My closest friend texted me a few months ago:

I listened to Mink car again this morning. For some reason, it seemed way better than I remember. Maybe I’ve finally hit the threshold number of listens for nostalgia to kick in.

I told h…

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The EP tracks. The rarities. The songs that didn’t make the main record but somehow made permanent homes in my life.

This is Kiss Me, Son of Extras.

Is it terrible if I sometimes relate to this song on some level?

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I’ve run out of ways to describe what this is. But this will be the intro for these bi-monthly bonus posts moving forward. Queue the banner image →

The kids albums hold a very special place in my heart. They were the catalyst for my kids to listen to They Might Be Giants with me. I was a teen parent and when No! first came out, I had a three year old. Being able to hear the voices of my favorite musical creators while I played songs for my toddler was everything to me.

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I absolutely could not stand this song when I heard it for the first time.

I’d skip it every single chance I had. Why was the album named for it? Was this supposed to be the greatest song on the album? My musical ears had an immediate Mink Car aversion to its smooth jazz sounds and I was not having any of it.

Woke Up In A Beautiful Dream

Maybe it grew on me but I feel like it’s more fair to say that I grew up and came to understand and appreciate this song for the beautiful piece that it is. Both musically and thematically. Sure, it may have taken me a decade but I got there. Even while just writing this post, I learned more things about the song writing process for this track that made me love it even more.

“Mink Car we actually wrote sitting at a piano in this Leopold and Loeb sort of way. We don't really ever do that.” - John Linnell, Electronic Musician interview, 2008.

John Flansburgh provided even more context in a 2002 interview with MIX magazine.

“Mink Car was done backward. We recorded the piano first, and then did the drums afterward, then all the horns and vocals and everything. The very last thing we did was have Danny Weinkauf, our bass player, play the bass part. The great part about it is that the bass gets to do all the elaborate stuff in all the holes that weren't filled by anything else.”

After reading that last quote, I grabbed my nicest headphones, sat in my quiet room and listened to the song again. The bass levels in the song’s mix are quiet and I had missed what’s really going on before. But, wow. The Johns aren’t kidding around. Weinkauf fills those space with beautiful bass-y flourishes that really compliment this piece so perfectly.

Mink car isn’t full of midi samples and digital keys. It’s a room full of musicians sitting around a live piano with guitars, drums, a flugelhorn and more, creating something wonderful. That’s the image I see when I close my eyes and listen.

The first half of the album is full of clever, quirky, positivity. Songs about being in love, hi-fi music, the embodiment of excitement, dance clubs, and the appreciation of bangs. Then at the mid-point, the mood shifts and we hear about hopelessness, disparity, alcoholism, a body that no longer works, and the unceasing nature of the passing of time.

The punctuation mark at the end of that depressing (in spirit not in music) run is Mink Car. A song that circles the the shallowness of the ultra wealthy and the reminder that we are all susceptible to a life alerting car accident.

According to Flansy, the impetus of the song title itself comes from his wife, Robin Goldwasser. While discussing what they imagined people do when they become wealthy, he suggested they likely go shopping for mink coats. Goldwasser’s suggestion? More like a mink car.

Silver Chauffeurs

This evolves into a song where said wealthy individual is recounting the aftermath of a car accident. Rich people aren’t like us, you see. When they get hit by a car and have their wig knocked off their head as they hit the ground. It is a diamond wig taking to the sky and ground made of platinum waiting to meet them. When the force trauma claims their life, they aren’t just dead; they’re 24-karat dead.

Was the song Drink! the cause of the car accident in this one? And if so, was the alcohol being sung about in Drink! in relation to the person experiencing the Hopeless Bleak Despair? And is the car accident in the song Mink Car what caused the paralysis of the person in My Man? There’s almost a Beatles-level opportunity for album conspiracies here that I wish to be true. It’s at least fair to say that the entire second act of this album is thematically heavy and before the third act, we get this beautiful sounding song.

Ultimately, I think the song Mink Car eloquently and poetically illustrates the reality that the gap between the lower and highest economic classes becomes much closer if measured in fragile human mortality and depth of character. A billionaire can wake up alone and hollow on the inside. Their smile nothing but “an open sign on an abandoned store.” And when their time comes, they too will die.

In this very moment, with repeated listens, having researched and written these words, I am astonished that I could have ever not liked this song. To me, this song is the point. It’s no wonder the entire album is named after it.

You’re reading one of my Mink Car essays. An album full of pop, depression, car accidents, and high fidelity.

• See all Mink Car posts - Start Here

• Dive deeper into TMBG lore at TMBW.net (fan-run and fantastic)

The EP tracks. The rarities. The songs that didn’t make the main record but somehow made permanent homes in my life.

This is Kiss Me, Son of Extras.

Have you ever heard the song Dark And Metric by They Might Be Giants? It’s on the Long Tall Weekend album and I wouldn’t be surprised if you said you hadn’t. The album itself is a bit of a deep cut and the track and this songs square in the middle. It’s never been played live, according to the TMBG wiki, but was apparently a big hit when it first appeared on Dial-A-Song.

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00:06.42

This song haunts me.

To help me feel the excruciated weight of existential dread that it places on my chest when I think about it too long, I decided to start a stopwatch while I write this.

01:45.36

Undoubtedly, one of my worst ideas. To be aware of the relentless marching of time in the back of my conscious thoughts is one thing. To glance down and see a timer displaying how much time has passed since I began writing is another. But the feeling I have while typing these words right now is very similar to the sinking feeling I get when I think about how much closer I am to the end of my life. And that is exactly the emotion I want to convey while I talk about this song.

04:26.25

The song itself is about 60 beats per minute which means for every beat, you are one second older. In a way, the song is talking to us about how the song itself, the day that we’re listening to it, and our own existence will be at an end soon.

There are two versions of Older with the main differences being some vastly different instruments being deployed. My preferred version comes from the Long Tall Weekend album (see the footnote below1). The Mink Car version is lead by a Contrabass Sarrusophone2 and a Rauschpfeife3 with John Flansburgh stepping in for the bridge vocals. Other than that, these are very much the same song.

07:40.44

It took me way too long to write that little blurb. If I’m being honest with you, the stopwatch gimmick is wreaking havoc on me. Admittedly, I paused it yesterday and walked away from this after just 4:26 minutes. I’m not going to count the time unless I’m actually sitting to write but still…

My mind keeps drifting to the fleeting nature of time and existing. It feels like too much pressure.

10:19.10

You ever go shopping at a place where you have to bag your own groceries? The anxious feeling that you aren’t moving fast enough and the people in line behind you are being held up? Or like being in a Costco on any given busy day and no matter where you stand to look at something you want to buy, you feel like you are immediately blocking someone’s way?

I feel like that right now.

Often, I feel like that when it comes to time passing in general. An appointment coming up after an already scheduled thing during the my day. Or thinking about how many more of my kids’ birthday’s I’ll be lucky enough to live to see. It all moves so fast. I’ll try to focus.

13:31.34

In some promotional materials for the album, John Linnell and Flansburgh said that Older was “just as current today as it was earlier today.”

This is some classic recursive speak coming from the Johns, particularly from Linnell. The entire song has a sort of light mood, silly-vocal-affectation vibe that gives it this exaggerated Father Time feeling. I think, if you were to do a song like this completely straight, it would maybe come across too heavy or melancholy. Which hasn’t stopped them before (looking at you, Piece of Dirt.)

The sweet spot for TMBG is the often happy sounding, upbeat feeling song with the existential dread filled lyrics. That’s over simplifying but this stopwatch next to my keyboard is just… still counting.

17:31.19

Verse 1 begins with:

You're older than you've ever been

And now you're even older

and verse 2 brings us:

This day will soon be at an end

And now it's even sooner

During the bridge, when the rhythm stops and time appears to stand still in the song, Flansy shouts:

Time

Is marching on

and time

is still marching on

His point is hammered in by several consecutive bursts of instruments. In a moment where we might feel a respite from the entropy of the universe, the song keep remind us. There is no escape from time.

21:55.92

According to several different lifespan calculators, barring some unforeseen event, I’ll live - on average - to the ripe old age of 81 years old. That puts me in the middle aged part of my life. The Autumn if you will. Not news to me but I’m 46 years into my existence and I have around that much more ahead of me.

After I’m gone, my friends will shortly follow. Anyone I worked with, and the within 20-30 years, my kids will as well.

My dad sharing my first coconut with me when I was 2. Spending the night with my best friend and playing Street Fighter II until 3 in the morning. My first kiss. My kids being born, making them enormous blanket forts, watching them grow into adults.

Within 100-200 years (and that’s being very generous), there will be nobody alive who has a memory of these things. It will all truly be erased. Lost to time.

In fact, eventually, there will be a death for every particle of matter in the universe.

32:06.15

Depending on how the human race goes, maybe this newsletter is preserved somehow for a longer amount of time. Let’s suppose it continues existing for 500 more years after I’ve died and everyone who knew me or has a memory of anyone who knew me has also died. At a certain point, billions or trillions of years from now, there won’t be a planet Earth. Our sun will go supernova and envelope it completely.

100 billion years from now, galaxies will drift too far apart to see each other until, eventually, the last stars will burn out. About one hundred billion trillion trillion years (10^34 Years) after you read this, proton decay begins. All matter in the universe will begin to dissolve. Existence will begin consisting of only black holes and light. Until 10^100 Years from now when the last remaining supermassive black hole completely evaporates.

There will be

nothing.

50:47.07

To me, Older is not just a clever song about aging while listening to the song. It is a haunting reminder that time is running out.

You are reading an essay of sorts about a song that will end. Written and performed by artists who will be gone one day. An essay typed up on a keyboard and PC that will dissolve into nothing from an author with a comparatively speaking very short amount of life left. The device you are looking at right now is running out of time along with everything you’ve ever known and everyone who has ever known you.

Since you first began reading this post, you are now even older. And time has continued marching forward toward that inescapable end of all things. This song is why I can’t sleep at night.

1:12:03.23

You’re reading one of my Mink Car essays. An album full of pop, depression, car accidents, and high fidelity.

• See all Mink Car posts - Start Here

• Dive deeper into TMBG lore at TMBW.net (fan-run and fantastic)

The EP tracks. The rarities. The songs that didn’t make the main record but somehow made permanent homes in my life.

This is Kiss Me, Son of Extras.

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I’ve never tried to write on a schedule while also taking a vacation. Here I am, seven days since I saw They Might Be Giants at Union Transfer in Philadelphia and six days late for publishing this write-up on my experience. Last weekened was packed full of conversations with old friends, flying, returning to work, and just yesterday I moved my youngest out of their dorm and back into the apartment here for the summer.

I’ve been busy. Oh! And I’ve been seeing someone and making time for them as well - which has been going GREAT. All this is to say that I really underestimated how much time I would have to write anything at all. Thankfully, I have created an epic editorial calendar to help keep me on track and ahead of schedule as much as possible. Alright, let’s kick off the live show review with a short clip.

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Blankly, Chase stares at his mechanical keyboard as waves of color flow through the keys. He is sitting at his desk, reaching into the deepest corners of his mind to find the words he needs to type.

Nothing.

Is this his third attempt at a draft? The fourth?

He can’t recall.

An essay for the song My Man off They Might Be Giants’ album Mink Car is overdue. No matter how much he tries to get the words onto the screen. The information from his brain is not making it to his fingers. Or as John Linnell sings in this song:

I guess my man’s fallen out with my head.

In hindsight, he wonders if he’d have an easier time writing if he hadn’t fallen behind by three planned essays according to his editorial calendar. Perhaps, he could have been writing while in Philly seeing TMBG instead of testing the limits of human consumption of Malort. He pushes his regret to the side. There is an essay to write after all - even if his brain and body aren’t on speaking terms right now. If they were, he’d try to write about the things he loves in this song.

What He Would Say

Probably something about how My Man is packed full of wonderful electronic sounds programmed by Chris Maxwell and Phil Hernandez - The Elegant Too1. A duo that has staked their claim in TMBG collaboration history. If only he was able to physically express this through typing words with the keyboard in front of him.

The fact that the digital flare that has been prevalent in this album has returned after the brief hiatus of the last track, is certainly something Chase would mention if his brain and fingers were cooperating.

Chase’s eyes begin to close as his body further rejects the notion of being both productive or conscious after a week of events and travel. His mind wandering to thoughts of lying in bed. Sleeping until the end of time. Certainly, if he were able, he’d point out how My Man is about a person who’s body is no longer responding to his brain. An apparent severing of the spinal cord. Could this be related to or inspired by the person with the drinking problem in the last track?

Perhaps a future song on this album will cover the details of an automobile accident. One thing has become clear in Chase’s active mind but inactive body, the past two songs have covered deep depression and alcoholism. Now a third song to follow the dark themes. One about paralysis. Permanent helplessness. With two more bleak songs on the way, Chase is feeling the spiraling sadness of the second half of Mink Car in full force.

Our writer’s body lets out a deep sigh. Flashes of a time when his body truly wasn’t working. A time when his man was not only falling out with his head, but his head was falling out with itself. Just a few days after last Christmas, Chase suffered a ruptured aneurism. Completely caught off guard.

When The Cable Breaks

He looks out the window of his room, remembering how he spent four days in bed at home, feeling the most agonizing head pain in his life. Convinced it was merely the flu until he finally had enough clarity to ask his oldest kid to take to the urgent care. Having been discharged after a cocktail of medicine and a precautionary CT scan, Chase crawled back into his bed. His prison of the previous 4 days. When his phone erupted with calls and texts from the ER.

A doctor told him that his scan shows signs that his brain is bleeding and to rush back immediately.

At this moment, Chase is trying to type and tears begin forming, trying to escape from his face. He gets another flash of the moment he told the two of his kids who were home at the time, that the doctor saw something on his scan and he has to return. He underplayed it. That seemed like the right move.

Chase knew that bleeding brains often do not end well and he worried. No - he was terrified that he’d walk out of that apartment and never return. That his kids would lose him. Would they be okay? Should he have said more? Got that one last hug? It would be nearly 24 hours before any of them would be standing in his hospital ICU room.

The memories are not linear and they’re loaded with emotions as much they are images. It was the most that Chase ever felt disconnected and at odds with his body. A body that was actively trying to end him. After that day, it was also the most he had ever related to My Man.

Chase leans back from his desk. Maybe a disconnected and disjointed essay about the signal traveling along his body in order to attempt to write this post is actually good enough. He may be exhausted from an amazing trip and got burnt to a crisp by the east coast sun, but he’s still here.

He did not get answers to whether or not his kids would be okay. They'd be wrecked. And then they'd spend years learning how to get their own man back on speaking terms with their head.

Has there ever been a time where you felt betrayed or separated from your physical body somehow?

You’re reading one of my Mink Car essays. An album full of pop, depression, car accidents, and high fidelity.

• See all Mink Car posts - Start Here

• Dive deeper into TMBG lore at TMBW.net (fan-run and fantastic)

The EP tracks. The rarities. The songs that didn’t make the main record but somehow made permanent homes in my life.

This is Kiss Me, Son of Extras.

Finally, I am circling back around to some of my favorite tracks on the Long Tall Weekend album. As a quick refresher, They Might Be Giants released an album in 1999 available exclusively as an mp3 with eMusic. The album contained songs that had been written and recorded over a long period time but never released on a studio album or any other physical piece of media. A move that proved to be extremely savvy, the band had maintained exclusive rights of their digital content.

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One year on Christmas Eve, my uncle Ron was in a mood that seemed much happier than one simply driven by the Christmas Spirit and company of his extended family. Even at the tender age of nine years old, I knew this meant uncle Ron had been drinking.

The other clue that he’d managed to drink alcohol d…

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Three years ago I started writing about every They Might Be Giants song in order and I told myself it was just something to do. A project. A weird little thing to keep me writing consistently.

I don’t think I believed anyone would actually read it regularly.

Over time, I started pouring more of …

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I’m sitting in a living room with a few of my closest friends who are also writers as we listen to international jazz and enjo…

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The EP tracks. The rarities. The songs that didn’t make the main record but somehow made permanent homes in my life.

This is Kiss Me, Son of Extras.

Hardly a rare or unheard song, Doctor Worm might be one of their most widely known, fan-l…

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Hungover and Hearing Things

The Eastern Washington diner I sat in years ago was somehow both busy and empty at the same time. The servers moved with a level of urgency that didn’t quite match the number of people sitting at tables or waiting to be seated. My head, along with the heads of everyone I was sitting with, was pounding from the night before. To…

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The EP tracks. The rarities. The songs that didn’t make the main record but somehow made permanent homes in my life.

This is Kiss Me, Son of Extras.

Remember the woman who was a hotel detective from They Might Be Giants’ self titled album…

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A lot of my life, I’ve felt disconnected from people and my surroundings.

Like I’m observing everything but not participating. Or maybe I am trying to participate, but there’s this underlying feeling that I don’t quite belong in it.

My mind has a narrator that contextualizes everything as rejection. It fills in gaps that don’t exist. It rewrites neutral m…

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Fine Dining Is a Scam

Two years ago, I sat at a table of a fancy restaurant for a friend’s birthday.

It was the kind of fancy restaurant that calls their mashed potatoes a “potato puree.” Do you know who else calls their food a …

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As a card-carrying member of a secret musical society, I have somehow acquired an advance copy of this album. I’m sorry, I’ve been sworn to secrecy. There was an oath and everything.

Writing about each of their songs on a weekly basis would normally keep me from even mentioning these until years from now. By then, I’d have lived with them, worn them down…

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Another First Kiss is a snapshot into a life I’ve stolen many glimpses of.

Unlike previous They Might Be Giants songs, the fifth track on Mink Car is a love song that does not collapse into a terrible end. No sad sack. No unrequited love. Just two people, living together, being comfort…

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