Shows/1995-02-19

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Links:

• East Carolinian review (pg. 10)
• alt.music.tmbg review by jesus onazareth
• alt.music.tmbg review by Mur Lafferty
• alt.music.tmbg review by Chris Dawson

Setlist: (incomplete and possibly out of order)

• O, Do Not Forsake Me
• Particle Man
• Ana Ng
• Don't Let's Start
• I Palindrome I
• Mammal
• Why Does The Sun Shine?
• Everybody Conga
• No One Knows My Plan
• Shoehorn With Teeth
• Destination Moon
• The Guitar
• She's An Angel
• Spy

They Might Be Giants
— with Tsunami and the Dambuilders opening —
The Ritz in Raleigh, NC
February 19, 1995 at 12:00 AM

Fan Recaps and Comments:

Tickets were $12.50 in advance, $15 at door. The show was supposed to start at 7:30pm but Tsunami, the first opening act, was late to the show and wasn't able to open until 10:30pm.

In a 2008 Gothamist interview with John Linnell, the author John Del Signore recounted a story about moshing at this show:^[1]

JDS: One of the best concerts I've been to was in 1994 [ed. note: the show was in 1995] at The Ritz in North Carolina. A band called Tsunami was opening for you, and the show was delayed for a very long time. And during the show you stopped and told everyone that the really cool mosh pit was outside in the parking lot. Was moshing something you had to deal with a lot in the early 90s?

JL: Sure, yeah. It was a weird problem about performing in any band at that time. For some reason it didn't matter what kind of music you were playing or what kind of band you were; everybody moshed to everything. It was just kind of the enforced rule of going to concerts. Thankfully it really did kind of settle down six or eight years ago; people stopped seeing that as an obligation. You know, it was funny because people would do it during quiet songs in our show, which just seemed bizarre.

"Giants walk the Ritz" by Mark Brett
The East Carolinian, Feb. 23, 1995:

Proving just how different they really are, [They Might Be] Giants opened with "O, Do Not Forsake Me." This song, a dirge-like number with three-part harmony on their John Henry album, was delivered with a lounge jazz snap by primary Giants vocalist John Flansburgh and keyboardist/accordion player John Linnell. Grinning like a fool by the second verse, I knew I was about to see something amazing. I wasn't disappointed. The Giants took us through a whirlwind of a show. "Out of respect for you as an audience," the two Johns told us, "we're not gonna play any bad songs. That's right! No bad songs, only the good ones."

Considering how few bad songs there are in the They Might Be Giants repertoire, this was a pretty safe claim to make. Giant standards like "Particle Man," "Ana Ng" and "Don't Let's Start" (their first hit) were carefully mixed in with lesser-known stuff like "I Palindrome I" and "Mammal". In the eyes and ears of the audience, our beloved Johns were right: There wasn't a bad song in the bunch.

Showing off some impressive musical talents all the way through, the Giants surpassed the studio versions of just about every song they played. On "Spy," for instance, they expressed their love of '60s spy movie theme songs and improvisational jazz with a lovely, jumbled climax loosely conducted by Linnell. But the big surprise for the evening was "Why Does the Sun Shine?" A song plucked from some educational children's record of the '50s, this one was released last year to mixed reviews. The somewhat myopic tone grated on some ears, and this track became infamous as a love-it-or-hate-it song.

For the show, however, the Giants relieved the song of any myopic qualities it might have possessed. Speeding things up, they almost gave this one a punk edge. I still can't believe Linnell kept a straight face delivering lines like "The sun is a huge, atom-smashing machine" over the driving beats being laid down by his bandmates. But the giggles were infectious at this show. The audience (a peculiar mix of alty kids, skinheads and the utterly normal) started moving as soon as They Might Be Giants took the stage and rarely stopped. A mosh pit briefly broke out near the stage and didn't really seem out of place despite the light tone. A rash of pogoing broke out, and a conga line snaked around the crowd for a while, but soon found itself stopped dead in its tracks by people surging up from the back room.

All in all, I've seldom seen a happier crowd; I didn't even see any violence break out. Considering how tightly we were all packed onto the Ritz dance floor, that's pretty amazing. Perhaps downtown audiences could learn from this example.