They Might Be Giants Numbers
Argenta Sugden
It's easy, in theory, to write educational pop songs for kids-- just set a bunch of facts to a simple tune-- but it's incredibly tough in practice. A good educational record has to make kids want to hear it over and over, until the intended lesson sinks in, but it also has to make their parents not want to stab themselves in the ears on the thirty-seventh play. They Might Be Giants found a new niche for themselves with their second children's album, 2005's Here Come the ABCs: Their goofy-little-tunes engine was on precisely the right setting to hold the attention of goofy little people, and the formal constraints of writing songs about letters and the alphabet spurred the Johns' inventive impulses. There were still too many half-developed throwaways, but they came through with some genuinely funny conceits like "Can You Find It?" and "Alphabet of Nations", the latter of which actually ended up on their set lists at shows for grown-ups.
The video version of ABCs went gold, so they've come through with a sequel-- this time, naturally, it's a set of songs about numbers. The high water mark in that category is still Multiplication Rock, an ingenious set of three-minute tunes written by Bob Dorough for the "Schoolhouse Rock" Saturday-morning cartoons in the early 70s: perhaps you've heard De La Soul sampling "Three Is a Magic Number" or the Lemonheads' cover of "My Hero, Zero". TMBG's number-songs, though, aren't anywhere near as neatly crafted, and the problem comes down to the fact that they simply aren't math guys. They're language guys, and they only really have a use for numbers as linguistic constructs. Dorough's Multiplication Rock songs worked because they were about the mathematical properties of numbers, and the Giants' mostly just incorporate the names of numbers. The lyrics to the John Linnell-sung "Figure Eight" cover the same territory as the Dorough song of the same name-- that "skate" rhyme is, admittedly, pretty obvious-- but Dorough also managed to throw in its multiplication table all the way up to 96, and TMBG don't get much beyond the shape of the numeral.
If there's a song from 123s that the Giants' older fans are likely to embrace, it's probably "Seven Days of the Week", a deeply daffy singalong in praise of indolence with the parping, galumphing beat they adopted back in the "Particle Man" days. Beyond that, the keepers are "Eight Hundred and Thirteen Mile Car Trip", a headlong one-minute rocker, and "Nine Bowls of Soup", a deadpan conversation with an icthyosaur that's a conceptual cousin to Ivor Cutler's "Bicarbonate of Chicken" and also gives John Linnell the excuse to sing "icthyosaur" repeatedly.
The rest, though, is a wearying slurry of not-quite-clever-enough lyrics and brightly colored plastic genre pastiches-- Giants by, well, numbers. "Zeroes" starts with a cute bossa nova riff but never goes anywhere with it; "High Five!" does the same thing with Eurodisco, and throws in a bridge copped from Devo; "Ooh La! Ooh La!" is dreadful fake jumprope funk. The title of "Triops Has Three Eyes" is almost its entire conceit (near the end, it's replaced by "tripods have three legs"). "Ten Mississippi" might be passable as a bit of "Sesame Street" filler-- three funny voices singing "one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi..." in turn-- but it's hard to bear more than once. To their credit, the Johns perpetually sound enthusiastic. ("I don't even know Spanish! But I'm gonna sing it in Spanish!" declares John Flansburgh in the middle of "I Can Add", before doing just that.) But every bouncy tunelet whose catchiness isn't paired with depth or wit lowers the most crucial number on the album, its Parental Ear-Stabbing Index.
There's also a DVD version of the album, featuring cute animated (and felt-puppet) videos for all of the songs. The two-year-old critic in the house sat raptly in front of it, although he lost interest during the two TMBG-written Mickey Mouse jingles tacked on at the end (regrettably, they're also on the CD). Then he asked to hear Multiplication Rock again.
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They Might Be Giants, often abbreviated as TMBG, is an American alternative rock band formed in 1982 by John Flansburgh and John Linnell. During TMBG's early years, Flansburgh and Linnell frequently performed as a musical duo, often accompanied by a drum machine. In the early 1990s, TMBG expanded to include a backing band.[5] The duo's current backing band consists of Marty Beller, Dan Miller and Danny Weinkauf. They have been credited as vital in the creation and growth of the prolific DIY music scene in Brooklyn in the mid-1980s.[6]
The group has been noted for its unique style of alternative music, typically using surreal, humorous lyrics, experimental styles and unconventional instruments. Over their career, they have found success on the modern rock and college radio charts. They have also found success in children's music with several educational albums, and in theme music for television programs and films.
TMBG have released 23 studio albums. Flood has been certified platinum, while their children's music albums Here Come the ABCs, Here Come the 123s, and Here Comes Science have all been certified gold. The duo has been nominated for four Grammy Awards, winning two.[7][8] Flansburgh and Linnell won for writing the theme to Malcolm in the Middle (Best Film or Television Theme) and They Might Be Giants won for Here Come the 123s (Best Children's Album). Linnell and Flansburgh were also nominated for a Tony Award for Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre along with other composers of the show for SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical.[9] In total, the group has sold over 4 million records.[10]
Johns Linnell and Flansburgh first met as teenagers growing up in Lincoln, Massachusetts. They began writing songs together while attending Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School but did not form a band at that time. The two attended separate colleges after high school and Linnell joined The Mundanes, a new wave group from Rhode Island. The two reunited in 1981 after moving to Brooklyn (to the same apartment building on the same day) to continue their career.[11]
At their first concert, They Might Be Giants were introduced as and performed under the name El Grupo De Rock and Roll (Spanish for "the Rock and Roll Band"), because the show was a Sandinista rally in Central Park, and a majority of the audience members spoke Spanish.[12] They had previously chosen a name that, according to John Flansburgh, was "so bad that John [Linnell] and I have made a vow that we will never tell anyone, even our children."[13] Soon discarding this name,[14] the band assumed the name of the 1971 film They Might Be Giants (starring George C. Scott and Joanne Woodward), which is in turn taken from a Don Quixote passage about how Quixote mistook windmills for evil giants. According to Dave Wilson, in his book Rock Formations, the name They Might Be Giants had been used and subsequently discarded by a friend of the band who had a ventriloquism act.[15] The name was then adopted by the band, who had been searching for a more suitable name.
A common misconception is that the name of the band is a reference to themselves and an allusion to future success. In an interview, John Flansburgh said that the words "they might be giants" are just a very outward-looking forward thing which they liked. He clarified this in the documentary movie Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns) by explaining that the name refers to the outside world of possibilities that they saw as a fledgling band. In an earlier radio interview, John Linnell described the phrase as "something very paranoid sounding".[16]
At one point, Linnell broke his wrist in a biking accident, and Flansburgh's apartment was burgled, stopping them from performing for a time. During this hiatus, they began recording their songs onto an answering machine, and then advertising the phone number in local newspapers such as The Village Voice, using the moniker "Dial-A-Song".[23] They also released a demo cassette, which earned them a review in People magazine. Authored by Michael Small,[24] the review caught the attention of Bar/None Records, who signed them to a recording deal.[25]
At one point in 1988, the Dial-A-Song answering machine recorded a conversation between two people who had listened to Dial-A-Song, then questioned how they made money out of it. An excerpt from the conversation has been included as a hidden track on the EP for "(She Was A) Hotel Detective." In the late '90s, TMBG started switching to a digital unit to update the format for Dial-A-Song, but due to frequent crashes, the band returned to the original format.
In 2002, Dial-A-Song's answering machine broke down, and fans responded by sending new similar models. In the following year, Dial-A-Song resumed service with a new answering machine. By 2005, a computer system from TechTV was provided to maintain the system, but technical difficulties started bringing the system to an end.
In 2006, Dial-A-Song became increasingly difficult to maintain as a result of unreliable answering machines that had to be replaced. The stress placed upon the answering machine in addition to its age caused excessive wear, and the machine broke down soon after. In August, Dial-A-Song ceased production and because fans started taking advantage of the internet, it was replaced with a page promoting the They Might Be Giants podcasts.
John Linnell stated in an interview in early 2008 that Dial-A-Song had died of a technical crash, and that the Internet had taken over where the machine left off. On November 15, 2008, the Dial-A-Song number was officially disconnected, though the number has at times been re-used in a similar style by other independent artists.
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