{"id":1546,"date":"2011-11-06T22:56:55","date_gmt":"2011-11-07T03:56:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/?p=1546"},"modified":"2011-11-06T22:56:55","modified_gmt":"2011-11-07T03:56:55","slug":"to-mahaiwe-balcony-grumbling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/2011\/11\/06\/to-mahaiwe-balcony-grumbling\/","title":{"rendered":"To Mahaiwe Balcony, Grumbling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, I signed up for a new offer from They Might Be Giants<\/a> called the Instant Fan Club.\u00a0 One of the benefits of the membership fee was 2 free tickets to any show on the band’s then upcoming tour.\u00a0 Once the tour dates for 2011 were announced, I saw that the band would be performing not too far from where I live – they had a concert scheduled in September in Great Barrington, Mass.<\/p>\n

In June I wrote to the fanclub address to request tix to that show (for me and my TMBG-liking partner), and asked where in the theater the seats would be.\u00a0 The response I got said my tickets would be waiting for me at will call, but they couldn’t give me exact locations – though they try to reserve a block of seats in the center of the main floor.<\/p>\n

Eventually, the day of the show arrived.\u00a0 Great Barrington is a little over an hour’s drive away, so it’s fortunate that the show was on a Friday night, and I didn’t have to work the next day.\u00a0 We headed out just after dinner, and found the venue (the Mahaiwe theater<\/a>) about 15 minutes or so before showtime.\u00a0 We found parking and started walking over there.<\/p>\n

We had to cross the main downtown street on the way, and I noticed this set of instructions at each end of the crosswalk:<\/p>\n

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I don’t think I’ve seen this in other towns, and certainly never thought of waving to drivers as being an official thing.\u00a0 I guess it is now.<\/p>\n

We got to the theater and went to the will call table.\u00a0 They did not have tickets in my name, and when I mentioned the fan club they said I needed to get in the line for the regular ticket booth to pick those up.\u00a0 So, we waited in line for 5 more minutes or so (there weren’t that many people in line, but each one seemed to be taking a while).\u00a0 I asked the guy in front of us if he was getting fan club tickets, and he said no, that he was just buying a ticket for the first time that night.\u00a0 Eventually we got to the window, and I mentioned the fan club and my name.\u00a0 The ticket seller consulted a list, then printed out 2 tickets.<\/p>\n

While we waited in line, we heard the opening act (Jonathan Coulton<\/a>) start playing, and it looked like the ushers were not going to allow audience members to enter the theater during the first song.\u00a0 That is a policy I’ve never seen at a rock concert, and I didn’t know what to think.\u00a0 Eventually, though, the staff seemed to relent, so by the time I got our tickets, the doors were staying open.<\/p>\n

Before going in, we stopped at the merchandise table, because my club membership also entitled me to a free goodie bag.\u00a0 Once I secured the bag, we headed to the first usher – who immediately questioned what I had in the bag (even though the merch table was in full view of her – about 10 feet away).\u00a0 Once we assured her that we weren’t bringing food in, we were pointed to our seats by a set of ushers.\u00a0 Those seats turned out to be in the balcony, several rows back, and way over on the right side.\u00a0 They were not good seats in the least.\u00a0 What’s more, the guy who we had talked to in line, who was just buying his ticket then, was in the row in front of us.\u00a0 It seemed clear that the fan club had merely provided a list to the venue of people who would get free tickets, but there was no reserved block of seats involved.\u00a0 Once we showed up, they gave us the next available seats in the place.<\/p>\n

The ushers were actively policing people with cameras, so I could not take flash pictures.\u00a0 The unfortunate thing with my camera is that if I turn off the flash, and don’t have a lot of light, I get blurry pictures.\u00a0 So this is the best picture of Coulton (and his 2 backup musicians) I managed to get:<\/p>\n

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Coulton’s set was okay.\u00a0 I have heard and enjoyed a few of his songs before, but I’m not a fan, and he seems kind of lackluster live.\u00a0 It’s possible that I would have enjoyed his set more if I hadn’t been annoyed about the crappy seats, but I’m guessing I wouldn’t have found it much more enjoyable.<\/p>\n

The Coulton set was fairly short – about 7 or 8 songs, I think.\u00a0 After a not-too-long intermission, TMBG took the stage.\u00a0 It was just the 5 regular band members that evening – John Flansburgh, John Linnell, Dan Miller, Danny Weinkaupf, and Marty Beller.\u00a0 No horn players were there, as had been the case the last few times I’d seen them.\u00a0 Still, TMBG always manages to be fun, and even being far away didn’t dampen my enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

Here is the best image I was able to capture of the band:<\/p>\n

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They had projections going on behind them during most of the show.<\/p>\n

Here is the setlist (songs from the new album “Join Us” are marked with an asterisk):<\/p>\n