There there

They Might Be Giants

Call me crazy, but I think that at 7 PM on a sunny Sunday in early April, Oakland may be the loveliest city on earth. OK, to be fair, it could just be that 7 PM on a sunny Sunday evening in April is lovely everywhere on earth. Fields, oceans, forests, and yes, even Telegraph Avenue, with its Lego-shaped buildings and wide brown boulevards…they all look like paradise in the violet light of an April dusk, and it just so happened that was where I was last Sunday night, in downtown Oakland awaiting a show by They Might Be Giants.

As Oakland native Gertrude Stein once said, “In the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling,” and that is so true. The evening is for feeling, in Oakland as everywhere, and it was so very nice to be spending this one with They Might Be Giants, because me and the Giants, we go way back. We go so far back that I remember when the words 'hello, we're from Brooklyn!' sounded weird coming from a rock band, because Brooklyn at that time was only a dull place where your East Coast grandparents came from. I feel like the Giants personally ushered in the Brooklyn we know now – that is, the Brooklyn of hipsters with waxed beards, avocado toast and "Girls." I am not holding that against them though, for the Giants have brought me so many good things over the years. I don't even remember their advent in my life, but I know that throughout it they have been the kindest and funniest and most generous of bands to me.

This could just be because I love them, and love often begets kindness, but that equation doesn’t always work with bands, so it seems worth mentioning.)

The Giants are personal heroes of mine, and there are, in addition, so many nice things about their music, their live shows, and the innovative ways they distribute their product. But the one that sticks out a mile at this point is just the longevity and consciousness of their body of work. They are the only band I can think of that has grown old gracefully alongside their fans, by, for example, making music for children and for parents as they become parents. Their series of kids records ("No!" "Here Come The ABCs" "Here Comes Science!" Etc.) are great, but their 'regular' music, for when you are done with being a parent and want to go back to being a human being for a while, is just as compelling and useful in that arena. I mean, what parent has NOT shouted, "TELEPHONE CALL FOR MISTER HORRIBLE" to their kid at some point, or gently reminded them that "there's only one thing you need to do well and that's be you! Be what you're like!"?

As those quotes indicate, They Might Be Giants made being a parent one thousand percent easier and more fun for everyone involved in that process at my house, and their reward is that their audiences are not just people their age, but young people who grew up with their music as well. The Fox theater last week was full of people of all ages, many of whom had bought tickets to the show three years earlier, only to have it be postponed twice. No doubt this added to the great joy in the arena, but it would have been there anyway, because theirs is just such joyous music. It always has been, even during an era when to be musically happy and funny was extremely uncool; to be honest, it’s probably still uncool to be those things musically, but the difference is that now we live in far uglier times, so the love of doom-laden music makes more sense.

The Giants Fox Theater show was ostensibly a celebration of the 1990 album "Flood," though they played many other songs as well, including some of my favorites like "When Will you Die" and "2082" from the highly underrated LP "Join Us" and new songs from their latest 'Book.'  They played the CRT anthem “Your Racist Friend,” as well as adding playful takes on other old favorites, like singing “Sapphire Bullets” backwards as if it were satanic, and introducing the patently ridiculous song “Istanbul” with various lengthy weedle-wee guitar solos that invoked artists as incongruous as Al Dimeola and Duran Duran.

(Plus, and this is just a personal bonus, a total me-only thing, but they still play “Waiting Room” by Fugazi during the intermission, and not only do you love to hear it, but I like to think its an homage to the fathers of Flansburgh, Canty, and Arnold (i.e.MOI), who happened to be colleagues. My late father was always asking how those two particular bands were doing. And I’d be like, ‘really really REALLY good Dad. So good. So, so, so, so good.’ I mean: how could I convey?)

It was all great fun and unbelievably infectious, but it still dropped a tiny veil of grief or something over my heart. Because for me, listening to the Giants is so nostalgic. So much happened to me musically in the 80s and 90s, and yet, throughout it all my ur-memory of those times is of sitting quietly in a car parked by the Hudson River in about 1989 with my friend Glenn, listening to an early demo of the song "Birdhouse In Your Soul" and the both of us just being stunned with the wonderment of its sheer beauty and depth; we were like, whaaa?  Argonauts? Symphonette? A cheesy nightlight as a metaphor for humanity? It was too much to take in at the time, so bouncy and so precious and so utterly complex. It felt, like so many songs of that era, like a secret that only we two would ever appreciate.

The evening is for feeling alright: and so it is that sometimes I feel like I am still sitting in that car with Glenn, watching the sunset over a Manhattan that was still intact; awaiting a future that was still so filled with star spangled hope. Who would ever have guessed that 30 years later I would be standing in the midst of a theater with thousands upon thousands of people sing-shouting the single lyric WHO WATCHES OVER YOU"? But here we are, and honestly hearing it happen the other night nearly broke me. Who indeed?