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I Can Hear You

From This Might Be A Wiki
song nameI Can Hear You
artistThey Might Be Giants
releasesFactory Showroom, Dial-A-Song: 20 Years Of They Might Be Giants
year1996
first playedDec. 11, 1996 (16 known performances)
run time1:57
sung byJohn Flansburgh

Trivia/Info

This track was recorded at the Edison Historic Site in West Orange, New Jersey on an Edison wax cylinder recorder. We performed this and other songs in front of a small audience, singing and playing acoustic instruments as loud as we could into a pair of enormous metal cones, the larger of which was perhaps twelve feet long, which fed the sound into a hundred year old non-electrical recording device created by Thomas Edison in the 1890s. The wax cylinder recorder carves a groove into a rotating tube of softened wax with a needle that is vibrating from the sound pressure collected at the small end of the cone. That is the best we can explain it. It looked very cool.
  • According to this article, the wax cylinder recording method was inspired by Chris Butler of The Waitresses, who worked the drum machine on the Wiggle Diskette.
  • The band recorded a millennium edition of this song, using the wax cylinder recorder, on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart's "Greatest Millennium" special on December 15, 1999.

Song Themes

Food, Questions, Self-Reference, Size, Telephony, Trade Names, Transportation, Wax Cylinder Recordings

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I Can Hear You is currently ranked #271 out of 846. (110 wikians have given it an average rating of 8.66)
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