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today is the four-year anniversary of september eleventh, and i'm sure nobody wants to hear a recap of all that because we've all heard enough to make us sick. i think just about every new yorker i know has already removed any worthwhile ideas from the date september eleventh and are generally uninterested in it anymore (in a cooly typical new york fashion. its part of the reason i love it there.
so, instead, here are two songs that seem particularly of interest to me today.


First up is They Might Be Giants' "I'll Sink Manhattan MP3," from their 1991 b-sides collection Miscellaneous T
obviously, the sentiment in the song's title has a bit of a different message today, not that it was ever a particularly upbeat message to begin with.
the song is actually about a love that blossoms and then fizzles. john flansburgh once said it was, specifically, about "falling in love with someone, falling out of love with them, and then hunting them down and killing them." in the song, he seems to use the entire island of manhattan as a metaphor for their love and feels he must destroy it. the very concept of "sinking" it seems to be a metaphor of sorts, as he admits in the song "i've got a message, so before i get through i'll find your answering machine and i'll sink it first"
i've played this song on every september eleventh for the past three years. i'm a pretty lousy person, i guess.


Next is a brand new track from TV On The Radio, "Dry Drunk Emperor MP3," recorded as a response to President Bush and the whole situation with Hurricane Katrina.
this song is basically a 6:46 epic call to arms against the current administration, but unlike many similar songs right now, it doesn't force the band's opinion down your throat, which i appreciate, though i do have plenty of throat-jamming anti-bush songs in my iTunes library. i personally love towards the end when the swelling chorus of voices chants "what if all the bleeding hearts took it on themselves to make a brand new start. organs pumpin on their sleeves, paint murals on the white house, feed the leaders L.S.D" it is also worth noting that the boys of TVOTR are headlining a benefit concert in Brooklyn tonight where all of the proceeds, even from the bar, go directly to the Red Cross to support the aid of New Orleans.

so what do these two bands have in common? plenty! for one, they are both from Brooklyn. for another, they both have four-word band names that are usually abbreviated, and those abbreviations both begin with the letter T. also, both bands started out as just two art students goofing around with limited instruments and a whole lot of weird loop and sample effects, and both bands have since evolved into larger bands with an impressive live show. the difference there is that most TMBG fans miss the good old days of just john and john being quirky on stage and all reports i've read of the earliest TVOTR shows are that they were completely unprepared and had no idea what they were doing. they're also both awesome, though i've had a handful of dislike with recent TMBG material.