Before setting out to write about all of the songs from the No! album, I posed the question to my readers (and maybe to myself) on whether or not I should go song-by-song on the kids’ albums or not. There was definitely thoughts, feelings, and memories surrounding this album but I did I have an essay’s worth of writing for each track?
“Sure!” I thought as I dove in.
Alas, I feel that I am grasping at straws here. Trying to force something that just isn’t meant to be. Not from me anyway.
Instead, we’re going to cover the remaining favorites from myself and my kids in this one epic post so that we can start listening and talking about The Spine.
Let’s begin.
Violin
My oldest kiddo loved this song and it’s probably one of my favorites of the album. The plucking of the violin, the soothing cello, and John Linnell singing math with three quarters of George Washington’s head.
John Lee Supertaster
In the early days of my learning the bass guitar, this song one of the first that I could play along with start to finish. Danny Weinkauf is playing a totally sick groove here. I also took a DNA test a few years ago. One of those Ancestry-at-home cheek swab situations. Amidst the results, I learned that I am extra sensitive to bitter-tasting foods. Not only that, I was also more likely to crave sweet tasting foods as those had a more intensely sweet sensation.
The beginning lyrics to this song go a little like this:
To a Supertaster, bitter fruits taste far more bitter,
and sweets far more sweet.
Turns out, I am a SUPERTASTER.
That amazingly groovy, rubberbandy sound that seems to come straight out of the the grooviest 60’s - 70’s rock? Well, that’s Linnell on the clavinet.1
Clap Your Hands
This was, and will always be, a staple in the Roper household. What a fucking banger. Here’s the version from the album (which also appeared Here Come The ABC’s) and here’s a god damned live version that will blow your TMBG fan-ears away.
If you don’t have the Almanac Live TMBG album, you should absolutely check it out here. Live with swears, its the TMBG National Anthem:
Looking back at the songs from No!, I realize that I’m experiencing a strange sort of nostalgia. They take me back to a time when my kids were either very little or yet-to-be-born. It’s a type of nostalgic reminiscing that makes my heart ache at both the beauty of having them in my lives while watching them grow and the relentlessly passing of time that keeps those moments at ever further lengths away.
I’m incredibly thankful to They Might Be Giants for jumping into the children’s music world when they did. It helped me introduce a creative force that I loved to my kids in such a new and accessible way. Little did I know that so much more was on the horizon and how that would shape us all.
Next weekend, we’ll crack into The Spine as well as its B-Sides counterpart that released alongside it, The Spine Surfs Alone. With Summer behind me, the first kids’ album (mostly) dissected, I’m ready to immerse myself once again.
Thank you for being here.
If this connected with you, the archive has 170+ more just like it. Paid gets you all of it, early access every Friday, Wednesday Extras, and two bonus posts per month. Even better, upgrading to a paid sub today just makes you an extremely cool person.
I think you made the right decision. I do love the album, but it sounds like the stories that are connected to it are more album specific than song specific, for the most part. That might even be the case for a non- children’s record in the future! And if that’s true, that’s perfectly great as well. I’m just glad to have you back because your writing is so good, and also it gets me listening to TMBG more.