A couple years ago, I
interviewed John Flansburgh from
They Might Be Giants about their
Here Comes the 123s CD/DVD set. Now with the impending release of the follow-up to that Grammy-winning album,
Here Comes Science, I recently had the opportunity to talk with Flansburgh's partner, John Linnell. In our chat we talked about his earliest musical influences, writing songs that aren't silly dance songs, and the role of science advisors...
Zooglobble: What are your childhood musical memories?
John Linnell: There were a couple specific records -- first,
Songs of the Pogo, it had lyrics by Walt Kelly, who wrote the comic strip and worked with a songwriter on the record. It came out in the '50s, before I was born. It was a followup to a songbook Kelly wrote. It had some crazy, non-sensical wordplay.
Sounds like you...
Yeah... it was an important record in my childhood.
Then there was the LP of the soundtrack to
Dumbo. I remember "Pink Elephants on Parade" -- it was a march with a menacing quality.
When I was 8 or 9, there was a Banana Splits record I liked. It wasn't quite as acid-touched as
HR Pufnstuff, say -- it was the inferior followup. All those guys now acknowledge the influence of drugs on kids' TV...
How did you pick the topics for Here Comes Science?
We attempted to represent all the sciences. There was no way to cover all of them, but we tried to make it representative of the sciences -- earth, biology, physics, chemistry, paleotonology, applied sciences. We could make a couple more volumes and not run out of general topics. There was a whole series of
Singing Science records, after all, that featured Tom Glazer.
Was it harder to write songs where you have to convey scientific truth rather than emotional truth (or a silly dance song)?
The previous recordings weren't that difficult -- there couldn't be anything simpler than alphabet. We could pour our efforts in being emotionally engaging.
There already was an alphabet song...
Yeah... but with
Science, it was a lot harder to write factually accurate songs. We hired a guy from the New York Hall of Science to check what we did. We didn't need to hire anyone on the
[Here Come the] ABCs and
[Here Come the] 123s albums.
Were the videos made an even earlier component of the process as a result?
No, we pretty much applied the same process. We wrote the songs, then handed them over to the visual folks. We had to oversee the videos more. The science advisor looked at the visuals, which was somewhat grueling. Sometimes we re-storyboarded them to make the information more clear. But the creative animators could still express themselves. In fact, the visuals were even more packed -- the video for "Meet the Elements" crammed all this information into the video that wasn't even in the song.
A major theme of the album seems to be trying to convey the idea of science as much as or more so than facts...
We didn't talk much about themes when we were writing songs -- we just presented the information. But a little way through writing the songs, we realized we had some songs about science as a way of thinking, which is a topic that is both important and challenging for kids. The way I'm saying it here puts kids asleep right away. But hopefully they'll pick it up on the album. Like on "Science is Real" -- there are ways of ferreting out truth. It's the difference between science and myth. Hopefully kids are interested in that idea.
What's the next kids' album going to be?
I can answer that in two words: no idea. This album opens us up to a broad range of possibilities -- we've been unleashed from simpler topics. After
ABCs, the Disney producers said that the obvious next step was the
123s. But here on out? We could certainly tackle subjects for older kids now -- history, or how society works. It'll be fun.
What else is next?
We have a book coming out called
Go!, which is based on a PBS song we did. It's a nicely illustrated version. And another adult CD is still in the works...
Photo credit: Autumn DeWilde
Where would kids music be without Belinda Miller and Hova Najarian, the hosts of the Greasy Kid Stuff radio show? Oh, sure, the greater arc of kids music would be unchanged -- Laurie Berkner, Ralph's World, Justin Roberts, Dan Zanes -- those folks would still be popular had Greasy Kid Stuff not aired starting in 1995. Belinda and Hova were never against mainstream "kids music" -- they just didn't have as much interest in it. By not making those artists the focus of their show, what they've done is expand (or re-expand) the notion of what music for kids might mean.
Greasy Kid Stuff 3: Even More Songs From Inside the Radio, just like its predecessor volumes 1 and 2 (review here) successfully mixes the rock with the silly, the (semi-)famous with the obscure, and produces another near-perfect mixtape. Just take the first three songs -- a theme song from fans They Might Be Giants to the incredible (and incredibly wordy) track from the late Logan Whitehurst "Happy Noodle vs. Sad Noodle" to Bubble's slightly off-kilter cover of "Pure Imagination." And so on. I hesitate to recommend specific songs because then you'll just go and download the best ones, and to appreciate what they're doing here you should listen to the whole thing. Really, I never would have thought that a cover (with new lyrics) of Burt Bacharach's theme for The Blob would make a good kids song, and I would've been totally wrong, because Guy Klucevsek's accordion-fueled version is perfect.
Kids ages 4 through 10 (and really, a lot older) will appreciate the songs here. You can listen to samples from the 32-minute album here. If anything has changed in the five years since the last compilation came out it's that a lot more people are making more idiosyncratic kids music. So while you have a repeat appearance from TMBG, you also have Captain Bogg & Salty and Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke making appearances as do John Upchurch and Mark Greenberg, creators of the great John and Mark's Children's Album, albeit in their format guise as members of The Coctails. If Belinda and Hova are playing more "kids music" on their radio show these days, it's in part because kids music has moved in their direction. Greasy Kid Stuff 3 is a small sliver of this vibrant genre with a lot of other fun songs mixed in. Recommended.
