Get out your Number 2 pencils: This is a spot quiz on rock'n'roll marketing. Imagine you're an up-and-coming band with seven albums that spawned one - maybe two - marginal hits six years ago on college radio. Commercial radio won't touch your stuff and your last video fizzled out of rotation in 1990. Your next big move is to: A) Get the label to bankroll three months in a major studio with the hippest new producer; B) Anticipate the next major music and fashion craze and ride the wave on MTV; or C) Write a bunch of slightly hokey, folky, pop songs and record one of them on a crackly, 19th century acoustic soft-wax recorder. If you answered C, you're either crazy, They Might Be Giants, or both. The songwriting duo of John Linnell and John Flansburgh have carved out a career on the pop music industry's lunatic fringe - a place where abject nonconformity, clever wordplay, constant songwriting and perpetual touring can keep a band in buisness indefinitely. Factory Showroom, their new disc, is exactly what a band shouldn't do if it's members are trying to get rich. If, however, they're trying to break new ground, parody pop rock cliches and have a lot of fun, Factory Showroom is a guided tour of the improbable. "I Can Hear You" was recorded on an original Thomas Edison wax cylinder recorder at his former lab in West Orange, NJ. "James K. Polk" is a no-frills history lesson about our 11th president, while "S-E-X-X-Y" is a commercial deviation written to garner enough airplay and retail sales to pay for the weirdo fun stuff. They might be crazy, but they also might be one of the sharpest acts in the buisness.