Tonight I learned that They Might Be Giants is doing a tour next year for the 30th anniversary of Flood. My delight at this news was tempered by the way I crumbled into dust when I realized that album will indeed be 30 years old next year.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of Flood for people who were nerdy kids in the early 90s. You see, in the long long ago, before most people had the Internet, and before the stuff we liked was being made into major international blockbusters, before geeks were cool, Flood was a nerdy-kid shibboleth. If you dropped a reference to the “blue canary in the outlet by the light switch” and someone got it, you knew you were going to be friends.
And unlike a lot of the things we loved in the early 90s, Flood holds up pretty well. I will never hear the phrase “minimum wage” without immediately imagining that whip-crack sound effect afterward, reminding us that minimum wage is effectively “I would pay you less if I could.” The lyrics of “Your Racist Friend” are sadly as relevant as ever, with literal white nationalists setting national policy.
So when the tour hits DC in April, I’ll be there, singing every word to every song.