Скачать или смотреть #Song1231

I covered TMBG way back in #Day80 but haven't profiled them.

John Flansburgh and John Linnell grew up in Lincoln, MA in the '70s and wrote songs in high school together but didn't form a band at the time. Linnell joined a new wave group called The Mundanes in Rhode Island, and the two reunited in 1981 after moving to Brooklyn. At their first concert, a Sandinista rally in Central Park full of Spanish speakers, they were introduced as El Grupo De Rock and Roll - a name that, according to Flansburgh, was "so bad that John and I have made a vow that we will never tell anyone, even our children." They instead chose the name of the 1971 film They Might Be Giants, itself taken from a Don Quixote passage about mistaking windmills for evil giants. With Flansburgh on guitar and Linnell on accordion and sax, and accompanied by a drum machine or backing track, their instrumentation and absurd and clever songwriting attracted a strong local following. They would appear onstage wearing oversized fez hats or with large cardboard cutout heads of newspaper editor William Allen White. Due to a bike accident, they were unable to perform live for a while, and they would record songs on answering machine and advertise the phone number in local newspapers under the moniker "Dial-A-Song". This caught the attention of Bar/None Records, who signed themt oa recording deal. (The song is still accessible via 844-387-6962.) In 1989, they signed with Elektra Records and broke out with third album Flood, with hits "Birdhouse in Your Soul" and a cover of "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)". The latter, and "Particle Man", generated cartoon music videos for Tiny Toon Adventures, giving them "kid appeal" that would continue through the years. In 2004, TMBG teamed up with Homestar Runner creators Matt and Mike Chapman to create an animated music video for "Experimental Film", and in 2008 they recorded a track for the 200th Strong Bad e-mail, where Linnell provided the voice of The Poopsmith. In all, they have released 18 albums and won two Grammys (one for Best Song Written for Visual Media for the theme song from Malcolm in the Middle, one for Best Musical Album for Children for Here Come the 123s).