1999-08-19 Daily Vidette
They Might be Giants make release available exclusively on web
By Brian Conant, The Daily Vidette, August 19, 1999
When the quirky cult-rock conglomerate They Might Be Giants jumped onto the Internet bandwagon in July, it was not, as it might have seemed, the calculated maneuver of a band bent on world domination.
July 27 the band released "Long Tall Weekend," a full-length recording of previously unreleased material, but the catch is the disc will be peddled exclusively as a download at Emusic.com, a company that the band's founding fathers, who is also one uses MP3 technology to distribute music utilizing the Web.
The download, which costs $8.99, includes some new studio work as well as some previously unreleased fan favorites like the quirky concert staple "She Thinks She's Edith Head" and the country-fried frolic "Counterfeit Faker." Emusic, a leader in the ever-expanding business of downloadable music, is also home to such acts as Frank Black, Iggy Pop, Throwing Muses and Superchunk all of whom have also released albums via download.
Yet even after releasing a new album on the World Wide Web, John Linnell, one of the infamous "Johns" (the other is collaborator John Flansburgh), isn't really sure why the album was released on the Net.
"I'm not sure if we are clear what it means to us; I think we are waiting to find out," he said.
"It's an extremely new way of putting out music. Obviously the transition between vinyl (and) CDs was a pretty easy jump to make it didn't really affect the way we made our work," he said. "This is something else, though, because the way you experience the music is going to be different, which is to say I'm not exactly sure how people are going to experience it. But they will either listen to music sitting beside or near their computer or they will have some little machine that they will transfer this stuff to, and then they can go jogging with that thing," Linnell added.
Weirdness is to be expected with any TMBG release. In their first 18 years as a band both Johns have used quirkiness like an instrument, giving life to hits like "Particle Man," "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" and perhaps their most mainstream-ready but still-offbeat single, "Birdhouse in Your Soul." Yet one of the weirder elements of the new record, or so said Linnell, is not the music but the artwork for the album.
"We hired an artist to do work for each song, and there is also a 'cover,' and this is all stuff you get when you download, but I'm not sure if you are seeing this stuff as it is playing or if you look at it separately. I just don't know," Linnell said.