A Giant of a Weekend!

I am so grateful to my employers and others who allowed me to take a brief escape from tax season in order that I might be able to attend a concert in Atlanta on Friday night.

The group is my youngest son Benjamin's favorite group, They Might Be Giants.  Their one top 40 hit is Istanbul/Constantinople, but they have many, many great songs.  They are clever and nerdy and quirky, a fun group to listen to and to follow.

The picture above is of the stage, as the standing room only crowd awaits the band's entrance.

The concert was performed at the Variety Playhouse in the Little Five Points area of Atlanta, a strange hippie throwback enclave, filled with tattoo parlors, hookah shoppes, vintage clothing boutiques and vinyl record stores.  Much of the street crowd seems dressed straight out of Haight-Ashbury.

The two brothers, Benjamin and Doug, look forward to their second concert with They Might Be Giants.  They had originally seen them in 2007.  The group does both children's and adult albums, so Benjamin has been able to grow up listening to them.

The foam finger Benjamin is proudly displaying was something he obtained at his first They Might Be Giants conference.  It was a special children's concert, and was also performed at the Variety Playhouse.  He was the only one there at this weekend's concert with the foam finger, and he wore it for virtually the whole concert.

Benjamin (and his foam finger) with his Mama.  Alison also loves They Might Be Giants.  She introduced me to their music in the mid-90s, first hearing one that has become a favorite, Birdhouse in Your Soul.  We saw them once before in a concert in Jacksonville, so this is mine and Alison's third time seeing them.  That's quite extraordinary considering how rarely I go to concerts.  How rare?  I think the last concert I'd see before this one was....They Might Be Giants in 2007.

Example #357 in a series that demonstrates why I am not a photographer.  This was the best shot I had on my camera phone of the group.  You can just imagine what the rejects look like.

If you get a chance to check out their music, google them or search them on YouTube.  They're hard to pigeonhole or describe.

And that's a good thing.

Back to tax season now.  sigh.