THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS

Sunday, 5 March 1989

Luxor
Luxemburger Strasse 40
Köln
West Germany


FLAC master, 27 September 2020, by elegymart:
Analog audience recording (stereo) {recorded by buenaventura}: Sony PC-62 stereo condenser mic > Sony WM-D3 stereo Cassette-Corder > Maxell XLII 90 (Type II CrO2) analog audio cassette master {from the buenaventura collection} > AKAI DX-W1100 double cassette deck > Zoom H2 > WAV (32/44) {transferred by buenaventura} > SHNtool (stripped non-canonical headers) > Cool Edit Pro 2.0 (audio cleanup, convert to 16/44) > SHNtool (fixed SBE) > CD Wave (track splits) > TLH (WAV > FLAC8).
Created this text file.


Total running time [71:22]
--------------------------------------------------------------
01 Piece of Dirt (instrumental intro) [1:32]
02 Hello Radio introduction [1:34]
03 Istanbul (Not Constantinople) [1:54]
04 Ana Ng [2:55]
05 Your Racist Friend [2:43]
06 Purple Toupée [2:33] >
07 The Famous Polka [2:23]
08 I'll Sink Manhattan [3:04]
09 They'll Need a Crane [3:23]
10 Number Three [2:23]
11 Rhythm Section Want Ad [2:54]
12 Santa's Beard [2:44]
13 Kiss Me, Son of God [2:15]
14 I've Got a Match [2:49] >
15 You'll Miss Me [2:08]
16 The Car Crash [3:00]
17 Don't Let's Start [3:23]
18 Lie Still, Little Bottle [3:27]
19 Cowtown [2:37]
20 (She Was A) Hotel Detective [4:26]
-- encore 1 --
21 Shoehorn with Teeth [2:20]
22 She's an Angel [5:02]
-- encore 2 --
23 Where Your Eyes Don't Go [3:14]
24 Road Movie to Berlin [2:49]
25 Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head [3:38]


Band line-up:
John Flansburgh – vocals, guitar, The Stick
John Linnell – vocals, accordion, keyboards
Mindy the American - The Stick on t18


Notes:

THE BUENAVENTURA LIMITED SERIES, VOL. 6

With much gratitude to the generosity of buenaventura, we're proud to bring you a limited series with more wonderful material to counterbalance the so far terrible '20s.

This limited series is being so coined because there isn't a deluge of tapes coming through for this right now, and the scope of it is still undetermined, but that could potentially change at any moment. There seems to be enough on tap at present to keep all following the series with enough new sounds to take in for at least the next few weeks.

This time we're in Köln at Luxor again for a set from Brooklyn's They Might Be Giants.

TMBG played Luxor for the first time in November of 1987 when they did their first tour of Europe at the end of that year. They played more European dates than they did in the U.S. in 1989, even returning to Luxor two months after playing this gig.

At this point, the "They'll Need a Crane" EP has been released but the "Purple Toupée" EP has not (nor did it ever). The majority of the setlist are songs from "Lincoln" which had only recently been released by Rough Trade in Germany. Three of the songs in the set would later show up on their follow-up album "Flood."

The crowd is more than game for audience participation, but "The Car Crash" interlude during a tune-up between numbers falls flat. It sounds like a fun harmless show except the two Johns make repeated references to how packed it is in the club and request that the fans don't all squash one another.

Recording quality is the usual fine capture courtesy of buenaventura. There are two instances or so of matches being lit or lighters being flicked near the mic, and some light buzzing at one point, but really no significant flaws for this early TMBG show.

Enjoy,
elegymart