TMBG's new Cloisonné video: Suits Me!

Oh boy!

This is so worth the wait.

TMBG haven't made an official music video showing all of them, faces and instruments and all their lovely selves since 2001. That was for their Grammy winning Malcolm in the Middle theme song "Boss Of Me" which depicted them becoming the disposable playthings of the kids in the show.

In that video they got pelted by paint balls and Flans was dumped in the trash. Could have put them off making videos featuring themselves for the rest of their natural lives!

We're blessed that they're back with a vengeance. In smart and sexy suits, too, looking and sounding the absolute bees knees!


They've re-recorded Cloisonné, one of the finest, if not THE finest song ever to emerge from Mr Flansburgh's creative imagination, in the key of D. So instead of just the familiar version from new album "Join Us", we get a fabulous brand new recorded version to enjoy.

What's a sleestak? If you don't know by now, treat yourself to an education courtesy of the lovely Johns!

Join Us: My favourite tracks (so far!)

Join Us has been on almost continuous play on the iPods of many fans including my own (when I can wrestle it back from my Mum - see last 'Pinwheels' blogpost!) since it came out last month.


I've so enjoyed seeing other TMBG-oholics lists of their favourite songs from the new album in order from favourite to least favourite. I'm never that good deciding between things I enjoy - typical dithering Nine-with-a-one-wing! It can vary from day to day. I see all sides to every argument. And then weigh it all up again!


This album certainly seems to me to be the best of the lads' albums to date for listening to all the tracks right through without being tempted to skip any (comparative!) turkeys. John Flansburgh's songwriting has improved endlessly over the span of their career, and he can certainly now hold his own in the company of John Linnell's fantastic melding of lyrics, rhythms, melodies and harmonies, evident from their earliest days.


So here goes. No tracks I dislike or skip. Many that are stuck in my head and bring a warm glow when ever the opening notes strike up.


I know this list is quite different from many others I've seen from other fans. For instance, I've yet to hear anybody raving about one of my very favourites 'Let Your Hair Hang Down'. It actually brought a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes for the sincerity and yearning in Linnell's voice at some points, the first time I heard it. It has a similar effect on me to "Broke in Two" and "Withered Hope" for some reason. Linnell insisting none of the songs reflect him in any way, but my gut somehow telling me there are tiny crumbs of him hidden deep in certain songs, that make them almost unbearably moving to a softie like yours truly.

Anyway, here are the tracks in the order I love them at this moment (please feel free to wade in with your own comments and points of view if you want to!):


JOIN US: Favourite track through to least favourite (for now!)


1. Canajoharie


2. The Lady and the Tiger


3. Let Your Hair Hang Down

4. You Probably Get That A Lot


5. Can't Keep Johnny Down


6. Cloisonné


7. When Will You Die?


8. Celebration


9. Spoiler Alert

10. Never Knew Love


11. Protagonist


12. You Don't Like Me

13. In Fact 

14. Judy Is Your Viet Nam

15. Three Might Be Duende


16. Old Pine Box


17. Dog Walker


18. 2082




Mmmmm! Now again I'm not so sure! How can those last few find themselves at the bottom of any list? It feels wrong already! 


A Linnell song at the bottom? Well, for the record I LOVE '2082'. It's just that I wonder if Linnell took his foot off the pedal just that tiny squidgeon with it, the way I feel about "Stalk of Wheat" (do I really feel that?????)
IDEK!


I love this album from start to finish and back again, so it's irrelevant really what order I put them in. None of them is ever going to be far from my heart!


Hope you enjoy it as much as I do and are already debating over your own personal favourites! Or if you're not yet a fan, maybe contemplating giving the album a spin?

They Might Be Giants' "Tubthumping" cover brings a smile to my day!

They Might Be Giants covers Chumbawamba


No apologies for blogging today about my favourite band who can always bring a smile to my day.


TMBG always put life's craziness into perspective for me with their integrity, sense of the absurd, fascinating and irresistibly earwormish musicality, combined with their ethos of fun, exploring the fine line between sadness and joy, laugh and scream.


 And so much more, as fans already know! All this, as well as new generations of kids being taught the alphabet, numbers and science singing along to their amazingly catchy and informative children's songs.


Can't wait for their all-original new album "Join Us" out on the 19th. Tubthumping won't be on it, of course, (this is just them having a blast enjoying the challenge of covering a song they didn't have to write themselves!) but their own wonderfully intricate, clever, funny, thoughtful, life-enhancing stuff will!


Previews, to give us a taster of treats to come can be heard here, courtesy of Amazon.com:


30 sec previews of TMBG's new album "Join Us" out July 19th


Hope this brings a smile to you today also! Enjoy!

*By the way, 'Pinwheels', which was my first experimental blog, has become a real mix of stuff over the years. That's why slowly, I'm trying to start new bloglets to focus on the many different passions in my life! For those who are happy to share my unrepentant fangirling, (too late to hope I'll grow out of it, folks!) most of my TMBG/music/comedy etc obsessive stuff for pure light relief appears now on Tumblr:
http://cardedfolderol.tumblr.com/ 
There I'm aka "(Dis)carded Folderol", a nom de plume which,  for the (lamentably) uninitiated, is taken from a line in John Linnell's sublime TMBG song "Metal Detector" from their album "Factory Showroom". Fair warning: Here be allsorts!

Say I'm the Only (Queen) Bee in Your Bonnet*

Photo of an identical bee from the site www.meades.org

 As the Royal Wedding celebrations drew to a close today (Prince William marrying Kate Middleton), my eyes were drawn to a different kind of royalty altogether. A Queen. One I've never seen before, in spite of a lifetime of nature watching!

This one was a huge, hairy, clumsy, bumbling Queen with a very active social life. But today, she was all alone, not doing the hokey-cokey at a street party!

Hopping away across the concrete patio towards the lawn was a large type of Bumblebee I didn't recognise. No golden stripes. No stripes at all! Just a very large black body, a couple of centimetres long and plump, with a rusty orange/red tail. This Queen was literally hopping, not just crawling as bees normally seem to do.

A bit of hasty Googling revealed it's one of the six common Bumblebees in the UK. Bees are notieceably scarcer these days, particularly the threatened honey bee. But this Bumblebee was alive and well and on the move after hibernation. I found the photo above and several like it, showing my new furry friend to be a Queen of the species Bombus lapidarius (Apis lapidaria), the Red-Tailed Bumblebee.

Only the Queen survives the winter. Maybe she's lucky to have survived at all from a bitter winter like the one we've just had. She must have overwintered under a stone or in a crevice, maybe in my neighbour's garden. She first emerged through the wrought iron gate that separates our plots of land. Now she's off, as the spring sunshine calls her out from her winter quarters, to found a new colony or take over an old one.

First, she'll be loading herself up with pollen from all the spring flowers that are now brightening up the borders, foraging and getting ready. Then she'll start her nest, making a waxy honey pot and filling it with the regurgitated pollen, or honey, as we humans prefer to think of it! She'll keep bringing in more pollen and mix some with nectar to produce what we call "bee bread". 

The workers will be produced from her eggs to develop the colony. Then it's time for the males and new young queens to join the fun and eventually mate to carry on the species. The males will die, leaving the new queen to crawl (or hop!) away to overwinter just like this old lady has been doing. Then her own life and work are at an end.

Apparently, the Red-tailed Bumblebee is quite common in the south of England, and found nationwide except in the north of Scotland. I also spotted a puzzled mention of them on a forum as being seen by someone for the first time in Sheffield, Yorkshire, the next major city to the south west from here, in early May last year.

I feel very privileged to spot this handsome lady on her way to make more of these beautiful bees! It will be interesting to see if the males appear around my borders in the summer.

I may never see this Queen again, but long live her unique loveliness. It'll stay with me forever!

Please leave a comment if you've seen this stunning species too! Thanks!

*Title of this post paraphrased (clumsily!) from the lyrics: "Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet" from the song "Birdhouse in Your Soul" penned by that modest genius John Linnell from the 1990 album "Flood" by my all-time favourite band, They Might Be Giants. Their new album "Join Us" is out on July 19th on Idlewild/Rounder Records, with 4 advance tracks already out this Tuesday April 26th, available on iTunes and at 
http://merchdirect.com/TheyMightBeGiants