1990-05 Keyboard Magazine
< Archived Interviews & Articles
Surviving Sandinistas & High Society
By Scott Kirsner, Keyboard Magazine, May 1990
Archived from: https://web.archive.org/web/20030523131743/http://www.tmbg.net/articles/keyboard1990.html
THE YEAR: 1982. THE EVENT: John Linnell's and John Flansburgh's first as a duo. The audience: a crowd of about thirty Nicaraguan Sandinistas. "They didn't speak English," Linnell explains, "which made the instrumentals go over that much better. It was kind of interesting way to start a rock music career."
Since that debut, Flansburgh and Linnell, now know as They Might Be Giants, have found a more appropriate audience- bigger, not so heavily armed, better acquainted with English- without compromising themselves. They dress normally and are not pretentious. They don't spend much time frosting their hair. Their live show has an honest, straight-ahead purity: no makeup, outrageous costume, or huge inflatable women, although for a song called "Whistling in the Dark" Flansburgh does march around the stage pounding a bass drum. They can seriously rock, yet they refuse to take themselves seriously. Their latest album, Flood [Elektra], begins with a mock-Broadway fanfare announcing "a brand new record for 1990."
Flansburgh, the guitarist, is willing to call the band's music rock, but their amalgamation of styles strains against rock boundaries. A polka-inspired accordion, a finger-picked banjo, a honking Motown sax, and a Middle Eastern violin all fit neatly into their scheme. Linnell, an accordion and saxophone player, describes Flood as having "that same kind of genre-breaking feel."
According to Flansburgh, their decision to maintain this sort of stylistic freedom explains why they've been a two-man group from the beginning. "We didn't want to rationalize what we were doing," he says. "We just wanted to go ahead and do it. If you get other musicians involved, you either have to allow them to make decisions or you have to come up with some kind of defense for why you want them to do exactly what they're told." But Linnell cuts in with a more pragmatic explanation: "We didn't have any gigs, man. There was nothing. It would have been like us saying, 'How about you be our slaves for no reason?'"
Despite an enigmatic marketing history that includes keeping their pictures off their album covers and refusing to affiliate with anyone else's products, John and John have garnered a considerable bit of media attention. In Dec. '87, for example, they were inducted into Esquire's annual compendium that honors "people who are making determined efforts to advance ideas they feel passionately about."
So what did Esquire's stamp of approval mean to the Giants? "It meant a really great dinner at the 21 Club in New York," Linnell says.
"It's a lie," Flansburgh cuts in.
Esquire didn't buy you dinner? "No," Linnell explains. "The lie is that we were seriously trying to advance ideas we believe in."
Flansburgh admits that they did actually get a free meal as guests of the magazine's glitzy award banquet. "We were the only musicians in it. There were all these people who had come up with cures for cancer and stuff like that. And I felt like this weird sleazebucket rock guy. It was flattering in a way, but it made me realize that there are people who are doing things that are really going to alter people's lives in a more direct way.
"But," he concludes, "I still feel pretty happy with what we are doing."