They Might Be Stars

Attention all employers: If you’ve been noticing the mysterious number (718) 387-6962 popping up increasingly on those office phone bills, wonder no more. It’s the Dial-a-Song service of They Might Be Giants. For four years the skewed rock duo from New Jersey has been offering callers a new song on the line each day, publicizing the number with the added enticement that the service is, of course, “free if you call from work.”

For most fans, one song a day won’t do. Addiction-prone members of what is referred to in song as “the exploited working class” are increasingly spending their own hard-earned dollars on They Might Be Giants. Neither of the duo’s two albums is on a major label; both--including the recent “Lincoln”--are selling in the six-figure range.

Those numbers--and mainstream media attention like guest shots with David Letterman and rave reviews in People magazine--aren’t bad for an outfit that has labored under an image as an East Coast intellectual novelty band.

That peg isn’t groundless, given songs like “Youth Culture Killed My Dog,” “Ana Ng” (their latest alternative-radio hit) and “Kiss Me, Son of God” in which absurdity is the means of bridging comedy and tragedy. Still, the two singer/songwriters see the substance of their bizarre power-pop blend as less jokey than “obsessively personal,” if “lumpy and strange and hard to defend.”

“The whole humor thing is sort of our cross to bear,” admitted John Flansburgh, partner of John Linnell, from his New Jersey home. “We especially flinch when people say that we’re comic . I feel like people will go into a coma if you talk about humor in what you’re doing. It’s like hearing Jerry Lewis on some talk show.

“But I do think we find as songwriters that using wordplay and having a lighter touch actually helps us deal with issues that might actually be way too heavy to deal with in a direct way, because without that element of lightness it just would be considered absolutely moaning-and-groaning music.”

Plus: “The other thing that’s good about having humor in your music is that it’s actually funny.” Check.

Some record industry types might find it funny that the duo has thus far resisted what Flansburgh calls “the whole devil temptation of rock” and stayed true to its minimalist roots--still using tapes in lieu of a live rhythm section, and still putting a new song each day on the answering machine in Flansburgh’s living room.

“In fact someone just called in. Did I tell you I got a machine that counts the number of calls coming in? It was really a shock, because I never really knew before how many people actually called, and there are days when it’s around 300. It’s really phenomenal. I mean, we make records now, so it’s not like you can’t go get it.”