I arrived at the ShowBox at 5:30 p.m., the time of my scheduled interview with They Might Be Giants. Because an earlier interview was running late, the tour manager asked me to wait. Fifteen minutes later, John Flansburgh, the guitarist, appeared and apologized for the wait. He led me into the main room, where the road crew was performing a sound check. He invited me to stick around as he joined them. Without hesitation, I sat down at a table and watched them run through portions of several songs, including "Don't Let's Start." Approximately 30 minutes later, he led me backstage.

"I haven't eaten at all, so I'm going to grab a quick bite," said John, looking over the assortment of meat, cheese and crackers on the rider. "Go ahead and grab something if you want," he said, motioning towards a punch bowl bursting with crushed ice and cans of soda. "Grab a pop, water or a beer." I looked again at the bowl, thinking I'd missed something, but the only beer was root beer. I picked up a Sprite.

Knowing that I had brought a tape recorder, John was worried that there would be too much background noise. He suggested that the tour bus would be more suitable. He finished stocking his plate with food and led me out the back door of the venue and into the bus. After taking our seats on the couch in the back, he asked me several questions about Starbucks and Seattle's Best Coffee. "People living in Seattle must really resent a company calling themselves 'Seattle's Best Coffee'," he said.

Then he asked about the "hot issues" affecting the campus. Caught off guard, I told him about last year's passage of I-200. "Sounds to me like an excuse for racist people to stay racist." He laughed and noticed the tape recorder was off. He turned it on. "You don't want to miss this," he told me, holding up the recorder. "This is the good stuff."

John, a resident of Brooklyn, pulled the conversation back to coffee. "There's plenty of bad coffee in New York," he said. "Most Greek diners have pretty sub-par coffee and a big neon sign outside that says like, 'World's Best Coffee,' although everyone knows exactly what it is. But the cups are nice." He mentioned that Starbucks was just popping up in his neighborhood, and that people were enjoying it. John surmised that people may dislike the chain because it reminds people about their first job, which is generally a negative experience.

John's first worked at Strawberry's Records in Cambridge Massachusetts, "which was a horrible job" that "systematically tried to chisel me out of every dime I possibly could have made." He asked me if I had ever heard of "split shifts." I nodded.

"They try to impose a four-hour break on you," he explained. "But there's nothing you can do except hang around the store. I did that for six days a week." John then leaned forward and told me to ask him my most difficult question. The one that I was afraid to ask.

I asked him to explain the meaning of their late-'80's hit "Ana Ng." He reminded me that the song was about two soul mates on the opposite sides of the earth. "I don't know where that would place the narrator of the song, but it wouldn't be in the United States."

Somewhere in the southern hemisphere, I guessed.

"Which would explain the Latin feel of the song," he replied.

"Do you ever think your band is too smart for its own good?"

John leaned back. "What we do is really specifically not streamlined for a mass audience, and yet we've managed to find a pretty wide audience.

"This band is in a unique situation," he continued. "Most bands are really obscure and struggling or they're really successful and thriving, and we're neither.

"A lot of times people think the only goal is to be internationally successful. Most bands like us don't get much of a chance, or if they do, the opportunities are really short-lived; they basically get pigeonholed as a novelty band... good for whatever that song is that brands them forever. We've managed to avoid that pretty well. I feel like we've flourished in obscurity."

"Your songs remind me of short-story writing," I said.

John responded: "Every time I read interviews with fiction writers, I feel a great kinship to them. Maybe this is the power of song writing in general, that audiences and critics invest a great deal in the songwriter as a first person form of writing."

John then elaborated on how the band's song writing process encompasses a variety of narrative forms, including historical, autobiographical and third-person points of view.

"We set about these little tasks for ourselves, to try to write a new kind of song. After you've written 150 songs, sometimes you need to think of another strategy to get yourself motivated.

"Although we're not an experimental band, I think we're experimenting with the form of the pop song. It's an interesting thing because it's so simple."

I observed that They Might Be Giants have been very active in the field of multimedia projects, specifically for movies and television. The band has recorded themes for ABC's Nightline and Primetime Live , and for several series. Is such involvement a natural progression of the experimentation process?

John explained that the band's "left-of-center" style forces them to actively seeks new methods in which to find their fans. He said the Giants have long pursued alternative outlets, but only recently have such gigs began to materialize.

"For some reason, it almost makes me wonder if our initial audience has gotten to a place of creative control in the art community," he said. "In the past year, our phone has started ringing with unsolicited requests to do music for things. Maybe it's just a matter of this is what happens to you when you endure for a certain number of years. But also I can't help thinking that it's a thing about people who have been into the band a long time are coming into power."

Before leaving the bus and going our separate ways, John reassures us that these projects will not replace the band's tours and albums. "Doing the band straight-on is still our first love and the thing that we're interested in pursuing."

Long Tall Weekend, the newest release by They Might Be Giants, is now available exclusively in the mp3 format at http://www.emusic.com.