THEN: THE EARLIER YEARS

"If you hear only one song this year, there's something terribly wrong with you!" —Kitty Carlisle, Easy Riders

Then: The Earlier Years is a compilation of some pre-Elektra material from TMBG. Most of it has already been covered somewhere in this listen-through, except Disc 1 Tracks 28-32 and 36, and Disc 2 Tracks 27-30 and 33-36. The songs that are cut out of these blocks are from the 1985 Demo Tape, actually.

Are you happy? Are you pleased with the lengths that we go for completionism. Are you having a good time. Are you enjoying yourself right now. I hope you are. I really do. I do this all for you, dear reader. Hell, some of these songs will show up on some bootlegs I'm doing later. I'll listen to them again. I'm doing it all for you.

Regardless, here's the track listing that I had, in exact terms. Disc 1:

• Critic Intro
• Now That I Have Everything
• Mainstream U.S.A.
• Fake Out In Buenos Aires
• Greek #3
• '85 Radio Special Thank You

And Disc 2:

• Kitten Intro
• Weep Day
• The Big Big Whoredom
• I'm Getting Sentimental Over You (Adaptation)
• Swing Is A Word
• Doris Cunningham
• Counterfeit Fake
• Schoolchildren Singing Particle Man

Both intros are wonderful and bombastic; they give off the energy that the Untitled track on Miscellaneous T gives. Do not be alarmed, the twin quasars of rock are here; they are not Satanists, they are not Nazis, they are They Might Be Giants.

The instrumentation on these tracks is... sparse, even sparser than the studio stuff, which makes sense. Mainstream U.S.A is very plucky and strange. Even so, there's an understanding that this band has the DNA of what will become They Might Be Giants; Now That I Have Everything feels like a premonition of Flood's later theme of, well, flooding.

Greek #3 is strange and I feel like I have to mention it. It's Number Three but... in Greek. It jumpscared me when I listened to it.

The very last few tracks, Swing Is A Word through Counterfeit Fake (notably not Counterfeit Faker, which is on Long Tall Weekend) absolutely radiate Dial-A-Song. They're short, punchy, they're in and out. They aren't about more than what they say on the tin. This is the theme that would continue carrying TMBG through later Dial-A-Song iterations, even as their production value increased.

'85 Radio Special Thank You is an unsolicited song that TMBG sent to radio stations in hope of getting a show on the air. That is wonderful and I need you to know it.