The Blackouts
The Blackouts was a band in which John Flansburgh played guitar in 1980 while he was in college, before the formation of They Might Be Giants.
Contents
History[edit]
Flansburgh was in the band while attending Antioch College, in Yellow Springs, Ohio. His years in Ohio were the source of the reference to Xenia in "Out Of Jail".[1] The other band members were Dan Spock (guitar), Chel White (drums), Dan Julty (bass), and, at some point, Karl Hecksher, who had also played drums for The Turtlenecks.
In a radio interview, Flansburgh stated, "I was in a band called the Blackouts. We did, uh...we did some really messed up stuff. We did a bunch of James Brown covers that were un-identifiable as James Brown covers. I was playing the role of James Brown." John Linnell added, "John just basically screamed."
On at least one occasion, at a show where only Chel White and Flansburgh showed up, The Blackouts played a song called "Where Is Everybody?".
Flansburgh claims that the income from a gig with The Blackouts made him realize that he could play in a band professionally:
In college, I was in this band called The Blackouts with another friend of mine from high school, and we were playing at this place in Dayton, Ohio called Walnut Hills. There was this really big turnout, like a lot of college bands. I can’t remember how much we made — I think we might’ve made $350 or $400 — but I remember being in the dressing room after the show, thinking, “Okay, if we made this much money in one night and we play four nights a week...” It’s not like were were ever going to play four nights a week, but it suddenly seemed much more plausible that you could actually make a living being in a band.[2]
In an 1990 interview, Flansburgh talked briefly about The Blackouts:
I was in this band at college called The Blackouts and I was wearing pyjamas. I was 20 years old.
In another interview in 1995 for Flipside, Flansburgh talked more in-depth about the band:
Flansburgh: The first band I was in was in Ohio, when I was at Antioch College, I was in a band with a guy named Chel White, who's now an animator. He animated the "Boy in the Bubble" video for Paul Simon and the Michael Jackson video "Leave Me Alone". The "townie guy" [Dan Julty] was the bass player; he was into tripping on stage.
[Interviewer]: Tripping over his cord? I do that.
Flansburgh: No, tripping on LSD. And this guy Dan Spock, who we knew from high school. So it was a lot of fun, it was this total party band. Very crude playing. In some ways, it was ahead of its time, because this was like 1980, and punk rock was still, you know, an extremely viable thing.
A few other bands going by the name "The Blackouts" have also existed through the decades, including Frank Zappa's first band, and a Seattle/Boston-based band that at one point included Paul Barker of Ministry. However, the group Flansburgh was involved in was one of the less notable among these, and ostensibly unrelated to those aforementioned.
Songs[edit]
- Always Smiling
- Desert Song
- Everybody's Gonna Die
- It's All Poetry
- Not Waiting
- Two Points
- What I Believe
- Where Is Everybody?
- You All Die
Live Covers[edit]
Gallery[edit]
A poster for The Blackouts, with art by Flansburgh
Poster for a 1980 show at Walnut Hills Bar in Dayton, OH
Poster for another Blackouts show
Setlist from a Blackouts show
