They Might Be Giants' Flood by Reed S. Alexander Sandifer Philip
Author:Reed, S. Alexander, Sandifer, Philip
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
music recognizes that childhoodâs mission of grasping
and constructing a universe is by nature strange and
maybe a little scary. As ever, the flood is treated as essen-
tially value-neutral, a site of both possibility and fear. A
childlike view of the world brings wonder and worry in
equal measure. The bluebird of friendliness abuts with
the drowning screams of the Argonauts, Particle Man
gets beaten up, and the word games of âDeadâ obscure a
No Exit proposition.
All of which is to say that They Might Be Giants are
not only focused on the theme of childhood, theyâre
particularly good at capturing it with something resem-
bling authenticity. The result of this is that they are
particularly well suited to be a formative band: a body
of music that is designed to grab a still-impressionable
audience and to shape their worldview. And as later
chapters will show, there was, in 1990, a rapidly growing
young audience that was particularly receptive to the
aesthetic on offer. But before we turn to the ways in
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which They Might Be Giants were well suited to speak
to the growing geek audience, letâs look at one of the
most basic shared concerns of geeks and They Might Be
Giants: technology.
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Mediality
S t u f f ( M y M e t a l D e t e c t o r I s Wi t h M e A l l o f t h e Ti m e )
Flooding within They Might Be Giantsâ music is
largely a conceptual process. The band doesnât focus
on a profusion of things so much as on a profusion of
ideas and possibilities: information overload. But that
doesnât mean that flooding isnât a material process, just
that floodingâs materialism takes the form of a focus on
mediaâthe way in which the overflow of information
is provided. As weâll discuss later, this is evident in the
so-called âhacker ethicââthe focus on playing with
and learning the nature of a new system or piece of
technologyâbut the idea predates computer culture,
most obviously in the form of Marshall McLuhanâs famed
maxim that âthe medium is the message.â However one
frames it, though, the basic point remains: They Might
Be Giants, as a band, are particularly focused on the
material aspects of their music, both within their music
as a subject and in terms of their musicianship itself.
Most musicians and record company folks treat
records, tapes, CDs, and mp3s as functionally transparent
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formats, effectively letting the music do all the talking.
This was never the case with They Might Be Giants.
Take a moment to remember how physical a childâs
first experiences with recorded media can be: thereâs
a tactile, ritualistic gravity to putting on a record or
in recording that first tape. The 1986 song âToddler
Hiwayâ namechecks the Close NâPlay, a turntable that
Kenner debuted in 1967 to a generation of kindergar-
tenersâone of whom was John Flansburgh, writer of
the song. Like the productâs name suggests, kids operated
the Close NâPlay by opening and closing its bright red
plastic case, which had a sturdy handle for carrying
around. McLuhan would have been proud of Kennerâs
marketing campaign, which effectively branded music
as little more than an excuse to use playback technology.
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