Gigantic: They Might Be Giants Concert Review

I saw They Might Be Giants perform at The Vic in Chicago on Saturday, May 2nd.

Who are They Might Be Giants? Their name is presumably inspired by the 1971 film starring George C. Scott and Joanne Woodward. The title refers to Don Quixote mistaking windmills for giants. I saw the movie decades ago. The IMDB synopsis is:

"In a Manhattan psychiatric hospital, a man convinced that he is Sherlock Holmes is treated by a female doctor who happens to be named Watson."

A review on IMDB says "This sweet, goofy, and fairly romantic film asks the questions 'Whose reality is right?' and 'Does it really matter?'"

I say that many They Might Be Giants (TMBG) songs are goofy, some are sweet, and some are even romantic. The lyrics and the music are quite clever and sophisticated. Some of the lyrics can be paranoid, others like science fiction or Kurt Vonnegut, others absurd or like the writing of Donald Barthelme; others are just quirky; some seem drug-referential or drug-inspired; some are straightforward. They are humorous, but I wouldn’t call them comedy rock.

John Linnell and John Flansburgh started TMBG as a duo in Brooklyn in 1982, Flansburgh on guitar and Linnell on accordion, keyboards, and assorted other instruments. They performed as a duo and sometimes used backing tapes or drum machines. In 1983, they began a service called Dial-a-Song, advertised in local papers. People called and got an answering machine which played them (part of) a song. Eventually, they put out a self-titled album in 1986, heard on some college radio stations. Their second album, Lincoln, had a song that broke through to commercial FM radio, such as WXRT in Chicago, where I first heard its single, "Ana Ng." I bought the album and enjoyed it immensely. Their next album, 1990's Flood, became their classic, including "Birdhouse in Your Soul," "Particle Man," and a cover of "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)." It would be the album they would later base a tour on, playing the entire album. 

I'll not list their 24 studio albums released over four decades, nor their dozens of live albums, EPs, or compilations, many including previously unreleased songs. They played 31 songs from 15 different records at the 2026 show I saw. 

In 2002, they won the Grammy for Best Film or Television Theme for "Boss of Me" for the Malcolm in the Middle TV comedy, which you may have seen or heard. Also, in 2002, a documentary film appeared about them, Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns). They have also put out several children's albums like No! and Here Come the ABCs. In 2003, I saw the band perform at Naperville’s “Last Fling” with family: Cathleen, Conor, Liam, Brendan, Barry, and Yvonne. 

They Might Be Giants at The Vic: John Linnell at the keyboard,
John Flansburgh on guitar in front of the drummer.

On this tour, they have a three-piece horn section, in addition to the core five-piece band. They play two sets with no opening band. The first set highlights one of six of their first eight albums, and the second set is more varied. The featured album would not be  announced in advance. I know all of their albums fairly well, with the exception of their fifth album, John Henry, which was on the list of options. I had found it a difficult album, which I attributed to their changing from a two-person band to a "real" five-piece rock band. To prepare for the concert, I listened to John Henry more than some of the other albums, which turned out to be prescient because that was the album they featured. Also, I found that it was not a bad album at all. 

At the concert, they started with nine songs from John Henry. The first, "Subliminal," I found a little confusing, because it has overlapping vocals (kind of subliminal). However, I knew this, and it seemed that the entire audience was familiar with all of the songs, and it is the first song on the album. The second song, "Snail Shell," was very strong, and struck me as a better song to open with. What I love about TMBG is that who else would have a chorus like "I want to thank you for putting me back in my snail shell." Some fans put mental energy into lyric interpretations (see https://tmbw.net/wiki for this song), but the lyrics often just make me smile. 

There was much enjoyable banter, easy in the way 44 years can make it. At one point, John F picked up the John Henry album cover from a guitar stand and mentioned that they were featuring it in the first set and handed it to someone in the non-mosh pit, deadpanning "I'm gonna need that back." (He didn't.) Later, just before beginning a song, the drummer had to adjust the top cymbal of the hi-hat, making the band wait. John F said to John L that reminded him of a conversation the band was having about momentum. John L said he associated the band more with inertia. Later, they brought up the house lights to determine the audience beard-to-glasses ratio (they would wait until the third night in Chicago to complete the data set). Another conversation involved meeting with Disney, where every department, including Disney on Ice, introduced themselves. I can only assume that might have to do with their children’s albums.

The set continued with “Unrelated Thing,” a slower song about miscommunication, then the upbeat Latin-tinged horn-heavy “No One Knows My Plan,” in which the protagonist sings from a prison cell, asserting that it’s part of his plan, but is clearly delusional. Several fans on the tmbg.net Interpretations page think the narrator is a murderer. The next highlight for me was "Spy," which seems like disjointed modern jazz on the album, but was great live, with different band members conducting (see clip below).

After the John Henry section, they explained the next song, "stelluB," which is Bullets spelled backwards, short for the song “Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love” from Flood. The band performs the song musically and lyrically backwards, then at the beginning of the second set, will play a video of that performance backwards to see how well they did. (The result turns out to be mixed, but thoroughly enjoyable.) John F jokes that “People who brought friends might be worried about that now…” 

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, John F said dryly at this point on the previous night:  

“Ladies and gentlemen, the most loathed words in contemporary legacy act rock music: We’re gonna play some songs off our new album.”

But that was an unnecessary warning. This crowd knew the five new songs from The World is to Dig album and the Eyeball EP spread across the rest of the night. "Get Down" was great and well received in the second set. Despite its title, and its groove and funky horns, it was not about dancing, but about an alien warning to duck and cover. Another song from the new album that they played was “Hit the Ground,” which is not about “hitting the deck,” but about a broken heart.

A song from their 2021 album, Book, also rocked the place. "Synopsis for Latecomers" has a government functionary trying to calm a concerned populace, backed by hard-hitting horns and guitars: 

I assure you there's a very simple explanation
If you'd only be patient... 
Okay, you're asking how container ships were found
Abandoned in the desert sands, covered in snakes
And who composed the ransom note
And taped it to the face of the equestrian monument?
You'll get your answers, all in due time...

There were people singing along to it.

They finished the first set with “Where You Eyes Don’t Go,” a paranoid nightmare ditty ending in a “Town Without Pity”-type vamp, from their second album. 

The second set began with the “stelluB” video, followed by “The Mesopotamians,” a poppy, harmony-laden tune wherein The Mesopotamians is a band made up of Sargon, Hammurabi, Ashurbanipal, and Gilgamesh: “The kingdom where we secretly reign (And no one's ever heard of our band), The land where we invisibly rule.”

A few songs later, they played “Man, It's So Loud in Here,” a song with surreal verses and a funny chorus. It was unintentionally ironic, in that I was glad that I had ear filters in:

Baby, check this out, I've got something to say
Man, it's so loud in here  
When they stop the drum machine, And I can think again
I'll remember what it was

“Can't Keep Johnny Down” wowed the crowd. “Doctor Worm” ended the second set strongly after introducing the band members (see clip below).

The first encore was “Number Three” from their first album: "There's just two songs in me, and this is Number Three" - ironically because they've written hundreds of songs by now. Followed by “Till My Head Falls Off”: “Though it may not be a long way off, I won't be done until my head falls off.” Like me, the two Johns are in their mid-60s, and are not stopping yet. 

The second encore was the sing-along "Birdhouse in Your Soul." A catchy song, but an unreliable narrator – is the blue canary friend or foe? Should you make a little birdhouse for him in your soul?

All in all, a good time was had by all. I was heartened to see that there were fans of all ages there. Many were younger than my 34-year-old son who was with me, and were not with their parents (see image below). 

For the complete setlist, see setlist.fm. This amazing website also has the 2003 Naperville TMBG setlist. It even has the setlist one of the first concerts I ever saw - in 1975: Led Zeppelin.

 

My Eulogy for My Mother: Coal miner’s granddaughter

I wrote this for my mother's funeral service, and read it there on February 21, 2026. A video of the service is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTLV_y69m0k. You can get more basic information from her obituary on this site. 

Jody: Coal miner’s granddaughter.

True, even her father worked in the mines some summers. 

Before the divorce, Jody was a “housewife,” raising children, cooking, baking. Cub Scout den mother, Brownie troop leader, involved in the PTA for public schools. Marching against the Vietnam War. Inviting my classmates over from across town. Birthday parties, Halloween parties. Proofreading (editing) my homework. Setting up guitar lessons for me, then letting our bands practice in the basement.

Crying for The Littlest Angel, a TV movie that I can’t even remember watching. She told me she cried for three days when President Kennedy died. She also said that she and Barry (my father) took me as a baby to see JFK speak in Ohio. 

Barry left in 1977 or 78, while Nathan and I were in high school, Mardi was 8 or 9 years old. Jody had to deal with being unemployed, albeit with a BA in English. Nathan was becoming a punk. I eventually crashed her car. But Nathan got a job at Swensen’s and I at the American Cafe.

And Jody found work at a knitting and yarn shop – how appropriate (she knitted many sweaters and such for the family). She went back to school, getting an Editing certificate at GWU, and then getting herself a good job for the next three decades at the Air Line Pilots Association. As Copy Editor of their magazine, just as she became editor of the church newsletter here [Dumbarton United Methodist Church in Washington, DC]. 

Somehow she held us together. Mardi’s friend, Megan’s mother, Nancy, invited Jody to this church. Mardi once told me she thought the church saved Jody’s life. 

I went away to school that fall and eventually stayed away, visiting at least yearly. And in those analog days, we wrote many letters to each other. 

Some subsequent memories stand out:

In 1981, the band I was in toured the east coast. The night we played the old Cellar Door, at M Street and 35th, Jody somehow hosted seven of us overnight, cooking a fried chicken dinner for all of us. 

In 1989, I wondered if I should ask Cathleen to marry me. I was somewhat leery because of my parents’ divorce. I mentioned that to my mother, and she said not to let that sway me; that anyway they had almost 20 good years, plus three wonderful children to show for it. “Besides,” she said, “you’re not going to do better than her.”

Jody’s vacations were almost exclusively to visit family. When our first child, Conor, was born in 1992, Jody drove 800 miles to see us. She complained of tummy trouble, but when she needed to lie down, Cathleen, then an ICU Nurse, drove her to the doctor. It turns out that her appendix had burst on the way to Chicago. She was admitted to the hospital, had a partial resection of her colon, and was lucky to have avoided sepsis and death.

Then I started to see the coal miner’s daughter there. 

Once I became a Christian in 2010, Jody I discussed religion more often. She puzzled at how her grandmother could be so devout a Christian after losing children to coal mining accidents and the Spanish flu. But with the strength of coal miners, Jody also faced the hardships of her life. 

I recently read Time Shelter, a Bulgarian novel of magical realism by Georgi Gospodinov. In it, there were “time shelters” created for people suffering from dementia. The shelters recreated the decade in which those suffering from dementia were most comfortable. This obviously hit close to home because Jody was suffering from dementia in her final years. 

For Jody, that comfortable time seems to have been when she was in grade school, in the early 1940s to the early 50s. In late 2019, she didn't recognize the house on Sherier Place as the house she had lived in for decades. She told her sister Sally that her real house was on a corner. Sally drove her to our previous home, on a corner, but Jody said that wasn’t it. I think she was looking for a house in Chillicothe, Ohio, where they grew up. Aunt Sally confirms that their house in Chillicothe was on a corner.

I remember visiting Jody at Memory Care once, a couple of years into her stay there. After visiting for a while and having easy conversation, you could hear dinner being prepared in the background. Jody said, "I think Mother will have dinner ready soon." I found that sad, but also sweet.

One of my favorite memories of Jody here at Dumbarton Church, was when her mother and father were visiting sometime in the 1980s. Her father stood up during the joys and concerns portion and said something really nice about Jody. Things I can't remember, but even then, they brought tears to my eyes. 

Another one of my favorite Jody memories is when Nathan's punk band was practicing in our basement, also in the 80s. He was singing "Do You Love Me?" by The Contours. After some loud minutes of that, Jody, who was upstairs with me, joked "Yes, already!" 

Writing this reminded me that at the end of the Gospel of John, Jesus asks Peter that same question three times, “Do you love me?”     The Contours continue, “now that I can dance?” Jesus on the other hand, could have continued “now that I am resurrected,” but did not.  As a Christian, my hope is in resurrection, and I trust that Jody will already be there when I arrive. She didn’t have to ask, but Yes, I love you, Jody, already, and always. 

A video of the service is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTLV_y69m0k.

My Mother's Obituary

I did not write this by myself. I filled out an online form from the funeral home with help from my siblings Nathan and Mardi, my aunt Sarah (Sally), and my wife Cathleen. It spat out an AI-generated obituary which I would not use. I turned to by best pal, Neil Steinberg, columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, and a experienced writer of many obituaries for the same. You can read his version of events on his blog at everygoddamnday.

Mary Jo McPherson — "Jody" to her family and friends — died peacefully on December 30, 2025, in Arlington, Virginia. She was 88.

She was born on January 23, 1937, in Sullivan, Indiana. Her parents were William Nesbit McPherson, a teacher and Darke County (Ohio) Schools Superintendent, and Mary Elizabeth Steele, a high school teacher.

She was the valedictorian at Chillicothe High School in Ohio, then attended Ohio University, where she majored in English, belonged to Pi Beta Phi sorority, and graduated in 1958.

The next year, she married Barry Strejcek. They had three children, Kier, Nathan, and Mardi. They divorced in 1979.

Jody worked for 30 years as the Copy Editor for the American Pilot magazine of the Air Line Pilots Association.

Dumbarton United Methodist Church was very important to her. She edited the church newsletter for decades, and was very involved in church activities and charitable causes. She helped arrange social events and other services for seniors at Palisades Village, which she co-founded and served as secretary-treasurer for many years. Jody was actively involved in the Francis Scott Key Elementary PTA, and was co-president during the organization of the Six School Complex. She was a Cub Scout den mother and a Brownie troop leader. She also volunteered at Sibley Hospital.

She enjoyed gardening, reading, doing crossword puzzles, and baking, and her homemade birthday cakes and cinnamon rolls were savored by her family. She also knitted and crocheted, making many sweaters for her children and grandchildren as well as hundreds of small dolls for Knitting4Peace, given to children in refugee camps.

Jody lived in the same house in Washington DC for over 50 years, and generously opened the basement to her sons' various (and often very loud) rock and punk bands.

Survivors include her children, Kier (Cathleen) Strejcek, Nathan (Stacey) Strejcek, and Mardi (Alberto) Mucino; grandchildren Conor (Laura) Strejcek, Liam Strejcek, Locke Strejcek, and Marissa Mucino; and her great-grandchildren (Conor), Ellis, August, and Linus Strejcek; her sister, Sarah (Edward) Carlos; nephews Aaron and Adam, niece Malia, and many grandnephews and grandnieces.

A memorial service celebrating Jody's life was held at Dumbarton United Methodist Church on Saturday, February 21, at 2 pm ET. 

A video of the service is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTLV_y69m0k. You can read my eulogy at https://www.thestrayczech.com/2026/02/my-eulogy-for-my-mother-coal-miners.html.