They Might Be In Concert

(Note: I have BowlingWidow proofread most of my blogs before I actually post them. She thought that this one had kind of a negative vibe to it. Maybe it does, but it's not because They Might Be Giants were disappointing. Quite the opposite in fact. They were great. I'd love to see them in concert again, as it's one of the best plugged-in band concerts I've been to in years. I can't possibly be turning into a curmudgeon at age 48, can I???)

As time marches on, I tend to not go to nearly as many rock, jazz, blues, folk (or whatever) concerts anymore. After thinking about this briefly, I can boil the reasons for this down to a few:

1. There aren’t that many new acts that interest me. The acts that do interest me are often retired, deceased, or simply no fun anymore since they quit using drugs and alcohol. Some are all three.

2. My bedtime is usually at about the time the featured performers take the stage.

3. Large audiences annoy me. Nothing personal, but the bigger the crowd, the higher the likelihood that there will be some idiot(s) who think that the event is strictly for and about them, and will proceed to misbehave in any manner they see fit.

4. It irritates me to no end that Ticketmaster adds around 25% to the so-called “face value” of the ticket.

But as with most things, we made an exception to this last Tuesday night. The next day was a holiday for much of the country, so Muffinheadedboy and his girlfriend were able to join us in seeing the band They Might Be Giants at The SoDo Showbox in Seattle. This is a small sparse venue with no seats and a concrete floor. It’s kind of like seeing a concert in a wing of Costco or something, but with decidedly better acoustics.
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I won’t blather on with a concert review here since there’s plenty of information on They Might Be Giants and their long careers to be found online. But suffice it to say that their music is fun, witty, and they have quite a following. If you’ve seen the old Fox Network show “Malcolm in the Middle” you may know that the opening theme (“Boss of Me”) was performed by TMBG. BowlingWidow and I discovered them some 15 years ago but this was the first time we’ve had a chance to see them live.


We all stood in line in the rain for over a half hour but were rewarded by being among the first to get into the building. We made it to the 6th row of humanity and were approximately 15 feet from the stage. Nice. Unfortunately the Showbox camera Nazis were out in full force so I wasn’t able to get even a poorly executed picture of the band (I stole the ones for this blog post shamelessly).

At 9 pm sharp the opening act, The Guggenheim Grotto (a worthy but unmemorable acoustical duo), took the stage with TMBG arriving at 10 pm. 10 pm! That’s insane. But we soon forgot about the time and the fact that my back was tightening up like a rope tow after standing for so long. Before we knew it, the second encore had ended and it was 12:15 am.

And, yes, being up way too late I made the wise choice of letting Muffinheadedboy drive home. He’s a college student and hits his stride at oh……1 am or so. I seem to vaguely remember those days.