(Reprinted from the Courier-Journal, April 29, 1990)
You’d have been willing to bet that every last person in the Bomhard Theater last night was that kind you know in high school who loved to quote dialogue from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It was that kind of crowd. The headliner was that kind of band.
All 500 of them had turned out for They Might Be Giants, pop music’s most extroverted contribution to arrested adolescence. Still funny after all these years, the irreverent duo stormed the Kentucky Center for the Arts – in itself an act of sacrilege – with three backup musicians and felony in their hearts.
John Linnell and John Flansburgh are eclecticism at its most gauche, performers and composers with a singular lack of restraint. No form is sacred, no genre beyond their relentless desecration.
Bouncing from polka to latino to the spy-movie soundtrack, they blew through classics like “Particle Man”, “Birdhouse in Your Soul”, and “Mammals” with cheesy abandon. The crowd surged onto the floor below the stage, singing, dancing and forming conga lines.
Against this backdrop the two John took to surfing for dear life, buoyed by the primary colors of punk but not spurning the accordion, bass drum, glockenspiel and a child’s keyboard seemingly operated with nine-volt batteries.
“It’s So Loud in Here” seemed to typify the band’s recent artistic direction, which simultaneously pushed the boundaries of complexity and tempo. The Giants roared along through this and similar tunes at 168 beats per minute or better, apparently unaware that at such speeds a song is supposed to contain only two chords.
You gotta love it. It’s a schtick that works, against all logic, and (like Monty Python) just stays funny forever. It’s that odd synchronicity you find in pop entertainment, where the patently ludicrous just seems to work, like the casting of Donny Osmond in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
“New York City” ended the 90-minute set and the band returned for an encore that included “Whistling in the Dark”. They left the stage without playing their signature piece “Istanbul”.
“Istanbul! Istanbul!” chanted an audience that would not be denied. Back came the band. After an unexpectedly brilliant acoustic guitar lead-in- the one genuinely musical event of the evening – it rendered “Istanbul” in all its opulent splendor.
Michael Shelley opened the evening with a half-hour set of tunes that topically grappled with bad moods, roller coasters and birth control.
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