Concert Preview
TMBG is big on musical freedom

By Rashod D. Ollison
The Baltimore Sun

SUSAN ANDERSON John Flansburgh, left, and John Linnell are the quirky alternative-pop duo better known as They Might Be Giants.

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They are free. As artists, John Linnell and John Flansburgh, the quirky alternative-pop duo better known as They Might Be Giants, savor doing things just as they want them done, producing smartly crafted music whose influences range from polka and country to Elvis Costello and cartoon music.

"Freedom, as an artist, is really about doing something you think is good and not trying to second-guess what you're doing," says Linnell, the slight, typically low-key half of the duo

They Might Be Giants, appearing Wednesday at the Woodland Park Zoo, has stuck with that ethos for about 20 years now. For the most part, it has worked, garnering them critical respect and a tight though modest following. Their biggest pop success was "Flood," the 1990 gold album that spawned the singles "Birdhouse of Your Soul" and "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)."

After putting out a popular children's album, "No!," in 2002, TMBG returns to its eclectic rock-pop roots on "The Spine," which came out last month..

Wit, geeky humor and childlike wonderment — distinguishing qualities of TMBG's music since its 1986 self-titled debut — swirl through "The Spine," which references '80s synth-heavy pop and Ramones-like punk. Lyrically, the story isn't always immediately clear. But the music is accessible, bristling with energy.

Linnell and pal Flansburgh grew up in Lincoln, Mass., a moneyed Boston suburb bordering Walden Pond. (The two are based in New York now.)

Concert preview They Might Be Giants, 6 p.m. Wednesday, Woodland Park Zoo, 601 N. 59th St., Seattle; $19 (206-615-0076 or www.zoo.org).

They met in high school, and in the early '80s moved to New York, where they formed They Might Be Giants, naming the group after the 1971 George C. Scott movie.

"It's just something we thought was cool," Linnell says of the name. "We didn't think we were gonna be called that for 20 years. There's nothing deep to be read into it."

The group's stage show on the city's underground performance-art circuit at the time was minimal: just the two Johns — Flansburgh on guitar, Linnell on accordion — backed by a tape of rumbas, mechanical drum loops and synthesizers.

The group also used innovative marketing strategies. The guys transferred some recordings to their telephone answering machine and advertised the result as "Dial-a-Song," which presaged the 900 numbers some artists use to promote new songs.

Two years later, in 1985, TMBG put out its first release on flexi-disk, a floppy record they sold via mail order, at shows and sometimes nailed to trees in Tompkins Square Park in New York. Such grass-roots efforts kept the band working regularly for years before it snagged a major-label deal with Elektra in 1990.

"We sorta jumped the gun in bands finding another avenue — other than major labels — to promote their work," Linnell says.

Despite commercial ups and downs, the creative energy between Linnell and his partner has not waned.

"It seems like by now we would have fallen out or gotten sick of each other," he says. "But John and I really understand each other very well."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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