Interview with John Flansburgh (long)
Jesse Fuchs
Here's an interview I did a few days ago with, as he modestly put it, "the one who doesn't play the accordian." I did this interview for a couple of articles - one about Mono Puff and the whole Hello CD club for the exceedingly fine San Fran magazine SOMA (should be in the next issue - pick it up, dammit!) and one about songwriting for my music zine, Crazy Rhythms. (I'll probably hold off on the TMBG issue to coincide with their new album, and also so I can
interview Linnell and do a complete Hello CD club retrospective.) If you're interested in other bands, though, issue #1 is out now, featuring a retrospective on Carter U.S.M. (kind of like a cross between TMBG and The Clash,) and a piece on the genius of Tricky. It's $1 plus a stamp, to Jesse Fuchs, Box 9146, Denver CO 80209. Anyway, here's a more or less full and exceedingly rough transcript of my conversation with John - it's rather discursive, but if anybody
would find it interesting, I figure it would be you guys. I make no apologies for typos and such - I've gotta edit this thing down to about 1200 words by tomorrow at 5, so spellchecking ain't a big priority. Anyway, hope you enjoy, and check out the Mono Puff CD - it's pretty damn good.
What inspired you to do the Mono Puff CD?
I've been in TMBG for 12 years, and it's my primary thing. Over the year I've picked
up a bunch of sideline hobby things that I really enjoy doing - right now I'm directing a
video for Soul Coughing's "soundtrack to Mary," When I started Hello, people wondered
whether TMBG was going to release for Hello. The first year I did a disc under a
pseudonym, and the second year I did a disc under the name Mono Puff, since it's been
around for 4 years, I had recorded a bunch of songs I like that were independent of
TMBg. It seemed like I recorded about enough songs to make a proper release of it. Then
I did a Hello revue last year in New York, so I put a band together on the spur of the
moment and played these songs. It turned out a lot better than I had anticipated - I could
pick from all the different musicians from the New York scene that I had met. It came
together in a very casual way, and it just happened to work. It could have just been okay,
and we wouldn't have made a record. but because the shows went so well, it kind of
sparked everybody's enthusiasm to do a record, in as spontaneous a way as the band had
come together. It's interesting to make a record without a budget or a master plan. So we
recorded a lot of the songs that had been on EPs, but now with a full band sound. The
thing about Mono Puff is that it's a very guitar-oriented band. In TMBG, my official role is
that I'm the guy who doesn't play the accordion.
Your guitar playing, from album to album, has gotten a lot meatier
and less polite...
Well, thank you. I've certainly gotten more practice. When we
started, I'd just learned how to play the guitar. I started playing when I was 18, and at that
age, most people have either gotten pretty good or given up. To start at that late a date, I
felt a little like I was in the remedial class. I think it's great when people can play their
instruments well, but it's never been a necessity to me. I think you can be a pretty bad
musician and still make great music, while the opposite is much more difficult. I've always
been song-oriented, and I try to write songs that complement whatever the limits of my
ability have been, and still are. It's not that big a deal in a way - rock music isn't that
complicated in a way. Even though a lot of songs that I write come across as being
complicated, the impulses behind them come from pretty essential places in my psyche.
It's a great form of writing - the three minute song is such an interesting, elastic medium
for expression.
It's like a haiku - what can you get across in this limited space.
yeah - it seems completely limited, but because it's so concise, you
can float a lot of ideas that would be harder to justify in a more elaborate, puffed up
context. I'm intrigued by stranger, simpler things. When something remains mysterious, it
works better than something that's explicit. When someone makes their case too well, it's
kind of dull. I've never been much for confessional songwriting - I'd rather wonder what
somebody is driving at, than having somebody's emotions downloaded onto my psyche.
When people talk about TMBG, they talk about the songwriting of
TMBG, when you and Linnell have very different songwriting styles.
I'm not sure that I can agree with you on that. We collaborate on a
lot of material. The main thing is just that our voices sound very different. John Linnell is
probably my biggest musical influence, and I write a lot of songs thinking...when I come to
a dead end, it's more often than not I'm thinking "well I wonder, what would John do in
this situation?" We've created a style together in the band - even though we have different
ways of approaching stuff and different takes on things, it's not as awkward a mix as one might think. I think there's more difference within our songwriting - I wish the Mono
Puff record was a little more unified. One thing I thought when I was putting it together is
that it'll be the first record I've made that has a single voice on it. It might be a relief to
have one sound, and I was kind of surprised that it turned out to be as much of a grab-bag
of a record as it is. Especially since - when you record a record over a weekend, it sounds
kind of samey. Which can be a really good thing - Rocket to Russia is a very samey record.
One song stops and the next one stops and you wonder if they even changed the settings
on their amps. The variety pack approach of TMBG is such a hallmark of the band, that I
thought it would be nice to do a more straight ahead, four-piece rock and roll record, but it
didn't really turn out that way. I guess, the thing I really realized from it, is that it's not an
accident that I'm in TMBG. I'm cursed.
What I noticed about the songwriting is that you have the shortest
attention span of any pop musician, while Linnell has one great song he keeps writing.
He's just as versatile...I'm definitely a workaholic. But John does a
lot of different stuff as well. You might be attributing more stuff of Linnell's to me than you
realize. Usually who writes the songs is who signs them, but there are ones that are real
50/50 collaborations. There have always been a song or two on each record that we've
worked out together.
But that's out of 20.
It's interesting. It's such a primary part of my life, even when I'm
writing songs...one thing different about writing for the Mono Puff record and the Hello
CDs is that it felt very different to be writing songs that weren't for TMBG. One thing
exciting about making a record outside your regular group is that it cleans the slate, there's
not template through which everyone will understand it. I wouldn't feel bad it people
heard the mono puffs record and said "this is like a really supercharged, electric guitar
version of TMBG" when I was putting together this, I was like "it would be nice to just
crank the guitars up on this record." on the next tmbg record, there are songs that
completely would make this sound like a declawed cat. there's no master plan. one thing
good about the mono puffs is that it's just not a s big a deal as tmbg. it's working on a much
more low-key level and very few people are paying attention. with tmbg, we've gotta
establish an audience, go out on these big tours, And everything maters a whole lot. with
mono puff, I just got back from a week of shows, and by the end of the week, we had
three other songs that we had just sort of put together on the way. and it was totally cool -
we worked out this song called felt tip pen, which is an excellent song. It was really
exciting and pressure-free.
Is the mono puffs touring band the same as on the record
the problem is that the personnel on the record is that hal and steve have other bands. hal wasn't on this last week of touring, because he's working with
iggy pop. we're gonna do some shows in September that are like Hal and Steve and me. we
have a second guitarist who on the record was mike viola, and on the road this time it was
Eric, whose in iggy's band too. one thing about NY musicians is that if they're good,
they're usually working. you can't get too pissed off that they're going off to do stadium
shows with some legend.
you're using two members from iggy's band. both in tmbg and here,
you've moved a ways away from being cute. The "They Might Be Canadian" joke no longer
applies.
I don't know that one.
I once read a review of the first album that said you should be
named They Might Be Canadian.
Being that we wear hunting clothes?
That you're cute and fun and harmless, like all Canadians are.
Well fuck them, man! We're not cute anymore, we're ugly old guys
now. I know what you're saying the first album had that children's book cover. we were a
two-piece, and no matter how hard we try to rock, there was a hearty governor on our ability
to rock, it's been a very natural evolution. As a band, we've been very lucky - we've clawed
our way to the middle. 80% of the bands you see are brand new, and are gonna totally ghost
after three years. And then there are these other bands that are so monstrously huge,
they're like a marketing plan more than a form of personal expression. we've been lucky in
that we've survived the flavor of the month, and moved on to just having an audience for
what we do. I feel like if started to really suck tomorrow, the people who have been
enjoying what we've been doing would learn to hate it. I don't take it for granted, but it's
very unusual to be in this middle ground. Most of the bands we started with, many of
whom got signed, and many of whom had much more commercially successful careers
than us - they aren't together anymore. Like Living Colour - we shared bills with them in
the late 80s in new york, and they're really not around anymore as a group. Bands usually
don't last very long.
Have you ever worried about being exposed in the wrong way - you
know, Randy Newman does 'Short People."
It's funny you mention that, because that's the exact example I've
always used as my worst-case scenario. Randy Newman is a songwriter that I completely
respect, and his career was really transformed by that song, and in a lot of ways it really
closed the chapter on the first half of his career. He's done other things now - he's moved
on to doing movie soundtracks. When I was a teenager, I thought Randy Newman records
were among the most fascinating things in the world, and he's written some fantastic,
beautiful songs that work on almost any level. And what's odd is that short people
catapulted him into another audience. it's not a bad song - it's a sophisticated two-level
song - it's a song about prejudice that has a catchy conceit to it. I worry about that a lot,
because we write songs that are very much like that in a lot of ways - that could be popularly
misunderstood. It would be disingenuous of me to say I wouldn't want to have a big fat hit
record. I'd love to have one, because it would mean that I could have a really excellent light
show and big sellout crowds, and it would be fun. I know what it feels like to sell out a
crowd, and I know what it feels like when the house is half-full. It's a funny thing - you
hear a lot of people- I just did a week of shows of shows with mono puff, and 4 of them
were well-attended, and 2 were really under-attended. The under-attended shows felt like
work. TMBG usually plays in theaters, and I was playing in clubs in Mono Puff, and
there's a certain idea that you're supposed to say 'It's so much better in clubs, man!' It
some ways, it kinda sucks a little. It's fun to play in a sold-out club, but it's more fun to play
in a sold-out theater. Part of it is that I never feel like I'm becoming close personal friends
with an audience. I feel respectful of the distance - there are hundreds of people watching
me at any given time, and I don't want to look too foolish, for fear of alienating them. I
have no idea who's in the audience - and when I go to shows, I don't even clap, so it's hard
to judge what people are thinking or how they're appreciating it. I've gone to shows that I
thought were fantastic, but I don't necessarily feel compelled to applaud. I don't mean to
sound like a total grump, but I don't think to roar out my approval.
If Laurie Anderson performs "O Superman," you're not going to
start hooting and stomping your feet at the end.
Right - I don't want to be the guy whistling in the back row. But
what's funny is that, as a performer, I actually appreciate the guy whistling in the back row.
They're two different worlds that people kind of mistake for being the same world in a
way. I would imagine I could do a show where nobody applauded and could convince
myself that people really liked it, but it would probably involve self-hypnosis.
The rock moves get more applause. If you do "Chess Piece Face,"
which is a great song...
We've done it live a lot, and we get almost no response from it. It's
interesting - TMBG can do a really good festival show - simply by being a band for 12 years
and having written a lot of uptempo rock songs that work, we can do a festival show and it's
surprisingly compelling. It's not our kind of show, because we like having a range of stuff
in what we do, but it's not really appropriate when half the audience doesn't even know
who you are to do something that works on anything but an immediate level. I really enjoy
performing and I really enjoy doing shows, but I don't feel like it's real. I'm not a "curtain
curtain don't come down!" kind of guy. I'm kind of bugged by rock performers who feel
like there's something real going on. If you've ever been at a show where the electricity
goes out, it suddenly becomes apparent that it's very much a Wizard of Oz kind of thing.
Without the electricity, it's just four guys on a stage.
Yeah, it gets very very quiet up there. But it's interesting to me that
the rock song can work so well as a form of entertainment, because it's so simple in a way.
It doesn't require a great amount of contrivance. You can just have
four people with instruments and you can hold the attention of 100,000.
It's really compelling. I go to movies pretty often, but it's surprising
how often I'm bored by them. Whereas with music, I can see a band in a Holiday Inn, and
if they're putting anything out there, it really comes across.
Have you ever worried about you guys being perceived as a joke
band. John Linnell once said "We're a lot less funny than people seem to think we are."
You turn on Dr. Demento and you hear "Particle Man" sandwiched between the new
Weird Al parody and Kip Adotta...
It would be hard to not grimace at that, but we get plenty of
chances to get our ideas out there. I would be disappointed if that was the only medium by
which people experienced our music. I don't know think of the world of heavily tattooed
and pierced bands as being more legitimate. There's a lot of artifice and surface in rock
music - a lot of stuff that succeeds is only succeeding on style or sex appeal. That's valid -
if you can lead the teen subculture in any direction, whether it's to get tattoos or take
hallucinogenic drugs or go to the library, it's all equally valid. I don't know much about
Marilyn Manson, but it seems pretty interesting, just because it's so fucked up. I really
liked Alice Cooper - when I was 13, I was the biggest Cooper fan in the world. I was
listening to "I Love The Dead" on headphones, and that's just a completely sick song.
There's nothing about it except being the sickest idea he could think of, and there's
something very excellent and liberating about writing a song about the sickest thing you
can think of. It's not that compelling to me now, but I'm not 13 anymore. There's a power
in speaking to people that age and people who feel that outside the world.
Have you ever wondered about your fan base? I'm 21 now - when I
was 16, I knew the way to pick up a girl my age was to say "You like They Might Be Giants
too?" And by the way, I want to thank you for that.
Wow...I wasn't hanging out with 16 year old girls much, but...we
have a wide range of people. I feel grateful that we've got a college age audience, because I
know people who have older audiences, and they're hard to motivate to go to shows, which
is a big, basic part of being a band. If everybody who buys your record is 30 years old,
chances are you're playing in pretty small venues. 30 year olds don't want to go out, while
20 year olds do. I really do feel like our audience is a very self-selective group, and I don't
really want to tell them who they are or what they should be. It's not about that - I just
don't feel comfortable telling people how to dress and how to think. I know how I want to
dress and how I want to think, but I don't think it's important that people follow us.
(cont.)