1988-07 Now What
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Wake Up And Smell The Cat Food
By James Barnett, Now What, July 1988
Otherworldy visitors from lyricist Bizarro world and steady customers at Hooks-R-Us, these two endearingly smartass New Yorkers exponentially produce material. Currently available are their self-titled debut LP, Don't Let's Start EP, and current EP, (She's A) Hotel Detective, and their Dial-A-Song service, at (718) 387-6062. They'll have you humming the tunes, but the lyrics are strange enough to keep you from singing them in public. Live, John Linnell (accordion, turtleneck) and John Flansburgh (guitar, specs), are part nuclear reactor, part vaudeville revue.
Accompanied by producer, engineer and sound guy Bill Krauss' backing tapes, the Johns put on the most all-around enjoyable show I've been to in a while. If you're lucky, maybe the Stick will even pop in for a Tom Jones number or two.
Nw: So, what's new?
John L.: Well, the thing that's new now is that basically everything is in utter turmoil because our video got so much airplay on MTV.
John F.: We're going to be like the Gary Numan of 1988.
John L.: Exactly. So the whole deal is that we've kind of geared ourselves for the struggling rock band level. The album's been out for more than a year, and suddenly started selling in much larger numbers than it ever did before.
John F.: We've been playing for a really long time and we got used to the idea of having to find our audience. Not on a global level, more like on a "there's gotta be a couple hundred people out there" level I think this is the first time in our career where we could even say we had a career. So, it's funny for us. It's good in a lot of ways, but it's as if we're not in control of our own situation any more.
Nw: You had no idea how people would react to the Dial a Song or your records.
John L.: We figured people like us would like it. It was the kind of music we wanted to have, so we figured there must be other people like us.
Nw: So, if you didn't make this kind of music, you would buy a record from somebody who did.
John L.: Yes.
John F.: And we'd probably think we were a lot smarter and more interesting than we really are.
John L.: Good point. We fake people out. No, it's not fake, it's real. The thing that's completely real about it is that we're wasting our lives. We're spending all our time doing this. So, if it's stupid, then we're stupid. It's really intense.
John F.: And frankly, we're a little scared. It's kind of like looking into the abyss night after night.
Nw: You're putting all of this work into it and you have no idea what's going to become of it.
John F.: The thing is, in a way, it's already more than we could reasonably ask for. We got to make our record. Great. It was really satisfying. A lot of my goals were kind of wrapped up around that. And as soon as we actually got our record out, it was kind of like, "Heh heh, now how do you fake it for a while until you find out what your other goals were? 'Cause you got to MAKE a RECORD."
And along with a record comes touring.
John L.: I think our worst show was the first time we played Pittsburgh, which is really funny because the second time we played there it was one of the best shows we ever had.
John F.: No, that was a great show. The show itself was fine. It was the circumstances...
John L.: The crowd was really skimpy...
John F.: There were twenty people there.
John L.: And the guy who ran the club is a complete, utter sociopath.
John F.: The place is called the Electric Banana. And every booking agent we talked to would say, 'You're PLAYING at the Electric Banana? Watch out. Watch out. You didn't hear the Circle Jerks story?' He pulled a gun on one of the guys in teh band and fired shots over his head when he complained about not getting his guarantee. Actually, the night of our show he shook down his own soundman 'cause he didn't have enough to pay us our guarantee.
Nw: What kind of music do you guys like?
John F.: I just rearranged my record collection so I've been listening to a lot more. Actually, I was just listening to XTC's greatest hits, which someone might think was totally appropriate for us. But to show you how committed to the band I am, I only have their greatest hits album.
John L.: You have that Mills Brothers/Andrews Sisters compilation...
John F.: Oh, yeah- amazing. The Mills Brothers are really worth checking out.
Nw: I just picked up the "Glowworm" single for like a quarter.
John F.: Oh, wow-what a song. [sings]
John L.: They don't even do the verse. It's so cool because they just do the chorus three times. That's the kind of thinking we're into.
Nw: What kind?
John L.: Chorus-chorus-chorus. That's it. Check, please.
John F.: All hooks. All the time.
John F.: You know what record I heard today that I like a lot, was "Going Back to Cali." What an amazing record. LL Cool J sounds like Peter Lorre reading limericks. "She says... she likes... the Ocean." Okay, LL, but what do you really mean? LL's a pretty intense guy.
Like I said before, they've got a Dial-A-Song Service, where you can call and get a new song every coupla days. Not to compared to phone sex $17-a-minute teentalk lines, all it really is is a long answering machine message, and listeners can leave their comments after the song's over. The Johns look at it as a way of reaching the audience who might not take the trouble to go to a club. Besides, "It's free from work."
John F.: So, do you know about our Dial-A-Song service?
Nw: I called it once.
John L.: It's not for everybody.
John F, John L.: It's an acquired taste.
There's a definite theatrical bent to a They Might Be Giants performance; this is not a band that walks out of the audience, puts down their beers, and starts playing. Live, they use cue cards for the "I Hope That I Get Old Before I Die" audience sing along and sell fezzes along with the usual tour T-shirts. In the video for "Don't Let's Start," they wear the big hats in the pictures.
John L.: We made them. John made them out of cardboard and cheap fabric. They're really just material wound around a cardboard tube. A lot of our stage stuff is like that. It looks cool but it's really cheap and easy to make. The giant heads in the "Don't Let's Start" video, for example. We just made one giant stat of this photo and xeroxed it in sections and pasted all the xeroxed parts together onto the cardboard.
Nw: Who is that guy?
John L.: It's just a guy from an encyclopedia. We shot the video out on the World's Fairgrounds in Flushing Meadows. It's on a giant map of New York State, the largest map in the world.
John F.: It's where the Beastie Boys made their album cover. We get all our ideas from the Beastie Boys.
Lisa: How much were you involved with the production?
John L.: All the visual stuff is our stuff.
John F.: And I was in the editing room when it was being put together.
John L.: Making sure that no drool or boogers or...
John F.: ...scenes that made me look really fat are in it.
Nw: Well, what about your crotch shot, when you're on your back moving around?
John F.: I was sensitive about that, and Adam, our director, didn't think it was a problem. And I was like, "No... This is wrong. It's going to be misunderstood by the youth of America."
Nw: So what are you gonna do now? You've done everything.
John L.: You're right.
John F.: Let's quit.
John L.: We still like making records. It's really interesting.
John F.: The more you work on making records, the better you get at it.
John L.: Once you get into it a litle ways, you can really start to loosen up and do some crazy stuff.
John F.: We were so uptight when we did the first record.
John L.: Fortunately, a lot of the tracks were done previously.
John F.: When we were trying to get a record contract.
Nw: Well, what haven't you done yet?
John F.: I think we haven't done our most interesting work. I think there's a lot of potential in the project just for a certain set of ideas that we have that are really quite different than the way other people think about what they should do as public performers. Doing stuff like Dial-A-Song is really interesting for me because it has nothing to do with anything- it's not about filing into something that's already been done.
Legend has it they got the name from an old movie. I hadn't seen it and wondered whether I was missing a valuable piece of information. Apparently not.
Nw: So how many times have you seen the movie?
John L.: Twice. I saw it when I was a kid. Dumb movie. It doesn't matter. I thought it was a good name.
John F.: Let's just say we don't talk about the Name. We're trying to get used to saying that. A friend of ours who's a ventriloquist had a long list of names for his ad, and that was one of them. It's really hard to come up with your own name when you're naming a band, so, it's better to steal some one else's.
Okay, so now that you're on the map, is it money for nothing and your chicks for free, or what?
Nw: What's the best part of being famous?
John L.: Not that we're famous, but I'm getting the feeling that apparently there aren't really any things that it gets you. It might make you more alienated from certain friends, screw up certain relationships, but it probably doesn't help you. I don't think it's a particularly nice thing. It doesn't make you closer to anybody.
John F.: It's totally excellent. You know what I mean? Heh heh heh heh.