I received an e-mail the other day of news about They Might Be Giants, including this link to a video for the song “Shadow Government”, which is on their new album. A pretty neat video, IMHO.
The animation style in the TMBG piece reminded me of a video that I saw a few years back at a film festival in Cincinnati. That would be this video, by the band Bad Religion (to date, it’s the only song of theirs I’m familiar with).
This year I didn’t have to drive for 2 hours – we were able to see They Might Be Giants right here in Northampton.
They performed 2 shows last month at the Iron Horse Music Hall. Specifically, there were 7pm and 10pm shows on Saturday, May 5. We had decided to get tickets to the early show, thinking it might be less crowded. As it turned out, the 7:00 show was the first to sell out (eventually both shows were sold out in advance).
Spring is the time when young Ann Arborites’ fancy turns to thoughts of terrible cinema. Those thoughts are directed at the Smithee Awards, a presentation that recognizes bad movies for their lack of accomplishment (Smithee web site here, Smithee blog here).
The show is put on by some friends of mine and I’ve attended many times in the past. I went this year, and here is my report.
There’s a fun little feature on the website for the movie of The Golden Compass. If you’re familiar with the book, or even if you aren’t, you may want to rate the accuracy of my result, and see what your own is.
Posted by seaking on 05-02-2007 at 10:05 pm
Posted in Arts/Media with 3 Comments
Yesterday I went to Albany, NY for the annual Tulip Festival. It wasn’t anything intrinsic to this festival that drew me (though I do like tulips), but rather the fact that there were a couple of stages of entertainment, and the headlining act was They Might Be Giants.
Those who know me know that I’m a big fan of the band. In the 15 years I’ve been a fan, this is the 7th concert of theirs I’ve been to (if you count appearances in music stores then the count is actually 9).
I actually arrived in the mid-afternoon and caught the band that was on before them: OK Go. I saw OK Go once before, opening for TMBG, in fact, back before they had any singles on the radio. OK Go were not, at first, as amusing as I remembered them from before. Their songs were enjoyable, and I had to like that they did a cover of Don’t Bring Me Down, by ELO. They finished with a great “encore.” While their equipment was being struck, the lead singer talked about the ancient history of MTV, when music videos were played. The band then proceded to do a “video” on stage for their new single. The song was played from a CD and they lip-synched and danced, with silly choreography, slow-motion martial arts moves, and the like.
Most of that set there was a guy standing just in front of me, smoking and drinking what must have been at least his 4th and 5th beers. I say this because he didn’t seem to be able to keep from stumbling into me, even before the music had started. He also at one point turned to me and declared “That’s rockin’, man!” and wanted me to give him a high five/hand clasp or something. In other words, he was just generally being Annoying Drunk Boy. A bit later, I noticed that ADB had a caterpillar walking on his shirt. I decided not to warn him, and watched amusedly while it crawled onto his neck. It took him a while to notice it there, and when he did, he knocked it down the back of his shirt while trying to get it off. At that point, I just felt sorry for the caterpillar. Not sure what happened to it after that.
Once the OK Go set finished, some of the crowd cleared away, and I was able to get a spot right behind the front row of people (and away from ADB and his friends). It was a nice, close spot from which to see John and John* (not to mention Dan, Danny, and Marty**) as they took the stage. I memorized the setlist as they played, assigning one word to each song, so that I could write it down later as I didn’t have pen or paper with me.
The setlist was as follows, with my mnemonic word in bold for each one:
Damn Good Times
Birdhouse in Your Soul
Why Does the Sun Shine?
Why Did You Grow a Beard?
Boss of Me
Careful What You Pack
Number 3
Fingertips
Albany
Los Angeles
Experimental Film
Older
Cyclops Rock
We’re the Replacements
We Live in a Dump
James K. Polk
Drink
[Song introducing band members]
Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
Alphabet of Nations
Dr. Worm
New York City
Those last 3 songs were the planned encore. John Flansburgh prefaced Number 3 by saying that he had once considered taking out references to the president in the song, as it was written in the Reagan era and he figured we would only have better presidents after that. He has changed his mind in the current presidency.
Speaking of that, apparently the heat and light of the sun are caused by the nuclear reactions between a failed foreign policy, a failed domestic policy, and a failed presidency.
Other highlights: the confetti cannon that they have used in the past for the song James K. Polk is now a double cannon, and it was used in 2 songs other than that one (plus it was accidentally set off backstage early on). For the song Drink, Flans had the audience members pretend we were doing an intervention. So, every time Flans said the word “drink,” we were to yell “No, wait!” Finally, in the song New York City, he sang about being 3 hours from NYC (the normal lyric being 3 days).
After their set, I bought a pre-signed copy of their Venue Songs dvd, had some overpriced festival food, and headed for home. The weather had been nice and sunny most of the time in Albany, but I entered low clouds when I crossed the Berkshires, and then found out that it had been rainy all day in Belchertown and surrounding environs. Perhaps, as the Mayor of Albany said on stage, he really does have powerful connections…
*Flansburgh and Linnell
**Miller, Weinkaupf, and Beller
Posted by seaking on 05-14-2006 at 10:05 pm
Posted in Arts/Media with 1 Comment
I’ve added two new blog links to the sidebar, and you can tell they’re men of distinction, because they’re both named Sean.
Sean Pronay is a friend from Cincinnati, who I met through a local Dennis Kucinich group during the 2004 election. In addition to sharing many of my political perspectives, he also is a video/media guy. His experience comes more from the advertising world, as opposed to my work mostly being in the public sector – as such, he is certainly more knowledgable about persuasion than I am. And if you happen to have stereotypical ideas about what advertising people are like, then you need to learn more about Mr. Pronay.
Sean Bieri is a minicomics artist in the Detroit area. I’ve been a fan of his work since the early ’90′s, but have not ever posted a link to him before. This is because, until a week ago, he never had a web presence to which one could link. Much of his work is wonderfully irreverent, and I look forward (and you should, too) to it being posted on his new blog.
For those readers who might happen to live in or near Western Mass., there will be a screening this weekend of rare footage from unfinished Orson Welles projects: “The Unseen Orson Welles.” It’s a three-hour program, and will be showing at the Academy of Music theater in Northampton on Saturday, 3/11 and Sunday, 3/12, at 2:00 each day. Tickets are $10.
The show will feature footage from, among other things, Welles’ The Merchant of Venice, and a 40-minute edited segment from a late film project. Footage will be presented by Gary Graver, who was Welles’ cinematographer the last 15 years of his life (Welles’ life, that is), and possessor of Welles’ archives.
Also, the reason I’m hyping this: the organizer will be donating a portion of the proceeds from the event to my employer, Amherst Community Television.
If you want more information, e-mail organizer Larry Jackson.
Posted by seaking on 03-09-2006 at 12:03 pm
Posted in Arts/Media with 0 Comments
Last night we went to Holyoke to see the Wire Monkey Dance troupe. It’s part dance and part acrobatics, as they do much of their movement on large pieces of scaffold that get moved around, taken apart and reconfigured throughout the performance. Cool stuff.
Posted by seaking on 10-16-2005 at 11:10 pm
Posted in Arts/Media with 0 Comments
I just found this out today, but Don Adams (Maxwell Smart for those who don’t recognize the actor’s name) died last weekend. Here’s the story.
I always found him hilarious as Smart, and think of him fondly, even though the rest of his career was less impressive. I’d certainly rank Get Smart as one of the funniest TV shows ever, though that owes as much to the writing (by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry) as to Adams. There’s a lot I didn’t know about him, and found out from the news reports, such as his service in WWII.
I originally found out about this from the message boards at the comics site Sequential Tart. As one of the posters there suggested, let’s observe a moment in the Cone of Silence.
Posted by seaking on 10-02-2005 at 10:10 pm
Posted in Arts/Media with 0 Comments