Shows/1996-03-28b

4 wikians attended: Gabeswarr, Glassofmilk, Hot Cha, TomInBoston

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Links:

• New York listing

• Listing

Setlist:

• James K. Polk
• The Guitar
• Why Does The Sun Shine?
• Meet James Ensor
• Particle Man
• Unforgotten
• Don't Let's Start
• They Got Lost
• She Was A Hotel Detective
• Spiraling Shape
• Certain People I Could Name
• Older
• Birdhouse In Your Soul
• Subliminal
• Spin The Dial
  • Bone Chilling Message
  • Into The Groove
• Counterfeit Faker
• S-E-X-X-Y
• Reprehensible
• XTC Vs. Adam Ant
• On The Drag
• Spider
• Sleeping In The Flowers
• Dinner Bell
• The Famous Polka (CD Skip Version)
• The Famous Polka
• Dirt Bike
• Sensurround
• Spy
• Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
• She's Actual Size
• Snail Shell
• Twisting

They Might Be Giants
Mercury Lounge in New York, NY
March 28, 1996 at 10:00 PM

Fan Recaps and Comments:

A moment during this show is thought to have inspired "How Can I Sing Like A Girl?", alongside comments from earlier nights of the Mercury Lounge residency.

From a recap of 1996-03-21b:

The general running theme of all the shows at the Mercury Lounge has been disco. Flansburgh joked that his vocal part in the Back to Skull version of Hotel Detective was actually just a woman (or a tape of a woman) singing behind the curtain.^[1]

And from a recap of 1996-03-28a:

Someone wanted Flansburgh to "sing like a woman" or something like that (I only caught half of what went on there...) and he did the Carole King songs very realistically, complete with hand motions!^[2]

In a bootleg of this show, however, someone can be heard shouting "You sing like a girl!" after "She Was A Hotel Detective". After some audience laughter (and possibly a callback to earlier jokes) John Linnell replies "It takes a man to sing like a girl."

Hotel Detective was introduced as "The song I sing like a girl" the following night,^[3] and "How Can I Sing Like A Girl?" was first played less than a month later (1996-04-25).