A.S.: Yeah, the Kablam video isn’t very good. It’s a professional equivalent to the literal-interpretation fan videos.

L.K.: It wasn’t about the video though, it was about the song itself. Then again, I always grew up with sort of conflicting views on TMBG from my parents.

A.S.: What an odd statement. Can anyone else in the world relate?

L.K.: I was watching the band’s official, live-action video for the song once a couple of years later, and my mom just stared disgustedly at me and said “Is this supposed to be funny?” Anyway, despite whatever my feelings toward the song were as a ten-year-old, obviously I like it now. I actually worry about it possibly getting phased out of the setlist, since they’ve retired their confetti cannons.

A.S.: I dunno, I think it’s a huge enough song for the band and among fans that it’ll never go away.

L.K.: I mean, they mostly stopped playing “Older” and that was another confetti song, but on the other hand, they’ve started playing “James K. Polk” again, so I don’t know.

A.S.: ”Older” isn’t “Doctor Worm” though.  This song is a bona-fide hit by TMBG standards.

L.K.: True, true. And I don’t think anybody would really miss “Older” anyway. Let’s talk about this song’s origins just because I want to bring up KISS again.

A.S.: Growing up with classic rock radio, “Calling Dr. Love” was a pretty difficult song to escape. (Unfortunately, that isn’t P.S.O.K. on vocals for this one)

L.K.: I’ve heard the Johns bring up the KISS thing with regards to this song in multiple interviews, which seems so incredibly weird. Then again, TMBG has always had kind of a lifelong committment to mocking or deflating the most over-the-top aspects of “rock”.

A.S.: Which is exactly how “Dr. Love” became “Dr. Worm” – substituting “love” with anything else, and I guess “Worm” just stuck.

L.K.: I can totally see them sitting around on a bus making up ridiculous alternate lyrics. And rock really doesn’t get too much more over-the-top than KISS.

A.S.: Just last night, my Satan-worshipping roommate and I were substituting “Pumped Up Kicks” with things like “Fudged Up Squids” or whatever. Lyric substitution: it’s a fun thing to do.

A.S.: Yes. Speaking of my roommates, this is my librarian roommate’s favorite TMBG song.

L.K.: It’s a catchy song! And it’s not that weird either, other than the fact that it’s about a worm. Or not, I mean, who knows whether the narrator literally is an actual worm or not. The point is, he wants to be called one.

A.S.: As Linnell has said, it details the thought process of the sort of person who aspires to have a nickname or to be viewed differently by others and will do anything to make those views stick.

L.K.: Yeah, exactly.

A.S.: ”…That’s all the song is really about, it’s about somebody who has a fantasy and nobody else will buy into it.” We all know people like that.

L.K.: I’m sorry, I’m just distracted again by thinking about what a great song this is live though. It really is great. It doesn’t need the confetti.

A.S.: Absolutely not.

L.K.: It’s one of the few remaining songs Linnell plays accordion on anymore. Dan on piano and backup vocals is always fun to watch.

A.S.: And just about anything that features Linnell on accordion is worth seeing live.

L.K.: Danny leaping up into the air at the bass solo is amazing. It’s just a really energetic song and the band usually seems to really get into it. It’s also great with a live horn section too, although I’ve only seen that in YouTube videos, never in person.

A.S.: Why does anyone write any song in any key?

L.K.: I don’t know, but you’d think you would pick one that’s easier to think in/play in. I don’t want to play accordion in F#! (Is this another song that’s in a different key live? I forget…)

A.S.: Nope. It’s still in F#, as noted in that one video from the last Beachland performance where they note the following song’s key is F#, and I knowingly yell out “YEAH” because I’m a creep.

L.K.: Oh man, I remember that. That was amazing. And I mean, you were just the one who yelled “YEAH!”, but I was thinking it. Quietly. To myself.

A.S.: But anyway, in terms of the buttons on the left hand, the song’s chords aren’t that far apart.  They’re just in an awkward key. It’d be much more annoying for, say the horns, likely than on accordion.

L.K.: Yeah, but I think Linnell tends to rely more on the piano key side of the accordion, in which case, this would be annoying to play. Maybe he uses the buttons for this, I don’t know, I can never see his left hand. I always wind up at the opposite end of the stage from the side he usually stands on to play accordion.

A.S.: I love this song so much although I’m now caught up in trying to find an original recording of it and I am getting very confused in the process.

L.K.: “The Clamdiggers”. Who on Earth are The Clamdiggers?

A.S.: I guess The Clamdiggers were a side project of another band, Mente, of which there just seems to be a very small, devout Bostonian following.  It seems totally insular and local. Most Google searches for the song just bring up Mono Puff’s version.

L.K.: If they wrote a song about Bobby Orr… (“greatest hockey player in the world- bahhhh-none!“)

A.S.: Yeah, I’m listening to “Bobby Orr” right now and it’s a pretty fun, catchy tune.  Not unlike “Devil Went Down To Newport”!

L.K.: I have to take issue with TMBW here for assuming “Newport” has anything to do with California. Wouldn’t Rhode Island make more sense?

A.S.: It would, based on the band’s geographical affiliation, although I don’t think Newport, RI is much of a surfing town.

L.K.: Hey, people surf in Lake Erie, so you never know…

A.S.: True.  As a born-and-raised New Englander, I honestly can’t say because somehow, I never went down to Newport.

L.K.: But if the band is really as New England-centric as they seem, writing a song about California seems kind of nuts.

A.S.: I mean, The Beach Boys sang a shitload about surfing and I believe Dennis Wilson was the only one who could actually surf.

L.K.: BEHOLD!

A.S.: Is that something you ever expected to Google?

L.K.: Nope. But I feel better about my hypothesis now.

A.S.: Anyway, this song is, as its namesake denotes, totally rocking.

L.K.: It really does only have two chords or so, right?

A.S.: It does!

L.K.: It certainly doesn’t sound complex.

A.S.: But it doesn’t overstay its welcome for almost four minutes. Wait, it modulates at the very end.  But most of the song is just two chords. Oh yeah, I guess we should mention that it’s based on The Charlie Daniels Band’s “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” although that should go without saying.

L.K.: Yeah. No golden fiddle (or bassoon) play-offs though, just the devil being unable to surf because of his cloven-hooved feet. And the song is thoroughly on Team Satan.

A.S.: Although a big difference is that here, the contest is between The Devil and God, and not “Johnny,” which yeah, I guess the Johnny singing this song couldn’t compete against Satan and cheer him on.

L.K.: Ah, rock, the devil’s music. Flans’s fake beard in the video for this song is definitely some sort of hellspawn.

A.S.: Yeah, I don’t know what the hell.

L.K.: It’s the only music video Mono Puff ever did, and it’s pretty strange. ”Satan” here is a weird silver alien type dude, and there’s very little surf-related anything going on.

A.S.: The Mojo Chessmaster returns though! Agh, I’m sorry but it’s frustrating how little there is online about the original version of this song. I guess Mente had a website at one point, but it was a fucking Geocities site. Ah, dear reader, I do apologize that we won’t be able to provide an original version of this song from “The worst band in Boston.”

A.S.: Yeah, it’s just this cool little surf/spy thing.

L.K.: It’s also known as ”Be Kind And Gentle”. Both of this song’s titles are so… enigmatic.

A.S.: Well, except that the first title is in reference to author Judy Budnitz.

L.K.: Yeah, but the #1.

A.S.: True, maybe there was another Budnitz piece written.

L.K.: True, with its own song, possibly. I really need a copy of the McSweeney’s book that came with these songs…

A.S.: I keep checking at the local Half Priced Books to no avail. What the hell happens at the end of this one, though?

L.K.: It just peters out into nothingness, which is always really disappointing (to me, at least).

A.S.: At least it’s not predictable?

L.K.: I guess, but I still would’ve preferred either an actual ending or a less anticlimactic one.

A.S.: What you’re really trying to say I think is that you wish they just jammed out on this one for a while? Because this could have fairly easily turned into something like “Guitar Was the Case”.

L.K.: Well I don’t really feel like it needs to be longer though. Just if it ended better! I love the little portamento effect on the keyboard, but other than that, that’s about all I have to say.

A.S.: Yeah, not much else on this one – neat little ditty!

A.S.: It’s always better with a president in it.

L.K.: Sometimes it has an evil doll, but sometimes it’s Richard Nixon.

A.S.: Oh I remember. I was among the nuts-goers.

L.K.: I was too, because it was exciting. And Linnell just kind of looked at us like we were insane for a second, and then went back to whatever else he was looking at.

A.S.: LINNELL LOOKED AT US, OMGGGGGGGG. ZZZZZZZ. !!!!!!!!

L.K.: Well, this time he actually was looking at us. As a group. Because uh… we might have been overreacting. Take that, delusional fangirls at your first concert.

L.K.: But yeah man, let’s talk about this song. This song rocks!

A.S.: It’s a great, chunky power-popper.  Vaguely Cheap Trick-ish?

L.K.: Possibly? My dad hated this song, it was one of his least favorite songs from Mink Car and I don’t know why.

A.S.: It’s a very superbly constructed and produced song – all the guitar flourishes, the chimes, bari sax, changes in drum patterns, back-up vocals…

L.K.: Oh I love the chimes. They sound suspiciously like the chimes for The El in Chicago though. Speaking of the production for this song, it took me years to notice that there is a siren in the background of the song in the last chorus.

A.S.: Is there?  I mostly pay attention to the little “doot doot” backup vocals.

L.K.: I’ve never lived anywhere where I wasn’t hearing constant police cars and ambulances, so I was never sure if that siren was part of the song or not, but after hearing it in siren-free zones, I noticed it really is part of the song. Doot-doot? See, I never noticed that. I was too busy being distracted by sound effects.

A.S.: What a great production number.

L.K.: Let’s talk about the demo version for a second before we go back to the final studio version.

A.S.: The ska verse.

L.K.: The demo sounds totally different, even though the song itself is basically the same.

A.S.: Aside from the Nixon lyric, there’s really nothing about the demo that I like better; I think the final version was an almost complete improvement.

L.K.: A bunch of people apparently prefer the ska version? At least I’ve seen people complain online. I prefer the Mink Car version too, though.

A.S.: The demo is missing the bari sax, the great Dan Miller guitar lick, the drum off-beat hits…

L.K.: One thing in the final version that I’m not crazy about is the guest vocalist verse… if only Joe Strummer had been around!

L.K.: Oh, about that guitar lick… I believe either Dan or Danny came up with that, and then it made it into the final song.

A.S.: There are shades of it in the demo (before the “it was sweet” verse) but it’s not nearly as prominent. Anyway, Cerys Matthews‘ part in this song has really grown on me. Outside of this song, I know nothing about her, but I really like the conviction on the “I’m stuck in a van outside of New York” line. That said, Joe Strummer would likely have been better than just about anyone because Joe Strummer fuckin’ rules.

A.S.: Nothing against Cerys Matthews, but you don’t turn down Joe Strummer.

L.K.: Take it up with Langer and Winstanley, man.

A.S.: Maybe I will.

L.K.: What other songs did they produce on Mink Car… let’s see. “Bangs”, “I’ve Got A Fang”, and “My Man”. And then they also produced four tracks from Flood, including both “Birdhouse” and “Istanbul”.

A.S.: Okay, I can’t argue against those, I guess. But aghhhh Joe Strummer.

L.K.: Elvis Costello’s Nick Lowe-produced albums were better though! But anyway yeah, we’re getting onto a tangent about the producers. Did they even know they’d be able to get Joe Strummer to begin with? Or were they just sitting around going “Oh man, you know what would be awesome? If we got Joe Strummer to do a guest vocal.”

A.S.: Yeah, I hope this all just isn’t speculation or anything.  Sadly, we’ll never be able to ask Mr. Strummer about it.

L.K.: Yeah. This is just going to have to stay one of those crazy “what if” moments.

A.S.: I also think this song should have opened Mink Car.

L.K.: Really? 90% of their albums seems to start with a poppy Linnell-penned tune.

A.S.: Yeah, I think the chimes are a good introductory motif, and this is such a solid, energetic song to introduce the band of Dans. It’d be a great way to herald in the 2000s for TMBG, a bit better than “Bangs” I think.

L.K.: Perhaps, since a decade later “Cyclops Rock” seems to have still maintained a place on TMBG’s setlists, whereas “Bangs” has not. Man, Mink Car was such a weird album…

A.S.: It was… it is. But this is a straightforward highlight. We haven’t really touched on the lyrics much, although I supposed we’re to believe they’re all variants on this theme: “This is the story of a fellow who feels betrayed and beaten by a relationship, but is surviving. He compares himself to Chuckie [sic], from the Child’s Play movies.”

L.K.: There’s a lot of great, mean little one-liners in the lyrics. There are also some phrases that got recycled weirdly into other things, like “I’m Sick (Of This American Life)”.

A.S.: “There’s a whole new generation waiting to be wrecked by you” ranks among my favorite lyrics in the canon.

L.K.: I have a weird love of “It was sweet/Like lead paint is sweet/But the after-effect left me paralyzed.” The chorus to this song is mostly meaningless though. As is the bridge. What is “cyclops rock” anyway? For an angry-seeming song about a fucked-up relationship, the lyrics are awfully full of noise. Is this song supposed to literally be from the point of view of a cyclops? I guess that’s the thing that always confused me about it; If you take out the cyclops aspect it’s fairly straightforward otherwise.

A.S.: It might be the narrator’s way of admitting to himself that he only sees/focuses on certain things (“I just stare with my one glass eye”), likely to the detriment of the relationship. As far the chorus, “Cyclops rock” might be a dance (the theme continued in the Cerys Matthews verse, which is a list of dances). Or it could all just be a Residents reference. Or all of the above.

L.K.: But that bridge still makes no sense to me. The narrator is angry at somebody he taught a dance to?

A.S.: Because she broke his heart?

L.K.: This is why I don’t write song interpretations.

A.S.: Yeah, same here.

L.K.: Other than ,“This song is about a guy sniffing markers”… Oh, speaking of “Imaginary Friend” again… DAN! As I mentioned then and will mention again here, for this song, the shouting of the musician’s name doesn’t break any sort of 4th wall here or bother me in this song. Probably because it feels so much like part of the song itself. It’s a very organic sort of “DAN!”

A.S.: It’s just a fun little rock and roll trope put to good use.

L.K.: Wait wait, I’m just… thinking about that bridge again. Froog. Froog?

A.S.: Froog.

A.S.: I just kind of assumed it was and hoped I was right.

L.K.: You know, the bridge isn’t in the printed lyrics in the liner notes.

A.S.: Odd.

L.K.: No wonder I never really knew what the lyrics were to it.

A.S.: That damn bridge.  So full of mystery.

L.K.: It’s my least favorite part of the song and yet it’s the part I keep talking about.

A.S.: I had no idea either, honestly. ”The scoop on Colorwheel: Lisa and Liza are the ladies behind the mic and the computer screen, and collectively they represent one of the coolest bands to emerge from the “lo-fi” scene of the mid-90′s. Always critics’ darlings, even when they are roadies for Human League, the lusher approach is reflected in this track.”

L.K.: That doesn’t help a bit!

A.S.: No, it doesn’t. Although I’m thinking it’s supposed to be like Stereolab or something. A really skewed version of Stereolab.

L.K.: Yeah, musically and lyrically I’ve never really been able to quite place this track’s influences.

A.S.: Stereolab’s the best thing I got for this one. I could also easily see Flansburgh as a big Stereolab fan.

A.S.: Around 1990 or so, I think.

L.K.: Ah ok, so they’d definitely been around for quite a while.

A.S.: Yeah, and they’d been indie darlings since the beginning – I dunno about “lo-fi” but this song doesn’t sound at all “lo-fi,” although to be fair, this is Colorwheel’s ”lusher approach.”

L.K.: TMBG’s Battle of the Bands project seemed really half-assed in a lot of ways; the recycling and rebranding of a lot of songs into it as a kind of desperate way to fill a month in TMBG Unlimited.

A.S.: Yeah, it wasn’t nearly as fully committed as Battle of the Bands revolutionaries’ The Turtles were (and needless to say, TMBG never got a self-parodic greatest pop song ever like “Elenore” out of this collection), but there are some really great curios from the project.

L.K.: The first month (that this song was from) was decent, but the second half was just recycling. To be fair though, if the official descriptions from Unlimited are to be believed, they were putting it together from the road while on tour.

A.S.: Which in that case, getting any sort of recording done on the road is impressive.

L.K.: Seems like they could’ve planned it out better based on how much it cost to be subscribed though.

A.S.: How much did it cost?

A.S.: Yeah, July’s definitely would have been worth $10. That is a pretty steep price for the whole year. It’s a bit ironic too that the songs in the Battle of the Bands ended up sounding less like emulations of artists than a lot of the Venue Songs.

L.K.: That is a very good point; Venue Songs verges on blatant style-parody.

A.S.: Case in point: “Leeds”, which we’ve discussed, is a pretty spot-on Who homage.  ”Chaos By Design” might be some Sterolab-ish thing?

L.K.: I mean, “Something You’d Like To See” is faux Broadway audition song, Spool 409 is Blink-182 or Green Day or some other crappy pop punk band, but this one is still just… yeah. It’s this one.

L.K.: Well the description of Bog Standard makes them sound like The Smiths meets XTC, but that’s for later. Other songs, man, these are all other songs.

A.S.: True, and we haven’t even brought up the cream of the crop yet… I guess the Battle of the Bands thing is more set on emulating certain styles, while a lot of the Venue Songs target specific artists. But I think the Venue Songs are overall far more successful in their emulations than these BOTB songs.

L.K.: Maybe somebody needs to ask Flans what this is supposed to be a fake version of, once he gets back from his JoCo Cruise. I actually have very few comments about this individual song though, just because I’m so totally clueless about where it came from concept-wise, influence-wise, and history-wise within the band itself.

A.S.: Yeah, we’ve talked very little about the actual song at hand.  It’s a lovely little song; I’m fond of the bells in the chorus.

L.K.: Yeah. It’s fairly forgettable, but when I hear it and remember what it sounds like again, it’s enjoyable enough.

A.S.: Rereading the lyrics calls up another likely inspiration for this song – Broadcast. They were very fresh around the time of “Chaos By Design”‘s release too.  Again, hardly “lo-fi” but I think it’s rather likely.

L.K.: This is more your area than mine.

A.S.: Dear reader, got any ideas on what the hell this song is trying to be?

L.K.: It really is. This unholy combination of faux-Boston accents and circular lyrics and that trippy chorus… none of it should work, but it does. Really really well. The verses feel like they’re not even from the same song, relative to the chorus.

A.S.: This song has one of the strangest chord progressions of any pop song I know. It goes through arguably four different keys on one whole repeat – G minor, A minor, Bb minor and Eb minor – all great keys, too.

L.K.: It’s a really weird song!

A.S.: For as strange a song as it is, it could have been even stranger, as evidenced in the Dial-A-Song version of it, which slows down, begins to collapses on itself, and gets cut off at the end. I almost wish they’d kept that original ending – it would’ve made an already somewhat threatening song into something completely nightmarish.

L.K.: Yeah, that DAS ending is pretty terrifying. By the time they got to the demo that appeared on one of the podcasts, it was mostly just a less-polished version of the final studio track. Man, I always forget about the brass section on this track, but it’s got those great John Henry horns too. That album really had more of a “sound” than most of their previous ones did, and I don’t think it was solely the result of them switching to a full band format.

A.S.: The horns were a great addition to the mix – obviously they’d used horns throughout their career but they add a lot of depth to just about every song on John Henry It’s a pretty distinctive horn sound too, given the band’s proclivity for baritone/bass saxophone.

L.K.: I wonder if the horn-dependence of most of John Henry is related to why the band only plays a handful of tracks from that album anymore…

A.S.: Which would probably account for why this gem hasn’t been unearthed since 1998.

L.K.: However, I mean, it’s not like the horns are even essential to this song, they’re just kind of there to add flavor. They’re a five-piece band, something could be covered by somebody.

A.S.: I’m sure Dan Miller could translate the lick after the chorus to guitar very well.

L.K.: I’ve never heard a live recording of this song, actually, but I really want to now.

A.S.: Looking at the list of performances, it’s only allegedly been played four times since John Henry‘s release, the last of which was done at a Tower Records in-store, so it probably wasn’t even a full band setting (which this song absolutely benefits from)

L.K.: Man, I know I’m just repeating myself, but this is such a good song, but the accent he sings the verses with… never really made any sense to me.

A.S.: Yeah, it’s one of those splendid mysteries about the song.  I mean, with something like “Wicked Little Critta” it makes almost too much sense, but why this song?  I honestly prefer not to know. Same deal with the lyrics; I have no idea what exactly they mean but I’d care not to know.  I just love the (as you noted) circular nature of them – tearing down the garage to make room for the tore-down garage.

L.K.: I only bring up the inexplicable accent in the verses because it seems to disappear in the choruses, but John Linnell is not known for his ability to maintain accents very reliably while singing (I know it’s from much later, but “I’m All You Can Think About” starts off faux-British and then gradually becomes less so)

L.K.: I have no idea why anybody thought it was “id” to begin with. The printed lyrics say “it”, it sounds like “it”, “it” rhymes whereas “id” does not, Flans said it was “it” on Tumblr.

A.S.: It seems like a real non-issue.

L.K.: Yeah. It’s just stupid listeners trying to be pretentious.

A.S.: “Id seems way too academic to me.” – John Flansburgh.  If “id” is too academic for the Johns…

L.K.: Hey, remember, the Johns always hasten to claim that they are a lot dumber than people think they are. But yeah, the id/it debate is a total non-issue and I hate to even give it legitimacy by bringing it up here, but it’s “it”. That is the lyric. End of story. The idea that it’s a typo is nonsense because wrong lyrics abound in the TMBG discography, and they’re generally way more seriously wrong than a one-letter typo.

L.K.: Or “Piece Of Dirt”, which was also from a different version of the song. (Also I have the gatefold LP version of Join Us, and the “dicks” is indeed missing from the printed lyrics to “Can’t Keep Johnny Down”, though not ”dicktown”, leading me to believe it was a mistake rather than censorship.)

A.S.: (Odd, because “dicks” is in the CD version.) But yeah, I don’t really have much else on “A Self Called Nowhere” other than that it’s pretty unlike anything else in the band’s catalogue, and that I wish I could express just how great it is.

L.K.: This is always the unfortunate thing any time a really great song comes up… it’s just us blubbering about how great it is. I feel like we aren’t really doing it justice.

A.S.: Alright, well I’ll just go ahead and state the obvious that this is a Who reference, almost certainly thanks to the Live At Leeds LP, which I still confidently claim to be the greatest live album of all time.

L.K.: A lot of Venue Songs are pretty blatant shoutouts to other bands. This one being one of the more noticeable ones.

A.S.: Even though Live At Leeds predated “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, which “Leeds” most directly derives from.

L.K.: Maybe they just took the “Leeds” part and then kind of ran wild with the Who theme from there. If only it had that great scream…

A.S.: “Won’t Get Fooled Again” was among the first keyboard-heavy Who songs, so that’d give John Linnell something to do, especially since he likely wrote this one.

L.K.: (It has some screaming, just not the epic CSI-opening type…)

A.S.: CSI opening, pshhhh.  Roger effin’ Daltrey.

L.K.: There’s also lots of Dan Miller guitar noodling going on in this one, which is always fun.

A.S.: TMBG’s own Pete Townshend.

L.K.: Out of all the in situ venue songs that didn’t get polished studio versions though, this is one of my favorite ones.

A.S.: Yeah, this song rules. So much energy, as of course would be necessary for a successful Who homage.

L.K.: Wall, ceiling, wall, floor, stage. There’s virtually no lyrics in this but it really doesn’t need any.

A.S.: For the longest time I had no idea what any of the lyrics were outside of “Leeds Irish Center” and “spinning around…”

L.K.: It’s just the venue, and its many walls, balls, floors, and ceilings. Oh, and bars, can’t forget bars.

A.S.: And the truck’s fuel tank.

L.K.: Oh yeah, that part.

A.S.: It sounds like they’re saying “Phil check” or something.

L.K.: I could never understand that part at all. I heard “drunk tank.” Drunk drunk drunk drunk drunk drunk drunk… something tank This was where their fuel got siphoned out of their bus, right? Because in that context, the fuel tank line makes a lot more sense.

A.S.: Allegedly; I had no idea about this until now.

L.K.: No, they did get their fuel siphoned out somewhere in the UK. I’ve heard it brought up in multiple interviews, so this must’ve been the place. Linnell also had a baritone sax stolen out of the back of their truck somewhere in the UK at some point; they seem to have bad luck with their property over there.

A.S.: This would also imply that the song was written, rehearsed, and performed right fucking there.

L.K.: Hey, that’s the whole point of venue songs. You write it and learn it and perform it. At the venue.

A.S.: I honestly wasn’t sure if they had some of them written in advance or whatever.

L.K.: I doubt they would’ve had the time.

A.S.: Before going on tour?

L.K.: But that would’ve defeated the point!

A.S.: Well I mean, the point was for there to be a song for every venue – they didn’t all have to be created and performed that day necessarily.

L.K.: Yeah, but pre-writing them feels like cheating to me.

A.S.: If anyone has information on when exactly the venue songs were written, that’d be helpful.

L.K.: Well I mean, it varied from song to song. They weren’t all written in the exact same context. I know the stories behind some of them, but not others. Since this was back when they were taping and selling their live shows and Dan Miller was writing little recaps of the downloads, he sometimes mentioned tidbits about the tour or the context in which the Venue Song was written.

L.K.: “The gig- located deep in the ‘where the fuck are we’ part of Leeds was  not my favorite gig of all time. The troubles began well before show  time. It seems that the parking lot is an ATM for the local hooligans.  Petrol (I’m using UK speak) was nicked from our truck and several cars  were broken into.” – Dan Miller

A.S.: Geez… I mean, Ian Curtis’ friggin’ headstone was stolen, so I guess a bari sax isn’t much compared to that. Different city, but still.

L.K.: Who knows how friendly the crowd was there… the newspaper sure didn’t like them.

A.S.: Oh christ.

L.K.: That is definitely one of the nastiest reviews I have ever read of any band, at least out of reviews that were published in actual papers.

A.S.: Yeah, fuck this guy. He seems to give reasonably good reviews to just about everything else. Everything gets 4 stars, except a reissue by The Fall (no shit).

L.K.: So yeah, bad environment surrounding the venue, horrible review… but good venue song. Crazy.

A.S.: Ugh, four stars to Bon Iver.

L.K.: Some people who like almost everything else just really, really, hate They Might Be Giants. It’s not that uncommon.

A.S.: Which is basically the reason why we’re doing this dumb blog anyway, because we like almost everything else, except we really, really love They Might Be Giants.

L.K.: We are the pro-”TMBG is legitimate music” crew. Or something. There’s room for all sorts of bands in the world, so long as they don’t take themselves too seriously, but are serious about their music.

A.S.: Yeah, personally we’re just not too keen on folks who take themselves way too seriously.  The stuff usually just winds up humorless and insipid. But anywho, it seems that, unlike yesterday’s venue song venue, Leeds Irish Centre is still open, which I guess is a good thing? Although there’s virtually nothing going on there anymore… except a THIN LIZZY TRIBUTE BAND!

L.K.: Oh boy…

A.S.: Things Ain’t Working Out Down at the Leeds Irish Centre. (Although I guess Things Are Working Out Down at the Music Farm, although that’s for another day…)

L.K.: (So many more Venue Songs to get to!)

A.S.: One of the infamous lost venue songs. This one is actually available on their website; the true lost venue song is “New York”, the Irving Plaza one.

L.K.: Given the questionable musical quality of some of the venue songs that actually were released, what is it about this one (and especially that one) that made them leave them off the album?

A.S.: I have no idea what kept “Irving Plaza” off because it apparently had a full set of lyrics or something, although I’ve never heard it. This one though seems to have virtually no effort put into it, it’s just this goofy keyboard rock and roll lick and the name of the venue. Even some of the lesser venue songs have the virtue of being flat-out weird (“Santa Cruz”), this one really has nothing going for it, and the band knew it when they played it.

L.K.: Venue Songs was such an insane idea for a project. They had to know going into it that there’d be no way they could write an actual song for every venue they played at. They made a really noble effort though, and do deserve commendation for that.

L.K.: “They’re not all…y’know…hit-bound.“

A.S.: This one is still charming at least, in that the band knows they half-assed the song, so that self-awareness adds a positive bent to it.

L.K.: Bet the Boston concertgoers were still jealous of the folks in, say, Pittsburgh though. Even then, a minor venue song is still better than no venue song at all.

A.S.: Yep.  Nothing for Cleveland, or anywhere in Ohio.

L.K.: The sad thing is how many of the venues have closed since the time the songs were written.

A.S.: Ya know, the Avalon is one of them. Closed in 2007 and I guess it’s now a House of Blows?

L.K.: How many Avalons are there in Boston? The one I’m looking at seems to mostly have reviews for its reputation as a gay nightclub.

A.S.: I’m not sure, but yeah, seems that the one TMBG played at closed in 2007 and is now a House of Bros.

L.K.: Oh, this seems to be the same club, but I guess they had a “gay night” once a week. (No big light up sign though, as far as we know…)

L.K.: Musically it’s pretty simple, lyrically it’s pretty incomprehensible… perhaps it was a good thing this song got left behind. There’s obviously some sort of reference to the Cinderella fairy tale going on, but I can’t quite puzzle out what the narrator’s relation to anything is. ”When it turns twelve o’clock/ I’ll be back by myself/ And you’ll be back in his arms/ As Mrs. Somebody Else.

A.S.: The actual Cinderella reference is a little confusing outside of the “twelve o’clock” bit, but overall, the lyrics seem relatively straightforward.  It’s an anti-love song, aimed at a girl who’s “been around the world” – presumably a lady of the night.

L.K.: Why the narrator is so afraid of her though… ”please don’t pound on my chest” “please don’t knock down my door” I’m just going to assume it’s not a very positive relationship going on between them. Of course, then the last part of the lyrics comes in and is just silly.

A.S.: Especially with Linnell speaking the lyrics, overtly enunciated.

L.K.: I’m guessing Flans or whoever wrote it didn’t really know where he was going with the song and decided it wasn’t worth the trouble to develop it further.

A.S.: I think it works fine as just a little minute-long ditty, though.

L.K.: Yeah, but how it would get developed into a full song is pretty unclear.

A.S.: It really is one of those Dial-A-Songs that just got tossed right out – never made it on a podcast, never wound up as another song, so little is known about it.

L.K.: Who knows how many of these there were that never even got recorded and stuck on bootlegs by fans? The Dial-A-Song machine did sort of provide an impetus for the Johns to be continually composing stuff to put up on it, but simply by virtue of the amount of stuff they were churning out at such a rate, the songs couldn’t all be keepers.

A.S.: It’s an odd practice if the songs surfaced once only to never surface again, but we are talking about an odd band.

L.K.: Well, I’m sure most bands probably do similar things, but the difference is that the songs never showed up in a public place.

A.S.: Yeah, they remained virtually entirely unknown, unlike these slight inklings of existence.

L.K.: TMBG actually seemed less self-conscious in their early days because they were confident that nobody was really paying that much attention to individual songs on dial-a-song–they didn’t think anybody was recording them. They didn’t think people were taping live concerts so they didn’t have to worry about trying out new songs there years before they wound up on albums. TMBG isn’t alone in being more paranoid now that they know everything is being recorded by rabid fans, it actually seems pretty common with most bands nowadays.

L.K.: I have no idea why They Might Be Giants thought coming to Cleveland in February was a good idea, but they kicked their 2008 tour off there anyway, and it was amazing. And this was the song they opened with. This is one of those B-sides that’s so good, you wonder why it was a B-side to begin with.

A.S.: This song is just perfect. It’s just an incredible, incredible pop song. And speaking as someone who hosts a college radio show (and I know you can say the same for yourself), it has a particularly special place in my heart, insofar as that it reminds me how glad I am that I’ll never have to deal with payola issues.

L.K.: I love the whole concept of the lyrics in that I can’t really think about any other songs about payola.

A.S.: I mean, there have to be others, I just can’t think of anything right now. There’s that new wave band The Payola$.

L.K.: Oh yeah, it seems like too obvious a concept to have been ignored in popular music ever since the term “payola” itself was coined. There have to be other songs out there somewhere. Did people write songs about Alan Freed?

A.S.: Oh wait, of course, Dead Kennedys allude to it in their legendary track, “Pull My Strings” where for one motif in the song, they parody “My Sharona” as “My Payola”. TANGENT TIME: That song has an incredible story on its own. Basically Jello Biafra wrote it for some regional San Francisco award show that the band was invited to play on; the awards were also televised regionally.  The DKs walked on stage with white shirts with giant “S”s on them.  They started playing “California Über Alles” (which you might know from John Linnell’s cover of it) and then Biafra interrupts the band.  They then flipped over neck ties from around their backs to turn the “S”s into “$”s, and played this song, “Pull My Strings” for the first and last time.  It’s a very blunt rant against the commodification of punk into new wave, and it included lines like “Is my cock big enough for you to make me a star.”  Needless to say, they were never invited to play an award show again, but it’s a wild moment, and a great song to boot.  The recording of the performance later wound up on their compilation Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death and I highly recommend it. I wish I knew how to add footnotes in WordPress.

A.S.: Lyrical subjects were generally a lot more limited when payola ruined Alan Freed’s career too.

L.K.: I did find “Payola Blues” but I’ve never heard the song in question. Good ol’ Neil Young.

A.S.: Ah, nor have I.  Neil Young has like 50 albums, I guess it’s not on any of the ones I have. So there we go, “Hey Mr. DJ…” is pretty unique after all.

L.K.: There are two Dial-A-Song versions of this song too, and while the second one is basically the same as the finished version, the earlier one is interesting. The lyrical differences are minor, but I really like the differences in the way the chords in the chorus are played.

A.S.: Also, Linnell adds a few nice vocal flourishes that I kind of wish were in the final version, and there’s a lyric change – “Had gone and made the world their oyster.”

L.K.: I love that they decided to go ahead and learn how to play this song two decades after it was written. They went through all that trouble and then basically stopped playing it after that ’08 tour!

A.S.: Which is really odd on both counts.  I have no idea why they never played it prior to 2008 and I have no idea why they’d stop playing it, especially since it’s a fan favorite.

L.K.: It’s an unusually long song by TMBG standards too, though a lot of that is the outro.

A.S.: Most of it, really. The second chorus ends at 2:16, so over a third of the song is the outro, which isn’t a bad thing.  I mean, great songs can have long outros.

A.S.: True; I love how you can hear the song end after it fades out, too. Going back to the song’s live performance, I’m now wondering what would have happened if the song had been what it was originally intended as – a song called “Sleeping My Way To The Top” where the band would perform it laying on hammocks stretched across the stage. Noting that, it’s really weird then that they didn’t play it until 2008, since it was conceived as a live performance piece.

L.K.: I’m guessing the performing-in-hammocks would’ve been conceived around the same time they were lighting their skin on fire and fencing with loaves of french bread. Gotta compete with those performance artists somehow if you’re not willing to strip naked onstage.

A.S.: Wait, when were they lighting their skin on fire and fencing with loaves of french bread?

L.K.: Check out old interviews with the band, pre-1986. It happened.

A.S.: Oh what the hell, why aren’t they doing that kind of stuff anymore? That’s fantastic.

L.K.: Oh my bad this is from 87 whoops.

A.S.: “Bring Me The Head of Kenny Rogers Tour ’87″

L.K.: I miss when their tours had names! Not like I was around to remember them, but still. Wasn’t ’92 the “Don’t Tread On The Cut Up Snake World Tour”? Oh, there’s this interview too: ”The twosome yuk-yuk it up with monster mitts made of papier-mache, fence  with loaves of French bread, lead sing-alongs with oversized cue cards,  and trade repartee with wisecrackers in the peanut gallery.”

A.S.: I guess I always knew the hammocks wouldn’t be out of place in the band’s old days, but those would seem downright normal compared to setting themselves on fire.  That’s some Butthole Surfers-caliber shit.

L.K.: Well, they did have that firebreathing tour manager during “Why Does The Sun Shine”…

A.S.: Hey, you know what part of “Hey Mr. DJ” really gets me?

L.K.: What part?

A.S.: That augmented chord in the pre-chorus on the word “forgiven” – that to me is where the song is elevated from “great” to “perfect.”