Chess Piece Face
From This Might Be A Wiki
| song name | Chess Piece Face |
| artist | They Might Be Giants |
| releases | They Might Be Giants, Then: The Earlier Years |
| year | 1986 |
| first played | October 19, 1985 (77 known performances) |
| run time | 1:21 |
| sung by | John Flansburgh |
Trivia/Info
- In an interview with The Daily Collegian on October 27th, 1987, John Flansburgh stated that the song and its title were inspired by his experience with a coworker at Macmillan Publishing:
This guy I worked with had Elephant Man's disease. It really affected me, because I could barely stand to look at him. I tried to wonder what his life would be like. Everything he does is defined by his appearance. The song came out of that wondering, though it's not exactly about him. It's the closest thing to a sincere, sad song on the album.
- When asked on Twitter in 2017 if Flansburgh ever found out what happened to the coworker that inspired "Chess Piece Face", he replied "[He] left that job in [1984]... no one knows." [1]
- According to John Linnell in a 1996 interview, the portamento note at the beginning of the song was created using a Casio CZ-101 synthesizer[2]: "We were pretty heavily into the Casio scene at that time."
- The titular character of "Chess Piece Face" has also been referenced in the songs "Rabid Child" and "Hey, Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had A Deal". The character of "The Big Duluth" introduced in "Rabid Child" was also confirmed by Flansburgh to have been "the 'CB handle' for an imaginary character in the world of 'Chess Piece Face'"[3].
Song Themes
Body Parts, Dreams, Games, Oblique Cliches Or Idiom, People (Imaginary), Questions, Recycled Material, Sailing
Videos
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