This weekend we went to the 4th Annual River Street Festival in Troy. It was FREE (free parking and everything!) and we heard that They Might be Giants would be playing there for free! Troy is about an hour and 45 minutes from us, and although most of what we heard about Troy wasn’t very positive (my sis went to RPI there and in that area it was a PIT), we decided why not give it a try. The “free” thing being the operative word.
Well, we lucked out that the weather was nice and it didn’t thunderstorm as it was predicted, it was just hot as hell. There was actually a pretty dope arsty scene in the area of Troy that we were, and we stopped into some neat little antique stores and cafes. We had some kickass Lebanese food for cheap, some Gelato (!!) from a cute little cafe, and some great vodka-infused lemonade from a bar called Daisy Baker’s, which looked like it was in a renovated church. The bartender was the epitome of a sassy new yorker and we loved her. She was telling people, “what do ya want? I’m the only person behind the bar, here, so cut me some slack alrrigggght?”. Apparently her vodka-lemonade concoction was invented in a drunken frenzy the night before.
There were some great live bands sponsored by WEQX, the Vermont alternative station–we were extremely impressed by Mink and Stars of Track and Field in particular.
Later in the day, it was indeed announced that They Might be Giants were playing! I was suprised that they would be doing a free concert in Troy, and I assumed that it would be short. When they got on stage we were so impressed. First of all, I was happy to see that they are just as deliciously dorky in real life as they sound, and they still got it going on. They were having WAY too much fun performing and getting the crowd involved. They played several songs from their new upcoming album, “The Else”, and we were thrilled to hear the oldies-but-goodies, “Istanbul”, “Particle Man”, and “Birdhouse in your soul”. There were also some great songs that we had never heard before that involved: Telephoning the Dead; Creating an Impromptu conga line with the audience (who totally messed it up!); a sort of Drinking Song; and a song about Messopotamians. They played a good hour long set and had so much energy it was hard to believe they were any older. Then for encore they came back and did four more songs! All for a free concert–TMBG Rules! We would definitely go to this festival again, and now that we know they weren’t lying about the free good music and the area wasn’t a piece of crap, we would invite other people to go with us next summer too!