Saturday, November 12, 2011

They Might Be Giants in the Crystal Ballroom

For my birthday I bought four tickets to the Nov 10th concert of They Might Be Giants (tmbg) and Jonathon Coulton (joco).  The show was awesome and the venue was fun.  I only wish I was taller.

coulton_shoulder

I am having a little problem attending concerts where I need to stand.  You see, I’m not very tall and with my luck I’m always standing behind some eight-foot  lumberjack that eclipses the entire show.  Fortunately (kind of) the guy in front of me must not have been a fan because he did not move at all.  I watched JoCo over his shoulder for 30 minutes.

Jonathon opened the show with a half hour set of roughly 50% new 50% songs.  It was entirely too short.  I’m a rabid fan and I’m always jonesing for more Coulton.  He sounds great, electrified and loud.  It was a fun change.  I will miss his intimate concerts, especially with Paul & Storm (P&S). 

They Might Be Giants took the stage after the break.  I had squeezed myself into a nice pocket in the crowd where I can see much of the stage.  I was however near a natural slip-stream in the crowd that connected the two bars in the room.  I was bumped into by many a passer-by, but as long as it was along my back I didn’t care much.  The one problem my wife and I had was a short curly headed lady standing right in front of us that LOVED to dance.  Well, it was more of a bouncing up and down like a Fraggle Rock on a Red Bull than an actual dance.  She only bumped into my junk a half a dozen times.  I’m still not sure if it was such a bad thing and she never jumped high enough to get into my field of view.

tmbg_stageTMBG rocked it with at least two encores.  They played many oldies and newies (is that a word? Should be).  We were even treated with a puppet show.  I can die now that I had finally seen them in concert. 

Crystal Ballroom was the venue for the evening.  I had only been to Lola’s Room a flight below the room.  Crystal has a neat bouncy floor that made for a fun feel when everyone did the Pogo in unison.  It nearly launched the Fraggle into the chandeliers at one point.

I had a great time with my wife, step-daughter and step-son-in-law (it was his birthday gift too).  But I’m thinking I need sit-down venues from now on. 

Check these out: 

Twitter for:  They Might Be Giants – @tmbg   *  Jonathon Coulton - @jonathancoulton

Cool Joco videos:

Cool TMBG videos:

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