1994-01 VOX
Come On Get Happy
By Don McSwiney, VOX, January 1994
Archived from: https://digitalcollections.ucalgary.ca/asset-management/2R3BF1FFHDMWH
John Flansburgh Is The Singles Giant
About a year ago we told you about a record club with a difference. You can't get six releases for just one penny, but you can get ten releases from the outer fringes of pop culture that you won't be able to pick up at the mall. It's the Hello CD Of The Month Club curated by They Might Be Giant's John Flansburgh.
The club exists as a fun outlet for a few established artists and a means of providing emerging artists with a recording vehicle. All the songs are new and recorded specifically for the club, so it isn't a record sampler by any stretch of the imagination. It also isn't some new vehicle created to battle against the big wheels of the record industry. "We're no competition for anybody," Flansburgh quickly points out in a recent phone interview, "we're just trying to do something that's interesting and creative for the people who want to become a part of it. Basically it's a pretty adventurous project, we do a lot of things that are pretty far out of the mainstream and I don't feel like we're going to readjust people's lifestyle choices. It's not that fashionable in the first place. It's never really a good time for things which are off-beat. There's always a part of the culture which is off to the left somewhere; that's where you'll find me!"
In the past year the Hello Club has included some big names, like Frank Black and Minus 5 (a project that comprised Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows) Peter Buck (REM) Tom and Terry (NRBQ) and "a couple of guys from the Posies.") Besides these nearly household names, the CD of the month club also features new talent that Flansburgh has run across during his travels with TMBG. "I've had the opportunity to do a lot of traveling and you experience a lot of different things. Every now and then you come across something that is relatively unknown which really catches your attention. That was certainly the case with this Japanese duo — these two nineteen year old women called The Nelories — who do this 'damaged in translation' kind of pop music. Actually their lyrics have this poetic quality to them which is really intriguing. It's the only release we've done that we've actually included a lyric sheet. Half of the Hello releases are dedicated to emerging artists. the other half are established people who are doing flaky side projects for us."
The criteria for selection remain undisclosed; however, for the more established artists motivation is the biggest element. "We end up getting involved with self-starters. You can't bend somebody's arm to record songs. The Scott McCaughey release was unsolicited. He was just cooking it up himself and thought this would be a good place to present. We called up Mac from Superchunk and he was like, 'Sure!' and sent us a tape three weeks later which was very impressive. He's got his own scene very together and he loves to record and write songs. He's very active. I've realized that for a lot of people four songs is a lot to ask. Some people only write ten songs in a couple years so they're not going to give away half their record for our crazy club."
The way the club works is simple, you call 1-800-Hello-41 and subscribe. Once you've joined you get all ten releases for the year. In fact, if you call right away, you may get last year's stash which has the Frank Black stuff and the Nelories. To this point the club is doing very well, financially in the black with a couple thousand eager subscribers welcoming in the Hello disc each month. In the coming year the club promises "a real bonfire rock star" whose identity at press time must remain anonymous. Among those we can mention, the less "bona fide" will include: John Linnell (the other half of TMBG) who will present some selections from his latest project "Songs for the 50 States"; Mac from Superchunk; Drink Me (part of the NY Men's drunken choir) who are doing an EP of songs on New York City.
Flansburgh's musical contribution to this point has been as a part of the Hello The Band disc, the club's house band release (described as "electronic music — a ton of fun") which Flansburgh wrote and produced along with Joshua Fried. His other, better known, project They Might Be Giants are also in the process of recording the follow up to Apollo 18, a release which is tentatively being dubbed They Might Be Giants Have Been Set Free. Interestingly enough their release of three years ago Flood just went gold. "Like the tortoise crossing the finish line! It's really exciting, it's weird, that's what happens when you do a lot of touring," explains Flansburgh. "It took a long time. I guess Apollo 18 is due to go gold in 1996!"
Their most recent release, The Sun Is A Mass... EP sounds like something that the Hello Club might release. "It's the same kind of format," says Flansburgh, "it's an EP. I've always been a fan of the EP, it's more than just a single. It has some scope to it but it's also easy to create. That thing was basically covers; we don't usually record other people's material so it was a good vehicle for these odd songs which we didn't really know what to do with. Except in the Hello Club we only allow people to do one cover, we don't want it to become the jam session CD Of The Month Club. It was kind of like a prototypical Hello release in a way, except in a commercial way."
This brings up a question that a lot of people have raised about TMBG. At times you get the feeling that they'd be much happier recording more experimental "off to the left somewhere" music. You have to wonder if the cumulative success of each "Birdhouse In Your Soul" makes the Giants' musical window of opportunity a little narrower, if they may be feeling pressure to be more of a pop band. "I think in the back of most performers and musician's minds," explains Flansburgh, "when you play a song that really wins over an audience and everyone applauds it seems really... cool. I feel like the appropriate response should be, 'no sellout man!' At the same time I think writing songs that people like, in some immediate way, is always a winning approach. It's harder to write a hummable, interesting, and engaging song than it is to write just whatever comes off the top of your head."
"I don't think of it in those terms really. I feel like the success is a byproduct of our hard work rather than the goal. It's not absolutely clear what people are going to respond to either. Some of the songs that have worked for us have been our oddest material; part of what we've done has always been to put on an interesting and engaging show. Before we ever made records it was clear that some songs are more interesting to people. Whether it was because they were more rocking or they have more twisted lyrics or whatever. We've always been a high entertainment thing."
With that in mind it's easy to see why Flansburgh was so upset with their appearance at In-Fest last summer. "Oh Man, that was the worst show we've ever done. I cannot apologize enough. There were so many things about it which were completely fucked up. Nobody told me that my amp had been left in New York. Nobody had the guts to tell me that I was going out on stage, without a sound-check, with an amp I had never played through before. Plus the horns were completely frozen so there was no way we could play in tune. That was one in a million. I've never left a stage in the middle of a show before. We should do a free show to make up for it. It was something that should have been sorted out before. It was so screwed up, it was so messed up, it was really, really weird. Somehow it was just not to be that day. We look forward to doing that 'make it up free show' in Calgary.... We really don't suck live!"