Giants move to Lilliput

When They Might Be Giants turned to children’s music a couple years back, it made perfect sense. In the 20-plus years the group had been singing about hearing aids, nightlights and everything in between, Brooklyn’s quintessential quirk-rock duo had made a calling card out of turning unlikely subjects into sing-alongs.

Populated with robots, sleepwalkers and potato-chip-eating puppies, their debut kids CD was no exception. Appealing to parents and progeny alike, “No!” escalated to the top of Billboard’s children’s music chart in 2002.

The band’s dual success has been great news for fans, but it will make for some tough parental decision-making this Saturday: Pack up the kids and bring them to the Giants’ afternoon show for children or hire a baby-sitter and catch their rock show later that night.

Both shows will feature songs from “No!” and the usual crowd pleasers -- old favorites from the band’s ‘80s heyday, such as “Particle Man” and “Dr. Worm.” But where the children’s program includes songs from the group’s recent children’s book and CD, “Bed, Bed, Bed,” the rock show will veer off in the direction of their new EP, “Indestructible Object,” and their next full-length album, due this summer.

According to John Linnell, who plays keyboards and accordion for the band, the difference between the shows may be less in the songs than in audience attitude.

“It’s sort of slightly schizophrenic because we’re playing some of the same songs, but the feedback we get is completely different,” he said. “Adults kind of want things to go well as much as the band does, so they clap in the right places and somebody will laugh if you make a joke from the stage. There’s this constant sort of affirmation coming from the audience. Kids are not like that. They don’t really care whether you’re succeeding or failing on stage, and if they get bored, they’ll start talking to each other.”

They Might Be Giants may have a long track record of performing for adults, but they’re still getting used to their new pint-size fans. Linnell credits the nerdy charisma of singer John Flansburgh with “keeping the ball rolling at these kids’ shows,” which they perform infrequently and almost never back-to-back with their shows for adults.

“Doing both the kids and adults Giants shows had been discussed since they came last year with Dave Eggers and the ‘Live at McSweeneys’ show,” said UCLA Live director David Sefton. “An intelligent rock ‘n’ roll band making clever, funny work for kids is a perfect combination.”

Over the last few years the group has made numerous forays into kid culture. They wrote the Grammy-winning theme song, “Boss of Me,” for the hit Fox TV show “Malcolm in the Middle.” They’ve appeared on Nickelodeon’s “Blues Clues” and the Cartoon Network’s “Home Movies.” They’ve also contributed songs to the films “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me” and “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.”

Most recently, the duo signed a deal with Disney to write four kids’ books with companion musical CDs. The books will be similar to “Bed, Bed, Bed,” a book of four stories accompanied by a CD that sets those stories to music.

“The first thing we’re doing is a DVD that will have something to do with the alphabet,” said Linnell, who concedes he uses his 5-year-old son as a test audience. “This is actually the first time we’ve done something that is truly teaching kids something.”

The rest of their kids’ projects have been strictly “entertaining as opposed to having something about it that was supposed to be good for kids,” he said.

That’s a philosophy that extends beyond the actual music. The songs on the “No!” CD are also interactively animated. Pop it into your Mac or PC and the songs come to life as a sort of kid-vid karaoke, with a scroll bar that shows each song’s lyrics and instructions on how to control the animated characters.

“With ‘No!’ we made a record we thought was fun and exciting and something that kids would like,” Linnell said. “There’s a lot of stuff which is intended for kids that adults actually don’t like, and it’s not really clear that the children would necessarily choose that stuff if they had the choice.

“Parents have to like the stuff too, is what we’ve learned. They’re ponying up the money.”

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They Might Be Giants

When: Saturday; children’s show, 4 p.m.; rock show, 8 p.m.

Where: Royce Hall, UCLA

Price: Kids’ show, $15-$30 (children 12 and younger receive 30% discount); rock show, $25-$35

Info: (310) 825-2101 or www.uclalive.org

Also: Rock show at House of Blues Anaheim, 1530 S. Disneyland Drive, Anaheim, Friday, 8 p.m. $20-$22.50. (714) 778-2583.