Brian Dewan
Hello Recording Club – March 1993 (Hello 33)

If memory serves, this was the inaugural release in John Flansburgh's ultimately ill-fated Hello Recording Club label, which for a few years at least, issued new EPs every month on a subscription basis.

Like CD-3s, this was a great idea that I guess just never caught on. Perhaps if the Hello CDs had been CD-3s, they both would have succeeded. Hm. I wonder why I'm so fixated on CD-3s.

At any rate, 1993 was about the peak of They Might Be Giants' success, and the idea to start a label aimed at TMBG fans as a means of exposing them to other great quirky artists was right as rain. I certainly subscribed for the first couple years.

I can't say I loved every release, but I did love the thrill of the new even when the music was not my cup of tea.

Brian Dewan, even to those who know him, provides the thrill of the new, that's for sure. And he is definitely my cup of tea (see my review for the great Tells the Story album).

This Hello EP, I believe, came out before the album was released, or if not, then I got the EP before I got the album. In either case, three of the tracks are available on that release ("My Eye," "Wastepaper Basket Fire," and "Obedience School"), I'm pretty sure in the same versions.

The exclusive track is the great "Tobacco's But an Indian Weed," another song that cements Dewan's role as the Reverend Jonathan Edwards of rock. This one sounds like an authentic New England Puritan propaganda hymn (it does receive a "traditional" songwriting credit), featuring lines like "The pipe that is so foul within/Shows how the soul is stained with sin/It doth require the purging fire/Think on this when you smoke tobacco."

Creepy! I'll never smoke again! Wait, does marijuana count?

This disc was a great intro to the wicked and weird world of Dewan (previously I'd only heard "99 Cops" on the Bar/None Time For a Change comp), focusing more on his "funny" side than his "spooky" side, but there's a little of both for fans of both funny and spooky (I'm not referring to the imported Mexican cartoon show "Funny and Spooky" (aka "Las Espiritas Hilariosa y Malevolente").

I doubt it's available anymore, and for one exclusive track it's definitely geared for the Brian Dewan diehard (all 12 of them, including myself), but I'm glad I have it both for the music and as a reminder of Hello Recording Club, another CD-era failure that deserved a better shot.

Loud Bassoon rating scale

Review by Beatrice Lay