How Do You Spell TLA?

May 13th 2006 by E..

Last night, as you all know (or at least are about to know), I saw They Might Be Giants at the TLA…but let me fill you in on the rest of the day before I rush myself… The day at XPN was a fairly crazy one, partly due to the craziness that poured over from Thursday…if you are in my Yahoo! address book, then you know that The Concretes had to cancel their appearance at the Free At Noon concert at the very last minute due to illness in the band…because of this, everyone at XPN was pretty frantic about trying to get an audience for Birdie Busch, who was kind enough to fill in for The Concretes…Like me, almost everyone e-mailed or called everyone they know and asked them to come to the show…in the end, not many people were in the audience, which was a shame, because Birdie Busch was really good…I got her CD and she signed it, and she was very nice and funny… So that night, Dad and I ate at Copa (as we always do before we go to the TLA), and then got in line for the show…Just like the previous times we have seen They Might Be Giants, the two of us were in a minority of super fan/geeks, and it was pretty obnoxious how immature a lot of them were…Since the last time were there (Matisyahu in December), the TLA had been renovated a little bit…they moved the box office up to the street, and inside there is a little merchandise booth…the stage is carpeted now, and they re-did the balcony area too…it looks really nice, except the florr is still really awkward to stand on, but oh well… There were two opening acts, but not in the way that The Secret Machines had two opening acts, more like how the Old 97’s had two opening acts (in other words, the acts last night didn’t suck)…the first was a guy named Michael Leviton, who sang some really good and funny songs and played ukulele, and a girl who was with him sang on a few songs and played glockenspiel…it was really odd, and really neat, so I got his CD after the show, and got him to sign a poster that he gave me for buying the CD… The second act was a band called Last Car, which features Robin “Goldie” Goldwasser, who is John Flansburgh’s wife…they were pretty quirky, and sang three short songs about Mr. T…they were also very entertaining, and so we got their demo after the show… Oh, I forgot to mention: As we were waiting in line, some people from the crew came out with free foam hands for everybody (just like at Penn’s Landing), but these ones were yellow, not orange! They Might Be Giants came on after the stage crew set up for them under blacklight…not only that, but they were wearing white HazMat jumpsuits…it was very funny, and very strange, but totally fitting for They Might Be Giants…it was a really good show…I was up against the stage, and a few time I had to move my head for fear of being wanged by Flans’ guitar neck…I couldn’t tell if John Linnell was looking over at me (he might have recognized me from previous shows, or if he was just looking in my general direction…regardless, I’ll be meeting them whenever the next time they come in to XPN…they did a really good set of songs, with a few new songs thrown in, and some stuff from their first albums as well…they then did TWO encores, including a really cool acoustic guitar intro by Dan Miller, which led into “Instanbul (Not Constantinople)”…Oh, and of course I got setlists from They Might Be Giants and Last Car (Michael Leviton didn’t have one)… So now I’m at home, but I’m going to Bubbie and Zayde’s in a few minutes for lunch…then I have to prepare for my Gratz lesson, which shouldn’t be as hard as I thought it would be… Oh, I got three CD’s in the mail the other day: The Specials’ first album, “Rio” by Duran Duran and “Get The Knack” by, of all groups, The Knack…Dad looked at them, and then looked at me and said, “What Year is this?”… Mom talked me out of getting my hair cut, because they would probably do a lousy job of it, and it wouldn’t look good for prom and graduation…and she’s not wrong…maybe over the summer I’ll do something to it… That’s it, now it’s time for lunch! E. Lyric of the Time: And nothing’s smelling like a rose But I don’t care If no one’s coming up for air I know nothing’s gonna change my clothes ever anymore

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