They Built a Little Empire…

They Might Be Giants has been a sta­ple of mine since high school.  The Tiny Toon Adven­tures videos of “Istan­bul” and “Par­ti­cle Man” inspired one of my friends to buy the album, and of course he made me a copy.  My dubbed copy of Flood got stuck in the tape deck of my car my senior year, and I’ve never been the same.

The two Johns (Lin­nell and Flans­burgh) have always had a strong work ethic, and have always been giv­ing to their fans.  When the band hit hard times in 1983, rather than allow cir­cum­stances to dis­cour­age or stall them, they came up with a new way to keep cre­at­ing music.  For 23 years, Dial-A-Song was an answer­ing machine in Brook­lyn that always had a song for the caller.  The slo­gan, writ­ten on the leaf notes of many of their albums, was “free when you call from work.”  I per­son­ally tried many times to get through over the years, but always hit a busy sig­nal.   Last year, the band decided that it was time to retire the ser­vice.  “Dial-A-Song mainly just died a tech­no­log­i­cal death,” John Lin­nell said.

The Dial-A-Song idea has evolved into their web pres­ence today.  Instead of only being avail­able to one lis­tener at a time, peo­ple every­where are able to simul­ta­ne­ously hear their free mp3s and pod­casts.   I adore their adult music, but right now the real fun is intro­duc­ing the kids to them, when the whole fam­ily watches their Fri­day Night Video Pod­cast for Fam­i­lies together.  Every­one can relate to this song in some way or another, right?  The lit­tlest one learns the days of the week, and Dad gets to bitch about going to work.  Win!