1996-02-09 Reporter
They Might Be Giants: "We've never been very cute and we've always been kinda old."
By Patrick Gaynard and Tony Paglia, Reporter, February 9, 1996
Archived from: https://repository.rit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1518&context=unipubs#page=9
On 2/3/96, at 8:00 AM, John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants (TMBG) got a call from his road manager saying they couldn't fly due to bad weather. This didn't bother John until his girlfriend reminded him that today was the 40th anniversary of the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and The Big Bopper. Seeking to keep history from repeating itself, TMBG headed out onto the open road. "Since this is essentially a one off for us and an adult size drive, 6 hours, we were thinking 'maybe we'll do the plane thing' because we actually never do. We were supposed to fly in this twenty seat plane, one of those three across deals. I don't really like flying, I prefer to drive. The history of They Might Be Giants is written on the interstate highways of America," John said.
At 9:30 PM, TMBG took the stage at RIT's Clark Gym, and proceeded to rock the house for the next hour and a half. TMBG didn't bring the horns section, as they have been known to do for the last few years, but instead played a more power set of songs. The set included a few new songs as well as "James K. Polk," a song that until recently they had never learned to play. They finished with a double encore including "The Famous Polka" and "Joker (Steve Miller Band)". Except for the mildly rowdy crowd and poor acoustics, the concert was a good one.
Sometime in-between their road manager's early morning call and the first note of the concert, Reporter and WITR interviewed John Flansburgh, the band's guitarist/co-vocalist/co-songwriter.
"There will be four people on stage tonight; me, John Linnell (accordion/keyboards/co-vocals/co-songwriter), Gram Maybe (bass), and Brian Doeherty (drums)," said John as he sat legs crossed and relaxed in WITR's studio "C". Relaxed is a minor understatement considering they were hours late and had little time to practice, not to mention he was due on stage in twenty minutes. "It's different for us. We worked for years as a duo. John and I just worked together for a number of years with a drum machine and just us playing on stage. We went headlong into this full band thing with a rhythm section about three or four years ago. When we first did, the big problem was to reproduce the rhythm section stuff as well as the extra things... and the horn section really worked best to fill that out. We were kinda really high on the idea of having a full band."
"In the past month we have started writing songs for the next record. The next TMBG album will be more like a combination of records previous to John Henry and... John Henry. It will have live drums, guitars, and accordions but it will probably have, instead of a horns section on top, it will probably have more electronically generated stuff, more sample based things, as well as things we just created in our home studios."
"Everybody sort of starts in a place that says a lot about the kind of band they are. Like bar bands start out in bars, garage bands start in garage, even though its just a place...it often says a lot about what your intentions are." John sees TMBG as a bedroom band. "I think for us it's been very personal and it always been almost private in a way. I think the intensity and the reason why our music kind of sticks out from the general scene is because it really is not focused on an audience. We have always been interested in...letting the song take us in the direction it's going, to the extreme. It's really almost ... on some level there's something about what we do that is really about pursuing very personal musical issues."
As for new music, along with a new album, there has been many rumors. "The B-side thing (rumored to be titled "Superfueled Freaksickle") is not going to happen. Elecktra's not going to put it out, and it is a shame, but it didn't fit in with our release schedule. They just had too many priority things to put out."
"Actually I have a record that is going to come out on an independent label, three labels are bidding on it right now, but the project is titled "Monopuff" and I did it with Hello records. It's done. It will be out in a couple of months, including a song with the Nixons."
It was ten minutes before TMBG was scheduled for the stage. The interview ended and the rest is history. The concert was sponsored by CAB. WITR will rebroadcast portions of this interview in the future. If you missed this show, you missed another reason which proves that they really are giants.