They Might Be Giants are still proudly weird geek pop giants
If quirky pop was your taste in the late 1980s, They Might Be Giants would have been your perfect jam.
Nearly 40 years after “Don’t Let’s Start” became a college radio staple and 35 years after their album “Flood” generated the hit song “Birdhouse in Your Soul,” the duo of John Linnell and John Flansburgh continue to tour and create new music.
“This has been the ultimate earn-as-you-learn experience,” Flansburgh said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution before the band’s shows at the Eastern on Friday (sold out) and Saturday. “I didn’t really know how to sing and play at the same time when we started this band. I really know how to do that now!”
The band had to postpone several dates earlier this year, including its Atlanta shows, because Linnell had an unspecified medical issue, but he quickly recuperated. “It was a one-off thing,” Flansburgh said. “We’re fine now.”
In fact, this fall, they are doing multiple dates in most cities and decided to challenge themselves by performing largely different sets each night in each city. With 85 songs ready to go, the band will only play five or six of its biggest hits every night, while rotating the others around.
“At the beginning of a tour, you’re really excited about what you’re doing,” Flansburgh said. “It’s a very human natural thing that once you conquer something and do it over and over, it becomes less dynamic. By doing these different shows, it keeps everybody on their toes. You gain so much by being a little bit more ambitious.”
The band added a trio of horn players to the lineup in 2019, which Flansburgh said has greatly enhanced their live sound.
“The payoff is huge,” he said, even if the bigger band eats into profit margins.
Flansburgh, who turned 65 in May, said he’s not a person who likes to be on autopilot. In fact, he has spent recent years watching YouTube tutorials from vocal coaches on how to improve his warmup and technique.
“It’s really late in the day,” he said. “I’m a relatively old man. But I really dug in on it. I think I’m a better singer than I was 10 years ago. I can tell. My pitch has improved. I’ve even paid some of the guys for their work.”
He is both gratified and mind-boggled that the band has survived all these years. The two Johns have known each other as children and became friends in high school while working on the school newspaper.
“John and I started this project in 1982 and began playing in New York every weekend in 1984,” he said. “It seems like such a mistake. I really can’t get used to that idea. Forty years. That’s an exhausting amount of time to be in a band.”
Yet he said he and Linnell still get along fine. In fact, there has never been a Hall & Oates-level blowout or breakup over the decades.
“We’ve spent more time together than most married couples,” he mused. “Last year, we were on the road in New England and I decided to travel by myself in a new car instead of the tour bus. John asked to come along. It was just the two of us listening to the radio and talking about music. It was fun.”
Back in 1980 when he was just 20 and before he ventured to New York City, Flansburgh lived in Atlanta for six months in a scummy apartment across from the Cheetah Lounge strip club in Midtown.
“It was a very colorful interval in my life,” he said.” I had a really good time. The guy down the hallway from me was named Spoon. I’m pretty sure he was a cocaine dealer.”
He interned at the IMAGE Film & Video Center, which morphed into the Atlanta Independent Film Festival.
“What struck me about Atlanta at the time was how it became this place where every kind of outsider person in the South who wasn’t headed directly to Manhattan would end up,” Flansburgh said. “It was a cultural magnet for bohemians, which wasn’t its reputation. It was a go-getter, corporate town.”
One of They Might Be Giants’ stranger concert experiences in Atlanta was performing at Centennial Olympic Park as part of a 2002 free concert series sponsored by Star 94 that also featured acts like Alanis Morissette and Hootie & the Blowfish. 99X had a competing free concert series with acts like Hoobastank and Cowboy Mouth happening 600 feet away in a parking lot that is now home to the Georgia Aquarium.
While the show went off without a hitch or too much sound bleed, Flansburgh recalled Jacoby Shaddix, leader singer of the 99X-sponsored band Papa Roach, throwing up on stage after a bout of food poisoning. (The AJC chronicled that moment in its entertainment Peach Buzz column at the time).
“That was so disturbing to the audience,” he said. “That’s what everybody was talking about. We could see the video projection of the guy vomiting!”
IF YOU GO
They Might Be Giants
8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. $49.36-$111.45. The Eastern, 777 Memorial Drive SE, Atlanta. axs.com
About the Author
Rodney Ho writes about entertainment for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution including TV, radio, film, comedy and all things in between. A native New Yorker, he has covered education at The Virginian-Pilot, small business for The Wall Street Journal and a host of beats at the AJC over 20-plus years. He loves tennis, pop culture & seeing live events.
