1989-03-11 Sounds
< Archived Interviews & Articles
Think Big
By Peter Kane, Sounds, March 11 1989
Archived from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tabloidfootprints/35741648005/in/album-72157685943168955/
Two blokes called John, a scratchy guitar and an accordion make up They Might Be Giants — a band that's not afraid to mix and match musical styles. Peter Kane discovers why nothing's sacred to them.
Two may be company, but it's rarely a band. There is the odd exception — Suicide, for example — but most four- handed combinations are stage-shy, studio-bound affairs concerned with creating a sound and making records.
Playing live, surely the acid test, comes way down the list of priorities, whether it's Yello or Pet Shop Boys. Enter They Might Be Giants from Brooklyn, New York out of Lincoin, Massachusetts: a not-so- big twosome who've turned preconceived notions of numerical shortcomings to their positive advantage.
OK, so there are backing tapes and pre-recorded rhythms to help them along, but a band is indisputably what they are, even though convention and good old common sense say otherwise. Individually, these Giants are John Flansburgh (stocky, bespectacled and bounding with energy) and John Linnell (pencil thin, studenty, with a nice line in dry humour). They work well together; whether it's songwriting, performing or just plain talking. Hell, they were even high school buddies, although Mr Flansburgh seems keen to dispel any nerdish notions about them being inseparable since birth.
"We didn't go to college together. We spent what seemed like our formative years apart. It's not like we're emotionally retarded or anything. There's something about people working together who've known one another since they were kids: you'd think they were twins."
No such thoughts had crossed my: mind, so the story moves from Smalltown, USA to the brighter lights of the big city and an apartment block where the two Johns were both a little surprised to find each other living. Now is that fate, or what?
A need to share equipment and a vague idea about forming a band with a third party eventually brought them into closer contact. Something was beginning to take shape — but nothing too conventional, mind.
While John F describes himself as "failing into the proud tradition of hack rock guitarists — there's no excuse, I could have taken lessons", John L had ditched the keyboards for something less obvious.
"We had someone who lived in our house who played the accordion at the age of six — basically, just for that year, and then stopped altogether. So she loaned me this — I'd never really seen one up close before — and we decided to try it. "I practised on it for a couple of months and we did a show on the promenade in Brooklyn, right on the East River, really just busking. It seemed such a perfect instrument to play live that I stuck with it."
A line-up of scratchy electric guitar and accordion was obviously not going to be everybody's cup of tea. Nor, for that matter, were the songs themselves: pithy ditties about whatever took their fancy, in a whole range of styles from finger- clicking jazz to pristine pop to cod country and way beyond. Nothing was sacred; everything was up for grabs. And that's the way it's stayed right through to their new album, 'Lincoln' (remember where they're from?), an 18-track extravaganza with a style and mood to suit every occasion.
As the bigger John confesses: "I think we just figured there was no audience for what we did. It's not the kind of thing you hear in bars. In the beginning we really didn't think there was any future in it."
A little lateral thinking was obviously called for. It resulted in a Dial-A-Song service. Phone 0101 718 387 6962 for confirmation (making sure you ring from anywhere but home).
John L: "It's just a phone machine connected to a phone and what's on that phone machine is our music. We've been doing it for five years now. Actually, it was Flansburgh's idea when we first started out. I really thought that he'd completely lost his mind, partly because what it meant was that no one was going to be able to reach him at home with this thing hooked up."
John F: "Somehow, at the back of my mind, I had the idea that it was something you could get arrested for. So for the first year and a half we had no talking on it, just the song — a different one every day. I didn't dare announce that we were performing somewhere — that way I thought we could protect ourselves from being punished.
"But I guess that, at a certain point, we realised that nobody cared and they probably thought, Great, more people making long distance phone calls: At this point AT&T probably makes a fortune off it."
Do you?
Jointly, laughing: "We get the satisfaction."
"There are a lot of people who are interested in anything to do with a phone," is the Flansburgh logic.
But, eventually, with a stockpile of literally hundreds of songs to call on, an eponymous self-titled first album was made, appearing on the small Hoboken Bar/None label. It was not an overnight sensation. Even so, a small yet devoted following began to develop across the States, among those with a taste for somewhat kitsch, off-centre slices of life served up in two-minute portions that were just as likely to be in the style of a '50s advertising jingle as anything in the history of rock 'n' roll. But TMBG are emphatic that they're not in the business of musical parody.
What is clear is that They Might Be Giants have become One Little Indian's first American signing and that, through the constant replay of their videos on MTV, they've grown there from a cult band that doesn't sell records to one that does.
And, rather than being limited by the fact that there are only two of them and no rhythm section of which to speak, it's given them the freedom to arrange their sometimes absurd, sometimes acute songs in any style that suits. On 'Lincoln', whether it's the broken down love songs such as I've Got A Match' and 'They'll Need A Crane' (the current single) or incomparable oddities like 'Purple Toupee', the effect is like getting a good, sharp jab in the ribs with a pointy stick. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't — but it's never dull. And, of course, brevity is their watchword.
"We want to be more like The Ramones," offers John F.
So do you get bored with the songs, or do you think the punters do?
The same John continues: "It's kind of an attention span thing. Most of our songs probably repeat the chorus three times and after that you sort of bore people. We don't have long, atmospheric intros and chiming fadeouts."
John L: "I think of it in the way that the miniature of something is often the best discipline. You have to say what you mean in this limited amount of time, a bit like a short story.
"One reason why the live show has turned into such a popular part of what we do is that it really is just like New York weather: doesn't matter if you don't like it, it'll soon change anyway."