Being in a band, a lot of times people think of what you're doing in terms of a competition. They talk about where you are professionally in your career, and all this other stuff. And if you're a lifer, you know it's going to be ups and downs. It's not like anybody is always just steady on.

When we're on tour, probably we don't go 24 hours without someone asking us where we came up with the name They Might Be Giants. Which, on one level, seems like a completely legitimate question. If I think of other bands, like The Beatles, it would explain to me that John Lennon had a proclivity for slightly cheap puns. But I'm not sure how much insight that would give me into what's actually good about The Beatles' music.

That really sums up the strange bluntness that a really prime German interview can have. They're really interested in your cultural velocity in this way that I don't think people in the United States even necessarily think about alternative-rock bands. So it's not like we're against regular rock. We're not like a battling army shaking our weapons against The Rolling Stones.

I guess the revival of vinyl records is not helping the environmental problem. Although, in some ways, people don't throw records away - I mean, I still have records from when I was 5. So it doesn't seem quite so wasteful. But maybe I'm just lying to myself.

We want to be original. To express our most interesting stuff. But you don't see the word "original" come up very often to describe big bands. Our job isn't to pigeonhole ourselves or describe where we fit in. Our goal isn't to fit in. Our goal is to be free of all that stuff.

A lot of times I'll post things on Facebook, and the immediate response will be like, "Stick to the music!"

Being in a band, a lot of times people think of what you're doing in terms of a competition. They talk about where you are professionally in your career, and all this other stuff. And if you're a lifer, you know it's going to be ups and downs. It's not like anybody is always just steady on.