2001-03 Boss Men
Boss Men
By Larry Getlen, March 2001
Archived from: https://groups.google.com/g/alt.music.tmbg/c/DmtWiJBdXVk/m/0yRoqMtYYeYJ
The quirky and brilliant duo They Might Be Giants, consisting of singer-songwriters/multi-instrumentalists John Linnell and John Flansburgh, just completed a collaborative project that makes so much artistic sense it's almost frightening in its perfection. The Giants worked with fellow Brooklynite and current literary darling Dave Eggers, author of the best-selling A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and editor of the McSweeny's literary journal, composing and performing 37 short songs for a CD that will accompany the new issue of McSweeny's (in stores March 20).
The songs on the CD were written to accompany the stories and art in the issue exactly, following or commenting on the narrative and style of the issue's content. Few musical acts would be up to the challenge of creating musical doppelgangers for such high-toned literary and artistic fare as the content of McSweeny's, but if anyone could do it, it's the Johns.
"It reminded me of all these mixed media things from the early '70's, and there was something so wonderfully misguided about the whole thing," says Flansburgh from his Brooklyn home. "There were all these little pictures by this guy named Haendel. He does this agit-prop thing with a Ford Aerostar, where he writes some phrase on a piece of foam and then parks it in front of various visually stunning places like the Washington Monument. We made these super-strange miniature songs using the phrases in the pictures.
"There's also an essay by this guy Lawrence Weshler about people looking backwards in paintings - there's a long tradition of people looking over their shoulders in painting. So he wrote one essay about men looking over their shoulders and another about women looking over their shoulders. In the piece we constructed for the men, we put together a track that was all backwards, but all male voices, and has this sort of Eastern European modality to it. The one about the women is all female voices backwards, and it's very haunting. he gets into it in the essays, but there's a distinct difference in the emotional meaning of men looking backwards than women."
Despite such artistic sensibilities, the Giants are currently enjoying a rare commercial success, the greatest of their career, in fact, with "Boss of Me," the theme song to the FOX sitcom Malcolm in the Middle. Linnell and Flansburgh have been a working act for 19 years, and to call their material unique barely scratches the surface of its intellectual and kitschy innovation. Examples of this permeate their recordings. Factory Showroom, from 1996, contains songs titled "XTC vs. Adam Ant," a commentary on the ridiculousness of arguing over the comparative merits of musical acts couched within an actual musical battle, and "James K. Polk," a tribute to the obscure former president. Their 1990 album Flood contained a cover of "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" and "Birdhouse in Your Soul," perhaps their most successful single before "Boss of Me," which is sung from the perspective of a night-light.
In addition to curious and enticing storytelling, the musical element is also unique and hard to categorize. Few adjectives fit all They Might Be Giants material save for "upbeat," as their songs all seem to have a happy, driving quality. But to consider them musical pop kitsch betrays the variety of their songs, like the surprising "S-E-X-X-Y," a funk-based prowler, or "I Can Hear You," a humorous comment on technology's intrusiveness and occasional inanity that was recorded at the Edison Laboratories, without electricity, on an 1898 Edison wax cylinder phonograph (and performed as such on a Daily Show special on Comedy Central).
Speaking with Flansburgh is an equally upbeat experience. He's unstoppably gregarious and optimistic. He speaks in excited bursts, his voice reaching the upper registers on occasion to match his enthusiasm. It comes as absolutely no surprise that this man, while 40, is the author of "Boss of Me," the perfect little brother 's rebellion.
It is surprising, however, due to the song's appropriateness to the show, that Flansburgh wrote "Boss of Me" separate from the show, having already written it when approached by Malcolm's producers.
"I wrote a 30-second song that I couldn't finish, and when I got the script, it seemed like it would be the perfect song for the show," recalls Flansburgh, who tried to customize the song but found that the original worked perfectly. "I did a version where instead of the original verse that I wrote for myself, the 'yes, no, maybe' part, I actually had the characters of the show in it. I did two demos, one which was my song as it stood, and one with the kids' names in it." The song works, Flansburgh says, because it's "basically just a really boy rock song, a really high-energy, filthy little song."
Flansburgh seems unconcerned with the commercial possibilities of his music. When asked about whether "Boss of Me" is the Giants' best commercial success to date, he seems so not in touch with that way of thinking that he understands true meaning of the question completely in terms of exposure, as opposed to about money or sales. The belief is that it's all about the creativity is reinforced by his answer.
"I don't know," Flansburgh replies, "I guess, judging from friends of mine who have kids, it probably is. I mean, it's on TV and TV is so much bigger than music culture. But who's more important - At the Drive In or 98 Degrees? I would suggest it's At the Drive In, and it's very likely that At the Drive In will never sell 100,000 of all their records combined."
Perhaps Flansburgh's perception is attributed to the fact that They Might Be Giants have long been relegated to the obscure, quirky band pile for so long that the mainstream doesn't feel like the place for them.
"If 'Boss of Me' was a bigger hit, it would be seen as a fluke," Flansburgh says. "It would be credited more to the success of the show than to us. For better or worse, the rock critics out there and the culture that makes people famous have decided that we are too left-of-center to be thought of as a mainstream band."
Of course, the critics and culture may be right, although that may not be a bad thing. As Flansburgh himself explains, being out of the mainstream can go hand in hand with a type of freedom not many bands embrace. "In some ways, the challenge we present to audiences is that we don't work on one consistent level," Flansburgh explains. "Most bands do one kind of thing, maybe a couple kinds of things, but we do a lot of things, and our intentions aren't really set from one thing to another. We do some songs that are very lighthearted, not particularly important songs. And then we have other songs that have the same sound and tone, but there's some metaphor going on, or a larger storyline where you can get into it more. We don't make a big difference from one thing to another, and I think that can confuse people. I don't think we're the easiest band to understand, that everything we do is completely obvious."
Which is not to say that They Might Be Giants desire to be mainstream, which could be restrictive of the type of material they could produce. But if they ever had the opportunity to break big, now is the time. In addition to "Boss of Me," the Giants wrote "Dr. Evil," the theme song to Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me." The song was sung by Flansburgh's wife, Robin Goldwasser.
It would seem that doing work for hire would limit a musician's creativity, but Flansburgh sees soundtrack work as a challenge with its own rewards. "Being able to stretch out and do stuff that is faceless is really exciting because it's just about the music," Flansburgh says. "It's very egoless, very abstract. You can do a drum and bass track, and as long as it sounds really twitching and electronic and insane, which is that idiom of music, then it's fine. Nobody goes, "YOU GUYS CAN'T DO THAT!" As a band that's been generally defined as being kind of boundless, I have to point out how many things we can't do without people thinking that it's really out of character for us."
They Might Be Giants will release their next album late this year, and Flansburgh says they will be playing songs from that album on the current tour. After that, it's anybody's guess. Whatever is next for They Might Be Giants, it will certainly be unique, as that's what motivates the Johns in the first place. As Flansburgh says, "We're not particularly interested in limiting ourselves. We're doing something very creative and very challenging for us. And the reason we continue to work and exist as a band and perform and everything else is that it is a real challenge."