1987-01-23 Atlanta Journal
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Giants plays to a variety of audiences
By Bo Emerson, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, January 23 1987
This band plays loony little tunes over the telephone for intimate audiences of one.
According to John Flansburgh, guitarist, and John Linnell, "rock accordionist," with They Might Be Giants, the band has reached out and touched a brand new public with its Dial-A-Song service. (For samples, call Flansburgh's answering machine at 718-387-6962, which plays a new ditty each day. You pay for the call.) "They're not real night-lifers," says Linnell of his phone followers. "They're usually people who work in offices and are sick of their jobs and just want to call somebody."
On the other side of TMBG's "piebald demographic" are fans of its live shows at New York City hot spots such as Danceteria, CBGB, Pyramid and Darinka. This week the group performs outside the New York metro area for the first time, in the "They Might Be Giants 'Bring Me the Head of Kenny Rogers' World Tour 1987." TMBG will be at Rollick tonight. The tour doesn't truthfully circle the globe, but it does amble across much of the United States in a pattern that resembles a noose. "I hope that's not ominous," says Linnell.
[...]
Of their lyrics, Flansburgh says "Most of them are pretty oblique. We're not that worried about being misunderstood, but Gordon Lightfoot would say the same thing... It's very positive, in a Bertolt-Brecht-meets-the-Lovin'-Spoonful sort of way."
Collaboration between the two Johns, both natives of Lincoln, Mass., began in high school when they invented a mimeographed underground comic book called Dark Brown Funnies. Both moved to New York about five years ago. "And we started working together, realizing that we were both musical geniuses," says Flansburgh. What happens when geniuses collide? "Oh, it's been really jolly," he adds.
Though they once performed at a Central Park Sandanista rally under the name Circle Gets the Square, the pair adopted their present handle from a 1971 movie featuring George C. Scott, whose addled character thinks he is Sherlock Holmes. Linnell says the movie's Quixotic overtones are suited to the band, which he describes as either an exercise in futility or a noble quest.
In addition to accordion, Linnell plays baritone sax. He adds that "At this moment I am studying the banjo, from across the room. I've been thinking about starting another band called BanJovi.
"We're ready for the bootleggers," says Linnell. "We have a lot of songs and we desperately need to get rid of our backlog. That was the purpose of the Dial-A-Song service."
In that function, Flansburgh's answering machine has served well. It has also accepted numerous recorded messages, both clean and obscene, from followers around the country, but very few of them have turned out to be from attractive single women.
Says Linnell, "As a dating service, it's been a failure."