For those of you who already dig They Might Be Giants in all their irrepressible, industrious, and insanely prolific glory, this may not be news to you - but TMbG has been running a podcast since last year sometime and it’s awesome. The podcast is not just a rehash of old TMbG classics, it’s an entire (mp3)radio-like program with strange versions of favorites, new wierd loops, and bits of their latest ideas. The podcast (also linked from their domain dialasong.com is the logical successor to the actual ‘dial-a-song’ they ran off their answering machine in the early 90s except that in this format there’s enough time (and tape?) to really explore ideas.

In the band’s own words,

The shows feature exclusive new material and previews, rare recordings from the band’s cavernous vaults, live performances and music from their television and film work.

Many songs incorporate samples of famous guitar solos, or chord progressions that wizz by before you have a chance to place them, and others are done in the style of other famous (and not so famous) musicians such that you may (or not) get the musical joke. Podcast 9A from Oct 2006, for example (near the end has a song called ‘If I win the lottery’ which is performed in the style of Jonathan Richman, right down to an impression of his voice. The Democratic Party song which follows is a political song in the old tradition.

If you use Firefox (or IE7), just clicking on this link should get you instant access to the podcast XML feed:

http://www.tmbg.com/_media/_pod/podcast.xml

If you use iTunes, click on Advanced | Subscribe to Podcast and paste that link in.