The Big Big Whoredom
From This Might Be A Wiki
| song name | The Big Big Whoredom |
| artist | They Might Be Giants |
| releases | Then: The Earlier Years |
| year | 1997 |
| first played | February 13, 1983 (3 known performances) |
| run time | 1:39 |
| sung by | John Linnell |
Trivia/Info
- John Flansburgh described this song in a 1997 interview with the Johns Hopkins University News-Letter:
"The Big Big Whoredom" was a song we did for many years in our early repertoire. The main thing about this song, I think, that the audience got out of it, was that we were people that were working really hard to do a good job. Because it was a really tricky, really non-repetitive song; it was hard to sing, and we were singing it in unison, so it was really like [whisper] "these guys rehearse a lot!" It's kind of weird, because I don't know if it's really important for people to know if you work hard. But for a cold audience, I think they kind of appreciated it. In some abstract way, they go, "oh, these people aren't just stumbling onto the stage, and getting in the way of my drinking..."
- Two vastly different arrangements of this song have been recorded. The first to be released was a stripped-back demo[1] of the song featuring only guitar, trumpet and solo singing from John Linnell, which was released in 1997 on Then: The Earlier Years. The second was a soundboard recording of the song captured from a mid-1980s live show which featured an eclectic and faster arrangement to the song with dual singing from Linnell and Flansburgh, which was released as part of TMBG Unlimited in 2001. Flansburgh would discuss both versions of the song in a 1996 interview with ICE Magazine:
It's a little sad we never recorded a final version of this song. When we did it live, we had a very impressive and strange rhythm accompaniment. [The version from Then] has Linnell playing guitar; it's a lop-sided, both-eyes-in-one-socket recording. Definitely less accessible than our average song.
- As early as the band's first show under the name They Might Be Giants in 1983[2], the live arrangement of this song was performed throughout the 1980s with ventriloquist dummy heads attached to poles, which Flansburgh and Linnell would wave around on stage[3]. The band used similar props for "Exquisite Dead Guy" and "Counterfeit Faker" in the late 1990s.
- This song is referenced in "Nightgown Of The Sullen Moon" — "There's a feeling of boredom / of the big whoredom."
- The 'Big Whoredom' could be a reference to Mount Whoredom, an old colloquial name for an area of Beacon Hill in Boston. The area earned the nickname in the late 18th century, due to the high concentration of prostitutes working there.
- The term "Monster switch" mentioned in this song's lyrics was used for a 1985 show poster's tagline, "A Monster Switch for the Weary!"
Song Themes
Denial, Hair, Heads, No, Oblique Cliches Or Idiom, Questions, Sadness, Self-Reference, Size, Upside-Down
Videos
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