MAY THE FINGERTIPS BE WITH YOU
May 4, 2022 10:14 AM   Subscribe

 
OK, that Last Jedi cut is better than the movie, and I'm one of the fans that fargin' love that movie.

Happy May the Fourth all!
posted by mark k at 11:29 AM on May 4, 2022 [3 favorites]


And Also With You
posted by gc at 11:32 AM on May 4, 2022


OMG, that is wonderful! Thank you!
posted by team lowkey at 11:41 AM on May 4, 2022 [1 favorite]


What's that blue thing doing here?
posted by Countess Elena at 11:43 AM on May 4, 2022 [2 favorites]


Man, there's a lot of Star Wars that I either haven't seen or have forgotten.

The music box is fantastic!

I've always pondered whether fingertips, in particular, were important to the song. I think as a teenager I imagined someone using their fingers on a radio dial as the theme. And there are short-wave sets which have a little indentation to stick your finger tip into for rapid scanning. But, I don't know that's actually in the song itself.
posted by eotvos at 11:47 AM on May 4, 2022 [2 favorites]


There is an episode of the Strong Songs podcast on Fingertips.
posted by team lowkey at 11:50 AM on May 4, 2022 [6 favorites]


Hah, this part of the unofficial video is just the perfect presentation of "I don't understand you".
posted by team lowkey at 12:21 PM on May 4, 2022 [3 favorites]


That unofficial video was surprisingly good. The dog was perfectly used.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 12:28 PM on May 4, 2022 [1 favorite]


Increíble. I’m amazed that I remembered all the words to the song but forgot almost the whole of TLJ! Weird. Anyway, great concept! I’d love to see this done for lots of other films.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 12:48 PM on May 4, 2022


eotvos: "I've always pondered whether fingertips, in particular, were important to the song. I think as a teenager I imagined someone using their fingers on a radio dial as the theme."

You know, I'd forgotten until you mentioned it, but I had the exact same interpretation. I think I remember hearing that in their early shows, They would do exactly that... bring a radio on stage, move around the dial, and then try to cover what they landed on. I imagined Fingertips was inspired by these half-heard bits of music. I don't think I've ever seen any confirmation of that, though. Maybe I invented the whole background story to fit the theory.

Apparently, They've said that it was inspired by those commercials for compilation albums, like the "Now That's What I Call Music" or "Freedom Rock" style of ad where they just play small snippets of choruses back-to-back. I don't know why I didn't recognize it as such. I had definitely memorized some of those commercials to the point I could sing along in order.
posted by team lowkey at 1:00 PM on May 4, 2022 [2 favorites]


Oh hai, it's May The Fourth Be With You Day, I see.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:20 PM on May 4, 2022


Someone has got to have done a Trek version(s). Hold on let me hop on Fiverr and commission one...
posted by credulous at 2:54 PM on May 4, 2022 [2 favorites]


Boy this was a trip. Didn't realize I needed it.

Also a large edit re: Fingertips. I thought I read back in the day that the idea was they wanted people to play the album on random, so these little songs (just the tips of songs is where I figured the names came from) would pop on and you or someone may momentarily think, "wait, is this a song or a fingertip?" Though that doesn't quite explain the name fully.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:08 PM on May 4, 2022 [1 favorite]


Someone has got to have done a Trek version
I've been very slowly working on the "Tilly sings every song (before the brain implant)" video series for an embarrassing amount of time. Now there's another one to add.
posted by eotvos at 3:35 PM on May 4, 2022 [1 favorite]


Back in my university days, I was the co-entertainment-editor of my student newspaper at a Toronto university. There were a lot of good gets from that -- I got to interview Paul Heaton of the Beautiful South (mostly about having a sinus infection), and did this whole thing with the Barenaked Ladies where they brought 20 university entertainment reporters to a pre-show dinner, broke off into four-journalists-per-Lady groups, and had a boxed chicken-and-fries dinner while shooting the shit with a Lady (in my case Ed Robertson, who is a pretty decent guy).

But the apex was getting to interview John and John of They Might Be Giants, who were promoting John Henry and I think wanted to really talk about moving into full band mode, and instead I tried to tell them my Grand Fingertips Theory, in which it tells the story of a life (because the first and last things you feel are fingertips; the obstetrician and the embalmer). So I laid it out for them and asked if I was onto something and one of the Johns just gave me a flat "No" and I knew in that moment that They Might Be Giants did not like me and this is seriously one of the things I think about at three in the morning, 30 years later.
posted by Shepherd at 4:36 PM on May 4, 2022 [14 favorites]


I wasn't there so there's a world of verbal inflection and social cues I am not privy to, but, judging from everything I've ever seen about the band, I don't think it's that TMBG didn't like you. It's that most of the time they just write the songs they want to write and let people do their own interpreting, but don't really want to take one side or another? I hope this sets your mind at rest, it's definitely the kind of thing that I would be thinking about at three in the morning, as well.
posted by JHarris at 4:51 PM on May 4, 2022 [4 favorites]


eotvos, now that you mention it.... It's sorta exactly like that. I grew up with a world band radio and one of those big satellite dishes (dad was ex Air Force radio sort). So sitting around turning dials and scanning the waves and the skies back on different bands and many knobs and flipping switches just to see what you come across is very familiar. Only real difference is the sort of "you understand it" because it's usually "you don't understand it" when you go both hands fingers on dial and headphones or watching the TV of what you find.

Now you can find SDR sites and random streams to flip through the same way. Once upon a time it was quite analog and tweaking knobs. (Then they started encrypting TV feeds :( sigh).

If not actually true, Still yeah, fingers turning knobs through the spectrum.
posted by zengargoyle at 5:20 PM on May 4, 2022


I’ve forgotten how terrible TLJ was thanks for the reminder?
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 5:26 PM on May 4, 2022


Luckily we have a wiki now, so we can see the evolution of the explanation of the evolution. And see that Davis Cross was a fan of the song, but not Ira Robbins.
posted by credulous at 6:35 PM on May 4, 2022




This might be a jinx
posted by credulous at 7:44 PM on May 4, 2022


The first time I saw TMBG live I was [very pleasantly] shocked that they did Fingertips live.

The second time I saw them live, Flansburgh high-fived me twice. Twice. At the start of the show they came out on stage and he walked straight to me, reached over the woman in front of me and gave me the five.

P.S. My neighbor's new cat is named High Five for a reason unknown to me.
posted by neuron at 9:26 PM on May 4, 2022 [1 favorite]


This is amazing, thanks for the post!
posted by Fleebnork at 4:55 AM on May 5, 2022


I'm heading into a conference room at work to listen to this becasue fuck these people.

I may also blare "Minimum Wage! Hyaaaaah!" on my way back into the work area.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 8:57 AM on May 5, 2022 [2 favorites]


LEAVE ME ALONE LEAVE ME ALONE was just what I needed this morning.

Thank you
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:00 AM on May 5, 2022 [1 favorite]


I always assumed that "Fingertips" was a direct reference to the Residents song of the same name, which was in turn part of another fun experiment in writing/recording extremely short songs (one minute each), the Commercial Album.

TMBG have acknowledged The Residents' influence in multiple ways, including featuring them in TMBG's short-lived EP-of-the-month service, the Hello Recording Club.
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:05 AM on May 5, 2022 [2 favorites]


re: Fingertips: I recall at the time they talked about TV adverts for compilation albums being an inspiration.

I bought Apollo 18 when it came out in 1992 and in the UK pressing of the CD, Fingertips was just one long track, making it impossible to shuffle them together with the rest of the album. Annoying, at the time.

As others have said, the John's giving a flat 'No' to a long complicated interpretation is exactly what I would expect them to do.

One of their fairly recent albums Nanobots had a few short tracks that were great and very Fingertips-esque - Decision Makers, Hive Mind, Nouns, Tick, Sleep
posted by memebake at 3:57 PM on May 5, 2022 [2 favorites]




The First Order - New Republic War Doesn't Work by the Templin Institute
posted by Apocryphon at 2:22 PM on May 24, 2022


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