Hello CD Of The Month Club

Hello's logo, designed by John Flansburgh

The Hello Recording Club (also known as the Hello CD of the Month Club) was a subscription-based independent record company founded in 1993 by John Flansburgh and Marjorie Galen. The club produced roughly ten exclusive EP-length CDs annually, each containing four or five original recordings from an artist. Between 1993 and 1997, Hello issued a total of 43 releases from 34 different acts.

The club was named after Flansburgh's Brooklyn home recording studio, Hello Studio, where much of the company's operations were conducted. Flansburgh designed Hello's logo himself, credited under the pseudonym Black Angus. He said of the logo in 2026: "Having toured Japan a bunch of times, I was entranced by the use of katakana and English on shirts and packaging. It really was just picking up on the graphic style and bringing it into Hello's identity."^[2]

Hello was intended to provide a platform for new artists and encourage "off the record" side projects by established acts.^[3]^[4] Many of the featured artists had toured or collaborated with They Might Be Giants. In a 1993 interview with Ray Gun, Flansburgh explained: "We hear a lot of really great bands that don't have deals and aren't readily available in the recorded market. The real impulse is to get some stuff that maybe for commercial reasons isn't getting picked up by some major label but is of merit in other ways."

Operations[edit]

May 1994 Wired magazine article

Hello releases were exclusive to the club and were not sold in retail stores. They were mailed intermittently to subscribers along with the club newsletter, HEY. The company's staff consisted of four people, including Flansburgh and Galen, and all releases were packed and mailed by hand.^[5]^[6] CDs were manufactured to order and issued in cardboard sleeves. By the end of its first year, the club had approximately 2,000 subscribers.^[7]

The company only licensed artists' master recordings for short-term release, with all rights reverting to the artists at the end of each year.^[8]^[9] This was an unusually generous arrangement for a record company. Several artists have subsequently reissued their Hello EPs.

In a June 1996 interview, Flansburgh discussed the club's purpose and operation:

The split function of Hello is to expose people to groovy new bands, and also let people in more established bands to do side projects that won't be perceived as an alternate career move, but instead be just something they're doing for kicks. We've been pretty successful. A lot of cool bands have done things that are beyond their regular thing. [...] It's really great, and it's really respectful of people's ability to do more than one thing. It's a more creative way of having a career and it sort of recognizes that people can work on different levels, and do good work on different levels. It's definitely a better thing. It's really refreshing to me to see people work on more than one level.
I'm amazed by how many positive responses I get from people on doing Hello Club stuff, because I'm basically just cold calling them. I don't have a million show business friends. I have to call up management people and be like, "Um, I run this really small thing, and we do this thing that, uh, nobody knows about, and uh, do you want to do it?" And more often than not, people are like "Yeah! It sounds like a lot of fun!" And you can tell that it's very exciting for them to be involved in something that isn't about a press release, or spearheading some campaign. Most people get into music because they like playing music.

Both Flansburgh and John Linnell released solo material through Hello. The club also issued two They Might Be Giants releases: the promotional CD Live!! New York City 10/14/94 and a reissue of the band's 1985 Demo Tape, with proceeds from the latter donated to the People With AIDS Coalition. Hello also had a "house band", Hello The Band, consisting of Flansburgh and Joshua Fried, which released one self-titled EP. On October 7, 1995, the club presented a "Hello Showcase" concert at Mercury Lounge in New York, featuring several Hello artists. Flansburgh formed Mono Puff specifically for the show, and Linnell performed a set of his State Songs material.

Closure[edit]

Hello effectively ceased operations at the end of 1996, although production continued until mid-1997. The final three releases were shipped in April and May 1997 with a letter from Flansburgh explaining the club's closure. In a 1999 interview, he reflected: "We pretty much worked with all the bands that were on our wish list. The whole thing was just a creative project helping out new bands and trying not to go broke. We had no seed money or capital to start it but at the height of it we probably had 5,000 subscribers. The whole thing was also kind of a burnout for me, the administrative thing doesn't really interest me. I don't want to be anyone's dad."

Two announced releases were never issued: one by Gordon Gano and a various artists collection titled the Hello Family Back To School Special. There were plans for a Hello compilation CD in 1999, but it also did not materialize.^[10] In May 2020, Hello's remaining stock was given to Asbestos Records for sale online.

Discography[edit]

Date	Title	Artist	More Info
1993	1985 Demo Tape	They Might Be Giants	More details
March 1993	Brian Dewan (1993 EP)	Brian Dewan	N/A
April 1993	The Nelories (EP)	Nelories	N/A
May 1993	Flat Old World (EP)	Flat Old World	N/A
June 1993	Kurt Hoffman's Band of Weeds (EP)	Kurt Hoffman's Band of Weeds	N/A
July 1993	Eugene Chadbourne (EP)	Eugene Chadbourne	N/A
August 1993	Prelude to "The Teds"	The Residents	N/A
September 1993	Hello The Band	Hello The Band	More details
October 1993	Duplex Planet	David Greenberger	N/A
November 1993	Frank Black (EP)	Frank Black	N/A
December 1993	The Minus Five	The Minus Five	N/A
1994	Hello 1993 Sampler	Various Artists	More details
1994	A Hello CD Of The Month Club Sampler	Various Artists	More details
February 1994	Portastatic	Portastatic	N/A
March 1994	Five Songs	Drink Me	N/A
April 1994	The Jickets	The Jickets	More details
May 1994	Peter Stampfel (EP)	Peter Stampfel	N/A
June 1994	State Songs	John Linnell	More details
September 1994	Brian Dewan (1994 EP)	Brian Dewan	N/A
October 1994	Insert Tongue Here	Spanish Fly	N/A
November 1994	Andy Partridge (EP)	Andy Partridge	N/A
November 1994	Live!! New York City 10/14/94	They Might Be Giants	More details
December 1994	Chaz and the Motorbikes	Chaz and the Motorbikes	N/A
March 1995	John Flansburgh's Mono Puff	Mono Puff	More details
April 1995	My Dad is Dead	My Dad is Dead	N/A
May 1995	Alaska (EP)	Alaska	N/A
June 1995	Spondee	Spondee	More details
July 1995	Freedy Johnston (EP)	Freedy Johnston	N/A
August 1995	The Coctails	The Coctails	N/A
September 1995	Philco Bendyx	Philco Bendyx	N/A
October 1995	Amy Allison and The Maudlins	Amy Allison And The Maudlins	N/A
November 1995	Dave Schramm	Dave Schramm	N/A
December 1995	Hello Family Santa Special	Various Artists	More details
March 1996	Looming in the Gloom	The Gothic Archies	N/A
April 1996	Will Rigby	Will Rigby	More details
May 1996	Unsupervised	Mono Puff	More details
June 1996	Soul Coughing (EP)	Soul Coughing	N/A
July 1996	Laura Cantrell	Laura Cantrell	More details
August 1996	House Of Mayors	John Linnell	More details
September 1996	Hal Sirowitz	Hal Sirowitz	More details
October 1996	You Were Spiraling (EP)	You Were Spiraling	N/A
November 1996	The Hal Cragin Years	Mono Puff	More details
December 1996	The Steve Calhoon Years	Mono Puff	More details