When I was in the sixth grade, I got my very first desktop computer for Christmas.
At the time that I received this desktop computer, I was grounded, and therefore barred from using said computer, but three days later, I was allowed to begin exploring my newfound desktop-bound freedom. The first thing I did was to fill my music library in Windows Media Player (as you do). The only music I had was ripped from CDs (a word I knew, but none of my friends did, because I was cool) and most of these CDs were my dad’s, mostly. I had ripped most of the Now That’s What I Call Music! series (this was the revival-series 1-8 or so) and the remainder of my library was one Beatles compilation I’d nabbed from my grandparents’ house and every They Might Be Giants album I could thieve from the bottom shelf of the pie cabinet where my dad kept all of his CDs and cassette tapes.
“Birdhouse in Your Soul” and “Ana Ng” were my favorite songs.
About two years later, when I received my first iPod–a Mini, pink (of course)–and iTunes became the thing, and came along with your first iPod as a CD-ROM that you would then install on your computer and never had to insert again, which baffled me, because in spite of having installed the Sims on my computer within literal moments of being allowed access to it, you still needed to put in one of four discs every time you wanted to play. If the Sims had incorporated some of the iTunes magic, perhaps we’d hear more about them today.
Anyway, when iTunes became my main method of music consumption at Christmas during eighth grade, one of the first things I did with it was to create a playlist which I dubbed the Harry Potter Soundtrack (Part One). The playlist was, of course, completely and totally unrelated to Harry Potter and the at all, but was compiled entirely of They Might Be Giants songs.
I know what you’re thinking: why didn’t you think of this sooner?
The all-TMBG HP soundtrack was, sadly, not picked up by Warner Brothers, but I still felt it was, in many ways, better suited than that symphony bullshit they came up with. Please.
The only things I truly remember from the playlist, specifically, were that I included “Pencil Rain” as Hermione’s theme song (ugh) and I felt “Stand on Your Own Head” was an appropriate ode to Draco Malfoy’s lackeys, Crabbe and Goyle.
Contrary to popular belief, I only had a very small group of friends as a child. I know, one would think, with such devastating creativity and innate coolness, I must have had an enormous fan base. You might say I had more of a cult following.
I, of course, burned copies of this opus for all of my friends. As you do.
When I was a kid, I loved the whole Harry Potter series so much–from midnight movie showings (wearing robes or hand-made t-shirts, without fail) to book releases, to preordering, to birthday parties, to desperately writing fan fiction, convinced I would land a deal for a hit spinoff series. I completely immersed myself in my bubble, holed up with books. And They Might Be Giants provided the soundtrack to my life. That they shouldn’t also provide the soundtrack to the adventures of my favorite young wizard never crossed my mind.
And as I watched them just completely kill it for the third time, twenty feet in front of me, playing the Music Hall of Brooklyn, I was thinking about that playlist I made. Mostly because tonight’s show was the entire first album, in its entirety, as well as selections from Dial-A-Song, which included not only new songs, but some old favorites as well, and about 75% of the setlist had featured into the inspiration for the Harry Potter playlist, if they weren’t featured on the playlist. I was standing, drinking a Naragansett tallboy, next to my dad, both of us bopping our heads and taking videos on our phones and screaming the lyrics along. This has been my childhood, my awkward tween years, my still-worse teen years, and my early adulthood. This has been my life–swinging my elbows and bending my knees rhythmically in time to “Don’t Let’s Start”; shouting along to “Istanbul (Not Constantinople).
They Might Be Giants has been the soundtrack to my life thus far. And I got to see them play most of my favorite songs, some of the first songs I ever knew all the words to, some of the first songs I ever bounced my leg to, sitting in my carseat in the back of my dad’s car when I was who-knows-how-young, for the third time tonight. And that was something just so mind-blowingly awesome, so just totally rad, that I had to share it with the world.
Also, this might be the first time since 2003 that the Harry Potter Soundtrack (Part One) has been mentioned. Probably for good reason.
Memo to myself: Do the dumb things I gotta do. (“Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head”)