nyctaper

They Might Be Giants November 29, 2008 Le Poisson Rouge - Flac and MP3 Downloads

Posted by nyctaper - 03/12/08 at 08:12 pm

[photo courtesy of coulter]

review by neild
I’d never been to (le) Poisson Rouge before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from the new space in the old Village Gate basement. After wending my way through (le) Poisson’s subterranean lair, and slaying the grue that guarded the entrance to the performance space proper, I found myself in a wonderland of sensory stimuli: red fish projected onto every surface (”poisson rouge” meaning “red fish” in one of those fussy European languages), the air swimming with pop music that remained unidentifiable despite its extreme volume. In the distance I could just discern the stage, which was carefully tucked into a corner of the room to guarantee the performers maximum privacy.

Once the show began, there were more surprises: To ensure that everyone in the audience enjoyed the same sound quality, the PA had been rigged up to what sounded like sheets of aluminum foil suspended from various points on the ceiling, which vibrated in a clever approximation of music. And as the piece (de) resistance, lighting technicians completed the dazzling display by shining pinlights into the audience’s eyes at random intervals.

Fortunately, the show itself was great, as I discovered once I got home and could actually listen to it. (Thanks to Dr. Nyctaper for recommending cardioid mics, which helped bring the aluminum foil into a bit more focus.) Many welcome rarities, plus a complete performance of the “Apollo 18” album, which is pretty much all welcome rarities, and comes off much better live than in its studio incarnation. The crowd is a bit noisy, and sings along on virtually everything, but that was part of the evening’s charm, and remains mostly in the background on the recording.

If nothing else, this is the first recording I know of (not counting a YouTube video with poor sound) to feature the new song “Why Does the Sun Really Shine? (The Sun Is A Miasma of Incandescent Plasma),” along with a long discourse from John Flansburgh about the pitfalls of writing about science for a Wal-Mart audience. There is also a recurring motif involving the “beep-beep-beep” sound a truck makes while backing up - I have no idea why, but it did make for a fascinating tutorial in the mechanics of 4-against-3 counterpoint.

nyctaper notes:
This is an outstanding capture with rich clarity and brightness. I edited the wav file by reducing individual portions of crowd noise and some spikes from close-clapping. The crowd is a bit less boisterous in the finished project, which is an excellent listening experience.

The NYCTaper recording of They Might Be Giants at Beacon Theatre February 2, 2008 is still available [here].

Direct download of MP3 files (HERE)

Email nyctaper with a request for the download location of the FLAC files.

Firefox users can Down Them All! at once (here).

More about FLAC

They Might Be Giants
2008-11-29
Le Poisson Rouge
New York, NY USA

Digital Master Audience Recording
Recorded from Upfront

CoreSound Cardioids > MM-EBM-1 battery box (with bass roll-off) > Sony MZ-NH900 > Audiophile 2496 > Sound Studio > 16bit 44.1 wav > Soundforge (set fades, level boost, edit close clapping and crowd noise) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > Flac Frontend (level 7, align sector boundaries) > flac

Premiere Download offered at
http://www.nyctaper.com
nyctaper@nyctaper.com

Recorded by neild
Produced by nyctaper
2008-12-03

Setlist:
[total time 1:55:50]
01 Stompy Introduction > Space Suit
02 Damn Good Times
03 West Virginia
04 [banter]
05 Why Does The Sun Really Shine?
06 Unsupervised, I Hit My Head
07 Withered Hope
08 Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
09 [banter]
10 Hey, Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had A Deal
Apollo 18:
11 Dig My Grave
12 I Palindrome I
13 She’s Actual Size
14 [banter]
15 My Evil Twin
16 Mammal
17 The Statue Got Me High
18 Spider
19 The Guitar
20 Dinner Bell
21 Narrow Your Eyes
22 Hall Of Heads
23 Which Describes How You’re Feeling
24 See The Constellation
25 If I Wasn’t Shy
26 Turn Around
27 Hypnotist Of Ladies
28 [banter]
29 Fingertips
30 [banter]
31 Space Suit
32 [encore break]
33 SEXXY
34 Dr. Worm
35 [second encore break]
36 Drink!
37 Introducing the Band
38 The Mesopotamians

If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT They Might Be Giants and visit their website, join their mailing list, purchase their official releases, and purchase the live downloads of TMBG shows.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 at 8:18 pm and is filed under nyctaper Recordings. The entry is tagged under 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.