music so well.
This welcomed me to the world of They, and I embraced it with open arms.
The Music in My Ears 