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Flagpole Magazine
April 1, 1992
The Behemoth Giants
’One thing that we find that works well is
we do these very small songs,
unaccompanied songs where it's just one
voice and one instrument—it actually seems
to bring a certain intensity to the big places
that we play,' said John Flansburgh. He is
one of the Johns that makes up the two John
band — Th&/ Might Be Giants. The other
John is John Linnell, accordion player.
Flansburgh plays guitar and.. .glasses ?They
Might Be Giants comes from what Linnell
states as "The name of a movie made in the
early seventies. We wanted a name that was
outward-looking and paranoid."
They Might Be Giants are silly, provoca
tive and simply unpredictable. The two have
at least eleven recordings including EF*s,
oddball releases and what have you com
plete with their brand of sophisticated absur
dity. They’re also beginning their tour right
here in Athens, at the Georgia Theatre on
Fnday night, April 3.
With each album come new surprises.
On their latest Elektra recording, Apollo 18,
they've utilized the shuffle mode found on
newer CD players that rearranges the tracks
and plays them differently every time you hit
the button.
Flagpole: What is this shuffle mode thing? I
have an “old" CD player and it has nothing like
that on there.
John Flansburgh: I think most of the new
ones, mine doesn't either—a friend of mine’s
does, but you just press this button and it just
plays the tracks randomly. We have this song
that’s 20 different refrains, all sorts of song
fragments put together in this one order But
we realized that we could actually index them
separately; make the CD think of each little bit
as a different thing. You could just press the
shuffle button and check out a completely
different arrangement of the record.
FP? “Fingertips * is definitely a strange little
piece...
JF: Yeah, it sort of marches along. John has
been talking about doing something like it for
a long time — just creating a piece of music
that was all unrelated, complete recordings.
Similar to those 25 Golden Great Late Night
TV collections. So, that was sort of the inspi
ration for it. I guess part of it was you hear
some of these songs that you’ve never heard,
a fragment you’ve never heard. It’s often very
intriguing that you want to hear the rest of it but
you never do. So, part of it was just creating
the enigma behind the fragment.
FP? Yeah, there are some strange little frag
ments—"What's that blue thingdoinghere...’
JF: [laughs] Do you remember — there was
a TV commercial on where I grew up in
Massachusetts that had this song on it that
went [sings] “All the chapel bells are ring
ing..." Did you ever hear that?
FP: Sounds familiar...
JF: I actually heard that song in its entirety. I
had never heard it until, at Christmas time, I
was at my aunt and uncle’s house and they
had a copy of
that record.
It’s a stranger
song than the
fragment but
it was so
strange to
hear the full
thing after
hearing this
little bit. The
song’s called
[laughs] “All
the Chapel
Bells Are
Ringing" and
it’s a really,
really poorly
constructed
song, it’s re
ally dull. Butit
was really in
teresting to
hear it...
FP: Tell me
about your new album, Apollo 18, and your
production duties.
JF: We produced the entire thing from top to
bottom. It made the whole experience really
happy and exciting.
FP: You didn't find it to be too much work?
JF: You know it is more work in a sense but
we really have a clear idea of what we want so
that made for a lot less problems in the studio.
There was a lot less arguing and a lot more
fruitful exploration. We do a lot of experiment
ing when we’re in the studio, and the problem
is where do you begin when you're working
with a producer — where does the experi
ment begin and end?
FP: You know it in your head...
J F: Yeah and I think we’re as riddled with self
doubt as anybody. I guess somebody who is
an engineer complimented the production on
the record and said, “the best thing about this
record is that it doesn’t sound like it's self-
produced. There isn't a part where all of a
sudden like, ‘wow! That guitar is way too
loud.” I think we really kept our eye on the big
picture.
FP: You know what you want too, where it
might be difficult to explain that to someone
else.
J F: Oh yeah, yeah. And also unjustifiable. On
the very first song, “Dig My Grave," the vocal
is sung through afuzzbox. I don tthinkthere s
a legitimate
producer
who would
be... well, I
can't imag
ine there'd
be too many
that would
be over
joyed when
the band
comes in
and says,
“We want
the song to
have a hor
rible vocal
— a really,
really ugly
sound. So,
what do you
think, huh 7 "
There tends
not to be that
kind of spirit
behind things. But it sounds really cool.
FP: What’s the musical spokesperson thing
for NASA entail 9
JF: Our only job is to tell people about
International Space Year. [It's] really a year
long event.. .there are a lot of things happen
ing in the scientific community about it, espe
cially 18 different countries’ space groups,
like NASA is the representative for the United
States. They're getting together to try to cre
ate an international space program as op
posed to national space programs. It's spe
cifically anti-military. The politics of it are that
NASA is being linked up with the Defense
Department and I don’t think that anybody
who grew up in the real prime era of space
explorat.on feels too comfortable with that. A
lot of really positive things come out of space
exploration like figuring out things about the
environment. It’s not all just...
FP: Shooting up spy satellites...
JF: Yeah, it's almost like nationalist bravado
or whatever. I guess it's just trying to reclaim
space for the philosophical, the beautiful
thing that it could be.
FP: Throughout most of your albums you
seem to write about scien tific matters or small,
minute details most of us ignore like...
nightlights ("Birdhouse in Your Soul”). Tell me
about some of the songs on Apollo 18.
JF: Well a lot of times we just use physical
things as metaphors and then there are times
when they are observational songs. There are
actually a few songs that we recorded now
that are information songs. There's a song
called "James K. Polk* on the EP last year that
was about James K. Polk, that contained a lot
of historical information about him. “Mammal"
is certainly in that tradition. It's a different kind
of song than most you hear. It seems cool.
Remember Johnny Horton? He does histori
cal songs that are hilarious.
FP: “Istanbul..." was kind of like that
JF: "Istanbul," the politics of the song are
kind of dubious. "It’s not nobody's business
but the Turks" is the problem. There's a whole
bunch of Greeks that would disagree with
those sentiments. Let’s see — the song “Dig
My Grave* — the title is actually taken from a
number of folk songs that have that same title.
In New York, you can buy the Folkways record
catalogue for about a dollar at Tower Records
[laughs], I mean every record has been cut
out and on sale in their bargain bins for
pennies. So I bought all these Folkways
records and one of the records had a number
of songs on it called “Dig My Grave* and it
was pointing out how the same song could be
transformed by going from one place to an
other. They had a New Orleans version of
“Dig My Grave’ and a Maine folksong version
of it and all these various versions. They were
like different songs. I thought it would be
interesting to do acomplete update. The only
thing it has in common is the title, really, but
that's a good title.
FP: Final question... which one of you sings ?t?
JF: We both sing. It’s really 50-50.1 sing “Dig
My Grave," Linnell sings “I Palindrome I," I
sing “She’s Actual Size," Linnell sings “The
Statue Got Me High," "Mammal," “Spider," I
sing "The Guitar," Linnell sings "Dinner Bell,"
I sing “Narrow Your Eyes," "Hall of Heads."
I'm the guitar guy...
Hillary Meister
They Might Be Here on Friday .Flansburgh(l.) and Linnell.
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