John Flansburgh

From This Might Be A Wiki
Revision as of 17:16, 7 February 2007 by Josherz (talk | contribs) (fixed alphabetical order issues)

They Might Be Giants
John Flansburgh • John Linnell
Marty Beller · Dan Miller · Danny Weinkauf
Flansburgh - Now
Flansburgh - Then
File:Jf-kid.PNG
Flansburgh - The Earlier Years

Biography

John Conant Flansburgh (born May 6th, 1960) is the strategist and businessman of They Might Be Giants. Oh, and he plays guitar, too. In concert he can be seen directing the other band members and he also has a penchant for saying really funny things...

Flansy can play the following instruments:

  • acoustic guitar (6- and 12-string)
  • electric guitar (ditto)
  • drums
  • bass guitar
  • keyboard
  • melodica
  • piano
  • tremolo harmonica
  • harmonica
  • trumpet (he can even play two at the same time, admittedly not very well)
  • organ
  • egg shaker
  • kazoo

Also, (rather obviously), both Johns oct-tri-quadruple on vocals.

Because he is left-handed and doesn't feel right playing anything that wasn't made for him to play, Flans sticks to what he can do. He's often overshadowed by single-producing Linnell, although he writes just as many songs as Linnell does and has had more side-projects over the years. He's the much more social of the two Johns and you can almost always track him down after a concert and get his autograph. Not surprisingly, Flans is the bigger showman of the duo and reportedly plans all the large presentations, including devising set lists for shows and coming up with the running orders for the albums. He's also the visual artist, and takes a big part in planning the design of CD liner notes and such. The back and front covers of Miscellaneous T are photos of letters he made with papier-mâché.

Before joining TMBG, Flansburgh attended George Washington University, Antioch College and the Pratt Institute, where he got a BFA in Printmaking in 1984. He then got a job counting commuters at Grand Central Station, which proves college is really worth the money. At some point, he was also in a band called The Blackouts and another by the name of Frieda. After joining TMBG, he started the Hello Recording Club with Marjorie Galen, and then formed Hello The Band with Joshua Fried, which had a one-off on the Hello club and no further releases. Soon afterwards, Flans started the band Mono Puff, which released a series of EP's on Hello and then a full LP on Rykodisc entitled Unsupervised. The album's single video The Devil Went Down To Newport was played on MTV's 120 Minutes, and wasn't a complete failure. Two years later, Mono Puff released the Bar-None LP It's Fun To Steal (which Flans produced himself, along with Pat Dillett). The album had no EPs or videos associated with it, but the band did tour to promote it. Since then, they've not officially broken up, but the members have relocated to far-away places and a new release is not forthcoming.

In addition to all these other things, Flans is an excellent music video director. He has directed music videos for Harvey Danger, Soul Coughing and Ben Folds Five, two for Frank Black, and another two of TMBG's own videos, The Guitar and Doctor Worm. He also produced Muckafurgason's self-titled album, and engineered Drink Me's self-titled. He was involved with the production of several EPs that were released on the Hello club.

Flansy's always had an autograph that reads "John F." Sometimes he draws a dude's face in the O and sometimes he turns the letter into a guitar. According to Linnell, Flans is about an inch taller than he is, which makes him 5'11". His wife is named Robin "Goldie" Goldwasser and she has collaborated with TMBG for various projects. His brother's name is Schuyler.

Flans claims "Roadrunner" by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers inspired him to become a musician. He taught himself to play guitar while working as a parking lot attendant (and only 2 cars were stolen the whole time he was working!). He learned to play on just the top three strings of the guitar, because that's all the Ramones used.

  • According to this, his father was an MIT graduate.
  • The first CD he bought was A Hard Day's Night by The Beatles.

He thinks it would be funny if they changed the name of the band to WAFMNWANFG without telling anybody that it means "We Apologize For the Misunderstanding, but No We Are Not in Fact Giants".

  • Flansburgh was given special thanks in the movie Chuck&Buck; released in 2000.

Has not seen any of these movies

  • Jaws
  • Star Wars
  • The Matrix
  • Pulp Fiction
  • Blair Witch Project
  • Silence of the Lambs
  • On Golden Pond
  • Back to the Future
  • Scream
  • I Know What You Did Last Summer
  • Die Hard
  • Spider-Man
  • The Lion King
  • Lord of the Rings
  • Home Alone
  • Saving Private Ryan
  • Austin Powers
  • Top Gun
  • Rain Man
  • My Big Fat Greek Wedding
  • Pretty Woman
  • Jerry McGuire
  • Rambo
  • Napoleon Dynamite
  • Grease

"I don't think I have ever seen a movie with Tom Cruise or Bruce Willis except fragments on broadcast TV. I have, however, purchased almost every ZZ Top album since Eliminator. I have no explanation or excuse for this random behavior."

Likes

Dislikes

  • 2/4 "rinky-dink" beats
  • being called quirky, wacky, zany, etc.
  • The Rolling Stones
  • radio DJs talking during songs
  • The Bush Administration
  • Reading - "I read so little. For a dude who people say is smart, I sure get by on magazines."
  • We Built This City by Jefferson Starship -- In this BBC article Flans says "It was so incredibly bad, I was positive I would never hear it again, and I wanted to fully comprehend the strange vileness of it. I thought it might be Christian rock or something, but then it became a big hit."
  • Drum Solos - from a 2003 Fresh Air interview: "No one likes drum solos."

Favorite foods/drinks

  • carrot juice
  • coffee -- subsists on it; likes it "lite"
  • Martinis with extra olives
  • salad -- for the dressing; Flans is not a vegetarian, though he tried it for a year but concluded it was "too dull living without barbecue"

Side projects releases of note:

Also referred to as

  • Rolf Conant - Conant is his middle name and Rolf is simply "a good German name." He has used this pseudonym for Unsupervised, Miscellaneous T, Apollo 18, Severe Tire Damage and Hello The Band. It was also used in the rare fanzine "Art In Context", which he produced with Bill Krauss. Rolf is also listed in Here Come The ABCs! for logo.
  • Cecil Portesque, The King Of Dead Air (The They Might Be Giants Podcast)
  • A motherfucker guitarist
  • Agent 00-soul
  • Big John
  • Brown John
  • Doctor Octopus (see Announcement A)
  • Dr. F
  • "The big, fat guy who looks like Danny Aykroyd, only fatter" (from an insulting message left on Dial-A-Song)
  • Flansburgher
  • Flans
  • Flanso
  • Flansy
  • Immensely huggable
  • Jack
  • Jim (NASA called them Jim and Jim in the ISY press release)
  • John "56k Modem" Flansburgh - From Podcast 5A newsletter
  • Jump Little Chicken (see Raleigh)
  • Lieutenant Glue (From Paste Culture Club Podcast)
  • Matthew (from a Dial a Song message)
  • M.C. Search (From 120 Minutes)
  • Mr. Flans
  • Mr Kissyou - See PODAS
  • Professor Flans (see L M N O)
  • Professor P.F. (see AM FM Announcement)
  • The Roar of the Kraken
  • Syndrome (from September 2004 live show at The Egg, Albany)
  • "That one with the glasses" (Strong Bad)
  • "That glasses guy/The glasses guy" (Strong Sad) (In the Homestar Runner DVD commentary for Experimental Film)
  • The angry John with all the curse words (As he described himself at one live show.)
  • The bespectacled one
  • The big, fat guy
  • The Flotation Device (see Radio Sweepers)
  • The nice John (what Flansburgh called himself while talking to a fan after one 1998 show)
  • The mean one
  • The sweet one
  • The one out selling the stuff
  • Tyler (See Sapphire Bullets)
  • John "Abzug" Flansburgh
  • John "Boom Boom" Flansburgh
  • John "Crashes Bashes" Flansburgh
  • John "Guitar Wizard" Flansburgh
  • John "light, no sugar" Flansburgh
  • John "Magog" Flansburgh
  • John "MC Landfill" Flansburgh

External links

Retrieved from "https://tmbw.net/wiki/index.php?title=John_Flansburgh&oldid=121812"