1988-04-28 Rochester Campus Times
< Archived Interviews & Articles
An interview with musical Giants
By John Bruni, Rochester Campus Times, April 28 1988
"Well, this is the very last issue of the CT, and I am not going to waste time complaining about how bad commercial radio is. (It still stinks.) Instead, I am going to start off with my interview of the group, They Might Be Giants, conducted in the studio of WRUR. The band played at Idol's in downtown Rochester, and they put on quite a show. Their single, Don't Let's Start, is rising to the top of the college radio charts and the video can be seen on MTV. They Might Be Giants is actually a duet, made up of John Linnell and John Flansburgh. I spoke to John Linnell last Thursday night:"
How about giving me some of the group's background?
Well, John and I started playing in New York about five years ago as They Might be Giants and we've basically been doing what we are doing now since then; we've performed with just the two of us on stage. I play the accordion, John plays the guitar, we play a few other little odd instruments, and the rhythm section is all on tape and basically what it is, is drum machine and bass. But it's not boring because we don't have the technical facility to make it sound that way. We're not just good enough to sound boring, like all the big league bands.
I saw the video for your song, "Don't Let's Start." Did you have fun making it?
Yeah, it was a lot of fun. It was kind of torture in a way; but, that's what we're into, I guess, or we wouldn't be doing this. Our director, Adam Bernstein, pretty much worked with us on the video. What we did was we took a lot of our stage stuff, like the hats and giant faces; all the aspects of our live show, we condensed into a single video. And Adam, for his part, got us up at about five in the morning to shoot this thing, so we were complete zombies and basically did whatever he told us, which is his incredibly successful method of shooting videos. He wakes people up really early so that he can control them. And I take my hat off to him, I think it worked.
I remember reading about your live shows. You are known for your entertaining stage shows. Do you find it difficult to hold the audience's interest?
I'd say that's mostly Flansburgh's department. I'm basically singing and playing for most of the show, and John does most of the jumping around. Sometimes, it's a bit like a tennis match, as John noted a few days ago. When we're watching the audience, we can see who's doing the most visually interesting thing by which way the entire audience's heads are turned. And they kind of bob back and forth for the whole show, which is a pretty strange thing to look at. I mean, they're looking at us; but, we get to see this real, like, "Hitchcockian" head-bobbing business. That's really our experience of touring.
Are there any concerts that are especially memorable to you?
...Well, there was the show in Norfolk, Virginia, at the King's Head Inn, and at that show we had, uh, several really messed up members of the audience scream "Pencil dick" at us as we started to play our song, Pencil Rain. And they were so completely out of their minds that after we introduced the song and told them it was from the film "Pencil Dicks," starring the three of them, that they became instant fans and danced for the rest of the night and then came out and got our autographs out at the truck later.
Your whole style and sound is really unique. Are there any bands that influenced you or that you listen to now?
Well, you know, a lot of bands like to make people feel they completely invented music, and we're no exception. We really wish people believed that we completely came up with every single idea that we have, and that we just invented music; but, obviously that's not true. On the other hand, it's pointing to the specific influences that's kind of a weird, sticky problem for us. We never seem to have a really clear sense of what, in particular, has been our influence. Other than the really standard kind of stuff... You know, I guess I was four and John was five when the Beatles came to America, and that certainly had an impact of some kind. And then we were in high school when this punk rock thing was happening and obviously that was somewhat of an influence, I think, partly because it was a bunch of bands that were otherwise sort of unrelated. But, the things they had in common were they basically weren't ruling stuff out for formal reasons, and the other thing was that they could only play to a limited degree technically, and that didn't stop them from feeling like they could do whatever they wanted. And that was definitely a source of inspiration. Beyond that, it's tricky. I mean, I think we each have our individual influences, and I don't know what they are anymore. Lately, we've listened to, like, lots of Frank Sinatra; but, that's not really coming out in our music very much, I don't think.
Most of your songs are fairly humorous. Were you two the "class clowns" in your high school?
John and I actually went to high school together outside of Boston. We were somewhat disliked, I think. The group we hung out with, which was the staff of the school newspaper, was not really admired much by most of the student body. So, yeah, I would say we were not particularly, like, the "golden boys" of our school. We put out this newspaper that not everybody was really in love with. We kind of stuck in our little newspaper office. I mean, the thing is that we found out later that most people in our high school had the same experience of feeling sort of persecuted by everyone around them. So that it wasn't really us, it was just a general thing about high school.
Finally, if you had a message for the youth culture of today, what would it be?
Be careful and don't take things at face value. Come and see our show; that is really our primary message. Our philosophy is come see us and rock to our "groove"...