File talk:Flood Product Facts 1.jpg

an approximation

(for the lazier among us) -Apollo (colloquia!) 01:16, 3 September 2012 (EDT)

Artist:     THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS
Album:      Flood
Cat./LC[?]: 960 907-1 / LC 0192
Producer:   Clive Langer & Alan Winstanley / They Might Be Giants
Published:  12.01.90

***

"It was 23 January", recalls John Linnell, whose accordion is a characteristic part of the music of THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS. The band's first concert took place during a blizzard in a basement in Manhattan, and was "full of the mystical, magic number a la Aleister Crowley", he adds, without batting an eyelid. "We played 23 songs, even though we had only planned to play 22, 23 guests paid us $23 each, and I was 23 years old at the time." Before he was reunited with high school friend John Flansburgh, he had been a daring bike messenger, hopelessly beaten in the congested streets of New York. [Flansburgh] classically had a very busy career[?] counting Metro North Railroad passengers in Grand Central Station. "I did two and a half years", he says proudly. "I have counted nearly a million people — an ideal job for writing songs. One has absolutely nothing to think about, and the counter does the job by itself. But I only got $7 an hour, and THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS paid $8 at the time." 

Just as the bizarre duo had assembled a small cult following in New York, the Johns would have been forced, by a series of misfortunes, to understand their ironic band name too literally: They had to leave their apartment in Brooklyn, which they shared with huge drums, headlong[?]. Just as John Flansburgh had finally found a new home, modern day Pony Express rider John Linnell fell off his bike and broke his wrist. Performances were unthinkable for the foreseeable future. But John Flansburgh used the seemingly hopeless situation to finally put a plan, which had been occupying his mind for some time, into action: He placed on his private number, 718-387-6962, a Dial-A-Song service, with one new song every day, which he advertised in the classified section of the Village Voice as "Free (when you call from work)". Several hundred fans blocked the line every day.

1986, [sic] a self-produced and distributed THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS cassette paved the way for [their record deal with] indie label Bar/None Records. Shortly thereafter came the debut album by John and John; in January '88, [sic] MTV saw the video for "Don't Let's Start", indicating that THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS were known even outside New York, where they were twice consecutively nominated in the "New York Music Awards" and won "Best Band on an Independent Label". The same year, they appeared in Esquire in the list of the most influential Americans in the music business for their "intelligent, ironic, and iconoclast songs", the New York Times brought a larger report and People magazine writes the two as the "most innovative rock and roll duo in the world. They work to integrate experiments into their pop songs that are as melodious as the best of the Top 40."