Giant Steps

Accustomed to performing in front of adults who understand songs
about prosthetic foreheads, mammals and the political achievements
of James K. Polk, cult-rock band They Might Be Giants has had a
challenging experience performing in front of children. Since the
release of their children’s album “No!” in 2002,
the musical duo of John Flansburgh and John Linell have found
themselves doing kiddy matinees like this Sunday’s at Royce
Hall, for children from infancy to age 8 ““ an easily
distracted audience to say the least.

“Adults have more invested in everybody having a nice
time,” said TMBG singer and accordion player Linell.
“They applaud in the right places, and they get nervous if
the band isn’t going over (well). And kids are not like that.
If they are even slightly uninterested they will wander off or
start talking.”

Linell, who has a young son himself, said that although he loves
kids on a one-on-one basis, it is simply hard to perform in front
of them. “You have to have nerves of steel to put up with
kids talking during your show,” he said.

The songs on “No!” were originally intended for 5-
to 12-year-olds, and indeed this is the age group that responds
most enthusiastically to the band’s kid-oriented material.
But Linell continually notices that parents bring babies to TMBG
shows who, as he puts it, “probably don’t know where
they are or what’s going on.” He said this is
understandable since most parents of young children are looking for
ways to entertain both themselves and their kids.

“Other than taking them to the McDonald’s Playland,
what are the possible ways to entertain a kid that age?” said
Linell. And so, the task of entertaining children falls on the
shoulders of the Giants.

“I think Flansburgh has gotten pretty good at keeping the
ball rolling and keeping the kids engaged, (but) he’s said
emphatically that he would rather do shows for adults,”
Linell said.

Aside from speaking clearly, trying not to swear, and avoiding
sarcastic humor, Linell said the band doesn’t do much
differently on stage than it does for an adult show. In order to
keep the tots’ attention, the Giants rely mainly on their
performance energy and the fun nature of their songs, which were
deliberately written to be entertaining rather than
educational.

Unlike some of the band’s adult recordings,
“No!” doesn’t contain songs which explain why the
sun shines. Rather, it is chock-full of silly stuff like
“John Lee Supertaster,” a tune about a man with the
super power of high-intensity taste buds, and “I Am A Grocery
Bag,” a 34-second ditty which lists the contents of the
narrator.

“You don’t always have to be improved by culture,
you can just be entertained,” said Linell, explaining why
this album was written to be amusing rather than pedagogical.

According to Linell, the idea of doing a children’s album
had not really occurred to him or Flansburgh even once in their
20-year career. Then, sometime between the release of their albums
“Severe Tire Damage” and “Mink Car,” a
friend made the suggestion.

“This seemed like an appealing direction for us,”
said Linell. “(It) was not going to confuse anyone about what
kind of band we were.”

As it turned out, the process of writing an album for kids
enabled the band to tap into a new creative channel.

“A lot of the material on “˜No!’ was really
inspired by the thought that we could do anything that seemed good,
and it didn’t have to refer to anything culturally,”
said Linell. “It was almost like context-free music. We just
let our imaginations cut loose, and that was a great experience for
us.”

Linell added that writing in this no-rules way is something the
band would like to do for adults, but that it is impossible due to
adults’ preconceived notions and their tendency to relate
music to some sort of historical or cultural context.

Since “No!,” TMBG has been keeping busy with more
kid-oriented projects, like writing music for a series of Disney
storybooks and DVDs. On the adult front, they recently released a
five-song EP “Indestructible Object” which includes two
preview songs for its next LP, “The Spine,” which will
be released this summer.