Creativity shows in how They Might Be Giants gets music to its fans

The Columbus Dispatch, February 8, 2018
by Julia Oller

Last week, calling the phone number 1-844-387-6962 returned a tuneful march about a sad sack with an ironic name.

“They call me the greatest because I’m not very good / They’re being sarcastic,” the chorus intoned.

The week before featured a song about a dog. Before that, a tune titled “I Like Fun.”

Welcome to Dial-a-Song, the fanciful phone line springing from the brains of John Linnell and John Flansburgh, who together comprise the eclectic indie-rock band They Might Be Giants.

Conceived in 1983, a year after the Johns moved to Brooklyn to officially establish their musical project, the duo was sidelined from shows for several months because of injuries sustained by Linnell in a biking accident and the theft of several instruments.

To keep themselves occupied, they recorded tracks into a voicemail machine each day, advertising the phone number in the Village Voice newspaper.

They disconnected the line in 2006 before bringing it back for a year in 2015 and adding a web component.

Flansburgh, the group’s guitarist, recognized the quirkiness of the project, comparing the output of his band to that of the prolific Dayton-based rock group Guided By Voices.

“From a distance, I think those guys are crazy, then I think about what we’re doing and it’s not that dissimilar,” Flansburgh, 57, said. “I hope people don’t think we’re crazy.”

The 2018 version of Dial-a-Song serves as a promotional piece for the band’s 20th album, I Like Fun, which they’ll play tonight at Newport Music Hall.

Full of erratic blips and bloops, trumpet solos and heavy-rock chords, the record takes a heavier musical approach without changing its still-whimsical lyrics.

Twenty albums is no small feat, particularly in an industry that changes faster than a child’s shoe size.

Flansburgh, though, isn’t terribly impressed by his own longevity.

“I grew up in a very different time in terms of music making. I think it’s more about understanding where audiences are at with it,” he said. “Circling back with Dial-a-Song, it’s something people get to listen to every week and in a way that connects them to what we’re doing really directly. I think it’s only the older people in our audience who are looking forward to this giant chunk of music getting delivered by an album.”

Unlike many musicians who came of age in the golden era of album sales, Flansburgh appreciates online streaming services — he calls Spotify “liberating” — for their ability to push endless new songs in front of listeners.

Considering that They Might Be Giants once released an album on which half the songs clocked in at less than 30 seconds long, not to mention composed the theme song to Disney’s goofy Mickey Mouse Clubhouse television show and created sock-puppet alter egos for its children’s albums, Flansburgh’s willingness to embrace new mediums isn’t a surprise.

“I think our ambitions for the band at the beginning were much more artistic and much less professional than a lot of bands,” he said. “We felt what we were doing was kind of different and a little fragile, and it could lose something if it was edited or modified in too many ways.”

Fortunately for the band, each quirky move forward caught the attention of a backer — first Bar/None Records, then Elektra — willing to let the Johns do anything they liked.

In 2002, they branched into children’s albums with No!, a whimsical foray into topics tailor-made to make parents scream and kids giggle.

Flansburgh, who has no children of his own, finds an allure in writing music for short attention spans but prefers performing for a crowd old enough to clap after each song.

“The challenge of being entertainers for kids always felt a bit beyond us,” he said. “We lean on the swear words far too much. The kids probably wouldn’t mind, but the parents would complain.”

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