1990-11-02 The Age
Not U2, but they may be giants
By Liz Lopez, The Age, November 11, 1990
THE publicist had some bad news. "There are," she said, "no underpants on the rider." Two years ago, soon after They Might be Giants played at a 'Spy' party, the magazine printed an excerpt from the performance contract it never honored:
"HOSPITALITY. Purchaser agrees to provide, at his sole cost and expense, the following ... One (1) pair 100% cotton men's briefs (new) size 34; four (4) pairs 100% cotton men's white athletic or crew socks (new) size large."
Surely John Linnell and John Flansburgh, (31 and 30 respectively, "so we're 61 collectively") didn't need reminding? "We had this tour manager who like thought we should have clean socks and underwear everywhere we go," says John Linnell, the accordion-playing half of the band, "It wasn't our idea."
But it could well have been. In 1983, the band's first career move was to set up a Dial-A-Song line which it advertised in the 'Village Voice'. Callers get a different song each day — EG caught a samba number. A recorded message at the end had Flansburgh signing off as one of the "Brooklyn ambassadors of love." "And remember," said the recorded message, "we're always just a phone call-and-a-half away from you."
"Nothing we were doing was geared for success," says Linnell. "There wasn't really an audience for it. We started playing in sort of show-casey clubs — really bad places — to our friends and relatives. The clubs were not part of any scene at all, and the people who showed up had no particular allegiance to any type of music."
In 1984, They Might be Giants broke into the New York performance art scene. Among their contemporaries was Karen Finley, recently accused of obscenity (one of her routines involves covering herself with alfalfa sprouts to represent sperm).
"There was a lot of that kind of thing going on. John and I were sort of the rock band that would perform in the midst of stuff like that. She was one of the more interesting things, but a lot of people were doing bullshit, very pretentious kind of stuff."
Their attitude has left rock writers alternately crying "geniuses" and grasping for put-downs. "We've gotten bad reviews of the band where the reviewer seemed to think we were to be funny but weren't doing a good job of it. They were right — it wasn't that funny (but) we're not comedians."
Last year, they knocked 'Rattle and Hum' off the number one spot on the college charts. "It was satisfying. If there's nothing else we can come up with to say about our music, at least it's the antithesis of U2."
The instrumental mainstays are a guitar and accordion — which Linnell took up six years ago. He met Flansburgh at high school in their native Lincoln, Massachusetts. Accordion-playing families were not exactly part of the city's social fabric. "Which is probably the reason why it didn't seem objectionable to me... I wasn't forced to take lessons as a child," says Linnell.
The two moved to Brooklyn. Flansburgh was a carpark attendant, staple remover and bus boy, while Linnell was a courier, before music became a fulltime occupation. They were signed to the Bar None label in 1986 (their first two albums are only available here on import), and last year joined Electra, who, to their surprise, left them alone during recording sessions.
Before coming to Australia, the band went on a 'Grumpfest 90' tour of American main and college towns ("It seems like we've toured America 10 times," he explains).
Linnell says he spends free time on tour doing phone interviews, and scouring flea markets for 78s. One sample from his collection made it into 'Flood' — 'Istanbul (Not Constantinople)', by the Four Lads. Linnell discovered them on a TV documentary about 1950s music, and says that its present reputation as the rock 'n' roll decade obscures the fact that the bands that made it then were not hellraisers.
"They were all middle-aged guys in tuxedos," he recalls. "It was so refreshing."