Stán Cynedóm

We have just returned home from our own little nerd prom–a They Might be Giants show! It was a concert hall packed to the rafters with all sorts of mismatched shirts, black rimmed glasses and odd hairstyles–in short, a nerdly paradise. The show was so fantastic. Early in the evening (post work) I was feeling tired and homebody-ish. I kinda just wanted to come home, get in my pjs and take a nap. But the tickets were already paid for, so I felt obligated to go. And I am so glad that I did. Not only was the band great this time (my last experience seeing them was in a gymnasium at Marlboro College–terrible acoustics), but the audience was a pure joy to watch.

E_to_the_M noted that there was a considerable contingent of shorter than average people at the show, suggesting that we should photograph the crowd with a measuring device along the edge of the photo and then figure out the mean height of the audience. She may have been wearing sophisticated, pointy, red shoes, but she is all nerd. So the relative shortness of the crowd made the taller people stand out, especially the endlessly hopping-up-and-down-guy who was so tall that his head was lit up by the spotlight that was meant to illuminate the band!

And then there were the two 16 year-old rockers, dressed all in black who tried to head-bang every time the music got a little heavy and/or fast. I loved them. I loved them even more when they began to pump their dramatically clenched fists into the air during the encore performance of ‘James K. Polk.’ I laughed out loud imagining that what they were really excited about wasn’t the band, but the beginnings of the U.S. Treasury and the defeat of Martin Van Buren. Oh, if only democracy had that passionate a following.

My favorite moment of the show may have been seeing Flansburgh stop playing his guitar (on multiple occasions) in order to pick up and spray canned smoke into the air. There was just something so unpretentious and wonderful about it.

I grinned and danced all night (except for when that horrible spotlight shone directly into my face. That was not so good.)

I heart them.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 5th, 2007 at 5:10 am and is filed under Nerdiness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.