1987-11 The Breaking Point
John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants
By Jennifer Leonard, The Breaking Point, November 1987
"We are a funny band, I guess," said John Flansburgh, one half of New York's They Might Be Giants. "But in a way, I think that was the big surprise — that when we finally started to reach an audience, we were perceived of as a 'funny band.'"
Their audience could have reached this perception after hearing the band's "hit" "Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head." The video, which was a regular feature on MTV's 120 Minutes for a while, featured two guys frantically bouncing around the Brooklyn set while performing the song in a non-descript old man's face mask. John Linnell makes up the other half of They Might Be Giants. Both Linnell and Flansburgh hail from Lincoln, Mass. Along with "funny", they've also been described in People magazine as "wacky and theatrical" and as a "duo-cum-beatbox rock attraction" in Musician magazine.
"I think of us as in the long tradition of art bands. That's the kind of music I really like, like Pere Ubu," said John. However you decide to think of them, the facts are these: Their self-titled, 19-song debut album gained them them much applause, including four, yes four, appearances on the "Joe Franklin Show," ("It's great being on Joe's show," said John.) and will be released worldwide soon, due to a deal with Rough Trade and Virgin Records. They are currently recording their second LP which should be available in January.
They Might Be Giants started five years ago, after both Linnell and Flansburgh wound up moving to New York on the same day. "We did a lot of things that were kind of strange, in that they were sort of to show how well rehearsed we were," said John, "We had a lot of songs that were probably unpleasant to witness... over-arranged songs that had complicated parts for the sake of being complicated. And that's probably the thing that we've ended dropping from the show most of all, and I think it's better now."
"We basically started out in New York when the whole East Village club scene started," said Flansburgh. "There were a lot of places to play, at one time, for people who weren't interested in making money... since there were a lot of places that were really progressive, in the sense that they allowed performers to do whatever they wanted, we got a lot of healthy encouragement from people to do whatever we wanted. I think if there's a band starting out now, they wouldn't get that kind of positive reinforcement."
What about those rather "bizarre" lyrics?
"We write songs the same way other people do, some of them are projections of things that never happened to us, others reflect real life experiences," said John. "We don't try to write bizarre songs... we have a certain understanding that people are going to have a hard time taking it seriously, on whatever level that people take 'rock songs' seriously. But you can't really worry that much, especially when the most popular songs are so incredibly banal. Writing a straight rock song has got to be the most tired thing in the world."
"One thing about our show is that the words are quite important to whatever we do. And it's really hard to impress upon people how hard it is to hear words from from any live live band, no matter how good the PA system is. We like people to be able to hear our words."
Live, unlike a lot of bands, they only have two members and rely heavily on prerecorded tracks featuring drum and bass parts. One might wonder why they just don't hire other members to cover those instruments. "We don't have any money to hire other members, so it's real easy not to consider that. By in large, most peoples' skepticism comes before they've seen the show. Afterwards, they've seemed to enjoy the show, and don't even consider (the missing band members)," said John.
Their new LP, recorded at Dubway Studio in New York, is yet to be titled, and the number of songs to be on it is still unclear, but John promised that there will be as many songs as they can squeeze within a 40 minute frame. "There'll probably be less songs than the first album, because our songs are getting longer," said John. "The sound is going to be much more hi-fi, and there's gonna be less country/western kind of songs, and there's gonna be more songs with kind of a swing sound. But outside of that, it's still us!"
To whet the appetite of the public, and to make the January release of their next album not seem so far away, They Might Be Giants are releasing a 12" 3-song single with "Don't Let's Start" on the A side and unavailable-until-now B-sides. One of those songs will be "Hi, We're The Replacements" which was featured on their Dial-A-Song service, which you to can call to find out the very latest adventures in the lives of They Might Be Giants.
1 (718) 387-6962, is the number of the service provided solely by John and John, and it gives the tour and other info at any hour of the day. So call, and start searching for that single.