1999-10-08 Daily Herald
Enterprising Giants
By Mark Guarino, Daily Herald, October 10, 1999
They Might Be Giants may have borrowed their name from the title of a '60s B movie, but lately, their achievements have been just as supersized.
The duo, otherwise known as John Linnell and John Flansburgh, has songs popping up in unexpected places: the recent "Austin Powers" film, the Fox sitcom "Malcolm in the Middle," the NPR program "This American Life," a Disney home video sequel to "Peter Pan," and a television series on science and technology hosted by Ted Koppel.
Flansburgh also was interviewed by the animated talk show host Space Ghost, Linnell's first solo album, "State Songs" (Zoe/Rounder), will be released late this month, and both expect to release a children's album next year.
The list keeps growing. Applauding two musicians for having an active work life may seem nebulous, but for most of their 18-year career, the Giants were considered some weirdo fringe act, appreciated mostly by the smartypants set. Words writers liked to describe them with words like "wacky" and "quirky."
But this year, at least most of the larger world caught up with them. As a result, the band's cottage industry for their campy songcraft has grown since they began their Dial-A-Song service 17 years go. It allowed fans to dial Flansburgh's answering machine and hear a new song every day. "It was for the person who never left their home," Linnell joked. "It was a very low-tech, low-cost way of communicating."
Although Dial-A-Song is still in operation, the band is going high-tech with "Long Tall Weekend," their first album since they were released from Elektra, the label on which the band spent most of the '90s. Without any label to release it, "Weekend" is available only in the MP3 format on Emusic.com. It's one of the earliest full-length albums in this format.
Linnell expects the Giants to release their next album in stores. The Inter net-only release is "just another way to get paid," he said. "I hate to sound pragmatic but I'm not personally on a crusade to switch over to online music." As for downloading music, Linnell says he finds it "totally confusing" and admits he has yet to download music from the Internet successfully. But since late July, "Weekend" has been downloaded into the thousands of computers, said Steve Curry, a spokesperson for Emusic.com.
The site also offers back catalog albums from Superchunk to John Lee Hooker. "Weekend" is the Giants' first album of all-new music available. "By far it's our most downloaded album. We expect it's probably the most downloaded album anywhere," Curry said.
It's a sign that the Giants fanbase is strong after nearly 20 years. There's been a fringe benefit to their staying power and not so in the obvious ways. Some fans have grown older and taken creative positions in the entertainment field, which has coincidentally helped them out. Last summer the Giants made their first trip to Hollywood where Disney, Nickelodeon and Fox courted them for soundtrack and theme song work.
"People were popping out of their cubicles telling us what big fans they were," he said. "They were really encouraging."
The result has been the ongoing television and film commission jobs. It's come at the right time. Linnell is 40 and Flansburgh is slightly younger (he won't give his age). Both have families in Brooklyn they'd like to spend more time with. They've spent half of the past 12 years on the road.
Lately, they've found younger and younger faces in the crowd. At Metro two years ago, they played two shows: one evening and one at 4 p.m. where many kids under 10 were seen resting on their parents' shoulders. One reason, Linnell says, is the two videos of Giants' songs that appeared on the animated show, "Tiny Toons" few years ago. The other is because of the Giants themselves.
"We're not trying to cultivate a younger audience," Linnell said. "Part of it is we've gotten these people even before they were old enough to buy records. Parents or older siblings played our records. We were felt to be an appropriate band for kids which is really hilarious. There isn't explicit violence or drug references in our music compared to other stuff."
Any Giants fan knows their songs are less about sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll than they are about Thomas Edison, former U.S. president James K. Polk, your racist friend and exquisite dead guys. Rather than novelty songs that use satire for laughs, Giants' songs approach their obtuse subject matters very seriously.
"We try to keep it fresh," Linnell said. "Occasionally people identify us as a band that is being deliberately offbeat. We're really trying to just come up with different topics. A lot of artists can cover a pretty specific set of subjects over and over again. I don't think John and I would be able to do that."
Other than their biography songs, which tackle certain historical figures, places or things (Linnell's forthcoming "State Songs" is the first of several volumes of songs focusing on all 50 states), The Giants usually write "about humdrum occurrences that happen while walking down the street."
"We just walk through life, we are experiencing stuff all the time." Linnell said. "If you only choose to write about certain things, that's a small percentage."