Kiss Me Son of Extras: Why Does The Sun Shine? (The Sun Is a Mass of Incandescent Gas)
The extras, the rarities, the B-sides. Let me share my favorite songs with you. LET ME.
I’m writing about every song from every full studio album by They Might Be Giants. These posts are for the other songs.
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.
Hey, why DOES the sun shine though? In 1993, They Might Be Giants released an EP with this 1959 cover to help answer that very question. I think I was a sophomore in high school when I first acquired this song and it made me smile every time I listened to it. It was just the kind of song that a kid like me would be drawn to.
Just last night I fell asleep to a full episode of MTV’s 120 Minutes where the band played this song live. The fact that these guys brought an accordion and glockenspiel on stage at MTV’s biggest alternative music centered show and played this live, is so alternative to alternative. I love it still. Here’s that performance.
This also led to two other extreme favorites of mine. I LOVED (and still do) playing this live rocking out version from Severe Tire Damage on the guitar in high school.
Since the original was first written in the 1950s, science had come to understand the sun differently.
It wasn’t a giant mass of incandescent gas at all; there is a FOURTH state of matter. Queue the new song for 2009, Why Does the Sun Really Shine? (The Sun Is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma). Here’s this gorgeous beast of a song performed live on At Large.
Sometimes, a thesis has to be rendered invalid. But doesn’t mean it can’t still rock.
You’re reading a post from Kiss Me, Son of Extras. A series of posts for the TMBG songs that don’t live on a big studio album. These posts are for the EP tracks, the rarities. The ones tucked away in between bigger releases but are also woven into my actual life.
See all Kiss Me, Son of Extra posts - Start Here
Dive deeper into TMBG lore at TMBW.net (fan-run and fantastic)
I hadn't heard of, "Why Does the Sun Really Shine? (The Sun Is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma)" and that's really funny.
Edited to add -- I know that a High School report is not the same as current interest but did you read the NYer article about solar storms? -- https://web.archive.org/web/20240227032614/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/04/what-a-major-solar-storm-could-do-to-our-planet
The rocking version is my favorite, but there's really something to the original's glacial slowness. One of the best TMBG bits is when they replace the elements mentioned as being in the sun's core with just whatever else is on their mind. Dinosaurs, shampoos, estrogen, estrogen, more estrogen...