1987-12-02 Dagbladet Information
Giants in a Big Village
By Niels Frid-Nielsen, Dagbladet Information, December 2, 1987
Translated from Danish.
"Scenes from a hyper-hectic everyday life with John and John, who, together with their tape recorder, drum machine, accordion and a whole bunch of other acoustic instruments, perform under the name They Might Be Giants and are treated like giants on their home turf in New York's East Village."
They run onto the stage. One swings the microphone stand over his head, and the next moment he hits the same microphone stand, as he's shouting into it, with an iron rod. The third moment, he hammers his hand against all the strings on the electric guitar, which completely drowns out the other guy on stage, who is sitting bent over an accordion. Their names are John and John and they produce sounds on electric guitar, accordion, iron rods, saxophone, mouth harp, drum machine, microphones with constantly overdriven voices, and a Revox tape recorder, which the soundman looks after down at the bar.
John and John grew up in the same neighborhood outside Boston, USA. They went to the same high school, and when they later moved into the same apartment building in New York, John and John discovered that they had the same penchant for sampling sounds on a tape recorder — and for the same kind of humor, which can perhaps be characterized as soft, sick and cheerful. A neighbor suggested that instead of ruining his night's sleep, they start performing with their tape recorder sounds. So they did, under the name They Might Be Giants.
It's a little after midnight now, and the Lone Star folk music club in the cheap end of Greenwich Village is filled with several hundred people who have paid more than a hundred Danish kroner to see They Might Be Giants. The first song of the set ends before a minute and a half has passed, and before I have figured out whether they are singing black, with a Boston dialect or just paraphrasing someone I don't know. Then, at an extremely fast pace, dozens of crisp acoustic pop and country-sounding songs follow, served with a friendly irony — which is suggested by titles like "Youth Culture Killed My Cat" and "Nothing's Gonna Change My Clothes" — and which balances on the fine line between student-like platitudes and exquisitely good/bad taste; the same kind They Might Be Giants demonstrate on a maxi-single of the opening number "Don't Let's Start", which is released this evening at Lone Star and is sold by the cloakroom lady in the break.
After the third country pastiche, only ten minutes into the set, a broad-shouldered guy in cowboy clothes puts on his hat and leads his female companion out of Lone Star. "I know him. He's an asshole," whispers one John into the microphone as the door slams shut behind the couple.
Hyperactive productions
"Hyperactivity" is the word They Might Be Giants themselves use to describe their musical creations, the next morning at Café Kiev on Second Avenue in the East Village. John and John pour themselves Ukrainian soup while they talk about their recent negotiations with a British record company. Here in the white avant-garde neighborhood, they have long had a cult following among those who are tired of Laurie Anderson and not up for black hip hop. Their debut LP is on display in several places in the neighborhood's store windows and has already sold more than 10,000 copies here. They Might Be Giants have become so cult that their fans greet each other on the street. I discover this when I cross Broadway on my way to Café Kiev and a guy taps me on the shoulder: "Don't you remember me?" he asks.
I think about the last three bars I've visited and answer: "No!"
"You were sitting at the table next to me yesterday at the Lone Star while They Might Be Giants was playing..."
Thus convinced of their importance, I arrive at John and John's table in Café Kiev. John and John themselves have long since moved to Brooklyn, and the ragged bohemian area around Café Kiev now functions mostly as a kind of home-base for They Might Be Giants, who now — after having performed in coffee shops for five years — are starting to be advertised on posters when they perform in the local East Village clubs.
The soup is cold and we go out into the street to find a place to drink coffee. Café Beirut across the street is closed and we continue in the direction of the Bowery, a kind of main street for homeless people and music freaks. This is where the old headquarters of NY punk, the CBGB club, is located. Both CBGB's newly opened record bar and the hardcore transvestite club Pyramid have been playing this acoustic-sounding version of regional-sounding, high-tech folk music, which is also part of They Might Be Giants' trademark. Perhaps they are pioneers of a new giant trend?
Anyway, we go into the small hallway on the Bowery, where John and John's friend and manager lives in a one-room apartment. He shows us the view to the nearest coffee shop from the rooftop terrace upstairs. John tucks himself into his wool coat: "Maybe it was pure nervousness that got us going. The first few times we performed, there were no breaks at all between our numbers. The tape on the tape recorder just ran non-stop from start to finish. Now at least we let people clap between numbers."
The other John leads the way down a narrow staircase from the roof garden: "Of course we know people's reservations about taped shows. I haven't seen any playback-shows that I liked. But our music is created on tape and is not supposed to represent a traditional rock sound with drums-bass-guitar. That's why we think our music works on its own terms."
Resident's heirs
On the next corner is the coffee shop that John says is quiet enough for interviews. We sit by an aquarium and look at the fish until the waiter comes sloshing over with the cappuccino.
Isn't there a bit of academic New York avant-garde in your music and whole attitude?
"No, no, no. The avant-garde element in our music is destroyed before the songs are finished. But there is now a fairly large underground scene here in the US that is inspired by The Residents. They have been releasing records for 10-15 years without anyone knowing who they are. They're inspiring because their music is so uncompromising. They inspire us to not care if the major record labels like us. We don't care if we get played on the radio. The important thing is that our music continues to be interesting."
I think of your performance as a kind of white folk hip hop.
"I don't know if you'd imagine it, but hip hop has actually inspired us enormously. We came to New York at the same time as rap and hip hop. It's an extremely exciting and interesting music that has taught us a lot about sampling, drum machine sounds and how songs can be put together in new ways. It doesn't matter if people can hear that inspiration. What's important is the kicks we've gotten from it."
What else does it mean for your music, that it is created here in New York's East Village?
"For us, the East Village means we finally found places to play. Millions of things happen here. So many that there is also space and an audience for us. We have tried gigs in other parts of the city, but there was just no audience for us among the skyscrapers in the city center. Here in East Village there is a broader acceptance of people who seek to escape trends and fashion waves. The interesting things almost always happen far from the mainstream."
At the Lone Star, I got the feeling of some kind of cult following around you?
"People who really liked us came last night. People aren't used to paying as much as it costs to get into the Lone Star to hear us. We're kind of lucky that we're starting to get our own shows now that a lot of the clubs we started playing at are closing. A lot of bands here in town are going down with the clubs they play at. We're just so established now that we can survive our regular clubs. It's really hard to be a local band here because people come from all over the world to break through."
Idiosyncrasy and communism
John and John have to go now. We follow them to the station on Bleecker Street. "It's typical. When we came to New York, this station was a place that nice people avoided." They jump on the train. "Today there isn't a single graffiti tag on the trains, and it's almost all business people that take the subway on Bleecker Street."
The subway rumbles under the East River to a part of Brooklyn, "which is not dangerous if you walk straight out, or are accompanied by someone who lives here." John and John do. They are preparing tonight's set for a concert against a nuclear power plant in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. "We are totally and utterly against nuclear power. The plant is right in the middle of our neighborhood. It's one of the first benefit concerts we've had the opportunity to participate in. It's only recently that people have started to know who we are when we play. We've suddenly become so popular that we can be used at benefit concerts. If people don't know us, we're no help for the cause. It's great to have the opportunity to do something. The attitude is probably different in Europe, but in the USA people keep asking if we're communists when we want the nuclear power plant in our neighborhood to be closed down," says one John before the other continues, "It's not because we have anything against being called communists. It just should have been kept a secret."
They get off at Driggs Avenue, walk seven blocks down and into The Bog, to get ready for tonight's rampage in white folk hip hop. Because, as one of The Might Be Giants — John, I guess — says: "What really works worldwide is created out of idiosyncrasy!"
Tomorrow, Thursday December 3, they invade the Musikcafeen in Copenhagen.