1992-10-01 The Daily Tar Heel
They Might Be's Flansburgh on flu, finances, funk & fiascoes
By Mara Lee, The Daily Tar Heel, October 1, 1992
The first peep I heard out of They Might Be Giants' John Flansburgh (the one with glasses) was when he was on the phone, talking about a date in Florida.
"Fuck him! Fuck him! (Pause.) Blow me! He can suck my fucking dick. What does Rifkin know about touring? Nothing! What does he know about being on the road for three days with a fever?"
The roadies were anxiously asking "Where's [Flansy]?" in Duke University's Page Auditorium during the sound check before last week's concert. Everyone seemed a little on edge, easily explained by the fact that TMBG has been on the road pretty much straight since February.
Flansburgh is a whole 'nother person in front of the tape recorder. He sets his book on the South during Reconstruction aside and calmly talks about having a fever on the road. "I don't feel crazy," he says with an engaging smile.
"I've actually had the flu the last couple of days and I'm just kind of pulling out of it now. But what's strange is that the actual couple of hours I'm on stage, I don't feel sick at all."
He also explains the band's politics thoughtfully. They Might Be is not usually thought of as a political band, but songs such as "Your Racist Friend" and "Minimum Wage" do contain sharp commentary among the catchy melodies. Flansburgh explains: "We're not preachers and we don't demand that people follow us.
"Sometimes I feel like if people need to be told to vote, maybe they shouldn't. And if all it takes to get them to vote is a musician telling them to do it, I say maybe we should wonder about their citizenship," he says with a chuckle.
"If they're disenchanted I understand, but at the same time it's one thing to be disenchanted, it's another thing to be disaffected. I don't get the impression that the reason that people don't vote is because they're fed up. I get the impression that people don't vote because they honestly don't know anything about the culture they live in. And they don't care.
"Leave the voting to the people that are angry — like me," he says with a voracious grin.
As he gets back to the task at hand, Flansburgh explains "The Guitar," from the newest release, Apollo 18. The song combines original strains with the old "The Lion Sleeps."
"Well, that's one of the few songs that we've ever done that kind of came out of an actual jam session," he says. "I had come up with the whole groove that's the rest of the song before hand, and so it's a real Frankenstein of a song — two very different things strung together for maximum contrast."
Flansburgh discusses the band's early days, 10 years ago.
"When we started it was such a hobby," he says with a bemused look. have to be told to vote, maybe they "Trsemed pretty clear that we wouldn't ever get to make a record. It just didn't seem like there were that many people that would like it."
But things have changed. "At a certain point it doesn't get any better. What's good about it isn't improved by being more successful — unless what you're trying to do is get power. Our goal is to write songs and do something that's strikingly original and... well, it's hard for it not to come off as sort of a profoundly full-of-shit thing to say... When we were kids, the Beatles were sort of the iconic perfect rock band. The way they became successful and how they dealt with it was such a pure and uncompromising sort of thing.
"Now that's all been very much whittled away. I tell friends of mine we were offered a Nike commercial, and they go like, 'Well, that's really cool!'" he says, imitating an enthused friend. "And then I have to tell them, 'Oh, well, we turned it down," he says nonchalantly.
"Aww!" he yells, imitating their response. "They're like all disappointed. Whereas for me, it's a very horrifying thing to be in a commercial."
The New York punk scene — the Ramones, Blondie, Television, Patti Smith, Talking Heads — all influenced John and John Linnell, the other half of TMBG. "There's something very accessible about the kind of bands they were. They weren't very fussy," he says, pursing his lips on the word "fussy."
Today he listens to "just old punk rock tapes." He does a double take — "Oh god! No." — and adds he likes the Pixies. "I'm slightly embarrassed to admit I really like the new Beastie Boys record," he concedes with a shy smile.
But he doesn't listen to is his own work. "I've heard a couple of people's mixtapes where a song of ours would be on it, and it's like being pinched," he says. "It freaks me out to hear it. I tend to just hear all the mistakes."
Flansburgh coughs heavily and says, "I'll always like our first album the most. At this point I don't even feel like it's by us anymore. It's by some wide-eyed innocents that I can just barely remember."