1992-07-03 Santa Barbara News
They might be with a band now
By Jeff Gordinier, Santa Barbara News-Press, July 3, 1999
It's the first day of a national tour. John Linnell is on the phone from Cleveland and he sounds, well, nervous.
"I've been really scared about getting this together," says Linnell, one half of the duo called They Might Be Giants. "We've been together for nine years and we've never done this before."
What they've never done is play with a band.
Back in the early 1980s, Linnell and his partner John Flansburgh had an accordion, some horns and a guitar. They were like a couple of boys making model battleships in the basement: They wrote songs in Flansburgh's apartment and played along with a tape recorder. Eventually it got to the point where people wanted to listen. Oh no!
For years, They Might Be Giants toured the country without a band. Linnell played the sax and the squeezebox; Flansburgh played guitar. The rest of the music came from the tape recorder. That's the they liked it. "It was a little frustrating when people said, "When are you going to get a band together?" Linnell says.
But now the duo, which comes to the Ventura Concert Theatre on Wednesday, is touring with other people—bass player Tony Maimone from Pere Ubu, Kurt Hoffman on sax, clarinet and keyboards and Jon Feinberg on drums—and the whole thing is giving Linnell the jitters.
He has to fend off the people who ask, "Why are you using a band?" He has to rearrange all the songs, and there are rehearsals and... "We have this sort of computerized light setup," he sighs.
It's almost too much to think about; now he wants to get off the phone. "They're telling me my dinner's ready."
You might get the impression, talking to John Linnell, that he plays in a duo called They Might Be Shrimps. Restless and curt, Linnell acts like the rock 'n' roll world is a big, carnivorous beast.
Linnell and Flansburgh became friends in high school in Massachusetts. They worshiped the Beatles until moved into weirder territory, something that Linnell—as usual—is reluctant to discuss. "It's very embarrassing to talk about now," he says. "When I was fourteen I really liked Frank Zappa. I don't really want people to think that's what we do now. He's got a very condescending attitude."
After high school, the two Johns split up and went to college. They were drawn together again in 1981, when they both moved to Brooklyn. They started recording songs together—the two alone with that lovable tape player—and eventual by found a niche in the club scene on New York's Lower East Side.
Linnell stresses, however, that the "scene" was really a hodge-podge of groups, with styles ranging from performance art to noise punk. "I never felt a super strong kinship with Sonic Youth," he says.
They recorded two albums on an independent label—"They Might Be Giants" and "Lincoln"—and then signed with Elektra for 1990's "Flood."
Like its predecessors, the band's new "Apollo 18" is a trip into a world of domestic whimsy, word games and kooky sounds. There's a song about waiting for the dinner bell. The new single is called "I Palindrome I" a title that virtually guarantees it won't crack the Top 40.
Critics throw around the word "quirky," but in the case of They Might Be Giants, it sticks. Quirky is an apt term; groundbreaking is not, according to Linnell. "We're in our thirties now," he says. "We're definitely part of the New Wave generation. We're not creating the music of tomorrow. I think it would be a mistake if anybody followed us."
It would be hard to follow They Might Be Giants, even if somebody wanted to. Take a slice of lyrics from the song "Mammal," the fifth cut on the new album: "Glass of milk/ Standing in between extinction in the cold/ and explosive radiating growth/So the warm blood flows Through the large four-chambered heart/Maintaining the very high metabolism rate they have." Such lyrics have given They Might Be Giants a reputation as a comic act, one without a whole lot of passion. But Linnell says the band is more than musical slapstick.
"I think if you ask people who come to our shows, they'd say that's not what we're doing," he says. "I guess it's just our cross to bear. We're not a very heavyhanded band, so I guess we ask for it. "We take ourselves pretty seriously. In fact, I think we take ourselves too seriously."
No argument there, judging from Linnell's behavior on the phone. "You know, there's people coming in and out of this room and I'm having trouble concentrating," he says.
OK, John. Relax. A couple of years ago They Might Be Giants appeared on "The Today Show". What was that like?
"We were up way before our wake-up time," he says with a groan. "We'd never sung at that hour before, or since. It sounded really horrible. I can't really remember. I remember Bryant Gumbel being sort of goofy and friendly. I was definitely in a zombie state at that time."
From the sound of it, you might suspect that Linnell rarely leaves that apartment in Brooklyn. "I never go out," he admits. "I don't go to concerts."
But why not? "We're both pretty private, I guess," he says, becoming more sheepish with each question. "We're not real scenesters, particularly. It seems a little empty.
"I've gotta go now. I gotta eat. Nice talking to you."
Then he hangs up. OK, John. Bye.