A bond forged 30 years ago by two high-schoolers over a shared love of underground cartoons and Boston punk bands lies at the heart of They Might Be Giants’ success.
“Having the kind of history we have is incredibly useful,” says John Flansburgh, who formed the band with his old pal John Linnell in 1982. “Your friendship is a constant reminder of where you’re from and why you got into it in the first place.”
They Might Be Giants perform Tuesday in downtown San Jose as part of the “Day on the Meadow,” as co-headliners with the equally clever Fountains of Wayne.
The pair’s geeky charm, absurdist humor and distinctive way with a tune have made them a musical mainstay for a quarter-century. In their early years, songs such as “Ana Ng” and “Birdhouse in Your Soul” made the band MTV and modern rock radio favorites. More recently, millions have heard the band’s theme songs to “Malcolm in the Middle” and “The Daily Show” on TV.
Richard Greene, who co-founded the quirky a cappella group the Bobs in San Francisco in 1981, says he immediately felt a kinship when he heard the early recordings by the group, then a duo consisting of Linnell on accordion or synthesizer and Flansburgh on guitar.
“The thing that really puts us in the same league is that they’re totally willing and we’re totally willing to write songs about anything,” says Greene, whose group covered TMBG’s “Dinner Bell” on its latest CD, “Rhapsody in Bob.” “Who else would write a song about Pavlov’s dog?”
But Greene emphasizes that there is more to the band than just lyrical quirkiness. “I have a lot of respect for their musicality,” he says. “A lot of their songs harmonically go unexpected places. They make left-handed turns, and they manage to pull it off.”
TMBG – now a five-piece rock band – is still pulling it off. Its 12th album, “The Else,” hits stores Tuesday, but it has already become a hit on iTunes, where it is being greeted by the band’s fans as a smashing return to form.
“It’s exciting that our fan base is so into it,” Flansburgh says. “Fans are strange, because in some ways they don’t want you to ever change, and on the other hand they can be very tired of you if they perceive that there is some kind of repetition.”
Flansburgh, 47, credits a detour into children’s music at the beginning of the decade with giving the band new life.
“In the ’90s we were really struggling with how to fit in the world, and we were touring way too much, and we were just generally exhausted,” he says. “That’s not the kind of place that inspires bold, innovative thinking.”
So the band tried its hand at kids’ music. Although it was new territory for the band, Flansburgh says he and Linnell trusted their instincts.
“At first, people wanted to bring in educational consultants and all this other jazz,” he says. “It was like, guys, you know what? Leave us alone. We know how to write songs, and we certainly know how to access our child brains. We’ll just do the thing we do. And it came out in a really interesting way.”
The resulting album, “No!,” got great reviews from grown-up critics and hit No. 1 on Billboard’s children’s music chart in 2002. “It really reminded us of our earliest days,” Flansburgh says. “It recharged our batteries and reset the band in a way.”
Most of the tracks on “The Else” find the band working with the Dust Brothers, the production team behind such landmark albums as the Beastie Boys’ “Paul’s Boutique” and Beck’s “Odelay,” not to mention Hanson’s “Mmm Bop” single.
The result is still unmistakably TMBG, but the rhythmic loops and sonic settings created by the Dust Brothers add a fresh twist, and the Johns’ lyrics, while remaining clever and idiosyncratic, avoid sheer jokiness – at least until the irresistible closer, “The Mesopotamians.”
“We’ve been doing this for a long time,” Flansburgh says. “A lot of the people who started with us stopped going to shows 20 years ago. We’re well aware of how transient audiences can be. We’re trying to make an album that will be of interest to a brand-new fan.”
But the band hasn’t forgotten its sizable base of hard-core fans either. In the pre-digital age, the band gave fans a peek at rare tracks and works in progress through its “Dial-a-Song” service, hosted on an answering machine at a Brooklyn apartment. These days, its free monthly podcast, available at iTunes or www.dialasong.com, has hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
It’s evidence of an ongoing creativity and drive rarely found in musicians half their age.
“This has been just the perfect vehicle for us,” Flansburgh says. “I feel like we won the lottery as a band. We found an audience that supports our most unusual impulses, and we can perform nationally and make a living doing it. . . .
“I hope we can do it indefinitely. It seems like the first 25 years have gone by in about 20 minutes.”
Contact Shay Quillen at squillen@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-2741. Read his columns at www.mercurynews.com/shayquillen and his music blog at www.mercextra.com/squillen.
Day on the Meadow
with Fountains of Wayne, They Might Be Giants, Madina Lake, Kung Fu Vampire
Where: Discovery Meadow, Woz Way and West San Carlos Street, San Jose
When: 3-10:30 p.m. Tuesday
Tickets: $15 at www.ticketmaster.com or at Streetlight Records, 980 S. Bascom Ave., San Jose
Call: (408) 539-2188
