John Linnell and John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants came in to the Setlist studio to speak with Bree Wilde where they discussed some of their favorite concerts over their lifetimes.

You may have seen this post where they went on about getting into Elvis Costello way before most people even knew of him.

But did you know they got to see Frank Zappa? About that: there's good news and bad news about it.

"That was the worst sounding show I ever went to," guitarist John Flansburgh said.

John Linnell, who went with Flansburgh to a Zappa show, was curious which gig the poorly-sounding gig was at -- either the Orpheum or the Music Hall in Boston.

Linnell: Yeah, I guess I saw them playing a couple times at the Orpheum.

Flansburgh: I think we procured the very worst seats in the house, and true to their face value, they were not worth it. But it was when Zappa had the super flashy drummer.

Linnell: Right, Terry Bozzio?

Flansburgh: Yeah. But it was great. I mean, he actually did a lot. It was interesting how the span of stuff he did, I thought was really respectful of his audience, because he did songs from Freak Out. He really actually did his full career in this very generous way. And in kind of a progressive way, which I was not expecting at all.

Linnell: That's an interesting point. He wasn't just playing his current stuff, which would have been fine. But yeah, he was clearly happy to reach all the way back to the beginning of his career.

John Flansburgh: Yeah. And it was a really musical show, too. I mean, it was like they reinterpreted everything they did, so it was good.

Bree Wilde: What do you mean they reinterpreted it?

Flansburgh: Well, I mean, he had all these... just the lineup of the band was very different than the original band. So he just took advantage of the musicality that was available to him, and he wasn't just trying to reproduce the original arrangements... I mean, I guess for some people it could be hit-or-miss, I don't know. But I thought it was really smart.

Bree: So you saw a show that didn't sound good. Did you see one that did sound good?

Linnell: Well, I think John was always a little more attentive to the sound quality, and I think I was probably not paying as close attention, same as today. I think John's always been more of an audiophile, interested in the production end and the sound quality, and I was probably paying more attention to the arrangements or whatever.

Linnell: I think the first big rock show I ever went to was Frank Zappa in 1974, so I was 14, I think, at that time, or it might have been '73. All this was a completely brand new experience for me as a young teen. And I was a big Frank Zappa fan at that age, so it was just exciting to be in a room watching him. But yeah, probably the sound quality was not terrific.

Bree: But I guess you wouldn't really know that at your first show.

Linnell: No, you wouldn't, and I'm sure I didn't. And the thing that actually stuck with me was that he was still recovering from an accident he'd had where somebody pushed him off the stage a couple of years earlier and he had this really severe back injury. He was in a wheelchair for a year.

So when I saw him, he came out, he was standing up and walking around, but during the show, this huge piece of lighting equipment fell from the ceiling of the Orpheum Theater in Boston onto the stage, and it was just an example of how fraught everything was at that time. Frank Zappa is still getting over this horrible accident, and then parts of the stage are falling on him.

Flansburgh: Did he keep on doing the show?

Linnell: Well, he went off-stage and obviously he was screaming at people like he would, and then he came back and finished the show. And I think some of the gear was damaged, like there's a woman playing a xylophone and the thing just landed right on her.

Flansburgh: Because just between you and me, John, if the lighting rig falls on the stage, I'm not coming back.

John Linnell: Yeah, yeah, I would think. I was just telling somebody about that Curtis Mayfield show in Brooklyn where he was permanently paralyzed by exactly that, the lighting gear fell down on him.

On AC/DC and if it was the loudest show they'd seen

Flansburgh: John, I have to ask you, because I know you saw it and we haven't really ever talked much about it, but you saw AC/DC with their original singer.

Linnell: That's right.

Flansburgh: The guy before the other guy.

Linnell: I can tell you the date... the Paradise Club in Boston.

Flansburgh: Which is like a club that's the size of my hand.

Linnell: Yes, it was a little club, August 21st, 1978.

Flansburgh: I bet that was loud for you.

Linnell: And Angus Young was probably not much older than me. I think he was 17 or something.

Flansburgh: Velvet pants.

Linnell: I think he had one of those very early wireless guitars. So I think, unless he had an incredibly long guitar cord, because he wandered all around the admittedly small club.

Flansburgh: Well, very wide, crazy—

Linnell: A wide but shallow room.

Flansburgh: It's like the railroad apartment of clubs.

Linnell: Playing guitar the entire time, whipping his hair up and down for the whole show. He never stopped. He was doing something that if I did now, I would have basically a back injury that would take me out of commission forever... That was right at their big moment early on where they were exploding.

Bree: Was it hard to get into that show then?

Linnell: I don't recall. John and I had this close friend who was the source of a lot of musical information that we were getting at that time. He was this guy, Jimmy Mack, who was a really dedicated music fan and just introduced everything to us at that time, and he brought me to the AC/DC gig.

Flansburgh: He worked at WBCN, which was the big radio station, so he could get into almost any show. So we were always just his happy plus one.

Linnell: Yeah, and he just knew everything. He also basically wrote half the school newspaper and half of that was music reviews, and was just an obsessive and very enthusiastic fan of music. So he's probably half the reason we're here now, is that he was just such an incredible music lover.

Flansburgh: So was it loud?

Linnell: No.

Flansburgh: It didn't seem too loud?

Linnell: Yeah. I don't have a memory of it being excruciatingly loud. I remember some shows that I saw, like seeing Sugar for example, that was a show that was memorably loud.

Flansburgh: Bob Mould of Hüsker Dü's band, the follow-up band was called Sugar, and they were insane.

Linnell: They were really loud. But no, I don't think it was off the graph, the AC/DC show.

They Might Be Giants have several dates scheduled this year which quickly sold out.

But the good news is you can go to their website to get on the waiting list. Good luck!

Meanwhile Sugar isn't touring, but Bob Mould is. Get your tix on his website.

Bob Mould Here We Go Crazy Tour

July 30 – Haddon Township, NJ – Lake Park
August 1 – Kingston, NY – Assembly
August 2 – Sellersville, PA – Sellersville Theater
August 3 – Lancaster, PA – Tellus360
August 16 – Novato, CA – Hopmonk Tavern
September 9 – Cincinnati, OH – Memorial Hall
September 10 – Nelsonville, OH – Stuart’s Opera House
September 12 – Buffalo, NY – Town Ballroom
September 13 – Ithaca, NY – Hangar Theatre
September 14 – Burlington, VT – Higher Ground
September 16 – Portland, ME – SPACE
September 17 – Shirley, MA – Bull Run
September 19 – East Greenwich, RI – Greenwich Odeum
September 20 – Brattleboro, VT – Stone Church
September 21 – Hamden, CT – Space Ballroom
September 23 – New York, NY – Le Poisson Rouge
September 24 – Baltimore, MD – Ottobar
September 26 – Charlottesville, VA – The Southern
September 27 – Winston-Salem, NC – SECCA
September 28 – Charleston, WV – Mountain Stage
September 30 – St. Louis, MO – Off Broadway
October 1 – Kansas City, MO – recordBar
October 3 – Bloomington, IL – Castle Theatre
October 4 – Chicago, IL – Old Town School of Folk
October 7 – Milwaukee, WI – Shank Hall
October 8 – Stoughton, WI – Stoughton Opera House
October 10 – Minneapolis, MN – Icehouse
October 11 – St. Paul, MN – Turf Club