Now That I Have Everything
From This Might Be A Wiki
| song name | Now That I Have Everything |
| artist | They Might Be Giants |
| releases | 1983 Demo Tape, Dial-A-Song, Power Of Dial-A-Song, Free When You Call From Work, Then: The Earlier Years, Selections From Then, Podcast 32A |
| year | 1983 |
| run time | 2:20 |
| sung by | John Flansburgh, John Linnell harmonizes and sings the outro |
Trivia/Info
- This demo was recorded in 1983, or possibly earlier. Later Dial-A-Song re-appearances of this song featured John Flansburgh saying it was the "the very first demo we made as a band", and "the very first song on [our] very first demo." The Then: The Earlier Years booklet doesn't credit Bill Krauss, suggesting that the song was created before he started producing the band's recordings in 1983.
- John Andrews of The Mundanes said this song was written by John Linnell prior to They Might Be Giants forming, but he was too shy to sing loudly enough for them to perform it. From a February 2020 Motif Magazine interview about The Mundanes:
As early as The Mundanes days, John Linnell started showing us things he'd written. We even rehearsed "Now That I Have Everything," but he sang in a whisper. It was hard to make out where these clever circular chord changes were going or what he had in mind. Let me say John and John were a local phenomenon in New York in the '80s. They both had an explosion of creativity as songwriters, and the combination was electric.
- John Flansburgh in ICE Magazine, December 1996[1]:
The first song on our demo. That was the "official pop song" to make people think we weren't going to send 'em away in droves.
- The drum track of this song is directly taken from the 1979 drum beat album, DrumDrops Volume 3: The Professional Album by David Crigger and Joey D. Vieira. The track is titled "5/4 Rock", and can be listened to here. The Johns used a similar track for the song "I Wouldn't Be Mad". Flansburgh:
The song was recorded before programmable drum machines existed, and as a band we had very limited recording resources with no money for anything beyond home recording—in NYC where making noise often costs $. The drum track is directly taken from a "Make Your Own Demo" drum record. For us, the tempo was right and since a new busy drum roll seemed to begin as soon as the previous one ended, and the density of percussion was so thick it seemed almost like they had no big musical meaning, so as the rhythms just rolled around across the bar lines we just rolled along with it.[2]
- This song was often used to open early They Might Be Giants shows at venues like the Pyramid Club and 8BC, according to Podcast 32A. Flansburgh: "It would kind of drop the soundman in the deep end with everything going instrumentation-wise."[3]
- The melody of the 1963 song "On Broadway" is borrowed at about 0:44.
- The "ba-boo" section at the end of this song was faded out a few seconds earlier in the mix on Then: The Earlier Years, compared to the versions on Dial-A-Song and Podcast 32A.
- Despite the drum track being in 5/4, the song is in 4/4, making this a rare example of a TMBG song using polymeter.
Song Themes
Everything, Mirrors And Reflections, Not In Common Time, References To Other Songs Or Musicians, The Senses, Songs With Samples, Traded Tracks
Videos
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