Factory Showroom

From This Might Be A Wiki

Factory Showroom Studio album by They Might Be Giants
First released	October 8, 1996 Release details / collectors: Show \| Hide	Tracks	14 (with hidden track)	Last album	John Henry
Label	Elektra <61862>	Length	43:32 (with hidden track)	Next album	Long Tall Weekend

Factory Showroom is They Might Be Giants' sixth studio album, and their last to be released on Elektra.

Purchase[edit]

Seller	Format	Price	Link
iTunes	AAC	$9.99

Description[edit]

A poster promoting the Factory Showroom tour

History[edit]

The development of Factory Showroom began in March 1996, when They Might Be Giants embarked on a month-long residency at the Mercury Lounge, a small venue in Manhattan's Lower East Side. They played every Thursday of the month, performing two shows a night. John Flansburgh explained in a 1997 interview: "These Thursdays we did at the Mercury were pretty much reserved for learning new material. We would rehearse the day before, and any new song we had would be the first priority. By the end of the month, we had about 14 new songs in the show that we could actually play and were ready to record. It was an extremely efficient way to learn new material." For these shows the band enlisted Eric Schermerhorn as a lead guitarist. A short tour of the midwest followed in April, after which the band returned to New York to record the new tracks.

The album was recorded from April to July 1996 at various studios in New York, including the band's home studios.^[1]^[2] Most of the basic tracks were laid down in April and May at The Hit Factory in Manhattan. Material was also recorded at River Sound Studio, Sound on Sound Studios, Clinton Studios and Coyote Studio. This was the second They Might Be Giants album to feature a live backing band, after their previous, John Henry. The core band for this album included Brian Doherty on drums, Graham Maby on bass, and Eric Schermerhorn on lead guitar. Nearly every track on the album features additional guest musicians. The album was co-produced with Pat Dillett. This was the first album to feature Dillett as producer, and he has gone on to produce the majority of the band's subsequent releases.

On April 27, 1996 the band recorded a series of Wax Cylinder Recordings at the Edison Laboratories in West Orange, NJ. The band performed four songs in front of a small audience, singing and playing acoustic instruments into a pair of enormous metal cones, which fed the sound into a hundred year old non-electrical recording device created by Thomas Edison in the 1890s. The band initially considered releasing an EP of these wax cylinder recordings. That idea was scrapped, though one of the recordings, "I Can Hear You," made its way onto Factory Showroom.

John Flansburgh let fans know about the album a few months before its release in a rare direct communication on alt.music.tmbg on June 30, 1996:

The album is going to be out in October. The title won't be Chimp or At Large, and might be Boro-Wide or my current favorite Factory Showroom but we haven't really discussed that with anyone, so who knows what everyone can agree on. Songs will include "How Can I Sing Like A Girl?", "Certain People I Could Name", "S-E-X-X-Y", "Pet Name", "Exquisite Dead Guy", "Rat Patrol", "New York City", "I Can Hear You", and a bunch more I can't remember.

The album's title was confirmed by Flansburgh in an online Q&A with fans on July 12, 1996. John Linnell explained the title in a 1996 interview: "We think of what we're doing as a 'have you seen our line of products' type thing. That's an idea that artists tend to shy away from when they're doing something for sale. Basically, we've woken up and smelled the coffee. We do have a product and we're proud of what we do, so we don't mind presenting it that way."

The band wrote a lengthy press release for the album, titled "A Guided Tour Of Factory Showroom." In it they explained: "Having recorded most of John Henry with the full band live, we set out to integrate our old, highly personal, electronic way of working with our new, more organic full band sound." The album was supported by the release of the S-E-X-X-Y EP in November.

In early 1997, a large collection of songs from the Factory Showroom recording sessions were leaked.^[3]^[4] Cassette copies of the recordings were shared widely among fans. The collection's 22 tracks included nearly the entire album and its associated B-sides, as well as seven other songs that had not yet been released.

Sales and singles[edit]

The back of a promotional flat

Factory Showroom only yielded one single, S-E-X-X-Y, which failed to chart on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks. The album itself peaked at #89 on the Billboard 200 for the week of October 26, 1996, but only spent two short weeks on the chart before dropping off.

Track listing[edit]

#	Title	Length
0	Token Back To Brooklyn	1:02
1	S-E-X-X-Y	3:51
2	Till My Head Falls Off	2:53
3	How Can I Sing Like A Girl?	4:32
4	Exquisite Dead Guy	2:02
5	Metal Detector	3:50
6	New York City	3:02
7	Your Own Worst Enemy	1:45
8	XTC Vs. Adam Ant	3:37
9	Spiraling Shape	4:24
10	James K. Polk	3:04
11	Pet Name	4:04
12	I Can Hear You	1:57
13	The Bells Are Ringing	3:32

Japan-only bonus tracks[edit]

#	Title	Length	Lyrics	Guitar Tab
14	Unforgotten	3:06
15	Sensurround	2:57

Trivia[edit]

On the cover for Factory Showroom, the band's name is set in the typeface "Giant", commissioned by Barbara Glauber and designed by Jonathan Hoefler for the album.
While the US release of the album does not include printed lyrics, the Japanese version included them in both English and Japanese.
This was the last TMBG studio album to be released on cassette until BOOK in 2021.
"Token Back To Brooklyn" is a hidden track. It can be found by rewinding the CD to before the first track starts; however, this won't work on some CD players, including most computers. It is omitted from foreign releases of the album, presumably in error. It was included as track 1 on the album, in the John Henry & Factory Showroom compilation released by Edsel. On the LP release, it is the last, unlisted track on the album, and starts after 1 minute and 15 seconds of silence following "The Bells Are Ringing". The vinyl's deadwax reflects this, with side A reading "To find the token" and side B reading "Mind the gap".