More They Might Be Giants wittering

[mmcirvin]

Interestingly (according to This Might Be a Wiki), the mind-destroyingly funky "Brain Problem Situation" was actually a new release, not a collected rarity--something of an easter egg on the bonus disc.

"The Else" is growing on me. It occurs to me that one could categorize TMBG's albums by whether Linnell or Flansburgh is the dominant personality. The debut Pink Album (as TMBW says) is actually a Flansburgh-dominant album, but the big hits on "Lincoln" and "Flood" and "Apollo 18" were all Linnell songs. I think one of the things that turns off some hardcore TMBG fans about "John Henry" is that Linnell seems to be kind of casting about for something new on it, and his lyrics don't quite have his trademark snap, but Flans is still firing on all cylinders there; he seems to be adapting better to the new style. Then on "Factory Showroom" Linnell comes around and there's more of a balance.

After the period in the wilderness, Flansburgh seems to rule for a while--"Mink Car" and "The Spine" were very Flansburghian, which I actually liked a lot, though some fans complained that they were almost Mono Puff albums; but this one is a very Linnell-heavy album. Though I like Flansburgh's "The Shadow Government" a lot and "Careful What You Pack" is a lovely song that sneaks up on you, otherwise Linnell provides the high points.

That might be the reason that the album seems to be an outsize critical success; maybe because of the circa-1990 work, in the larger world Linnell tends to be the attention-grabber, the guy who sang "Particle Man" and "Birdhouse In Your Soul".

Comments

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't call "Mink Car" and "The Spine" Mono Puff albums-- as much as I prefer Linnell songs, Flans knows how to rock it, frankly, and his songs are quite good to go to when I want something lightly heavier than the light nerd fair. Sometimes you want the xylophone version of "The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas," and other times you want the version that sounds like Cheap Trick on their best day evar. Even if Flans has to get all political in the middle.

"Experimental Film" from Spine works so well because it's instrumentally a Flansburgh song, but lyrically Linnell, and it serves as a decent midpoint between the two guys.

I think the major problem with TMBG getting critical success is that for whatever reason, they peaked with Flood or at least can't escape the poppiness of it. Maybe their record label got off its ass for a change, or maybe they just hit the college crowd just right, or something, but a trillion people bought Flood as their first TMBG album, and found it fun and poppy off-beat bubblegum, and never felt compelled to buy another TMBG album ever again. Show me a lifelong fan of TMBG, and I'll show you someone who *certainly* started with a different album. (Though I temporarily owned Lincoln, I sent it back to the CD club owing to lack of funds, so my first was Apollo 18 which, combined with an auto-looping walkman and a very large lawn to mow in the summer of '92, I listened to constantly. (And sung along, too-- I was mowing the lawn, so who could hear?))

Counterexample

[prog.livejournal.com]

I discovered TMBG via "Birdhouse in Your Soul" playing on the Dr. Demento show while I was in high school. (I have a half-written post aout my personal TMBG history that this here post kicked off...)

Re: Counterexample

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

I was tempted, after my last paragraph, to spell out my own-- the leap from Apollo 18 to Misc. T was a critical one... but then I realized that I should save that sort of thing for my own journal, which is empty for a reason.

[sneakums.livejournal.com]

I love the live version of Metal Detector on the bonus disc.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Show me a lifelong fan of TMBG, and I'll show you someone who *certainly* started with a different album

That's not really true in my case--or it's not 100% true. Flood was indeed the album that really turned me into a fan, with heavy rotation on my roommate Phil's CD player. On the other hand, I'd thought of them as a band I liked and should get around to checking out ever since I saw the video to "Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head", and especially since I heard "I Hope That I Get Old Before I Die" on college radio; and after overdosing on Flood I immediately got cassettes of the pink album and Lincoln.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I need to play that for Sam. SO MUCH BRASS.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I think the major problem with TMBG getting critical success is that for whatever reason, they peaked with Flood or at least can't escape the poppiness of it. Maybe their record label got off its ass for a change, or maybe they just hit the college crowd just right, or something, but a trillion people bought Flood as their first TMBG album, and found it fun and poppy off-beat bubblegum, and never felt compelled to buy another TMBG album ever again.

I've always gotten the impression that record label mechanics had a lot to do with it. TMBG went to Elektra at a moment when they were actually willing to give Flood massive promotion, then a series of management changes and the rise of grunge meant that they were no longer considered a highly marketable commodity, and relations between the band and the label were never good again. The band survived by dropping the big-label route and becoming a cult act--they were almost tailor-made for the Internet when it became a significant publicity and distribution medium. But that meant they never got that level of mainstream Top 40 promotion again.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Though, of course, eventually something very interesting happened: their fans got old and started having children, and TMBG seems to be sneaking up on Flood-level success again as a children's band. I bet back in the Eighties they never thought one of their record labels would be Disney.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...And I have to say, these guys have had such a happy fate compared to most popular musicians that they seem incapable of having any resentment over the situation.

People are constantly befuddled that They Might Be Giants, an act that never quite made the A-list of pop immortality, are still together after a quarter-century as a band. Part of that, of course, is that if your core band consists of two people, so that it will be recognized as the same entity regardless of any other personnel changes, that eliminates a lot of combinatoric problems: every time these two guys get together, TMBG still exists.

But I think a lot of it is about money. John Linnell and John Flansburgh were either smarter or luckier than the typical pop act, and managed not to sign away their lives for shiny baubles. The result is that they never got rich, but they eventually came up with something that is an absolute rarity for a pop band--a sustainable business model. They still have to tour a lot, but they can actually live on the proceeds.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

It's too bad they don't add a permanent brass section to their band-- they bring along a section with some of their live tours more than others, and without a doubt it's a bright part of the live show, which, aside from Flansburgh's guitar-heavy versions of songs that had a sound-effect-y studio composition on the album, make the live show so much more impressive than the album versions of songs.

My first TMBG concert, when They played Seattle's Operahouse at Bumbershoot 1992?, and I got in to the back row of the upper balcony, they opened with, Istanbul which ended with about 2 and a half minutes of maddeningly great brass instrumental.

I heartily concur with sneakums. Also, word to the Penny-Arcade icon.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

I think you're exactly right about Elektra records.

I'd go a little further and say that TMBG was ahead of its time with the internet-- Their eMusic partnership, which went unnoticed by the world because the buying and downloading of music couldn't be implemented yet, would've been pioneering if it had caught on. They even released an mp3-only album, "Long Tall Weekend."

And these days they have a stunning array of high-quality bootlegs for sale on their own site, so anyone can assemble a greatest-hits-live album for the market price of a song.

All this to say nothing of Dial-A-Song, which is another great communications-medium-embracing idea of Theirs.