1989-02 Paper
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New York Giants: Two Johns from Brooklyn make art rock for fun and profit.
By Laurie Pike, Paper, February 1989
They Might Be Giants is about sticking it out. In their six years together, they have worked as people counters and bike messengers by day and played the Pyramid and the Village Gate at night. They've toured extensively in a van which somehow seemed to beg, "please steal my contents." Now John Flansburgh (guitar, vocals) and John Linnell (accordion, sax, vocals) are pole-vaulting from New York to new fame as their second LP Lincoln (Bar None Records) makes a dash for gold.
Lincoln is packed with twisted rock, pop, funk, folk and C & W songlettes which make their point and end as soon as the punch, or punch line, has been delivered. This way they were able to fit 50 songs on their two LP's and four singles. Recently They Might Be Giants signed a one-record deal with Elektra, because, like most New Yorkers, they don't want to be tied down. For a sneak preview of a new song, call the They Might Be Giants Dial-A-Song at 718-387-6962.
Chances are you've already heard "Ana Ng," the first single from Lincoln. It topped the college charts and rules MTV, The follow-up, "They'll Need a Crane," has just been released, will undoubtedly boost the albums' already remarkable ascent on commercial charts. What's best about They Might Be Giants' formula of art rock from caffeine hell is that it does not induce suicidal tendencies, Along with Hugo Largo and the Ordinaires, they are making a more accessible art rock. Musicologists can make careers out of dissecting lyrics like "Youth culture killed my dog" and "I don't want the world, I want your half." Random silliness or obscure dogma? Who cares? You may hear reminders of Elvis Costello, Joe "King Carrasco, Frank Zappa, the Raybeats, Simon and Garfunkel and even the Kinks, but They Might Be Giants are in a category—no, make that a world of their own.
That world began in Lincoln, Mass. where they knew each other as youths. After high school, Flansburgh college-hopped and Linnell wound up in Providence playing with the Mundanes. Flansburgh landed in the "Telly Savalas winners and losers capital of the world" at the same time Linnell was relocating here with his band, They moved into the same Brooklyn building on the same day Linnell quit the Mundanes and later started making tapes with Flansburgh which they still use when performing. Flansburgh plays the cartoonish yin to Linnell's yang. He slips into goofy characters and makes up songs on-the-spot to illustrate a point. Shoot him a question and it ricochets back as a one-liner. While Flansburgh's wit bops you on the brain, Linnell's sneaks up on you. He's the more pensive and expansive in conversation.
Laurie Pike: There's humor in all your songs, but you adamantly declare you're not a comedy band.
John Linnell: The thing about saying something is comedy in the music business, that's like a reduction, like making something disposable, as if the only point to it is to make you laugh and there's nothing else going on.
John Flansburgh: We're not funny a whole lot of the time, that's not what we're about.
J.L.: I don't think we're all that funny ever, we're just a little more funny than the normal kind of band.
J.F.: We're songwriters and music is very important to us. I just want to kill people who say stuff like that. We're willing to be silly, for a photo session, and that's something someone in an average rock band not only doesn't like to do, but they can't do it, it's not part of their cool rock image. The comedy label has been pinned on us a lot by our own actions. If you allow yourself to be goofy some of the time, you're going to be pidgeonholed in that way. Ultimately when we change the world with our great ideas that'll change too.
I think our songs are pretty good at acknowledging the grimness of reality but not just to bum you out. I think there's something positive in our music, even though it seems to prevail in the negative.
J.L.: Which brings up to the whole love/hate aspect of our music.
J.F.: We're pretty much a love/hate project. There are a tot of harsh contrasts, we set out to make music which is graphic, juxtaposing conflicting ideas, and that runs through everything we do. I think that's a modern preoccupation.
L.P.: You know those Lotto ads, "All you need is a dollar and a dream?' If you were to do one of those, how would it read? You know, the ones that say, "I'd pay someone to follow my husband around the house and pick up after him."
J.F.: Oh, right. I'd pay someone to cover up those signs.
L.P.: If you made a ton of money and had to give a bunch to charity or a political action group, where would you dump it?
J.F.: Karen Black Integrity Defense Fund.
J.L.: See, that's why John is the hate member of the band. I think one should be suspicious of charities because they're frequently run poorly and your money is really not going to the particular thing. It was really depressing to hear about the USA for Africa thing, after what seems like so much smoke, and it was a good idea, and a lot of people had good impulses but I've heard these stories where they brought the food to the harbor and the food was rotting on the docks because they didn't have trucks to move it to where the people are hungry. People like us aren't the ones to make decisions about foreign policy.
J.F.: You really have to believe your own publicity that just because you play a musical instrument, you have more insight into politics than the liars and cheats that are our political leaders today.
L.P.: It's such a big deal for musicians to make anti-drug statements. Are there any drugs you would refuse to campaign against?
J.F.: That's nobody's business.
J.L.: I take the liberal point of view, which is that it's part of government's job to tell people.
J.F.: She's talking about you, not governments.
J.L.: I know, but it's obvious that people need to be told what sort of drugs are really bad for you. After-the-fact anti-drug legislation, like jailing people who have used drugs, is really ineffective, and education is where it's at. So I love to see Run DMC saying, "Don't do crack."
L.P.: Say you were approached by an anti-drug lobby, would you do a spot?
J.L.: I definitely would.
L.P.: Which drugs?
J.L.: Crack is number one on the list.
J.F.: Crack is sort of off the graph as a drug, compared to alot of other drugs.
J.L.: I would do an anti-cocaine thing, too, because I think a lot of people get led into it for the wrong reasons. It's supposed to be recreational but there's some other head set behind someone who's doing that drug. It's stupid and people should be told that they're stupid for doing it.
J.F.: Publicly shame them.
L.P.: Do you ever picture yourself getting a band or will you continue with the back-up tapes?
J.F.: We don't know, we've been playing with the tapes for such a long time, it seems like the easiest way to go.
J.L.: There's no compulsion now to change.
J.F.: It seems like a regular band.
L.P.: Today's audiences are more willing to accept that.
J.F.: We grew up with synthesizers, Kraftwerk was a band when we were teenagers, so it's quite different for us. It's not an expression of technology, it's just the way things are.
L.P.: You've performed with masks of someone else's face, and with a backdrop of an enlarged photo of some old guy's face.
J.L.: It seemed like a great idea initially to have faces of people who nobody knew, but it obviously bothers certain people.
J.F.: It doesn't bother people. They just want to know. They think it's some secret message and it really isn't.
J.L.: We haven't used the masks in a long time. We started using the giant heads in back of us, after which we shot the "Don't Let's Start" video, so it became the big face treatment.
J.F.: This last tour we didn't use any props at all. People start wanting to see the props every time they hear the song and the show becomes ritualized.
L.P.: When you play outside of New York, do audiences dance more?
J.F.: This last tour, it seemed like people were dancing more.
J.L.: But it's this dangerous kind of dancing.
J.F.: Slamming.
J.L.: This whole crowd pushes each other across on the people on one side and then they turn around and go the other way.
J.F.: We used to get a lot of people hippie dancing, that was nice.
J.L.: When we played the Village Gate, there was this area on the floor where people would do these dances. You'd see a hand silhouetted across the room against the wall and you'd know that the hippie dunce was in progress.
L.P.: How often do you change your Dial-A-Song?
J.F.: Every day or two. We've got a big back- log of songs, so we just spin them around a lot.
L.P.: Has it been ringing off the hook lately?
J.F.: We got 100 calls before I left today.
J.L.: There are a lot of national magazines that have printed the number.
J.F.: Yeah, and then there's regulars.
L.P.: What's the one thing in your fridge at all times?
J.F.: I have a toy guitar autographed by Les Paul.
J.L.: You've got more than one guitar in your refrigerator.
J.F.: A friend of mine got this guitar from Les Paul. It says, "To John, You've got a problem, Les Paul." My friend who got it for me asked him why he wrote that and he said, "Well, if he's going to try ta play that, he's got a problem."
L.P.: I really like the fact that you use art on your covers.
J.L.: We both feel like it's really stupid to have a picture of yourself on the cover of your album.
J.F.: It helps keep the songs in their own abstract world. It's more like the song is the vehicle of expression.
L.P.: Steve Miller said the same thing. But now that you've signed this deal with Elektra, they might want you to do that.
J.L.: The point is that we want to put the whole package out, and they signed us based on that idea, But ultimately, they're the ones who'll decide.
J.F.: Art work on covers really stands out. You go toa record store and there's 20 records. with 20 people's cool attitudes being expressed and one illustrated cover or one with a photograph that's not of the band and it's really unusual these days. But we've had photographs on the backs of our records, the backs of our singles.
(L.P. leaves and they continue the interview.)
J.L.: John, tell Laurie about ali the different artists who have snubbed us, who we tried to get to do the cover of Lincoin.
J.F.: Well, first there was Charles Burns,
J.L.: Was that the first one?
J.F.: I can't remember.
J.L.: Oh, we talked about Leroy Nieman first.
J.F.: And there was this guy, what's his name? Cordou?
J.F.: Oh, Robert Condo, who now lives in Paris and is a millionaire. He wasn't remotely interested. Then Charles Burns.
J.L.: Charles Burns had this great plan...
J.F.: He had this great idea and it overwhelmed him and it he had to bail out.
J.L.: So John got this message on his machine, "This is Charles Burns, I can't do the cover. Bye, Sorry." And this was two weeks before we had to do it, So then we called Gary Panter.
J.F.: He didn't have any time to do anything for the cover and he had a lot of neat stuff but a lot of it had naked ladies in it and you can't have a lot of naked ladies on your album cover and expect these square record stores to carry it.
J.L.: Unless you're the Sugarcubes.
J.F.: But that's so artful.
J.L.: What, Gary Panter isn't artful?
J.F.: No, Gary Panter's totally artful, but there'ssomething really sexy about his art... Actually Helene (Panter's wife) is going to be probably putting together the next single cover. She's our girl influence. She's a girl.
L.P.: You're a very lyrically important band and I'm wondering if the language barrier is a problem when you play abroad.
J.F.: Germans speak better English than Americans.
J.L.: We found that out the last tour. We did this interview with this guy from a German magazine, and he understood all our songs better than we did. And we had a great crowd in Paris.
L.P.: Since February is love/hate month, I'm interested in knowing what you love and hate about... for instance, Ed Koch.
J.F.: We love to hate Ed Koch. He's so easy to hate.
J.L.: And what we hate about him is we hate to love Ed Koch.
L.P.: What do you love and hate about New York?
J.L.: It's beyond love and hate for me. I've internalized New York, but there's this intense feeling when you come back from a tour, suddenly every good thing about New York is magnified, and none of the bad things are apparent, and I really get misty eyed.
J.F.: I'm sure most of the people who are reading this feel like they're stuck in New York. Well, stop feeling sorry for yourself. It's no bed of roses out there. It's the greatest city in the world.