Factory Showroom

	Factory Showroom Studio album by They Might Be Giants
	First released	October 8, 1996 Release details / collectors: Show | Hide	Tracks	14 (with hidden track)	Last album	John Henry
	Label	Elektra <61862>	Length	43:32 (with hidden track)	Next album	Long Tall Weekend

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See Discography Abbreviations for definition of various terms.

Factory Showroom is They Might Be Giants' sixth studio album, and their last to be released on Elektra.

Purchase

Seller	Format	Price	Link
iTunes	AAC	9.99

Description

A poster promoting the Factory Showroom tour

History

The development of Factory Showroom began in March 1996, when They Might Be Giants embarked on a month-long residency at the Mercury Lounge. They played every Thursday of the month, performing two shows a night. John Flansburgh explained in a 1997 interview: "These Thursdays we did at the Mercury were pretty much reserved for learning new material. We would rehearse the day before, and any new song we had would be the first priority. By the end of the month, we had about 14 new songs in the show that we could actually play and were ready to record. It was an extremely efficient way to learn new material." Short east coast and midwest tours followed, during which the new material was further refined.

The album was recorded in mid-1996 at various studios in New York, including at the band's home studios. It was the second album that they recorded with a full band, after John Henry, and features a different lineup. The core band for this album included Brian Doherty (drums), Graham Maby (bass), and Eric Schermerhorn (lead guitar). Nearly every track on the album features additional guest musicians. The album was co-produced with Pat Dillett. This was the first album to feature Dillett as producer, and he has gone on to produce the majority of the band's subsequent releases.

On April 27, 1996 the band recorded a series of Wax Cylinder Recordings at the Edison Laboratories in West Orange, NJ. The band performed the songs in front of a small audience, singing and playing acoustic instruments into a pair of enormous metal cones, which fed the sound into a hundred year old non-electrical recording device created by Thomas Edison in the 1890s. The band initially considered releasing an EP of these wax cylinder recordings. That idea was scrapped, though one of the recordings, "I Can Hear You," made its way onto Factory Showroom.

John Flansburgh let fans know about the album a few months before its release in a rare direct communication on alt.music.tmbg on June 30, 1996:

The album is going to be out in October. The title won't be Chimp or At Large, and might be Boro-Wide or my current favorite Factory Showroom but we haven't really discussed that with anyone, so who knows what everyone can agree on. Songs will include "How Can I Sing Like A Girl?", "Certain People I Could Name", "S-E-X-X-Y", "Pet Name", "Exquisite Dead Guy", "Rat Patrol", "New York City", "I Can Hear You", and a bunch more I can't remember.

The band wrote a lengthy press release for the album, titled A Guided Tour Of Factory Showroom. In it they explained: "Having recorded most of John Henry with the full band live, we set out to integrate our old, highly personal, electronic way of working with our new, more organic full band sound." John Linnell explained the album's title in a 1996 interview: "We think of what we're doing as a 'have you seen our line of products' type thing. That's an idea that artists tend to shy away from when they're doing something for sale. Basically, we've woken up and smelled the coffee. We do have a product and we're proud of what we do, so we don't mind presenting it that way."

In early 1997 a large collection of songs from the Factory Showroom recording sessions were leaked.^[1][2] Cassette copies of the recordings were shared widely among fans. The collection's 22 tracks included nearly the entire album and its associated B-sides, as well as seven other songs that had not yet been released.

Sales and singles

The back of a promotional flat

Factory Showroom only yielded one single, S-E-X-X-Y, which failed to chart on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks. The album itself peaked at #89 on the Billboard 200 for the week of October 26, 1996, but only spent two short weeks on the chart before dropping off.

Track listing

#	Title	Length	Lyrics	Guitar Tab
0	Token Back To Brooklyn	1:02
1	S-E-X-X-Y	3:51
2	Till My Head Falls Off	2:53
3	How Can I Sing Like A Girl?	4:32
4	Exquisite Dead Guy	2:02
5	Metal Detector	3:50
6	New York City	3:02
7	Your Own Worst Enemy	1:45
8	XTC Vs. Adam Ant	3:37
9	Spiraling Shape	4:24
10	James K. Polk	3:04
11	Pet Name	4:04
12	I Can Hear You	1:57
13	The Bells Are Ringing	3:32

Japan-only bonus tracks

#	Title	Length	Lyrics	Guitar Tab
14	Unforgotten	3:06
15	Sensurround	2:57

Trivia

• On the cover for Factory Showroom, the band's name is set in the typeface "Giant", commissioned by Barbara Glauber and designed by Jonathan Hoefler for the album.
• While the US release of the album does not include printed lyrics, the Japanese version included them in both English and Japanese.
• This was the last TMBG studio album to be released on cassette until BOOK in 2021.
• "Token Back To Brooklyn" is a hidden track. It can be found by rewinding the CD to before the first track starts; however, this won't work on some CD players, including most computers. It is omitted from foreign releases of the album, presumably in error. It was included as track 1 on the album, in the John Henry & Factory Showroom compilation released by Edsel. On the LP release, it is the last, unlisted track on the album, and starts after 1 minute and 15 seconds of silence following "The Bells Are Ringing". The vinyl's deadwax reflects this, with side A reading "To find the token" and side B reading "Mind the gap".

Gallery

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  Advance copy cover

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  Advance copy back

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  Advance copy disc

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  Promo cover

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  Promo CD

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  Cassette

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  Japanese version (with obi)