1998-03-20 Tampa Tribune
They might be free agents
By Curtis Ross, Tampa Tribune, March 20, 1998
Severing ties with its label has left They Might Be Giants in B-side limbo.
The duo of John Flansburgh and John Linnell has packed its singles with plenty of music unavailable on its albums. Those bits and pieces from the '80s were compiled on "Miscellaneous T," released in 1991. The next edition, "Superfueled Freaksicle," was to have collected the rarities and oddities made since then.
"That one's kind of indefinitely on hold because it's all owned by Elektra," Linnell says from his home in Brooklyn. The duo began its relationship with Elektra in 1990 and ended it last year.
The compilation "is actually completed. Everything's sequenced and ready to go," Linnell says. "It got lost in the shuffle."
The Elektra personnel on board when the Giants were signed all had moved to other jobs by the time "John Henry," the band's third album for the label, came out in 1994.
"I don't blame the [new] people," Linnell says, "but they didn't sign us, they inherited us.
"We actually had a hard time convincing them to drop us because we were selling records," Linnell says. "They didn't have to do much.
"It wasn't a bad deal for them but it was becoming a bad deal for us because we weren't getting promoted," Linnell says.
Linnell and Flansburgh are moving along briskly, though. A live album, "Severe Tire Damage," will be released in late spring or summer by Restless, the label which handles the Giants' pre-Elektra catalog. And, Linnell reports, a new label deal should be forthcoming.
In the meantime the Johns, with bassist Hal Cragin and drummer Dan Hickey, are hitting the road for a 13-date jaunt, four of which are in Florida. "It's not a real tour," Linnell insists. "It's just to remind everyone in Florida we're alive and to pay some bills."
Bay area fans who have caught previous Jannus Landing shows will hardly need to be reminded. A particularly memorable '94 gig featured a horn section and a conga line, among other treats.
Linnell and Flansburgh originally were a self contained unit, using cheap electronics and a lot of imagination to create their weird, funny and undeniably catchy tunes. The duo's first recordings were homemade cassettes sold at its shows. Independent label Bar None signed the pair, releasing an eponymous 1986 album and its follow-up, '88's "Lincoln," before the Giants signed with Elektra for 1990's "Flood."
That album brought the pair MTV exposure and an English hit single with "Birdhouse in My Soul." In the middle of touring behind its next album, 1992's "Apollo 18," the Johns formed a band for the first time.
"John Henry" (1994) was the first Giants album recorded with a band. For 1996's "Factory Showroom," Linnell and Flansburgh continued working with a band, but also went back to their old method of building up some tracks with overdubs.
The years just whiz by," Linnell says. Last year was spent working on the live album, which will also contain a newly recorded single, "Doctor Worm." Flansburgh "has been super busy directing videos," Linnell says. "Right now he's in Los Angeles shooting a Ben Folds Five video.
"I've been mostly sitting around," Linnell quips. Actually, "my day to day thing is I go to my studio and write songs." Many of those new songs can be sampled by calling the group's long-running Dial-a-Song, (718) 387-6962.
Some of the Dial-a-Song numbers have turned up on Giants albums. Others are more akin to the weird little song snippets that populated earlier albums but have been less evident on later discs.
"I miss that stuff," Linnell says. "[Flansburgh] had a brilliant idea to name the next album They Might Be Giants II,' and all of the songs will be two minutes long. We haven't quite figured out if we can pull it off."