Review: They Might Be Giants at Mohegan Sun - 9/25

View of They Might Be Giants from the Edge of the Wolf Den.

Everyone kept telling us to get to this show early, but there are much better ways to go about seeing a Wolf Den show than waiting in line for 3 hours. They Might Be Giants performed a free fan appreciation show in the Wolf Den in Mohegan Sun on Saturday at 8, and when we got to the Earth casino, where the Wolf Den is, we saw a pretty long line - and it was just before 5. After stopping for dinner, the line spanned even further, wrapping around much of the area. The Wolf Den is pretty small, and there was no way all those people were getting seats. Also, everyone in line can hold a spot for up to 4 people. Not sure who was policing that, but taking that fact into account, only the people in the front half of the line could get seats.

I'm not saying that if you're a big fan of a band you shouldn't wait in line for a long time to get a close seat, but I just liked the way we went about it better. We found areas we could see from the edge of the Wolf Den, and we could still walk around and set up at slot machines, thus getting drinks delivered to us. And you can see the show from a lot of the slot machines, so it was a pretty sweet deal. 

A blurry zoom-in of They Might Be Giants.

And They Might Be Giants gave a really fun performance, bringing in extra band members for a complete horn section and playing lots of their better-known nerd rock songs. You could feel the fan appreciation. The people up front had foam No. 1's and they raised them just as the band came out playing some of The Edgar Winter Group's "Frankenstein" to pump everyone up. There wasn't really a bad spot in the house if you wanted to watch the band - there were people standing on the edge, and lots of people who were at the casino anyway popping in to check it out - but there was a big screen above the stage so we could still see some stuff projected. That was cool because there were some songs that included a puppet show. They Might Be Giants played for about an hour and a half, performing lots of familiar stuff like "Birdhouse in Your Soul," "Particle Man,""Doctor Worm" and "Mesopotamians." They came back for an encore - "Istanbul," of course - tearing on the acoustic guitar in the beginning and ending with a bang.