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are my favourite pop band, noted for their short songs with very silly lyrics and unusual instrumentations. “They” originally were the duo of John Linnell and John Flansburgh (occasionally with drum machine), but now they usually make mp3’s and tour with a full band, which comprises the 2 Johns and 3 Dans.
TMBG’s official web site
TMBG.org : the unofficial web site
Dial-A-Song : alternatively you could phone New York (718) 387 6962, and listen to John and John’s answering machine!
TheyMightBeGiants’s official news web site
Number Three : an example of TMBG’s wacky early style – a 1.3 MB MP3 file.
John Linnell describes the curious saxophone mix on “Number Three”: In May of 1984 I got a new, better job working in a darkroom and moved from a grim section of Park Slope in Brooklyn to Hell’s Kitchen on the west side of Manhattan. My roommate was the landlord’s half-Greek son Chris, who had once played in a band with Flansburgh called the Turtlenecks.
Chris was also the building’s super and he and I spent a few days cleaning out several of the apartments. One of them contained all the possessions of an Eastern European couple that had lived there right up until they died, so many of the things we removed were the accoutrements of the last days of a person’s life, which was kind of disturbing. Some of the records they left were instant favorites of ours, especially an album called “Polka Time” and a single called “Skinny Lena.” Skinny Lena was an Italian song in 6/8 with a humorous verse in English and a staccato Bari Sax riff. At some point I figured out a way to make the record skip in 4/4 during the riff while the 45 was played at 33, which became the repeating figure on TMBG’s recording of Flansburgh’s “Number Three.”