1987-10-27 Penn State Daily Collegian
< Archived Interviews & Articles
They Might Be Giants try everything once
By Charles Patterino, Penn State Daily Collegian, October 27 1987
Archived from: page 1 page 2
Three giant xeroxed cardboard faces hang as a backdrop for They Might Be Giants. Whose face is that? Hubert Humphrey? Joe McCarthy? He looks like every porkbarrel politician who ran this great nation before JFK made looking blow-dried and air-brushed a standard requirement for national office.
Like their backdrop, They Might Be Giants remind you of a lot of things, but when you try to think of exactly what, you go blank. Maybe that's because They Might Be Giants aren't like anybody else.
First, consider the lineup. TMBG is John Flansburgh on guitar and vocals, John Linnell on accordion, saxophone and vocals, and their soundman / drum machine programmer / "omnipresent guiding force" Bill Krauss. Not exactly your typical guitar / bass / drums combo.
Next, consider the music. TMBG take eclecticism to its outer limits Country? Pop? Broadway? Polka? TV theme songs? Sometimes they do it all in one song. They have tunes about writer's block, Toys R Us, female hotel detectives, Bill Krauss, and even love. They marry jumpy rhythm tracks and thickly layered sound collages to pure pop hooks and their own vocals that sound like John Lennon with an adenoid infection. The result is cutting-edge pop music, the sound of the 1990's.
Finally, consider their live show. At their four-weekend stand at the Village Gate in New York City, the two Johns wailed away in front of those giant heads like the hyperactive garage band progeny of Lawrence Welk and Laurie Anderson.
Backed by prerecorded tapes, Flansburgh chopped at his guitar and Linnell pumped his accordion with wild abandon. They slashed through tough versions of their future-pop hits, "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head " and "Don't Let s Start.' They also stopped for some good-natured, arty silliness like doing an instrumental "My Funny Valentine" on accordion and melodica. They opened the show by singing a new song with tall red velvet hats perched on their heads.
To bring their snappy tunes to the masses, TMBG started a Dial-A-Song service three years ago. If you call their special number, you can hear the latest TMBG song They write about six or seven new songs to the rotation every month.
"We started the service because I was robbed of all my stage equipment and Linnell broke his wrist, so he couldn't work," Flansburgh said "We don't make any money off of it. It's a home phone."
Flansburgh looks like Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor. Wearing green pants, a white button-down shirt, and glasses with thick, black rims, he defies every rock and roll stereotype imaginable. "We re not exactly a high-fashion band. If we knew how to dress, we probably would," he said.
Linnell looks marginally more fashionable with his askew haircut, but his frequently worried expression undercuts any potential hipness. Asked about the face on the backdrops, he said, "We don't know who he is exactly either. He's Mister Mystery, Mister Psycho Fuck-Up."
TMBG formed when Flansburgh and Linnell met on their high school newspaper staff in Massachusetts. They broke up while they went to college, but reformed in 1983 to start playing New York's East Village clubs, where they refined their show.
"I originally performed with a Farfisa organ, but I lived with a woman who loaned me her accordion, and I stuck with it. I can move around more onstage with an accordion, and it's also cool-looking." Linnell said.
TMBG released a cassette in 1985 on Express Music. Many of those songs ended up on their first, self-titled album on Bar / None Records, released at the end of 1986 to high critical acclaim. They Might Be Giants contains "Puppet Head" and "Don't Let s Start." plus 17 more cryptic toe-tappers, such as "Youth Culture Killed My Dog" and "Chess Piece Face."
"Chess Piece Face," a spooky synthesizer meditation on the title character's life, was inspired by a coworker of Flansburgh's at his job at a book publishing company. "This guy I worked with had Elephant Man's disease. It really affected me, because I could barely stand to look at him," Flansburgh explained, "I tried to wonder what his life would be like. Everything he does is defined by his appearance. The song came out of that wondering, though it's not exactly about him. It's the closest thing to a sincere, sad song on the album."
When asked if they worry about being categorized as a comedy band. Flansburgh said, "Well, it's obvious that there's humor in what we do. It's better than being categorized as heavy metal."
Their travels have included opening for Robyn Hitchcock at Haverford College and a recent tour of Europe and Japan. "I'll tell you a secret," said Flansburgh, "The entire first row at the Robyn Hitchcock concert was tripping."
Their trip to England took even stranger turns. "Our record company in England, Rough Trade, booked us into a Mexican restaurant for a show for record company people. Then we played a place called Sir George Roeby's in London. The audience was reserved, very cool. They stood five feet back from the stage. They wouldn't come any closer," said Linnell.
At the Village Gate, the crowd yelled enthusiastically for many different songs, some of which haven't even been recorded yet. TMBG attracts a witty crowd, as evidenced by the woman who yelled, "Which one's John?" between songs. When the shouts for an encore persisted. Flansburgh deadpanned, "C'mon. you know we can't." TMBG couldn't do any songs that weren't already on their prerecorded backing tapes.
When asked about using tapes in their live show, Flansburgh said. "There will always be some people who will say that we're not a real band unless we get a rhythm section We've tried to find drummers, but the ones who can play all the different rhythms in our songs are playing in Broadway pit bands. We don't have the money to compete."
"We once tried a gig with a jazz trio," Flansburgh continued, "And it was interesting, but the drummer started every song way too fast. After the show, a friend of mine said, ‘John, I could tell that you were really communicating with the drummer that one time when you looked at him.' when in fact I was trying to get the guy to slow down!"
TMBG is currently being courted by some major labels, but Flansburgh said, "We really can't talk about it." Meanwhile, they're working on their second, yet-untitled album. Some of the songs will come from their cassette, and some will be all-new. None will come from Dial-A-Song. "All those songs are exclusively for the service," Flansburgh said.
"We want to go as far as we can." Linnell said, "But we like this situation we're in now. The crowd's loose, and they seem to enjoy what we're doing. We like to play for people who like us."