1989-02-21 The Campus Slate
An Interview with John Flansburgh of... They MiGht be GIANTS
By Douglas Mashkow, The Campus Slate, February 21, 1989
Archived from: page 1, page 2
This interview was also published in the New Music Scene, a fanzine written primarily by Douglas Mashkow under the pen name "Doug Mash": 1, 2
You know, they just might be. With a newly-signed deal with Elektra Records, and a potential audience that ranges from devout Folk aficionados to those who purchased the California Raisins LP, They Might be Giants are poised for success in a big way.
It all must be pretty funny to John Linnell, TMBG's Lead Singer/Accordionist/Saxophonist, and John Flansburgh, his Guitar Playing/Singing cohort. Having built their following one listener at a time by starting "Dial-a-Song" (still available today by calling (718) 387-6962) on their apartment's answering machine, the band is now ready to expand their listenership by the thousands, as work on their Elektra debut begins as soon as the current tour supporting their Bar-None LP "Lincoln" is over.
So, before they really are giants, and while Danny McCue takes a week off in pursuit of an interview with The Rolling Stones' Keith Richards, I spoke with TMBG's John Flansburgh by phone from his manager's office in Manhattan.
DM: First let me congratulate you on your signing to Elektra Records. How did that all come about - I know Elektra has a pretty elite roster these days...
- JF: Well, we figured if it was good enough for Phil Ochs, it's good enough for us.
DM: I trust that your Dial-a-Song Phone line will continue, even with the record company's publicity backing.
- JF: Yeah, definitely.
DM: How did Dial-a-Song start out?
- JF: Well, we started it about four or five years ago, basically because we weren't making records and we just wanted to get our songs out to the public at large. We thought it was really a bad idea at the start because we thought that the phone company would probably never let us have a phone again. We aren't making any money off it, so it's not what people think, like we're running the "Lita Ford Hotline,"
DM: Yeah, Al B. Sure has one too now...
- JF: And they get like five dollars a call for it. But that's not how we work. It's kind've our non-profit demo service. It's just a nice way to get people to hear what we do without having to go out to a smoke-filled club. That was basically the impulse.
DM: Regarding your recent David Letterman appearance, did you guys choose to play with Paul Schaeffer and the band, or was that something that was required of you?
- JF: Oh no, we wanted to play with the band. It is something they like you to do, but we had no problem with that.
DM: Were you disappointed when there was no time for an interview at the end of the show?
- JF: No, that's the typical way they do it, if you're on for the first time they don't really talk to you. He said he wants us back, so that was good.
DM: Getting back to an atypical interview question, what were your musical influences, and do they differ from John (Linnell)'s?
- JF: No, we have the exact same influences, we are exact copies of one another.
- That's actually a difficult question, because we come from the same culture as everyone else. I could tell you the records I listened to, but I think it's more a question of being a child in the Sixties, an adolescent in the Seventies and being an adult in the Eighties, we're all products of our upbringing.
- A lot of what we do is just bringing a lot of different, what may seem like conflicting, ideas together in our music.
DM: Just to drag a name out of you, who was your first real musical idol, the one you first looked up to and said "I want to do that!?"
- JF: I don't know, a lot of the records I had as a kid were like...well, I actually bought Beatles records when I was five, I remember spending my birthday money on "A Hard Days Night" I also was pretty big on The Monkees, you know,just popular music for little kids.
DM: I've seen you do "Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Constantinople" in your live shows, are there any other songs you forsee covering in the near future?
- JF: We also do a Leslie Gore song called "Maybe I Know," which is really a kind of torch song for us, but we don't do too many covers really.
DM: How was the audience reaction on your recent swing through England?
- JF: Well, we also did a press tour of Germany, and a press tour along with the couple of shows we did in London, which got an incredible reaction, though I noticed a lot of Americans in the audience. We toured all over the United States, so quite a few foreign exchange students doing their semester abroad came to our show to feel weepy and nostalgic. We've always had a good response in Europe, since we toured there about a year ago, and we have a much higher profile in regards to the press there this time around.
DM: How is Mid-America taking to you now? I can imagine California and the Northeast being receptive but some parts...
- JF: I think anyone who's into more adventurous music generally take to us, our show is very friendly - and we're really down-to-earth performers, so it's a very "dress as your are" kind of show, which is a relief for people. Everyone seems to "get it," no matter how hard our show is to describe, people tend to respond to it in a very positive way, and feel they could take something home from it. There's definitely a lot of snobbish people who like our music, and then there are those that see our show as a pleasant diversion from the tedious, nightmarish music that they truly love. It's hard for me to fully understand what people see in us, so we just keep doing what we like.
DM: Speaking of responses, what is the strangest interpretation of a song of yours that you have heard? I'm sure somebody had to come up to you with an idea about a song that was totally off-mark.
- JF: Once this guy who was a born-again Christian heard "Kiss Me, Son of God" and he thought it was really great. He said it really told the truth about all the evangelical types. I thought that was really nice, because I figured that someone who was a born again Christian would really take offense to the song. He really thought it was true.
- By and large, people come up with some pretty good interpretations of our songs, they all seem pretty interesting to me.
DM: Who was the character in "Kiss Me, Son of God?"
- JF: It's just basically an "all-purpose tyrant" kind of song. It's not specific. Whenever you wonder what we're getting at, just take the broadest possible interpretation available and you'll generally do O.K.
- Most of our songs aren't about specific people, we try to keep things pretty open-ended.
DM: Well, one song that was about people was "Hi, We're The Replacements," did you get any feedback from Westerberg and company over that?
- JF: Paul Westerberg actually called Dial-a-Song and he said he liked it. But even that song isn't really about The Replacements. It's really about life on the road in general, it uses The Replacements as the example, but only because they're such a solid example of a typical touring rock band.
DM: I know you're playing a few shows in the area this month, where will you be headed in March?
- JF: We're doing a lot of east coast shows, then we're headed back to Europe in March.
DM: I've managed to avoid any question about the name, but I'm just dying to know... When your Elektra debut LP goes multi-platinum, and you sell out a string of shows at Madison Square Garden, can we expect a name change?
- JF: Yeah, we're planning on calling ourselves... The Rolling Stones!