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They Might Be Giants might be giants after all.
Stranger things have happened. Well, maybe not stranger. Better make that less likely.
The New York-based (but Lincoln-raised) duo of John Linnell and John Flansburgh had no idea about record deals, international tours or even dial-a-song phone lines when they started playing music together nine years ago.
"We had dead-end jobs," Flansburgh said over the phone last week from his apartment in Brooklyn. "Instead of stealing cars we thought, "rock music.' We're fairly compulsive about what we do. I started playing the guitar when I was 19 and started writing songs immediately. John started writing songs in his teens. We went from being guys our friends kind of felt sorry for to something that does resemble a career in music. On a number of levels we weren't very professional about it. We didn't have a drummer, and we didn't worry about what kind of radio was going to play our songs. It was pretty obvious that no kind of radio was going to play our songs. We were doing it for the sake of it."
Somehow, it has all worked. Flansburgh, who plays guitar, and Linnell, who works the accordion, replaced their drum machine with a real band last year. They have put out four albums together and, with a combination of progressive music, clever lyrics and sometimes wacky antics, have became favorites on college campuses around the country and abroad. They even get their faces on MTV once in a while.
A Creative Approach
It has all...