It takes a great deal of self-confidence to name a group after yourself, but singer-songwriter Jim Infantino says his decision to dub his band Jim's Big Ego was inspired by the opposite sentiment:
"I was really self-conscious about standing in front of a group and having them play my songs," Infantino tells NPR's Liane Hansen. "It was most honest to say that it was just about me... in order to defray that a little bit, I put the name out there as my big ego."
Infantino's affinity for word play stems from his days as an undergraduate at Haverford College, where he studied the philosophy of language. He says it was there that he embraced the notion that words are essentially meaningless.
"When you think of language as just a move and a response, and you drop the sense that words represent things, it gives you a lot of freedom to write about anything you like," Infantino says.
Smart, witty and sometimes absurd lyrics have become a trademark of Jim's Big Ego albums, the latest of which is They're Everywhere. In this age of Internet file-swapping, Infantino says he considers music sharing "the greatest form of flattery," and it's OK with him if his songs end up everywhere, too.
In fact, Infantino and his band mates — drummer Dan Cantor and bassist Jesse Flack — have wholeheartedly embraced the Web. The Boston-based trio distributes its music on its Web site under a special license that encourages file-sharing for non-commercial purposes. And in 2001, Infantino won a Web design award for music videos he created using Macromedia's Flash platform.
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