I first heard the album probably in the latter part of seventh grade, from a friend who said it was good. I popped the cassette in and gave it a listen. The songs were oddly catchy, and captivatingly odd.  The lyrics made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.

I loved it.

As some of you have already guessed (from my riff in the title of this post), the album was Flood, by They Might Be Giants. And when we were in Jean MacCurdy’s office during the L.A. trip, she showed us two music videos from an upcoming Tiny Toons episode — which turned out to be videos of two songs from the album.

I’m pretty sure I was the only one in that room who was already familiar with the songs. (In the episode, they even have Buster quip, “Who are these guys?”) It felt like such an awesome inside joke to have the characters from my favorite TV show doing videos from an album I was listening to constantly. Amy and Sarah and my other friends from that set never got into TMBG as far as I knew, and for my part even I just bought Miscellaneous T later on, liked some of the songs on it, and then kind of lost interest and moved on to other artists and styles.

Still, the album remains a perfect little time machine for a couple years or so of my life, in that visceral way that music can transport you back, and Forty can remember, if only for the space of a chorus, what it felt like to be Thirteen.

Video – Tiny Toons: Particle Man

Video – Tiny Toons: Istanbul

They Might Be Giants – Flood (full album)