Hi, How Are You

Occupation

Guitar, vocals, piano: Daniel Johnston

Hi, How Are You: The Unfinished Album is the sixth self- distributed album of the musician Daniel Johnston, which he took up in September 1983. Hi, How Are You is arguably his most popular album, and is considered a classic of the American indie scene.

Genesis

The bipolar Daniel Johnston worked in the early '80s as a groundskeeper at an amusement park in Austin and as Tischabräumer at McDonalds. In his spare time, Johnston often took on in his apartment of songs. In September 1983, he recorded " Hi, How Are You". Local record stores put the tape out as a free Mitnehmware. He also put it - after Johnston's own statements - secretly in McDonalds bags of buyers into which he found attractive or likeable. Johnston 1985 win by a MTV documentary about the music scene of Austin, Texas, and was a little known underground fan base. Definitively he was known and the album by Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of the grunge band Nirvana world famous. Cobain wore a T -shirt on which the now legendary "frog" of the album cover was a picture when he takes on the MTV Video Music Awards was a guest in 1992.

Johnston says that he would have had almost a nervous breakdown during the recording sessions for this album and he calls it his " unfinished album". The album was re-released by several labels on CD or LP, most recently in 2007.

The audio quality on the album is deliberately bad. So said Jad Fair, singer and guitarist for the band Half Japanese, he would have bought this album Johnston for high-quality cartridges, but Johnston they threw away later.

Reception

John Dougan writes at allmusic: This is a friendly album, proved by [ Johnston's ] talent as Popschreiber and his always pleasant expectant singing. His mood on the album is good. Dougan gives the album 4.5 out of 5 stars and writes that it is an important album.

Walking the Cow

Walking the Cow is a song of the album. He is regarded as the most famous song of the album.

He has been covered by many indie bands, for example, in October 1994, live from Pearl Jam. The singer of Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder, 2008, his solo tour started always with this song. 2004 song by TV on the Radio has been covered on a Daniel Johnston cover album. Also, it was played by the Swedish band A Camp on tours.

Johnston himself published in 2010 a new version of the song on his album Beam me up! .

Title list

All songs were written by Daniel Johnston.