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Never Say Disc: Apollo 18

The NASA mission may have been canceled, but the They Might Be Giants album lives on in its memory. The album cover that looks like it comes out of the writing of Douglas Adams*, and built like how we pick images for this site. That cover alone should give you a good expectation of the strangeness within. It is a classic clash of music, controversy and the weirdness you come to expect if you’re a fan of They Might Be Giants. Perhaps it is not their most popular recording, even at the time, but there are a number of interesting things to look at and listen to as the album celebrates its 30th anniversary. So take a look with us in our rear-view mirrors and check out Apollo 18 in actual size in this edition of Never Say Disc.  - A

 * It does appear in Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke, though. - B

A Side: Apollo 18 is a strange album full of trademark They Might Be Giants weirdness, and I have a strange relationship with it as well. I wouldn’t call it my favorite of their albums, but it does hold the distinction of being one of (if not the) first albums I purchased on CD. There I stood in some music shop (Sam Goody? Tower? The place is lost to memory.) and looking over the selections for one of my favorite artists at the time TMBG. Should I get Flood? I already had it on cassette (and still do!) Something new then, Apollo 18. At this point I’ve listened to it countless times, and several dozen more before writing this post. While I’ve always found several of the songs enjoyable, I can’t even say any of them are my favorite TMBG songs. Still, this album has stuck in my library rotation for the occasional listen. Why should it be there though?

While, at least at the time, the group moving to a full band for the tour was a controversial move, they’ve now made more albums as a full band than as a duo. This era was the first though, and makes it a special look at what you might see from the band in the future. In particular, you can see hints of their future television show theme song prowess: tracks like "Spider" and "Dig My Grave" could easily work as intros to shows even if they were never meant to be. Another great reason to give this album a listen, especially if you can score a CD copy, are the "Fingertips." Though they’re often played now as just one track, this collection of short clips were really meant to pop up throughout a play of the album. The "new" feature of random tracks playing making the fingertips tracks a unique experience for the listeners. Even if you can’t get those playing throughout, embrace the weirdness of this TMBG treasure.

B Side: We who move in the spaces of fantastic storytelling, no matter the form, have an understanding of the concept of “objects of power,” whether we call them totems or horcruxes or infinity pebbles or whatever. (I’m sure I’m borrowing some terminology from Control.) And, as with all elements of the fantastic, these objects carry meaning in ways reflective of those in our own lives. While they may not grant supernatural powers or physically transport us, they do change and shape our destinies, the very forms our lives will take. One of my own Objects of Power, one of the most important in steering me into the present, this moment in which I am writing these words to you, was a simple 90-minute cassette tape.

In a sense, all recordable cassettes were Objects of Power. One aspect that the current nostalgic resurgence seems to miss is the way they could make one’s identity manifest through music selection. Sure, mix tapes have entered into the common parlance and have their own legends and histories. But even the simple choices made when copying records (vinyl or CD) to tape said a lot about someone. Were they an archivist, pairing consecutive albums by an artist as if each tape side were a book on a shelf? Or were they an aesthetic, choosing contents based on what might flow together, creating a whole as notes create a chord, as words form sentences, as decisions make a life? My Object of Power was one of these, taped by a friend’s father and paired for reasons inscrutable to me at the time. But their effect was seismic.

We all had our struggles in our youths of defining ourselves as individuals, and my own were significant. I longed for something of my own, but was at a loss to what it was. So much of what I knew and loved came from my parents. I watched very little of the same TV or movies as my classmates, so, while I was aware of trends among my peers, I felt distinct from them… separate. Maybe I didn’t want to feel I was part of a crowd, or maybe I felt too proud to be interested in the things that were popular at the time. But where does one begin? Even with the limited choices available to a kid without spending power in the pre-internet era, it could seem overwhelming. Once, when asked what I wanted for Christmas or a birthday, I said I wanted music on tape, but when parents followed up with “what kind of music,” I was utterly incapable of answering. And so I ended up with the safe choices of popular classical, or hand-me-downs of my parents’ own tastes. None of these stuck, and the stereo in my room was used primarily for books on tape, where I could connect with the momentum and energy of narrative in ways I couldn’t with most of the music I had been given… especially if it was funny.

Comedy, as many who came into their own through similar avenues, is what will get ya: one thing I had been given that did click was a tape with a few Tom Lehrer albums. And so, it makes sense that Lehrer’s heir apparent, one "Weird Al" Yankovic was the one to finally break through. The first side of this legendary tape was Al’s 1992 album Off the Deep End, and when my friend played it for me, I was instantly hooked. It was deeply funny, and so I kept listening, but the music itself, both the originals and the parodies, felt strange and exciting and new. This was not something chosen for me, it was something contemporary, but delivered without fear of seeming influenced by the marketing machine or the force of the crowd. I made my own copy (although, at this point, I had no idea what to put on the other side) and listened to it over and over again in the coming months. Unbeknownst to me, I was getting quite the crash course: Off the Deep End played with modern rock, hop-hop, numerous varieties of pop and even takes on older genres like pub rock and the Beach Boys. At some point, though, the original tape made its way back to my house, and I resolved to finally listen to what was on the other side, without any idea of what to expect. All I knew was that the label said “They Might Be Giants - Apollo 18.”

Of course, the connection between the two records is obvious in hindsight: they were both released in 1992  (only three weeks apart, in fact) and prominently feature accordion. But eleven-year-old me couldn’t have told an accordion from a trombone from a distorted guitar from a cello. All I knew from that first listen was that it was attention-grabbing and different… from the “Weird Al” side, from what my parents liked, from everything. In retrospect, I was lucky it was Apollo 18 - while Flood became my favorite TMBG album once I became a diehard fan, I don’t know if it would have shaken me the same way had it been the B-side of that fated cassette. (At the moment, I'd probably say my favorite is John Henry, the full-band follow-up to Apollo 18.)

Not that I would have known at the time, but the album is a pretty major departure from its predecessors. Where Flood opens with classically harmonized guest vocals announcing the album via a processional tune (a self-reflective wink acknowledging their major labor debut, perhaps, via a self-referential song without either of the Johns?), the vocals on Apollo 18's opening track, "Dig My Grave," are harsh and distorted - probably some of the first I ever hard, and certainly the first time I heard anything being sung through a stompbox. (The fact that I now own several dozen myself is surely an unrelated coincidence). And, while this is one of the very few instances of guest musicians on the album (not counting vocalists), the entire thing is dense and teeming in stark contrast to the sparseness of the three previous albums. The title and lyrics set the tone for the darker side of the Giants that will be on display throughout the record. The grave itself will be revisited in "Turn Around," with the added (if surreal) horror of a ghostly live burial, and the album is rife with skulls, severed heads, and other horror imagery - even if it is frequently presented in goofy, jovial manner. It occurs to me now that this had a similar effect to the early "Treehouse of Horror" episodes of the Simpsons, which were also pretty scary to me at the time... and remarkably enticing. 

Listening now, I have a clearer understanding of the two Johns' respective approaches, with Linnell's cinematic pop storytelling buoyed by Flasburgh's shorter, more openly bizarre experiments. While this had been present since the very beginning, Apollo 18 fully realizes the possibilities through narrative songs like "The Statue Got Me High," and "I Palindrome I." Significantly, both feature cyclical killings presented in a "me/you" format and, in both cases, evidently singing from beyond the grave! (There's that grave again..) The weirdness has a clarity now, which was another factor in this music "clicking" so well with me. If anything, I probably read too much into them at the time, simply because they were both accessible and strange, I thought there was some deeper, more hidden meaning. Before long, I would be listening to more music like that, but at this point I can acknowledge that, yes, TMBG songs really should be taken at face value. The song really is about a supernatural statue that kills people, the "Hall of Heads" describes exactly that, and so on. Maybe I should have listened when they say it themselves in "The Constellation" - "just a guy made of dots and lines." And I'm okay with that. I've discovered plenty of music to require careful thought and listening, and am willing to let the Giants take me on whatever ride they wish. Perhaps this is no clearer than in "Mammal," presenting real science in a catchy and clever way, and presaging the openly educational direction the band would be taking in coming years.

Likewise, with years of fandom under my belt, I can acknowledge that Apollo 18, like most TMBG albums, does falter on its back half. "Fingertips" is an experiment that never really works. Its best moments are when it leans into the duo's inimitable gift for hooks with tracks that sound like clips from great songs that never were. But there are far more "cute" bits that wear out their welcome quickly, or simply go on too long. A larger issue might be that, even as originally intended, I've never been able to get the shuffle function to mingle the "Fingertips" songs evenly throughout the record - the full length songs always clump together, as do the "Fingertips" tracks. This can probably be blamed on poor random number generation in the units, along with the fact that most of the CDs they were designed around would have had far, far fewer tracks - so it makes sense that the lower numbers would come up earlier and more frequently than tracks 18-37. But I'll certainly give them credit for trying to use new technology in an interesting way, even if it wasn't influential in the way the hidden track on Nirvana's Nevermind (released six months to the day prior to Apollo 18) was.

Most of all, approaching the album (and, especially, the B-sides to its singles) thirty years later, I can appreciate how passionate TMBG were about music. Not only in making it themselves (although the album is most definitely a testament to that, it's hard to believe that they're playing every single part themselves on all but two songs, necessitating the live band Andy mentioned to realize them onstage), but in their own music fandom. Much as I hate to say it, I see far too many nerds afraid to venture outside their comfort zones and explore a wide variety of music. But the Johns openly acknowledge (and work with ) people who approach electronic, dance, and other genres as seriously as the Giants approach their own music with goofy irreverence. And there are shout-outs if you know where to look for them: I'm fairly certain, for instance that the "silver spaceship" in the "Guitar" is a reference to the one in Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush," since they borrow the melody from that song in a track on "John Henry." I can also recognize "Spacesuit" as a tribute to the experimental space pop of electronic music pioneer Joe Meek. And is that an Ian Curtis impression in "I Walk Along Darkened Corridors?" Not that any of this was hidden, of course, a breakup song on Flood mentions a couple dividing up tapes from specific bands, but now I can appreciate them as fellow music fans in a way I couldn't at the very beginning.

That's a journey that started with this very album, and I'm sure there's more in there to discover, even now. Here's to the mission lasting another thirty years.

 
Pretend you’re not shy and send comments and questions to neversaydice20@gmail.com or Tweet them @neversaydice2.


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