They Might Be Giants Album: “A User's Guide to They Might Be Giants”

This has no new tracks, it is not designed for existing fans of the band, it is for you to make new fans with!!

As that, I think it will do pretty well, considering it has some of everything.

A good introduction to the band, 4/5.

How to you compile "A User's Guide To TMBG"? Here's a band with a few songs with moderate airplay, no top 10 singles, yet have a devout following with lots of EPs and albums that AVERAGE about 20 songs each since 1982? A daunting task indeed. "User's Guide" does pretty much a good of a job as one could expect. Like any collection, there may be gripes like "James Polk" may be clever but not really worthy. Or where's the single for "Man It's So Loud In Here". But I don't think that's the point. The CD tries to highlight the best songs from the broad spectrum of albums. We get everything from the electric cheesy drum and keyboards from the early days (Don't Let's Start, Purple Toupee) through putting together an actual band with horn section (the rockin Dr. Worm), to selections from the children's album "No!". On that level, and being well remastered, the CD does its job. For anyone who has ever been curious about TMBG, this is an excellent place to start (after you laugh at them for not being so hip to them after all these years).

"A User's Guide" is an entertaining and reasonably-priced intro to the fun and sometimes informative music of the Brooklyn-based band They Might Be Giants. Fun for songs like "Dr. Worm" (the story of a would-be rock drummer who's "not a real doctor" but is "an actual worm") and a cover of the classic "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)"; and informative for songs like the almost-historically accurate "James K. Polk" and maybe-not-so "Meet James Ensor" (Belgium's famous painter). TMBG offers a science lesson or two along the way as well--"Particle Man" introduces us in a way to particle physics (I did a reasonably well-received Karaoke version of this one); "The Sun Is a Mass of Incandescent Gas" explains the nuclear processes that go on in that important stellar body; and "John Lee, Supertaster" is kind of a cross between science, superheroes, and "names in the news", though I'd never heard of him. Their best-known song from the CD is the bouncy "Birdhouse in Your Soul", which some claim to be quite cryptic, but the spirituality of which seems obvious to me. If you like music that gives you a little to think about, but not too seriously, TMBG might be your band, and "A User's Guide" is a great introduction.

I've been listening to TMBG's since the beginning and have all of their early albums on vinyl. A kids band they're not, well any more than Shel Silverstein is. These 29 classic tracks represents the early form of TMBG at their finest! If you like the early They Might Be Giants music then this is the one to get.

There are not any other comprehensive single-disc TMBG best-of's out there, at least not that I'm aware of (as far as I know, the only single-CD TMBG best-of that has ever existed was that mega-skimpy Best Of The Early Years). However, although this collection has a whopping 29 tracks, too many of them are ones that I personally don't consider to rank among the best. It does feature many of my fave TMBG tracks, but there are also many selections that make me scratch my head. I mean, "Spider"?! "Clap Your Hands"?! "Minimum Wage"?! "Meet James Ensor"?! These are just a few of the tracks here that I find questionable. I'm sure that there are other people who like them more than I do, but to me they mostly fall into the "filler" category. There are (in my opinion) many other songs that would have been more worthy of inclusion. How in the WORLD could they leave off "I Should Be Allowed To Think" (from the John Henry album)?! And where's "Pencil Rain" (from Lincoln)? What about "Everything Right Is Wrong Again" (from their debut album)? Or "Hey Mr. DJ" (which I think was a B-side, also included on Miscellaneous T)? I could go on and on. I'm well aware that you can't fit a million songs on one CD, and that no matter what tracks you include, you're probably not going to please everybody, but to me, even though this "best-of" has many good songs, it comes up too short. Too many songs were left out that would have made it a lot better. I can understand how some people might prefer a 1-CD best-of to a 2-CD best-of (which in this case is the Dial-A-Song collection), and that might be why this was released (and yes, I have both --- I rather foolishly ordered this one without knowing the full tracklisting!), but this 1-CD best-of doesn't quite cut it. Like that so-called "Essential 'Weird Al' Yankovic" collection, this barely avoids getting just two stars from me. (Again, I emphasize that these are my OPINIONS; I don't expect everyone to agree!)