S. Alexander Reed - They Might Be Giants Flood

THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS FLOODPraise for the series: It was only a matter of time before a clever publisher realized that there is an audience for whom Exile on Main Street or Electric Ladyland are as significant and worthy of study as The Catcher inthe Rye or Middlemarch The series is freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebration The New York Times Book Review Ideal for the rock geek who thinks liner notes just arent enough Rolling Stone One of the coolest publishing imprints on the planet Bookslut These are for the insane collectors out there who appreciate fantastic design, well-executed thinking, and things that make your house look cool. Each volume in this series takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. We love these. We are huge nerds Vice A brilliant series each one a work of real love NME (UK) Passionate, obsessive, and smart Nylon Religious tracts for the rock n roll faithful Boldtype [A] consistently excellent series Uncut (UK) We arent naive enough to think that were your only source for reading about music (but if we had our way watch out). For those of you who really like to know everything there is to know about an album, youd do well to check out Continuums 33 1/3 series of books PitchforkFor reviews of individual titles in the series, please visitour blog at 333sound.com and our website athttp://www.bloomsbury.com/musicandsoundstudiesFollow us on Twitter: @333booksLike us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/33.3books For a complete list of books in this series, see the back of this book Forthcoming in the series: I Get Wet by Phillip Crandall Selected Ambient Works Vol. II by Marc Weidenbaum Smile by Luis Sanchez Biophilia by Nicola Dibben Ode to Billie Joe by Tara Murtha The Grey Album by Charles Fairchild Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables by Mike Foley Freedom of Choice by Evie Nagy Entertainment! by Kevin Dettmar Live Through This by Anwyn Crawford Donuts by Jordan Ferguson My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kirk Walker Graves Dangerous by Susan Fast Exile in Guyville by Gina Arnold Definitely Maybe by Alex Niven Blank Generation by Pete Astor Sigur Ros: ( ) by Ethan Hayden Flood by S.

Alexander Reed and Philip Sandifer and many more They Might Be Giants Flood S. Alexander Reed and Philip Sandifer Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway 50 Bedford Square New York London NY 10018 WC1B 3DP USA UK www.bloomsbury.comBloomsbury is a registered trade mark of BloomsburyPublishing Plc First published 2014 S. Alexander Reed and Philip Sandifer, 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the authors. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data They Might Be Giants Flood / S.

Alexander Reed and Philip Sandifer. -- 1st edition. pages cm. -- (33 1/3) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-62356-915-0 (pbk. paper) 1. paper) 1.

They Might Be Giants (Musical group) 2. They Might Be Giants (Musical group) Flood. 3. Rock musicians--United States--Biography. 4. I. I.

Sandifer, Phillip, author. II. Title. III. Title: Flood. ML421.T514R44 2013 782.42166092'2--dc23 2013024807 ISBN: 978-1-62356-965-5 Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN Flood They Might Be Giants 1.

Theme From Flood (0:28) 2. Birdhouse in Your Soul (3:20) 3. Lucky Ball & Chain (2:46) 4. Istanbul (Not Constantinople) (2:38) 5. Dead (2:58) 6. Your Racist Friend (2:54) 7.

Particle Man (1:59) 8. Twisting (1:56) 9. We Want a Rock (2:47) 10. Someone Keeps Moving My Chair (2:23) 11. Hearing Aid (3:26) 12. Minimum Wage (0:47) 13.

Letterbox (1:25) 14. Whistling in the Dark (3:25) 15. Hot Cha (1:34) 16. Women & Men (1:46) 17. Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love (1:36) 18. They Might Be Giants (2:45) 19.

Road Movie to Berlin (2:22) Contents Prologue: Theme from Flood viii Who Might Be Giants? Lincoln 7 Brooklyns Ambassadors of Love America 26 Flooding 40 Childhood 49 Mediality 63 Geek Culture Post-Coolness 105 Epilogue: After the Flood 121 vii Prologue: Theme from Flood Two F l o o d s ( T h e re s a P i c t u re O p p o s i t e M e o fM y P r i m i t i ve A n c e s t r y ) A photograph of the Ohio Rivers 1937 deluge emblazons the cover of They Might Be Giants 1990 album Flood. Both Floods poured into a million American homes, but while the former killed 385 people, the latter managed to kill absolutely no one. Flood is, after all, not a ferocious record. Where rock fans might want John Flansburghs guitar to roar, they get a pinched meow instead. There are no awesome drum solos or trancelike beats, just a sterile, tinny rhythm machine. Flansburgh and his accor dionist bandmate John Linnell sing in voices so nasal that a rock critic once asked them if they sounded like Olive Oyl on purpose.

This is not music for cool people. But theres actually something more interesting happening on Flood than rocking out. Despite the sleeve photo, the flood that the album uncorks doesnt refer to a past event, but instead we might hear it as a creative practice. And not to put too fine a point on it, the bands flooding on this album can tell us a lot about an important shift around 1990 that gave a new social, viii S . A L E X A N D E R R E E D A N D P H I L I P S A N D I F E R technological, and ultimately economic legitimacy to what we might call geek culture. The authors of this book first heard Flood as middle schoolers at an academic summer camp.

The programs name was CTYCenter for Talented Youthbut to our classmates during the regular school year, it was usually just called nerd camp. In our public schools, it was a statement of fact that we were nerds; there was no use denying it. CTY by its nature attracted a lot of people like us from the outskirts of various social groups, and its own culture was heavily impacted by the fact that for large swaths of its student population, those three summer weeks were the first time that they had been in a like-minded social environment. Campers parents sent them for the academics, but more than coursework, every kid there treasured that sense of belonging, and as such, the weekly dances served as major centerpieces of the larger experience. Each Friday, Floods iconic single Birdhouse in Your Soul marked a peak of giddy, electrified togetherness for 400 teenagers. For a few minutes, being a nerd wasnt about isolation.

If the medias portrait of They Might Be Giants is to be believed, this experience was no fluke. Billboard magazine declares them nerd-rock heroes, Pitchfork Media champions them as geek-rock kings, and Englands New Musical Express dubs them a nerdhouse cabaret act. The words geek and nerdsetting aside any arguable differences between themare cavalierly tossed around in writeups of the band without much definition or qualification, which suggests theres an unwritten assumption that readers not only understand the terms, but that they also understand why such labels ix F L O O D might be applied to They Might Be Giants music, fairly or otherwise. The implication is that whatever it is that makes someone a geek, youll find it on