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PHONING IT IN

Phoning It In: “Rock Club”

TMBG

They Might Be Giants have resurrected their ingenious Dial-A-Song concept by streaming a new song each week of 2015 at www.dialasong.com. MAGNET’s Matthew Fritch reviews them all.

In 2009, John Flansburgh was on This American Life (listen here or, if you’re a freak like me, read the transcript) explaining a thing or two about contract riders. Flansburgh and Ira Glass get to the bottom of the Van Halen brown M&Ms clause, and the conversation is brief but pretty great. “Rock Club” is a sidelong look at the fatigue and absurdity that results from being a touring musician for decades. (It’s also just a song about shitty rock clubs.) It has a vaguely “Freebird” acoustic strum, and that’s possibly intentional.

File-A-Song: 8/10