1997-10-23 The Johns Hopkins News-Letter
Giant guitarist speaks out
By Allan Massie, The Johns Hopkins News-Letter, October 23, 1997
Archived from: Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries, Internet Archive, page 1, page 2
Earlier this month, They Might Be Giants played at the 9:30 club in Washington, DC. The N-L took the opportunity to interview Giants guitarist, singer and songwriter John Flansburg, who talked about the upcoming TMBG album, top forty music, "Stairway to Heaven," and the weirdest restaurant in Baltimore.
Q: Y'all have had several tours since the release of your most recent album, Factory Showroom. What are y'all doing on this current tour to make it different from other stuff that y'all have done?
A: Well, we're in the precarious position of being in a working band, and our careers kind of go on... in a funny way, I don't think of what we're doing as a promotion of anything. I think of writing songs and doing performances and making records as all kind of one thing. I guess that's why we've never been particularly good at reinventing ourselves through the years, because we really don't approach it as a package to sell; we approach it as a creative project.
Right now, we're in the process of making our next record, and we've got a bunch of new songs we're including in the show, and we've made a bunch of demos, and we're just kind of in that whole process. We're doing a series at the Mercury Lounge [in New York City] in November and December; we're playing every week. And over the course of that time, we'll probably be adding a couple of songs a week, and by the end of the run, we'll be able to completely leave the audience in the dust.
It's funny because, you know, a couple of years ago we had the privilege of opening for Elvis Costello. He requested that we do the shows, and it was super flattering and interestingâbut he did things thing, in the show, that I actually thought seemed like a total mistake, which was that he did all of the songs from his next record. And it's something that I definitelyâI mean, we'll do like probably five or six songs out of the thirty tonight, that come from our next recordâand I feel like we almost have to like, kind of cajole the audience into thinking it's not, like, not as much fun as if we played a song they knew really well. You just have to be like, [enthusiastic voice] 'and how about a new song?' and you'll get to go, like, 'mmmm, okay.' I mean, it's sort of inevitable, it's just like part of the weird thing.
Actually I read this interview with what's his name, the guy from... the guy from Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant, and he was saying that... they were asking, like 'what was it like the first time you played Stairway to Heaven?' and he was like, 'it got a really bad reaction.' And that's always sort of the case, you just have to kind of spoonfeed people a little. It's not their fault, it's that they just don't know.
Q: Tell me something about these new songs. how would you say they compare with the work you've done so far?
A: Well, I think the challenges of writing have changed over the years. I think you just naturally sort of raise the bar. When we first started writing songs, I think we were so surprised that we weer writing songs that it was kind of exciting, and maybe a little too satisfying in and of itself. You would write a song, it would be like two minutes long, and it wouldn't even have the component parts of like a realâit wouldn't have a bridge, or an intro or anything, it would just be like, 'That's great!'
So you're a little but more easily satisfied and over the years I think, out of realizing that there is this tradition of songwriting, that, you know... it's sort of like getting good at writing a paper, or getting good at developing a photographic print. You just learn that there's other things that people measure the craft part of it by, besides just having a good idea. Having a good idea is sometimes not that hard; it's just actually fleshing out an idea into something that's a complete work is a bit more of a challenge. So I think that we try to invest a little bit more time into making songs more full blown.
And we've extended it aroundâespecially in the last five years, with different kinds of approaches. We've gone to having a live rhythm section, a full band, and that's sort of shown us how to improvise more successfully, and conclude ideas that come up through improvisation. I mean, we're far from being jazz musicians, or improvisers.
It's funny because the way we started as a band was so about rehearsal, and about set things, and we've really loosened up a lot. I mean, we're hardly loose, but, we started out kind of uptight. We're not as uptight now.
I just wrote this song called 'First Kiss,' that's like, a pretty unambiguous, unqualified love song. That's a real accomplishment for us. We've recorded like a hundred and thirty songs or something, and none of them are love songs, not a one. There a lot of songs that are about relations, but there about sort of these fractured, damaged relationships.
Which is an interesting kind of song to write, and it's interesting to write about murderers, and it's interesting to write about all sorts of intense topics. You know, it's interesting to write about insanity. We've written a lot of songs about characters, and we've written a lot of songs that aren't from our perspective.
But for me, it's like, I feel like it's important to just do one that's just an 'I love you' song. And that's hard to do, because it's very familiar terrain. There's lots of mediocre work in that areaâmost songs are not very good, and a large proportion of the songs that aren't very good are love songs.
I don't know why I'm drawn to it, but it just seems like it's an important thing. On the last record, I wrote this song called Pet Name that really started out with the same intention, like a straight love song. And halfway through that I just... I chickened out. It's about a troubled, misstepped kind of relationship. And it's an interesting topic, it's got a little bit more friction in it. But I don't know, it's an ongoing thing for me.
Q: I have a question as to some of the different things you've done in your shows. What was the inspiration for the talking heads in Exquisite Dead Guy, and how was that done?
A: It's very, what is the word, I feel like it's almost structuralist. It's a tape, with our voices on it, and there's a click track. It's a stereo tape. Anybody can do this. On one side of the DAT tape there's a click track, which is being fed to the drummer. On the other side of the tape is the vocal track, which is going through the PA, which is the voices you hear. So the drummer and the bass player play along, and we have these two ventriloquist-dummy heads on mike stands that are extended as long as they can be. And we just pull on the string and move the mouth, and it looks like they're singing.
We actually did this thing in our showâthis compilation record came out called Then and there's a song on it. There's actually a demo of the song The Big Big Whoredom which was a song we did for many years in our early repertoire. Talking about improvisation versus rehearsal, it was one of these songs thatâthe main thing about this song, I think, that the audience got out of it, was that we were people that were working really hard to do a good job, because it was a really tricky, really nonrepetitive song; it was hard to sing, and we were singing it in unison, so it was really like [whisper] 'these guys rehearse a lot!' It's kind of weird because I don't know if it's really important for people to know if you work hard. But for a cold audience I think they appreciated it. In some abstract way, they go, 'oh, these people aren't just stumbling onto the stage, and getting in the way of my drinking...'
Using the heads was something we actually brought back from that show. Basically as soon as we started touring in 1988, touring nationally, we did one tour with the visual stuff. And then we stopped, because we realized we would instantly become The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Everybody responded to the visual stuff so much; it was like all they remembered about the show. It was like 'ah, there the guys who wear these hats, they've got these paper-maché hats, oh wow.'
I mean... I like the theatrical rock stuff, I really think Alice Cooper is actually sort of culturally a part of keeping rock real, because it's actually fessing up to the fact that it is largely theatrical. A lot of it is really grand posturing. And it's exciting, it's extreme stuff. I mean, if you can write a song called I love the dead, you know, that's cool. There's something that's really cool about a medium that allows you to write about something that's as fucked up as fucking dead people.
So I dig that stuff, but I think it was important to us that we not end up just being a stagey rock show. We didn't want to be The Tubes, you know.