Hearing Aid
From This Might Be A Wiki
| song name | Hearing Aid |
| artist | They Might Be Giants |
| releases | Flood, Birdhouse In Your Soul (EP), Flood + Apollo 18 |
| year | 1990 |
| first played | February 18, 1990 (96 known performances) |
| run time | 3:26 |
| sung by | John Flansburgh |
Trivia/Info
- In a 2009 interview with Rolling Stone, Flansburgh recalled:[1]
The sonics of this were a real step up. Contrasting the genre-approved beat with the Arto Lindsay guitar solo and the vacuum-cleaner synth sounds in the middle was really just a balancing act to hold the listeners' interest. I remember trying to do some dub moves, but no one we worked with had any practical experience with how to do it, and it all seemed very tame, so we scrapped that part."
- The sample at the beginning of the song is from the Glenn Miller Orchestra's 1942 recording of "Angels of Mercy." The song was written by Irving Berlin, and the lead vocalist on the recording was Ray Eberle. The full lyric of the sampled line is "Your mercy goes marching on."
- In 2021, Flansburgh described the process gathering the samples:[2]
Much of the drums and percussion on the track is made up of homemade Casio FZ1 "one hit" samples either from live sources or recordings and sequenced via MIDI on a Mac. The singing at the top I think might have been recorded straight off the radio. In my project studio I usually had it tuned to WNYC-AM because it was all talk. But I spun the dial to capture a moment of the very dusty AM stations still playing music from the 30s to the 50s in NYC at that time. (Perhaps WOR-AM?) I don’t remember where the muted trumpet samples are from, but there are a few textures so I suspect it is actually a combination [of] sources.
- This song was often performed live in 1990 as a medley alongside Whistling In The Dark. After the former song's backing track fades out, John Linnell would continue to perform accordion or stop playing until Flansburgh was prepared with a chest-mounted marching drum to perform the latter.
Song Themes
Addiction, Compulsion, Album Lead-Ins, Artificial Body Parts, Aversion To Work, Backwards, Coffee, Fade Out, Jail And Imprisonment, Medical, Misanthropy, Not In Major Or Minor, Occupations, Songs With Samples
Videos
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