Friday, February 22, 2008
The group has a lucrative sideline doing kids music.
By JOHN BENSON
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
There’s something to be said about having an overzealous cult following.
Just ask They Might Be Giants (TMBG) member John Linnell, who acknowledged the quirky alt pop duo regularly uses fan Web sites as a concert set list reference guide to ensure it never performs the same show twice when on tour.
“That’s one great thing about having insane, obsessive, compulsive fans, we always do different stuff whenever we come back to a place,” said Linnell, calling from his Brooklyn home. “And now we have a way of making sure. There are these people who compile all our set lists and it’s available on the Internet.
“So we can refer to our last three shows in Cleveland and make sure we’re doing something new.”
Linnell said while the group is touring its recently released 12th studio album, “The Else,” which was co-produced with the Dust Brothers, audiences can expect to hear plenty of material from its entire catalog. This includes a smattering of fan favorites, such as “Birdhouse in Your Soul,” “Ana Ng” and “Istanbul (Not Constantinople),” but also a few catalog gems that directly appease the loyal following.
That’s quite a selling point for TMBG fans attending the outfit’s Wednesday date at the Beachland Ballroom.
However, these days with TMBG, there’s an added dynamic that perhaps ups the ante. The duo’s Cleveland gig is being billed as a 14-and-older show, which on the surface seems quite peculiar. What may seem like some odd PG-13 movie rating is actually rooted in TMBG’s lucrative side project as a children’s performance act.
What began earnestly in 2002 when the band won a Grammy for its Fox TV “Malcolm in the Middle” theme “Boss of Me” morphed into the group releasing children’s record “No!” and penning the theme song to popular Disney Channel cartoon “Higglytown Heroes.” TMBG’s latest kids album “Here Comes the 123s” was recently released.
As if a concert booked for a nightclub on a school night with a midevening set time (after most kids have gone nighty night) isn’t a big enough clue, the band has to keep order, and maybe also its sanity, by announcing ahead of time which show — kids or adults — it will be performing.
“It’s sort of a new thing for us because we have a lot of parents who want to bring their kids,” Linnell said. “So we have to make it clear when we do an adults show. It’s something we take very seriously. We’re playing these places where it would be a terrible idea to bring your kids.”
Despite the hassle, the Massachusetts native has a unique, glass-half-full take on the entire phenomenon.
“It wasn’t really a calculated move for us,” Linnell said. “If it had been, we would have been crediting ourselves for being incredible geniuses for coming up with this plan, because it’s almost like having a kids audience is like a farm for a grown-up audience.
“We’ve been around long enough where we’ve seen young kids who are now old enough to come on their own without adults to our shows. So, that’s an amazing transition, and it’s surprising too.”