Shows/2025-11-14b

From This Might Be A Wiki


Setlist:

Set 1:

Set 2:

Encore 1:

Encore 2:

They Might Be Giants
Brooklyn Bowl Nashville in Nashville, TN
November 14, 2025 at 8:00 PM


Fan Recaps and Comments:

PicklesOblongFan:

Set One
  • The first thing Flansburgh talked about was how "Bohemian" the audience was. There was talk about hats and moustaches and things of that nature. He then talked about how Nashville seemed to be experiencing a mass exodus, similar to what's going on in New York, leaving behind plenty of vacant apartments. (No explicit mention of Zohran becoming mayor, but this was the reference if you find this article years from now.)
  • Before The Statue Got Me High, Flans announced that tonight was a Apollo 18 themed show, and that we shouldn't tell the people showing up to tomorrow's show, so as not to disappoint them for having missed it.
  • In regards to this being "An Evening with They Might Be Giants," Flansburgh discussed how they were opening for themselves and told the audience to act accordingly how they would with any opening act. By folding one's arms, staying stoic, talking during the performances, and never cheering. Really good joke. Got a good amount of laughs.
  • Danny bumped into the camera that was pointed at The Horns (who were having a great time all night (especially Mark (but when isn't he having a good time))), and Linnell said "We can tech that."
  • There was a discussion about "buttons" in a musical sense, and Flansburgh said it was okay to get pretty specific, since 50% of Nashville are musicians. (I'm part of the other 50%, so I didn't really know what they meant.) He then went on to say that they were low on "buttons" due to the government shutdown. (This will be relevant later, so remember this.)
  • Whilst The Horns were being ushered off the stage in between songs, Flansburgh made a joke about how they were going to go bowl some strikes over at the bowling lanes. He then joked that they needed to get on that for tomorrow's show. So if you see The Horns bowling during the concert on the 15th, you heard it here first.
  • Linnell joked about people discrediting the legitimacy of Mammal before they played it. Stuff about how it's not totally accurate. But he said it was just a song. Come on.
  • One of the longest bits of banter in between songs was Flans talking about "the second scariest thing" you can see on your phone. (He would later go on to reveal that the scariest thing is a FaceTime.) The story was about him getting a text from an unknown number, but the body of the text was this person describing a dream they'd had. Flans did not expose any of the details of the dream, going so far as to say that he wouldn't even expose the details of one of his own dreams (up to you if that means that talking about dreams is boring or private). Then he said that the next text he got was "This is Mary," and then another text about how "Our friend Freddie's the mayor now," and he's "going to be at the show." At this point, Flans "realizes" this must be Mary from Elektra Entertainment, and he presumably starts corresponding with her as she asks if he wants to get lunch. But then, Linnell jumps in to provide the twist of the story. This was NOT Mary from Elektra and was actually all a scam?? Even though it was so specific. Wild stuff. (Edit: This was actually a joke from Linnell. Which makes more sense, but he said it so stoically! I can't be blamed for not getting the joke.) After all of that, Flans talks about Mary's involvement/support during the Apollo 18 era and sort of dedicated the next song (can't remember which one) to her.
  • One of the final bits of Set One was Flansburgh talking about how Apollo 18 was the last album to use a drum machine, and he said that even Marty would agree that drum machines are better than live drums. Marty then had a look of anguish on his face as he jokingly refused to start the next song before relenting after a few seconds.
Set Two
  • The video feed for Stuff Is Way didn't work, so it was revealed after the song played, by Linnell, that they used footage from a previous night for Flansburgh's blown-up mouth. [EDIT! As noted by Amberdew below, I think it is true that this discussion of the video not working was actually about stelluB, not Stuff Is Way. Looking through my archival footage, I think this can be confirmed by the fact that Linnell is wearing a stripèd shirt in this footage but was wearing a solid shirt the rest of the night. (Author's Note: I think a similar issue actually occurred during the second show at Brooklyn Bowl in 2023. Maybe I'll fact-check that one day.) Sorry for any confusion. Back to your regularly-scheduled recap.] Flansburgh was talking about how the people backstage probably didn't want to freak anybody out by saying "It didn't work." Linnell goes on to say how "It Didn't Work" is a They Might Be Giants motto and will likely be the name of their authorized biography. It Didn't Work: The Story of They Might Be Giants
  • After Moonbeam Rays, The Horns came back with Mark carrying a beer, and Flansburgh started riffing about that to the chorus of the song. He talked about "The Horns coming back with ice-cold beer" and how they were wearing "painted-on jeans." There was also a reference to 615 in here. It was really fun! Wish I could have recorded it.
  • During the giveaway of the signed copy of Book, Flansburgh said "We made 15,000 of these, and we only have 500 left," then he made a joke like, "so we're going to be increasing the price to an exorbitant amount." The copy was then bestowed to a fan wearing Apollo 18 headphones atop a Apollo 18 denim jacket (incredibly sick outfit; worthy of receiving the Book), but the recipient went on to re-bestow the album to the person behind the original recipient (presumably they had come to the show together). Flans commented on on this and talked to the fan off-mic a bit, presumably asking what was happening and presumably finding out the headphones-wearer already had a copy and didn't want to be greedy. Flasn then went on to say this was like a baseball giveaway during a baseball game. [This will be all relevant for the next night's show is why I'm cataloguing it here.]
  • At some point, The Horns (a lot of Horns-centric bits tonight) were meandering around on the stage, and Flansburgh said there wasn't enough room for them. He said it was a "Hunger Games situation," explaining they had to fight for their spots on the stage. Linnell added on it was like Squid Games. Then one of them riffed that it was a Squid/Hunger Games situation and the other followed suit.
  • After New York City, the joke about there being a buttons shortage came back, this time being explained by tariffs rather than the government shutdown.
  • Similarly, as Flansburgh presented Marty's role during Shoehorn With Teeth, he talked about how he was going to play only three notes, but they would be the [most important?] [best?] [no way to know] notes of the entire night. He then said there used to be four notes, but they got rid of one due to the tariffs.
Encore(s)
  • Before the first encore, people in the crowd were chanting "One more song," which I instinctively smirked at like I was in a anime*. You peons... There's going to be two songs for this first encore! You're selling yourself short! But I get that you gotta hype everyone up while you're just waiting around. They went on to change the chant to "We need more," which was better. *This is supposed to read as sarcastic, but who knows if it comes across that way when you don't know me.
  • After the first encore, people were trying to say both of the phrases that had been concocted before the previous encore, but some wires got crossed and it ended up turning into "Three more songs," which is really funny and specific and was never going to happen, so I was happy to support that one.
  • Mark, during Istanbul (Not Constantinople), was having the crowd perform loud enough cheers before he would continue playing during his solo. It was awesome.
Miscellany
  • I can't remember which set this was from, but Flansburgh talked about how they were having a chaotic day getting ready for the concert for the first time in a while due to the radio soundcheck, so he was a little frazzled with the setlist, but it didn't hamper the experience in any way, and if he hadn't said anything, I wouldn't have noticed. Even with him saying something I didn't notice anything off.
Subjective Thoughts
I've always been fascinated by these recaps, so I was happy to try to do my own for this concert. It was sort of weird trying to be a court stenographer during the concert, though. I normally would have recorded some of the conversations in between songs, but I was up so close that I felt weird shoving a camera in the Johns' face as they were just riffing to connect the songs together, so I just wrote some notes out during the intermission and then a couple very quick ones during the second set. (That's partially why there's so much more during Set One, as I had more time to reflect on it.)
But yeah. Great show! The crowd was pretty fun and not too annoying, which is pretty much all you can ask for at a TMBG concert. There were some people really into the weirder songs, which I always appreciate. Shout-out to the person I saw singing along during stelluB. Even I'm not that far in. Genuinely really cool.
I was really surprised to hear Withered Hope! I was only vaguely familiar with the kinds of songs that would be played in addition to the general Apollo 18 and John Henry themes, so that caught me off-guard. I was also then surprised to see it had only entered the rotation in September of this year.
If you enjoyed this write-up, I'll be at the show on the 15th, and I do accept tips! Typically $100 is expected, but I'm not picky. I'll take $50 as well.
Also, as mentioned, this is my first time doing this, so feel free to yell at me if I did anything wrong or if this is too long and annoying. The constructive criticism fee is $35, though.

Amberdew:

This was my favorite show of the Tennessee trio!
There was apparently a technical problem with the stelluB reversed video- I could tell right away that it was actually from shows/2025-11-13 because Linnell flipped his shoe much higher that day than he did earlier in this show. Flans mentioned it after Stuff Is Way. I think PicklesOblongFan might be mistaken about the video for Stuff is Way not working, since Flans was talking about stelluB (sorry, I guess I owe her $35). The video did work for shows/2025-11-15, so I guess they fixed it!
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