They Might Be Giants – Doctor Worm (Live on KEXP)
According to the keepers of the world's most arcane knowledge over at This Might Be a Wiki, the most hardcore of hardcore They Might Be Giants fans (and I know they're hardcore because only the most hardcore fans edit wikis about the objects of their obsession) have collectively voted “Doctor Worm” as the eight-best song in the venerable Brooklyn band's vast, vast catalog. It is one of the non-live tracks on the group's 1998 mostly-live album Severe Tire Damage and appears on the first disc of the 2002 compilation Dial-A-Song: 20 Years of They Might Be Giants, a two-disc set that is one of the first pieces of music I bought with my own money, and thus is of great importance in Derek Lore (to give you a sense of where my head was at, I think I bought Ween's 2003 record Quebec during the same transaction). That's how long I've been in love with the work of the two Johns. I've loved this band almost as long as I've loved any band.
I was pleasantly surprised to see TMBG pop up in my YouTube feed playing live at Seattle's iconic KEXP, the Platonic ideal of an independent radio station. The set list was “short” (45 minutes is still a hell of a lot of music for one of these) but, naturally, eclectic, mixing recent songs with a pair of stone-cold classics: “Ana Ng” (from 1988's Lincoln, their finest hour, and according to the sickos of This Might Be a Wiki, the second-best song TMBG ever cut), and the aforementioned “Doctor Worm.” I love “Doctor Worm,” it's a near perfect introduction to They Might Be Giants' whole deal: punchy but askew indie pop, casually surreal in a way us lifers can take for granted sometimes. I have heard this song hundreds of times. Even I was not ready for how hard this version of the song goes. The first time I listened to it, the horns hit me like a Mack truck on fire. Those horns dropkicked me out of a tenth-storey window onto a plush bed of winning indie pop melodies. It's nice to be surprised by something we think is familiar to us.