Sunday morning is Scott’s province for music notices, but that leaves the other six days of the week going begging, so why not join the fun. Last night I returned to the Hollywood Bowl for the first time since 1975 (when I saw Yes as a teen), taking in They Might Be Giants (I wore a Gentle Giant t-shirt just to confuse people), and then the headliner, Sparks.
In other words, comic rock (or “exuberant silliness” as one reviewer puts it). In fact “Weird Al” Yankovic was sitting a couple boxes ahead of us, while actor Mark Proksch, who played Daniel ‘Pryce’ Wormald in the first season of Better Call Saul, was in the box right next to us.
And I was not disappointed. They Might Be Giants went through their classic hits from their breakout period of the late 1980s, such as “Ana Ng,” “Particle Man,” “Little Birdhouse in Your Soul,” “Don’t Let’s Start,” and most especially their cover of the old classic from the 1950s, “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”:
Even old New York was once New AmsterdamWhy they changed it I can’t sayPeople just liked it better that way
Istanbul was ConstantinopleNow it’s Istanbul, not ConstantinopleBeen a long time gone, oh ConstantinopleWhy did Constantinople get the works?That’s nobody’s business but the Turks
They Might Be Giants
Their between-song humor was matched by a terrific horn section that turned up for several tunes.
Tuba player not shown.
Sparks, which has been around since the Boer War, is definitely an acquired taste, but has its charms, most especially the deadpan, bespectacled Ron Mael who sits as still as a cigar store indian at the keyboards in a coat and tie while his 74-year-old lead singer brother Russell Mael jumps around stage like an 80-year-old Mick Jagger or something.
Russell and Ron Mael
Their set list is, to put it mildly, iconoclastic both for style and lyrical content. (“Balls / all you need are balls / To succeed are balls / all you need are. . .”) “The Girl is Crying in her Latte” also has a contemporary application.
As a reviewer notes, “At the risk of sounding past expiration date, there just has not been many bands in the modern era taking risks like this.” I especially enjoyed “We Go Dancing,” which was introduced as a parody of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. The closer was “All That,” and that’s all. (It was the final show of their current tour. Hope they’re back again, but you never know.)
