The Black-Outs

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John Flansburgh (front) with Dan Spock and Dan Julty, performing at The Black-Outs first show in Antioch College's cafeteria. Photo by Julie Kantner, 1980.

The Black-Outs (also referred to as The Blackouts) was a rock band active in 1980, in which John Flansburgh played guitar and sang. The group was formed during Flansburgh's time at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, prior to the founding of They Might Be Giants.

History[edit]

Background[edit]

Poster for The Black-Outs' first show, designed by Flansburgh.

The Black-Outs' line-up consisted of Chel White on drums, Dan Julty on bass, with Dan Spock and John Flansburgh on guitars. Flansburgh described the band in a 1990 interview: "I was in this band at college called The Black-Outs and I was wearing pajamas. I was 20 years old."

The band played its first show in Antioch College's cafeteria, opening with a cover of "Sweet Pea" by Tommy Roe. The show was John Flansburgh's first public live performance. He recalled the gig in a 2002 interview: "My very first stage experience was at the cafeteria. I was wearing pajamas and singing. I had never done anything like that before." A poster and photo from the show have been shared by Flansburgh on social media.[1][2]

John Flansburgh described The Black-Outs in a 1995 interview with Flipside:

The first couple bands I was in, we barely played out. 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. [...] 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. But there were other musical aspects to it too.

The band was active for less than a year.[3] By November 1980 they had disbanded, and a new group called Cielzio Script was founded by some of the former members.[4][5] It is unknown whether Flansburgh was involved in this subsequent band. Flansburgh did not complete his studies at Antioch, and in September 1981 he moved to New York City, where he formed They Might Be Giants with John Linnell. Flansburgh's time in Ohio was the source of the reference to Xenia in They Might Be Giants' 1994 song "Out Of Jail".[6]

The Black-Outs did not officially release any material, though their instrumental song "Two Points" was somehow included on a 1984 compilation cassette titled Circular Commotion #3, assembled by the San Fransisco arts organization Circle Arts / West. In 2022, demo recordings of two songs, "Everybody's Gonna Die" and "Two Points", surfaced on YouTube (for more information, see below).

A few related bands were active at Antioch around the same time as The Black-Outs. In 1980, John Flansburgh formed The Turtlenecks with Julie Kantner, Chris Lawrence, Fred Hickler and Karl Hecksher. Flansburgh played with The Turtlenecks concurrently with The Black-Outs. At around this time, Flansburgh also had a free-form radio show on Antioch's community station WYSO.[7] After The Black-Outs, Chel White formed a band called Process Blue, and Flansburgh is credited as an engineer on their song "Up To $100". Bill Krauss also attended Antioch, and played bass in The Functionaires (later The Generics) with Dan Spock, Chel White and Eric Zimmerman.[8] Flansburgh produced some of their demo recordings. A video of The Functionaires performing and being interviewed by Fred Hickler is available on YouTube.

Live Shows[edit]

Poster for The Black-Outs' June 3, 1980 show at The Walnut Hills Bar in Dayton, Ohio.

Roughly half of The Black-Outs' repertoire consisted of cover songs, and the rest were originals, some of which were written by John Flansburgh.[9] On one occasion, at a show where only Flansburgh and Chel White showed up, the duo played a song called "Where Is Everybody?".[10] In a 2002 radio interview on The Bob & Tom Show, Flansburgh stated: "I was in a band called The Black-Outs. 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, "I think John just basically screamed."

The band are known to have played two shows at Antioch College's cafeteria,[11] as well as a few shows in Dayton, Ohio at Uncle Sam's Bar and The Walnut Hills Bar.[12] Their June 3, 1980 show at Walnut Hills received some press in the local Dayton newspapers. A preview of the show appeared in the June 1st issue of the Dayton Daily News:

Funk group debuts in Dayton
Yellow Springs' new funk group, Blackout, will make its Dayton debut Tuesday evening at the Walnut Hills, 2033 Wayne Ave. Bassist Dan Julte says the group plays a mix of funk and new wave.

That show was reviewed by Jim Collins in the June 7th issue of Dayton's Journal Herald:

This week saw an impressive Dayton debut by the Yellow Springs band, The Black-outs, at the Walnut Hills. The new-wave unit mixed in some excellent originals with covers of James Brown's Papa's Got a Brand New Bag and Wilson Pickett's Midnight Hour. The band showed a lot of talent and promise, as well as proving they know how to have fun — any band that does Tommy James and the Shondells' My Baby Does the Hanky-Panky deserves credit.

Flansburgh has stated the success of this gig made him realize that a career in music could be viable. He explained in a 2011 interview:

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.

Material[edit]

Original Songs[edit]

Note: A collection of five "Blackouts" songs, purportedly sourced from a tape belonging to Chel White, was uploaded to YouTube in 2022. Of these, only two can be verified as authentic recordings by The Black-Outs. "Everybody's Gonna Die" features John Flansburgh on vocals, and "Two Points" is confirmed through its appearance on a documented Black-Outs setlist. Both tracks also share the same distinct lo-fi audio quality. The remaining three tracks ("It's All Poetry", "What I Believe" and "You All Die") do not contain any identifiable involvement from Flansburgh, are of noticeably higher audio fidelity, and lack corroboration from external documentation. Available evidence does not support the confident attribution of these three songs to the band; it is possible that they originate from an unrelated musical project by Chel White.

Live Covers[edit]

Gallery[edit]

  • A variation on the poster for the Black-Out's first show

  • Another poster for The Black-Outs' first show

  • The Black-Outs flyer

  • Setlist from a Black-Outs show

See also[edit]

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