âFree When You Call From Workâ The story of Dial-A-Song by They Might Be Giants
The liner notes from Dial-A-Song: 20 years of They Might Be Giants
 Before there were modems-and back when the function of the pound key on a touch tone phone was entirely a mystery-we here at They Might Be Giants started a simple but enticing service on a home phone line with a home phone machine that would inform and often eclipse the rest of our bandâs output. The idea for Dial-A-Song, which started receiving calls in 1984, was born out of initial phone machine fad of the early 80âs in New York City where the devices first came into common use. Still in service today at 718 387-6962, it receives calls continuously and from around the world. It is played by DJs over the air, and receptionist on speakerphones as a daily escape from their inner-office hell. It flaunts a notion that still boggles the minds of many in the music industry: give something away and folks might come back to buy some more. It has given a very small musical project an immeasurable amount of notoriety, and connected us to an audience that is surprisingly accepting of our most extreme impulses.
           Although we had worked in bands with standard lineups, we were also part of an early generation of home-tapers, a trend that has later been dubbed lo-fi. Armed with a TEAC four-track tape recorder, a Moog synthesizer and the very earliest of drum machines, we found a kind of creative freedom in home recording that seemed unobtainable in live band. Inspired by the full range of studio-oriented work of San Franciscoâs The Residents, and self-deputized by the D.I.Y. spirit of the New Wave- we formed the band around our recordings- making elaborate demos, and playing shows with tape recorded accompaniment as a substitute for a live rhythm section. The idea of placing our homemade recording on a phone machine was an idea we had casually kicked around from the moment the devices started showing up in electronics stores
           We started performing in the summer of 1982, and had moved slowly up the local band ladder at a number of downtown clubs through â83. Over the course of a year we built up a small but tangible following, but then in quick succession a couple of random events knocked the band off the performance calendar: Linnell broke his wrist in a bike accident and would be in a cast for three months, and Flansburgh had his new apartment thoroughly burglarized on his first day there, with the thieves literally taking out his lifeâs possessions in the boxes that had just been brought in. They only left Flansburghâs four-track TEAC tape recorder behind, presumably because it was too ponderous to carry out the window.
           While Flansburgh found a new, safer, apartment, performing was still out of the question for the immediate future. The idea of Dial-A-Song seemed less far-fetched as it became our only vehicle to generate continued interest in the band. We bought a machine, and started placing ads in the back of the Village Voice, and the calls started coming in immediately. The local press, already tuned in to the very public expression of Keith Haring and the downtown art scene, also started taking notice, and our real career as a band began.
           Dial-A-Song has had some unexpected and long term influences on our song-writing style and gave us some basic insight into our audience. First off, if a caller didnât like the song, or just simply found it too long, they hung up. We could hear the machines prematurely rewinding whenever a caller didnât make it to the end. Almost immediately we found ourselves moving away from the layering of tracks that had our four-track set up had offered us, and toward more vocally-oriented songs with simple, graphic accompaniment. We also found long sustained notes, and almost any instrumental solo, would be falsely perceived as the end beep, and reset the machine. Again, the machine was calling the shots, and writing songs with tighter arrangements-and no long notes- became imperative.
           While the set up for has changed a bit over the years-from reliable but crude Record-A-Call phone machines to sophisticated but highly erratic computer-based systems and then back-a lot about Dial-A-Song hasnât changed at all. Itâs still just a regular call to Brooklyn. It still only takes one call at a time. Waves of calls burn out the machines-sometimes knocking them out for days-and then weeks go by when itâs relatively quiet.
           Almost every track on the Dial-A-Song box set started its life on Dial-A-Song. The biggest challenge to They Might Be Giants as a musical project was clear to us before we even started: this thing needed a lot of songs. We had to write a lot more, because Dial-A-Song is always hungry for new songs, no matter how insignificant or misguided. It helped us become less precious and a lot more prolific, and it reminded us of the simple charms of melody.
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