Well that was fun. Today marks the last of Lily’s and my interviews on Gothamist. Hopefully you’ve been reading and enjoying, and we look forward to another round of interviews sometime in mid-December. Meanwhile, today’s interview came about totally by luck thanks to the kindness of publicist Sam Rudy. When he asked if we’d be interested in John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants who was making his stage debut in the new rock musical People Are Wrong! at the Vineyard Theatre, it took all of five seconds for us to say, “Uhm … YEAH!”
John talks about the new show, which was co-written by his wife, and his career with TMBG. It’s absolutely incredible how prolific TMBG has been the last several years. They’ve written theme songs that are almost hard to imagine came from the same group – take The Daily Show vs. WNYC’s daily The Leonard Lopate Show. They came out with a new album in July and plan to have another release by next Fall. Plus they’re now doing these kids-oriented projects for Disney. I got seriously tired just reading about John’s life.
Meanwhile, if you’re not that familiar with TMBG, you should be, and there are some great simple ways to do so. For one thing, you can download some free mp3s and buy many others from their web site. Even better, a documentary called Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns) about TMBG was produced a couple years ago and now premieres on Sundance Channel a week from tomorrow (on 11/20) at 9 PM. Sundance will repeat the film several times over the next couple weeks, and you should definitely try to catch it. But for now, enjoy the interview.
Out of Focus 