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The Blackouts

From This Might Be A Wiki

The Blackouts was a band in which Flansburgh performed before They Might Be Giants. VERY little is known about this band. In a radio interview, Flansburgh stated:

"I was in a band called the Blackouts. We did, uh... we did some really messed up stuff. We did a bunch of James Brown covers that were un-identifiable as James Brown Covers. I was playing the role of James Brown." Linnell added, "John just basically screamed."
  • A band called The Blackouts formed in Seattle in 1979 and by 82 was in Boston and the East Coast. Its members were often rotating, and they often needed random musicians to fill in for a gig or two. If this was the Blackouts John Flansburgh was in it would be around this time that he would have been in it. In Boston they recorded an LP called Lost Soul's Club, released on Wax Trax!. They then quickly relocated to San Francisco and broke up in 1985. In 1986 one of their members, Paul Barker, joined Ministry.
  • Interestingly, there was another band called The Boston Blackouts that performed hardcore punk-rock in Boston at the same time. They had this name four years before the famous Blackout in Boston when a power outage in the middle of the Stanley Cup caused its delay. But the name may have been a reference to a locally famous blackout in Boston in 1981 that shut down Chinatown and a section of X-rated movie houses and strip-tease cabarets. There is also a contemporary band with the name The Blackouts from Champlain/Urban, Illinois. With the popularity of this name for bands, it is likely that Flansburgh was in an altogether different band with this moniker.

(Coincidently enough, Frank Zappa's first full band back in the 50s was also called the Blackouts...)

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