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High school friendships can be fickle but for Lincoln, Massachusetts classmates John Flansburgh and John Linnell, a shared interest in writing alternative rock music brought them solidly together. After college, in 1982, they reconnected to form They Might Be Giants, performing first as a duo, and later, in 1995, as a full-fledged band. Their music and performance style was never like everybody else's. And that was the point. "All our songs work on a bunch of different levels," Flansburgh told UK journalist Sean McManus, "They're not going after the same idea. Some are extremely hard edged and a song like 'Istanbul,' a featherweight song, is an opportunity for arrangement ideas that are not part of regular rock music. There are other songs that might be metaphoric or relatively straight-forward or might have cultural allusions in them that are hard to understand if you didn't grow up where we grew up. We're more complicated than the average band that's just trying to achieve the same thing over and over."
Complicated, yes, but highly innovative as well. Consider some song titles from their 14 studio albums: "Birdhouse in Your Soul," "I Palindrome I," "Purple Toupee," "Mink Car." Besides the adoring adults who love their songs, They Might Be Giants was also moving steadily toward the younger set. They wrote music for TV cartoon shows and appeared on kids programs. Then, in 2002, their first album for kids caused a stir, reaching number one on the Billboard "Top Kid Audio Chart." A later album, "Here Come the 123s," won a 2009 Grammy. Other TV music, the theme song for the series "Malcolm in the Middle," had also won a Grammy in 2001.
This prolific duo, whose band also includes Dan Miller on guitar, Danny Weinkauf on bass and Marty Beller on drums, perform two concerts on October 30 at The Quick Center. The first, at 2 p.m. is a family show. The second, at 8 p.m., showcases They Might Be Giants's more mature music. Both will show off this band's amazingly outsized talent. Tickets are $25. For more information, visit The Quick Center's website.
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