SOMA - June 1996
Interview with John Flansburgh
By Jesse Fuchs, SOMA, July 1996
Archived from: alt.music.tmbg part 1 part 2
Note from Jesse Fuchs: "Here's an interview I did a few days ago with, as he modestly put it, 'the one who doesn't play the accordian.' I did this interview for a couple of articles - one about Mono Puff and the whole Hello CD club for the exceedingly fine San Fran magazine SOMA (should be in the next issue - pick it up, dammit!) and one about songwriting for my music zine, Crazy Rhythms."
What inspired you to do the Mono Puff CD?
I've been in TMBG for 12 years, and it's my primary thing. Over the year I've picked up a bunch of sideline hobby things that I really enjoy doing - right now I'm directing a video for Soul Coughing's "Soundtrack To Mary". When I started Hello, people wondered whether TMBG was going to release for Hello. The first year I did a disc under a pseudonym, and the second year I did a disc under the name Mono Puff, since it's been around for 4 years, I had recorded a bunch of songs I like that were independent of TMBG. It seemed like I recorded about enough songs to make a proper release of it. Then I did a Hello revue last year in New York, so I put a band together on the spur of the moment and played these songs. It turned out a lot better than I had anticipated - I could pick from all the different musicians from the New York scene that I had met. It came together in a very casual way, and it just happened to work. It could have just been okay, and we wouldn't have made a record. But because the shows went so well, it kind of sparked everybody's enthusiasm to do a record, in as spontaneous a way as the band had come together. It's interesting to make a record without a budget or a master plan. So we recorded a lot of the songs that had been on EPs, but now with a full band sound. The thing about Mono Puff is that it's a very guitar-oriented band. In TMBG, my official role is that I'm the guy who doesn't play the accordion.
Your guitar playing, from album to album, has gotten a lot meatier and less polite...
Well, thank you. I've certainly gotten more practice. When we started, I'd just learned how to play the guitar. I started playing when I was 18, and at that age, most people have either gotten pretty good or given up. To start at that late a date, I felt a little like I was in the remedial class. I think it's great when people can play their instruments well, but it's never been a necessity to me. I think you can be a pretty bad musician and still make great music, while the opposite is much more difficult. I've always been song-oriented, and I try to write songs that complement whatever the limits of my ability have been, and still are. It's not that big a deal in a way - rock music isn't that complicated in a way. Even though a lot of songs that I write come across as being complicated, the impulses behind them come from pretty essential places in my psyche. It's a great form of writing - the three minute song is such an interesting, elastic medium for expression.
It's like a haiku - what can you get across in this limited space.
Yeah - it seems completely limited, but because it's so concise, you can float a lot of ideas that would be harder to justify in a more elaborate, puffed up context. I'm intrigued by stranger, simpler things. When something remains mysterious, it works better than something that's explicit. When someone makes their case too well, it's kind of dull. I've never been much for confessional songwriting - I'd rather wonder what somebody is driving at, than having somebody's emotions downloaded onto my psyche.
When people talk about TMBG, they talk about the songwriting of TMBG, when you and Linnell have very different songwriting styles.
I'm not sure that I can agree with you on that. We collaborate on a lot of material. The main thing is just that our voices sound very different. John Linnell is probably my biggest musical influence, and I write a lot of songs thinking... when I come to a dead end, it's more often than not I'm thinking "well I wonder, what would John do in this situation?" We've created a style together in the band - even though we have different ways of approaching stuff and different takes on things, it's not as awkward a mix as one might think. I think there's more difference within our songwriting - I wish the Mono Puff record was a little more unified. One thing I thought when I was putting it together is that it'll be the first record I've made that has a single voice on it. It might be a relief to have one sound, and I was kind of surprised that it turned out to be as much of a grab-bag of a record as it is. Especially since - when you record a record over a weekend, it sounds kind of samey. Which can be a really good thing - Rocket to Russia is a very samey record. One song stops and the next one stops and you wonder if they even changed the settings on their amps. The variety pack approach of TMBG is such a hallmark of the band, that I thought it would be nice to do a more straight ahead, four-piece rock and roll record, but it didn't really turn out that way. I guess, the thing I really realized from it, is that it's not an accident that I'm in TMBG. I'm cursed.
What I noticed about the songwriting is that you have the shortest attention span of any pop musician, while Linnell has one great song he keeps writing.
He's just as versatile... I'm definitely a workaholic. But John does a lot of different stuff as well. You might be attributing more stuff of Linnell's to me than you realize. Usually who writes the songs is who sings them, but there are ones that are real 50/50 collaborations. There have always been a song or two on each record that we've worked out together.
But that's out of 20.
It's interesting. It's such a primary part of my life, even when I'm writing songs... one thing different about writing for the Mono Puff record and the Hello CDs is that it felt very different to be writing songs that weren't for TMBG. One thing exciting about making a record outside your regular group is that it cleans the slate, there's not template through which everyone will understand it. I wouldn't feel bad if people heard the Mono Puff record and said "this is like a really supercharged, electric guitar version of TMBG". When I was putting together this, I was like "it would be nice to just crank the guitars up on this record." On the next TMBG record, there are songs that completely would make this sound like a declawed cat. There's no master plan. One thing good about the Mono Puffs is that it's just not as big a deal as TMBG. It's working on a much more low-key level and very few people are paying attention. With TMBG, we've gotta establish an audience, go out on these big tours, and everything maters a whole lot. With Mono Puff, I just got back from a week of shows, and by the end of the week, we had three other songs that we had just sort of put together on the way. And it was totally cool - we worked out this song called Felt Tip Pen, which is an excellent song. It was really exciting and pressure-free.
Is Mono Puff's touring band the same as on the record?
The problem is that the personnel on the record is that Hal and Steve have other bands. Hal wasn't on this last week of touring, because he's working with Iggy Pop. We're gonna do some shows in September that are like Hal and Steve and me. We have a second guitarist who on the record was Mike Viola, and on the road this time it was Eric, who's in Iggy's band too. One thing about NY musicians is that if they're good, they're usually working. You can't get too pissed off that they're going off to do stadium shows with some legend.
You're using two members from Iggy's band. Both in TMBG and here, you've moved a ways away from being cute. The "They Might Be Canadian" joke no longer applies.
I don't know that one.
I once read a review of the first album that said you should be named They Might Be Canadian.
Being that we wear hunting clothes?
That you're cute and fun and harmless, like all Canadians are.
Well fuck them, man! We're not cute anymore, we're ugly old guys now. I know what you're saying, the first album had that children's book cover. We were a two-piece, and no matter how hard we try to rock, there was a hearty governor on our ability to rock, it's been a very natural evolution. As a band, we've been very lucky - we've clawed our way to the middle. 80% of the bands you see are brand new, and are gonna totally ghost after three years. And then there are these other bands that are so monstrously huge, they're like a marketing plan more than a form of personal expression. We've been lucky in that we've survived the flavor of the month, and moved on to just having an audience for what we do. I feel like if [we] started to really suck tomorrow, the people who have been enjoying what we've been doing would learn to hate it. I don't take it for granted, but it's very unusual to be in this middle ground. Most of the bands we started with, many of whom got signed, and many of whom had much more commercially successful careers than us - they aren't together anymore. Like Living Colour - we shared bills with them in the late 80s in New York, and they're really not around anymore as a group. Bands usually don't last very long.
Have you ever worried about being exposed in the wrong way - you know, Randy Newman does "Short People."
It's funny you mention that, because that's the exact example I've always used as my worst-case scenario. Randy Newman is a songwriter that I completely respect, and his career was really transformed by that song, and in a lot of ways it really closed the chapter on the first half of his career. He's done other things now - he's moved on to doing movie soundtracks. When I was a teenager, I thought Randy Newman records were among the most fascinating things in the world, and he's written some fantastic, beautiful songs that work on almost any level. And what's odd is that Short People catapulted him into another audience. It's not a bad song - it's a sophisticated two-level song - it's a song about prejudice that has a catchy conceit to it. I worry about that a lot, because we write songs that are very much like that in a lot of ways - that could be popularly misunderstood. It would be disingenuous of me to say I wouldn't want to have a big fat hit record. I'd love to have one, because it would mean that I could have a really excellent light show and big sellout crowds, and it would be fun. I know what it feels like to sell out a crowd, and I know what it feels like when the house is half-full.
It's a funny thing - you hear a lot of people- I just did a week of shows of shows with Mono Puff, and 4 of them were well-attended, and 2 were really under-attended. The under-attended shows felt like work. TMBG usually plays in theaters, and I was playing in clubs in Mono Puff, and there's a certain idea that you're supposed to say 'It's so much better in clubs, man!' In some ways, it kinda sucks a little. It's fun to play in a sold-out club, but it's more fun to play in a sold-out theater. Part of it is that I never feel like I'm becoming close personal friends with an audience. I feel respectful of the distance - there are hundreds of people watching me at any given time, and I don't want to look too foolish, for fear of alienating them. I have no idea who's in the audience - and when I go to shows, I don't even clap, so it's hard to judge what people are thinking or how they're appreciating it. I've gone to shows that I thought were fantastic, but I don't necessarily feel compelled to applaud. I don't mean to sound like a total grump, but I don't think to roar out my approval.
If Laurie Anderson performs "O Superman," you're not going to start hooting and stomping your feet at the end.
Right - I don't want to be the guy whistling in the back row. But what's funny is that, as a performer, I actually appreciate the guy whistling in the back row. They're two different worlds that people kind of mistake for being the same world in a way. I would imagine I could do a show where nobody applauded and could convince myself that people really liked it, but it would probably involve self-hypnosis.
The rock moves get more applause. If you do "Chess Piece Face," which is a great song...
We've done it live a lot, and we get almost no response from it. It's interesting - TMBG can do a really good festival show - simply by being a band for 12 years and having written a lot of uptempo rock songs that work, we can do a festival show and it's surprisingly compelling. It's not our kind of show, because we like having a range of stuff in what we do, but it's not really appropriate when half the audience doesn't even know who you are to do something that works on anything but an immediate level. I really enjoy performing and I really enjoy doing shows, but I don't feel like it's real. I'm not a "curtain curtain don't come down!" kind of guy. I'm kind of bugged by rock performers who feel like there's something real going on. If you've ever been at a show where the electricity goes out, it suddenly becomes apparent that it's very much a Wizard of Oz kind of thing.
Without the electricity, it's just four guys on a stage.
Yeah, it gets very very quiet up there. But it's interesting to me that the rock song can work so well as a form of entertainment, because it's so simple in a way.
It doesn't require a great amount of contrivance. You can just have four people with instruments and you can hold the attention of 100,000.
It's really compelling. I go to movies pretty often, but it's surprising how often I'm bored by them. Whereas with music, I can see a band in a Holiday Inn, and if they're putting anything out there, it really comes across.
Have you ever worried about you guys being perceived as a joke band? John Linnell once said "We're a lot less funny than people seem to think we are." You turn on Dr. Demento and you hear "Particle Man" sandwiched between the new Weird Al parody and Kip Adotta...
It would be hard to not grimace at that, but we get plenty of chances to get our ideas out there. I would be disappointed if that was the only medium by which people experienced our music. I don't know think of the world of heavily tattooed and pierced bands as being more legitimate. There's a lot of artifice and surface in rock music - a lot of stuff that succeeds is only succeeding on style or sex appeal. That's valid - if you can lead the teen subculture in any direction, whether it's to get tattoos or take hallucinogenic drugs or go to the library, it's all equally valid. I don't know much about Marilyn Manson, but it seems pretty interesting, just because it's so fucked up. I really liked Alice Cooper - when I was 13, I was the biggest Cooper fan in the world. I was listening to "I Love The Dead" on headphones, and that's just a completely sick song. There's nothing about it except being the sickest idea he could think of, and there's something very excellent and liberating about writing a song about the sickest thing you can think of. It's not that compelling to me now, but I'm not 13 anymore. There's a power in speaking to people that age and people who feel that outside the world.
Have you ever wondered about your fan base? I'm 21 now - when I was 16, I knew the way to pick up a girl my age was to say "You like They Might Be Giants too?" And by the way, I want to thank you for that.
Wow...I wasn't hanging out with 16 year old girls much, but...we have a wide range of people. I feel grateful that we've got a college age audience, because I know people who have older audiences, and they're hard to motivate to go to shows, which is a big, basic part of being a band. If everybody who buys your record is 30 years old, chances are you're playing in pretty small venues. 30 year olds don't want to go out, while 20 year olds do. I really do feel like our audience is a very self-selective group, and I don't really want to tell them who they are or what they should be. It's not about that - I just don't feel comfortable telling people how to dress and how to think. I know how I want to dress and how I want to think, but I don't think it's important that people follow us.
But you do have your cult, just like Tori Amos or Trent Reznor - there are people who are really intense about you guys.
Sure - I don't mind that, but I'm more interested in people who don't know who we are checking us out. That's maybe the booster in me. I appreciate having that steady an audience, and it's kind of fascinating in a weird, personal way, to have people become that obsessed with minutiae.
Your cult is very intellectual - have you ever seen the "They Might Be Giants and Bachelard and the Pathology of the Image" paper out of Stanford?
Uh, no.
I found it on the web - it's about nine pages long, and is pretty recondite. Does it kind of freak you out that somebody could get course credit for listening to your albums?
It's fascinating in an absurd way... I don't know. I don't feel like we're working out of that high a tradition. We write pop songs - a lot of times when they succeed, it's with the most modest setting, and it's not that self-aware or even purposeful. Our best songs are usually the simplest, and just try to put out an odd thought in a unique way. I feel like it would be really over-intellectualizing things to think it has something to do with Bachelard. I don't feel like we're in any great tradition. We're coming out of a culture that's a real mixed stew of things. There's a lot of people who come out of the same kind of cultural background as us - they've experienced a lot of different kinds of music and really take it all to heart. To a large extent, they just dig music. That's where we're coming from. I don't feel there's traditions that far beyond the general trends of popular music. It's really hard to read critiques of your work and feel like you're being understood. When somebody says something good about us I tend to feel good about it - and no matter how accurate or qualified somebody might be critiquing us, it still hurts my feelings. We're not for everybody - that's the thing about popular music is that it's supposed to be for everybody. you're somehow breaking the rules if you say that you're going to do something a little extreme, and that you're not reaching out to the biggest audience you could. It's an interesting paradox about popular music - it is this populist form, created by some really anti-social people. It's really the cult of the individual as an entire subculture.
What inspired the Hello CD club? Did people keep sending you tapes of stuff, and you said this has to be released?
Really just the opposite - I knew a bunch of people that I worked with professionally that were doing work that wasn't really radio bound or commercially viable that would work for a major label. But I though had interesting material. And I knew a lot of people that had other musical careers going, and had a lot of other ideas and interests, and to create a platform that would welcome side excursions a established artists. The split function of Hello is to expose people to groovy new bands, and also let people in more established bands too 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. We're about to put out this Soul Coughing EP, and it's mostly instrumental and very psychedelic. It's much deeper into the groove - which exists in all of Soul Coughing's songs, but their regular releases are more pop song oriented. This is more the total free jam that you won't hear on their major label release.
It ties into the songwriting in TMBG - there's a very particular sensibility working of...I wouldn't go so far to say the destruction of identity, but you listen to one of your albums, and it could almost be 20 different bands in a sense. They're always being sung from different characters point of views, and then you get to something like Fingertips. With the label, it seems like it's trying to answer the question, what happens when Andy Partridge wants to do something that doesn't sound like - big capital letters - Andy Partridge?
Right. Well, the thing about rock music that's both it's greatest strength and its greatest downfall is that it's really persona driven. And you can get people who are tremendous characters, whether it's Trent Reznor or Little Richard, there's this great tradition of people who are total oddballs, foisting their personal obsessions on the world. It's a great thing in that it's totally unfettered personal expression that you don't experience in a lot of other places in culture. At the same time, you get people being locked into this one way of presenting themselves, and then they just become this one thing. And you get to levels of weird mannerist self-parody, that a lot of bands fall into. I think for me and John, we've always felt like, the less we've sold the band as John and John - even though that's a very effective way of putting the band over - and the more we just try to put our songs forward, the more effective the actual statement can be, and the more the bands can stand on their own. And... that's a totally personal thing and I don't want to start naming names, but there are people who have entire careers based on people sitting down, listening to the records, and saying "Gee, I wonder what they're really like?" And I find that to be such a total gross-out.
The personality cult thing - the reason that Pere Ubu won't put pictures on their web page, because David Thomas thinks it smack of personality cult.
Well, he's a really good example of somebody who can work the... he's a total superstar - his whole thing is about his persona. And it's not a bad thing, if somebody's really got oodles of charisma and personality. I mean, Prince is a really sexy guy, it's not an accident he's a superstar. He's monstrous, he's superhuman - he's like an action figure. I completely understand how it happens, but there's a kind of very standard way of putting an artist forward, where the obvious goal is to create an enigma. Whether the enigma is somebody being like a drug addict, or somebody being..."oh, they're sooooo irresponsible!" It's so tired - you want to meet somebody really irresponsible, go down to the end of the block and find the guy working in the mini-mall who's, like, doing glue - that guy is irresponsible.
But it's not nearly as romantic. Is that one of the reasons for the Mono Puffs - are you worried that you're getting trapped in the image of the two hyper nerds? Like on the Mono Puff CD, you've got "The Devil Went Down to Newport," which has got you chanting "Go Satan Go!" and then a song about Dock Ellis pitching a no-hitter on acid.
I don't think there's a song on any TMBG album where you couldn't wonder if it isn't about LSD. But people don't think of us in those terms. I'm not dissatisfied with the way that we're perceived any more than anybody in any other band is. Part of it is just labeling somebody is a limiting thing. It's very hard for it not to happen. For me, whatever I can do to free myself from that, the more I'll like it. Basically, I've got the most excellent career - when I'm not recording with my band, I can make rock videos. It's really okay.
You've leapt on every opportunity available.
I totally dig this rock thing.
Have you ever written about rock?
I wrote this essay once for CMJ, about my fake ID. But I've never... I spend a lot of time sitting around talking about rock music with my rock musician friends. It probably is about the same...some of it... on any given day, I have really contradictory opinions about a lot of things, depending on how much MTV I've watched that day. You can definitely OD on it. But the state of the whole rock music thing is remarkably good now - ever since the 90s started, I've felt way better.
You mean, no more Warrant?
People don't realize...people really villainize major labels, but they were so much worse in the 80s than they were now. It's great when the general feeling in the culture is that nobody knows what's going to happen next. It's much healthier atmosphere for record companies to be working out of. At the end of the 70s, it's almost like 6 coke-addled guys had some international summit to nail down rock music and not let it move one iota from whatever the template they've established was. You think about how good the Replacements or Husker Du were, I mean, even more marginalized characters from the 80s who were doing interesting work - they didn't have any of the shot that bands have now.
So you think that if Paul Westerberg was at his prime today making "Let It Be," he would have had more of a chance?
Definitely! I think if you could transport that band 10 years later, they would be multi-platinum. The radio is much more open to things. It's still a stinky world in a lot of ways, but.... I just feel like having seen how stagnant it can be, there's so much excitement about things that are new in general. 10 years ago, if there was something new, record companies were like "do I have to?" It just amazes me how much more interest there is in the margins of the culture - it's not about superstars as much any more.
The Hello CD is kind of a leader in the multi-tiering of rock music, of it being less centered around superstars. In the sense that Weezer is a platinum band, and then the bassist decides he wants to do his own thing. And so he has his own band with people from that dog, which is still pretty big, but not as big as Weezer, and it wouldn't really affect them that much if it didn't take. And then Beck has his major label album, releases some weirder stuff on minor labels, and then goes back and releases another major-label release.
It's really great, and it's really respectful of people's ability to do more than one thing, and 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. It's not some sort of ego ride, where they like seeing their pictures on magazines - obviously, some people, that's their total goal. But for a lot of people, it's really about the music.
And you're able to take away that fear...
Well, that fear of the marketplace. I mean, nobody's going to say, "I heard your new Hello release, and I think you really sold out." The Andy Partridge thing is total excitement - people love that disc.
In a sense, you can get around people having to plot every move, but do you ever worry about the multi-tiering turning into Balkanization? You know, there's the Weezer level, and then there's the Rentals level, and then there's the Beck level, and then there's the indie Beck level, and then there's the Hello level.
I don't want to marginalize myself - I have full respect for the awesome power of Time/Warner. The thing about subscription is that it allows us to work with a lot of people that we couldn't work with otherwise. If it's not in the stores - people sign contracts that tie them up for long periods of time, but that's about retail availability in stores. I couldn't get Frank Black to do this otherwise - he just signed a big deal with Interscope - I can't sell something that would compete with them, they wouldn't let me.
Was that part of the idea from the beginning?
Yeah - TMBG has a pretty big mail-order business - it's a real cottage industry. So having done that, I knew it was something that kind of existed, and that I could operate reasonably well.
What do you think about using the internet and such as a form of marketing?
Well, it's interesting... you can turn off your tape recorder, you're never going to want to write about this - but within the record industry, there's a lot of glad-handing and happy talk about how much the companies need retailers, but in fact, record companies would like nothing more than to annihilate the retail level of the business. Because they're the middlemen between them and what they perceive as their market. They're trying to maximize profit - they see something for sale in the store for 15 bucks, and they're only getting nine of that, well, they want that other six, too. So, they just feel whatever the retailers getting is just money that they're being chiseled out of. And the internet for huge companies provides this opportunity to not just circumvent retailers, who they secretly loathe, but to create a product that has no product. You'd have a master tape, and then a delivery system that doesn't involve actually having the hard manufacturing of anything. It's incredibly lucrative - you're selling intellectual property, instead of an actual item that has manufacturing costs.
But on the other hand, they want to crush the retailers, but what's their use?
Well, let's say that you're Trent Reznor Jr., and you haven't signed your deal with TVT yet, but you've got these techno songs that everybody's dying for, and there's a huge cult audience that's gone crazy for what you do, and they're all on the internet and computer literate. It would seem like you'd just go on the internet and put it out there yourself - if you want to download my most excellent tunes, just send 5 dollars here, and you'd make a lot of money. But in reality, the people who run the record companies would figure out exactly how much you would make, and they'd offer you exactly that amount more, and would get you to change your mind and do it their way. That'll be their orientation - they understand that controlling the means of production is of tremendous value in the marketplace. It's not just about selling the popular records, but it's also about controlling how records are sold. It's like being in publishing - there's a value to just holding on to your properties. If you control the marketplace... you look at the hits of 20 years ago, you look at the hits people have now - Neil Sedaka isn't on the top of the chars, but Warner Brothers is.
There are times when it's even a loss leader situation, which is what I was talking about with the Reznor Jr. example - they'll actually lose money to just hold on to their market share. There are all sorts of examples of it, all the way down the line. When ZZ Top gets signed for $40 million dollars, it's really doubtful that they're going to make that up. But by having the ZZ Top album available, that means that the publicist can get the rock critic who's a big ZZ Top fan free tickets to their concert, which means that they can get them to go and review the new Superjumble band that they've signed. There's a push/pull - it's very subtle. You can't just read it on the surface - it's not just about "we sold a lot of records today." It's about maintaining access and control. If people could figure out a way to work independently that would blow the doors off of the record companies - if the 'net could somehow become more autonomous in the culture - but I don't think that's going to happen. And the key ingredient isn't the sort of the coffers of the companies as much the mentality of the culture. People are more interested in successful weirdos than unsuccessful weirdos. People aren't curious about things that aren't shrouded in the mystique of success, and the things that say that and telegraph that idea are things like being signed to a major label. It's a big part of it - it's a weird situation - people are interested in things that are new and exciting, but they also need a certain amount of validation - that this is the thing that they need to know about. If you want to find out about new bands, you can pick up the new issue of Option, and there's 500 new bands that are available. Or you can be like a lot more people and pick up Rolling Stone, and open to the "What's New" page, and find about the three.
It's cultural overproduction - there's more music than there is people to listen to it.
It wouldn't mean much if people started paying attention to 500 bands instead of 1. I don't even know if it's a bad impulse to just pay attention to specific trends or individuals. It's natural.
It's sort of like the local band phenomenon - you know, everybody loves their local punk band, even though they sound exactly every other local punk band. But because they have that local validation, they're a big deal. But with the Hello Club...
I really started that as a hobby - I'm fully aware of how un-overthrowable record companies are. In a lot of ways, I have a very idealistic view of what people can do, and I saw I had the ability to do something that very few people could do, because I have access to people and I'm a musician, so it's easy to figure out what my motivations are. If I was just Joe Guy, there's no way I could convince anybody of what my intentions were. That I wasn't trying to use them - they know my commitment to TMBG, and they know that's my primary thing, and this is something that I'm doing because it's an interesting project. In a way, by having announced my lack of ambition for the project, it's allowed it to be successful and self-sustaining, and it takes the pressure off the artist. While if somebody had gone in with the intention of making it work on a commercial level and be really viable, it not only would have failed three years ago, but it would never have been able to get access to the people I've been able to work with.
Have you become friends with the people you've recorded?
Not really - Frank Black was one of the first people who did one, but I was friends with him before. I knew Charles back in the Pixies days, that's just a long-standing thing. But by and large, my affiliations with people in Hello is from doing shows and getting out to festivals. People I've pursued on a professional level are just people I've found interesting - like Soul Coughing opened for us on the tour right after their record came out, just because I liked them and thought they were a good local band, and now they're on Lollapalooza and they're officially happening. At any given moment, though - it's not like New York is filled with great bands - when a good band comes along, you notice.
You have the CDs available in perpetuity, or is it a first-come, first serve kind of deal?
It's like subscribing to the New Yorker, although we do have some of the backlog available... we're almost out of 1993 right now, though. We have all the back stuff available because we order them in lots of 1000, but it's not going to last forever. And it's not that profitable to keep it all in print endlessly, and technically, our license to manufacture them runs out six months after the calendar year, so it would be in bad faith to keep re-printing them.
I've gotta go now - I was supposed to call Linnell about a half-hour ago about the sequencing on the new album.
Well, thanks for your time!
It's been a pleasure. Thanks for the interview.