Like Being In Hell With A Cool Soundtrack

(I had to link to this picture. Click here for the original post by its original author.)

Saturday I went to a music festival down near Atlantic City at a place called Appel Farm. It would have been awesome had it not been 250 million degrees in the shade. Oh wait, there was no shade. The last time I completely sweat through every piece of clothing I was wearing was at the Mermaid Parade a couple of years ago, and I had totally forgotten what a disgusting feeling it was.

Anyhow, I think Enter the Haggis was pretty good, but I was so hot I couldn't pay attention. By the time Suzanne Vega came on, I had resigned myself, and managed to enjoy her stage banter quite a bit ("Do I look like Alice Cooper up here? Maybe not the best idea to outline my eyes in black ink before coming out here...and now, we're going to play a song in a major key!")

She ended her set with "Tom's Diner". Now, when I was growing up I absolutely hated that song, mostly because local radio overplayed the crap out of it. But compared to what radio plays today - well, I'll take it. And the live version she did was surprisingly rock 'n' roll...lots of bass, lots of drums.

Then there was They Might Be Giants, who were enjoyable simply because they were clearly having a good time, and because, as they say, they might be the only band on the planet that employs a full-time confetti artist. And maybe because, by that point, the sun had retreated at least five feet away from my head.

My friend advanced a theory that with They Might Be Giants, you can totally date someone by what songs they're a fan of. In my case, it's "Istanbul Not Constantinople" and "Particle Man", but there were some people in the audience grooving to "Fingertips," which I found to be an incomprehensible mess. So what TMBG era do you hail from?