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They Might Be Giants Crack 'The Egg'

They Might Be Giants have been making music since 1982, a career that includes fourteen studio albums. In 2002, the band released their first children's album and has since recorded three more records for their educational series. The Brooklyn band is currently on tour supporting their latest release, 'Here Comes Science,' and singer John Linnell will be checking in with his thoughts and musings all along the way.

We have just played a pair of shows at The Egg, an enormous cement bowl in Albany, NY that was constructed in the high modernist -- some would say brutalist -- style that was all the rage in the 1960s. The Egg looks to us like where we would live if the Soviets had won the Cold War. Not that I'd complain -- sometimes I find myself yearning for a more streamlined, uniform lifestyle. The closest modern society can come to that is Gap t-shirts and the iPod, but a building like The Egg suggests a higher level of ovarian smoothness. As John Flansburgh sings in 'Albany' (available on our 'Venue Songs' CD):

The Egg, exciting and old
The Egg, you'll do what you're told
The Egg, the Egg, no corners for you

On the bill with us was Peter Stampfel, whose band The Holy Modal Rounders shattered the folk duo paradigm in the early 1960s and blasted out a mountain pass for bands like They Might Be Giants to follow. Peter and his daughter Zoe played a set of expulsive, freakish material so at odds with the space age environs that both band and venue were enhanced.

This week's vintage snap was made with a creaking Zeiss Ikon Tenax camera with a fungus-ravaged lens. Perversely, it takes square 24 x 24mm pictures on 35mm film, in this case expired Kodak Gold. The camera predates both The Egg and The Holy Modal Rounders, but somehow the colors harmonize with the subject.


Next week: When 24 x 24mm is still too big.

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cmiller

You know what would be fun? If these comments allow photos, to post reply photos, instead of verbal replies?

I have no idea how, of course.

October 23 2009 at 11:40 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kristen DeRosier

At the end of the Chicago show of this tour I had a chance to say "Thank you" to John F, which was intended as "Thank you for nearly 30 years of music and tonight's fantastic show" but may have come across as "Thanks for handing me a free bumper sticker just now", so I'll correct it in this public forum, and maybe if John Linnell is truly reading these comments, he could make note of it for me when you see him next.

Also, John, if you're reading...
I'm enjoying this mock-vintage photography you're sharing, keep them coming! I enjoy anything that doesn't come from a point-and-click in this age of photography.

October 20 2009 at 11:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ana

Funny how the mind plays tricks! Even when I tilt my laptop screen (or my head), my brain refuses to believe it is the camera was tilted, and not the subject matter. Perceptual psychology.

October 20 2009 at 10:40 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Emmalee

I love the Egg!!! I was at the Flood show!! Do you remember that small girl with the short dark hair, thick glasses, flood t, and sung along through almost every song? That was totally me! I thank you for sharing eye contact with me during Meet the Elements. That was my first concert and it was also my birthday. The Egg is such an amazing building too!! Cool picture.

October 20 2009 at 9:14 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
cmiller

OHHOHOHOHOHOHO!!!!

*Now* I See It! You sneak, you took the photo with the top of the egg level as if it were a flat-topped building. Took me a minute, sheesh. Doh.

Still makes me woozy, for some reason, even being conscious of the cheat.

October 20 2009 at 5:46 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
cmiller

Like the color, but is that leftermost lamppost leaning? I, er, this photo is giving me the dizzies - it feels at if everything in it is sliding to the right ..... ???

October 20 2009 at 5:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply