1995-03-23 Democrat and Chronicle
When these two guys bark for attention, it's completely in character
By Jeff Spevak, Democrat and Chronicle, March 23, 1995
Now, I don't practice bestiality, but I find dogs to be very attractive animals. So when I once called John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants at his Brooklyn apartment, I asked about the dogs barking outside his window.
"When I die," Flansburgh said, "I want my body cut up and poisoned and fed to those dogs."
A year and a half later, They Might Be Giants is passing through Rochester again, playing at the Horizontal Boogie Bar Friday. So last week I spoke with the other John in the band--They Might Be Giants is basically a two-John band--and read John Linnell his partner's anti-dog sentiment.
"Yeah, I know that dog." Linnell said, focusing on the ringleader. "See, John has lived in that apartment for 10 years, and that dog has always been there. If you heard the dog, you'd probably come up with similar sentiments."
Neither Flansburgh nor Linnell know the dog's name, and I suggested that he just wanted attention.
"That's why I'm calling you," said Linnell. "I'm a barking dog. I want attention."
OK, then, let's move on to the subject of They Might Be Giants. But first, one more digression. This conversation happened last Friday. It was originally scheduled for Wednesday, but their publicist postponed it because Danny Bonaduce wanted the band on his radio show that morning. Bonaduce was the red-haired kid actor from The Partridge Family who grew up into an adult with all kinds of personal problems that we read about in People magazine and saw on Geraldo. Now he has a top-rated radio show in Chicago, he's married and he has a new baby, which he talks about constantly during his show.
"He said the kid barfed on Flansburgh's girlfriend," says Linnell, "but I asked her about it later and she said no. He likes to talk about the kid always barfing, so I guess he kind of made that up."
And I must disrupt my schedule so Bonaduce can make jokes about his kid vomiting on John Flansburgh's girlfriend?
OK, now we're ready to start the They Might Be Giants part of this story. And everything you will read is true, even when we get to the Barry Manilow part.
Linnell wrote The End of the Tour, inspired by a book he's never read: J.D. Ballard's Crash, which takes place entirely during a car accident. And Flansburgh wrote Meet James Ensor, about a now-dead, turn-of-the-century Belgian artist of morbid interests who painted a skeleton and called the finished work My Self Portrait in 1975. "Dig him up and shake his hand," one of Flansburgh's lines instructs.
Once a quirky duo, They Might Be Giants has evolved over the last six years into a quirky six-piece band. This didn't suit one longtime fan at a New York City show, even though They Might Be Giants remains one of the few rock bands that understands how to use an accordion. So this guy passed around leaflets at one show encouraging the crowd to chant, "Lose the band!"
The audience, a stable group with a life of its own, ignored the plea of this lone nut case.
Groupies are a part of the life of a rock band. Linnell recalls a conversation during an airline flight with a guy who played bass for Manilow. "There's this woman who's been to every Barry Manilow concert," says Linnell. "This woman actually freaks out Barry Manilow. They've actually arranged to not have her in the front row so it doesn't disrupt his performance." It's a strange world when Barry Manilow groupies are scarier than the crowd drawn by a non-mainstream, dark and quirky group such as They Might Be Giants. "Some of these people need lives, they need help," says Linnell. "And we can't provide any."
What he may mean is the Johns of They Might Be Giants aren't perfect psychological profiles themselves. Linnell's thought is interrupted by Flansburgh, who has walked into the room. "I'm talking to this guy on the phone," Linnell says to his partner. "He says he talked to you last year, and you told him when you die, you want to be cut up into pieces and poisoned and fed to that dog."
"Yeah," is all I can hear Flansburgh say.