Shows/1988-07-02
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They Might Be Giants
— with Spongehead Experience opening —
Maxwell's in Hoboken, NJ
July 2, 1988 at 10:00 PM
Fan Recaps and Comments:
Show preview "They Might Be Giants' Stress On The Strange" by Jane Greenstein
Gold Coast, Jun. 30, 1988:
They Might Be Giants, due at Maxwell's in Hoboken July 2, are New York's own ambassadors to the strange. They wear funny hats. They beat sticks in rhythm to the beat. They write songs about youth culture killing their dog.
The Giants -- guitarist John Flansburgh and accordionist-sax player John Linnell -- are entertainers. They know a good joke when they hear one, and repeat it regardless. Yes, the Giants have a sense of humor and a wicked way of turning a phrase.
As the Giants' popularity grow -- their eponymously titled album moved 50,000 copies -- they are in danger of becoming respectable. But I wouldn't count on it.
Take a gander at the song titles -- Boat of Car, Nothing's Gonna Change My Clothes -- and you're immediately clued into the notion that these guys couldn't possibly take themselves seriously. Or could they? I mean, who writes lyrics like "Everything right is wrong again/You're a weasel overcome with dinge" or Life's just a mood ring we're not allowed to see" without downing a couple?
"We are serious," Linnell said by phone from a tour stop in West Palm Beach, Florida, in a motel he describes as "nice in an abstract way." "There's a serious element behind the lyrics. Part of the reason for the humor and some of the ambiguity is that we don't want to confine people. The common trend in pop music is for the audience to be bummed out in an epic way by what the band's saying. We want to avoid that situation."
Now Brooklyn-based, Flansburgh and Linnell teamed up while attending Lincoln Sudbury High School in Sudbury, Mass. It was in high school that their initial insanity stream was ignited. Linnell says much of their humor originates from bouncing ideas off their friends, such as the group they hung out with at the high school newspaper. "We felt like real outsiders," Linnell said. "I guess everybody did. We kind of put the paper out for ourselves."
He says they draw most of their material from the stuff of everyday life -- "things that come out of our conversations, jokes, general repore with other people." When asked what in particular inspired their songs, Linnell said, "It's difficult to say. We talk about everything. The limits are unknown to you. I mean you don't know about things you don't know about. We try to work from the whole perspective, that everything in the world can be used to go into our songs."
The Giants may also be poised as the next hip '80s interpreters of bourgeoise life, the proletariat's favorite mouthpiece. In Alienation for the Rich Flansburgh sings: "I ain't feeling happy about the state of things in my life/But I'm working to make it better with a six of Miller High Life." In another ditty he proclaims, "I built a little empire out of some crazy garbage called the blood of the exploited working class."
Maxwell's is located at 1039 Washington St. in Hoboken.
