Ween Talking Shit About They Might Be Giants
Christopher M. Stangl
comment that "I consider us smart"):
> This from the guys who wrote "Push the little daisies" and "Homo Rainbow"?
1) Gene is talking about the difference between being an
intelligent person who doesn't feel the need to show it off every time
he writes lyrics (Ween) and being an intelligent person who writes
smart-ass puns for EVERY lyric (TMBG).
2) "Push th' Little Daisies" is a beautiful and complex song,
mostly being about a love so strong and fucked up it KILLS you. As
"Daisies" is a song where Ween (whose cheerful misogyny- and everything
else- is closer to the surface than TMBG) comes very near to stepping on
TMBG ground, I don't know why you're complaining!
3) "Homo Rainbow" is a complicated social satire, all the more
cherishable because our boys, even at their very most lovely and poetic
("Sarah," "Don't Laugh") clearly don't slave over their lyrics
particularly. TMBG are so "smart" they never would've even thought to
write lyrics like this.
4) TMBG DOES make music for smart ass college kids, and Ween does
make music that sounds exactly like a bad (or a good one) acid trip at the
trailer park... For what it's worth, I think Dean Ween's got guitar chops
that lay my man Flansburgh out on a cold slab. Ween knows what they're
doing, and, unlike TMBG, it may not always require ten English Lit majors
to decipher for you, but they're definitely hard working and smart.
5) Yo dude, Gene's the Stallion. Do you know who you are fucking
with!? You're fucking with the STALLION, mang! The STALLION!
-Rev. Chris Stangl
"Let me tell you about the fuckin' bitch, Deaner!"
-Brother Gener Weener "Common Bitch"
MariaSombrero
about the might be giants, i don't particularly care. (i saw them play once,
when i was like 16: one of 'em rode a mountain bike on stage. it was fuggin
stoopid).
Satchmangg
what amazed me about WeeN when I first heard them was the depth
and....VAREITY!!!
TMBG usually has the same boring college boy drone,very annoying.They found a
niche and it was good,that is until they molested to the point where it is now
a fad...
WeeN prove that you dont need a "niche"
to put yourself in the pages of Music history
(which mark my words they'll matter)
Compare something like "Sarah" to "Mourning Glory" (Which are both on the same
album) and you'll see what I mean.I'll write the rest of this later...
Satchmangg (the extra "g" is for "geek")
Rich Bunnell
>
> as to what you said about ween, i agree wholeheartedly. as for what you said
> about the might be giants, i don't particularly care. (i saw them play once,
> when i was like 16: one of 'em rode a mountain bike on stage. it was fuggin
> stoopid).
>
Gee, that sure has a LOT to do with their music, now doesn't it?
--
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Rich Bunnell or "Metal Man," whichever sounds more insane
-
"The white folks think they're at the top, ask any proud white male. A
million years of evolution, we get Danny Quayle." -Oingo Boingo,
"Insanity"
-
"You put your cleanest dirty shirt on, then you stagger down to meet the
dawn!" -XTC, "Wake Up"
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http://members.xoom.com/taoster/
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Amanda
And I got friends even older who are even bigger TMBG fans than I am.
As much as I love TMBG's lyrics (which, by the way, are not so pun-laden
as you make them out to be), the unique sound of their music is what does
it for me. Show me one song on the radio in the past 12 months that
sounds anything like Birdhouse or Dr. Worm or Exquisite Dead Guy. And the
fact that so much of their stuff doesn't sound like so much of their
*other* stuff.
So it's geek rock. So what. So it helps to have a few brain cells to
appreciate their work. You got a problem with that? That's your personal
taste, and I don't fault you for it. I happen to prefer a song with
scientific facts about mammals to 98% of the redundant crud on the radio.
If all you hear is smart-ass puns, then it's not for you. Don't listen.
But don't attack TMBG and their fans just because you don't get them.
-Amanda
--
"Sexy in a Raphaelesqe under-grad Banana Republic sort of way."
-- Will Durst
simon
writes
>If all you hear is smart-ass puns, then it's not for you. Don't listen.
>But don't attack TMBG and their fans just because you don't get them.
Chris make fun of TMBG? Have I slipped into an alternate universe
--
simon
Joshua Latta
Christopher M. Stangl
> I haven't been a "smart-ass college kid" for nigh under ten years now
Your literal status as a registered, tuition-paying college
student is not the point, and you KNOW it. The POINT is, TMBG is smart,
and that manifests itself in very visible, obvious ways: they write
complicated, and they write with big words... and they dress, act, and
convey an entire demeanor of Goofy College Kids. Never mind that they're
twice as old as the average college student. If you don't see it in the
floppy haircuts and t-shirts and sneakers and hopping dances and coffee
consumption, then, to paraphrase William Gaines, explaining what Gener
meant by "TMBG seems like goofy college kids" to you is about like
explaining the joy of sex to a frigid old maid.
Ween is a different kind of smart which often disguises itself as
brain-dead ("I think you a fucker! An' he's a fucker too!"). Ween may take
little or no pleasure in Linnell's poetry, but that hardly means *I*
don't... or that I'm not willing to explain where Ween is coming from.
> As much as I love TMBG's lyrics
...which can't possibly be half as much as I do.
> not so pun-laden as you make them out to be
Show me a TMBG song with no puns, and I'll show you a song TMBG
didn't write. I tend to use "pun" to encompass all "word-play," because it
is "three letters long" instead of "eight letters long".
> Show me one song on the radio in the past 12 months that sounds anything
> like Birdhouse or Dr. Worm or Exquisite Dead Guy.
1) We might as well be talking about Ween, then, who followed up their
15-genre exploration "Chocolate & Cheese" with "12 Golden Country
Greats," a real-live Nashville record, and then "The Mollusk"
entirely fashioned out of "dark ocean-rock"... Show me two Ween
songs that sound the same.
2) Maybe you're not listening to the right radio stations. "Birdhouse" has
clear roots in plenty of '80s era power ballads, "Dr. Worm" in
big band and "Exquisite Dead Guy" in any number of a capella
traditions. The point isn't that TMBG invents genres, but that
they bend and fiddle with them in scary ways. They don't sound
like nobody else, they sound like ALL kinds of people singing, right?
3) Since when does Chris Stangl not love They Might Be Giants more than
his own mother?
4) Show me something on the radio in the past 12 months that sounds like
my cat vomiting... I can't do it, but that doesn't mean my cat
vomiting is particularly fun to listen to.
5) Nirvana sounds a good deal like the Pixies, and they were both great.
> So it's geek rock. So what
Listen, boys, this may come as a shock, but what I listen to,
it's all geek rock.
Understand the difference between Gene Ween's TMBG bashing and
words out of my own mouth, and understand that my willing and accurate
defenses of Ween do not in any way downplay the fact that I think John
Linnell is the savior of humankind.
> it helps to have a few brain cells to appreciate their work
Maybe. I also think that to entirely understand anything from Gary
Lewis and the Playboys, to Prince and the NPG, you need a healthy and
functioning wad of grey matter. This is serious business.
> You got a problem with that?
No. Ween does.
> That's your personal taste, and I don't fault you for it
It's okay to fault people for personal taste, so long as you're
willing and prepared to back yourself up properly. Your problem is simply
that you've failed to recognize that I would, without hesitation, name my
first born daughter Ana Linnell Stangl... if I weren't planning on
sacrificing said infant to the Gods of Flansburgh.
> 98% of the redundant crud on the radio.
So you like 2% of the redundant crud?
Ween hardly qualifies as redundant (they can hardly stick to one
genre all the way through a single song), and rarely write music that
could even be played on commercial radio if people WANTED to hear it.
> If all you hear is smart-ass puns, then it's not for you
What if I think those smart-ass puns are poetry to DIE for?
What if I think those smart-ass puns are to be taken more
seriously than any previous manifestation of the Word Of God?
What if the main reason I didn't post here last week was because I
was too busy composing a thirty-pager about TMBG's bird-and-skull logo
motifs?
> Don't listen
I would cut off three of my own limbs using a hacksaw fashioned
from my own femur and incisors before I would stop listening to They Might
Be Giants.
> But don't attack TMBG and their fans just because you don't get them
You don't know who I am, do you?
That's refreshing. My spare time is dedicated to doing little else
than "getting" They Might Be Giants, and light housework. Thank you for
your time.
-Rev. Chris Stangl
"Why did you play the Giants and say it was us...
what do you mean 'because there's two guys in the
Giants'? There's two guys in Simon and Garfunkle,
but you didn't play 'Bridge over Troubled Water'!"
-Dean Ween
