Chase It!
For Christmas, my sister got me tickets to see Theo Katzman at the Wiltern in Los Angeles. The concert was last night, and it was great. I wasn’t super familiar with his solo music but everything just felt good. It felt like it was from the heart, and that’s the thing I appreciate most about music. During the first song though, he said something that really resonated with me. In between lyrics, while he was playing the piano he said (of playing at The Wiltern):
“I gotta be honest I never really thought this would happen… but part of me always knew it would… and that’s the thing you gotta chase all the time”.
That’s the attitude. Thanks for the tickets, Liv.
-J.P.
Wild Heart
The New Hippies return today with the release of their new sing “Wild Heart”. It’s a departure from their previous sound, for sure, but that departure is more a case of doing what was needed than an indication of where their sound will go.
“Wild Heart” is another song featured in season 3 of Wu-Tang: An American Saga, appearing first for the end credits of episode 2 and then multiple times through episode 3. (It’s not the last release that was featured in the show either… we put a lot of music in that show). The song was born out of another opportunity given to us by the RZA. Before the season started, he floated the possibility of being able to feature us and the other band that worked on the show, Shot, in a bigger way than we had been for the first two seasons. The pitch was essentially this: having put the time in playing and fleshing out his ideas for the first two seasons and knowing that the third would be the final season, he was going to try to get us a chance to get some original songs in the show. In particular, he was eyeing the third episode of season three, which was going to be an allegorical telling of how ODB’s “Return to the 36 Chambers” was made. They were going to take a highly stylized approach, and make a mini-movie in the style of 70s Blaxploitation films, like a Shaft or a Superfly, and so if we could write some songs that fit the bill, he could use them and we could get our big credit at the beginning of the episode, which would then be ours to leverage into more career opportunities - something we could point to and something that might get us some visibility with the audience of the show.
The idea behind “Wild Heart” was to create an anthem for Dirt McGirt, the character that ODB becomes in the mini-movie within the show. There were a couple things to keep in mind. First, ODB himself was larger than life, and from stories I’d heard and what Understanding knew, he had a spirit that couldn’t be contained. Second, it had to be original. There’s no sense in trying to make something that sounds like an ODB record. If you’re familiar with Wu-Tang, you know that Ol’ Dirty Bastard had no father to his style. Plus, when you work with RZA for a few years, you learn that it’s a waste of time to try to replicate his sound. In fact that definitely wouldn’t work because, as I said, the idea was to make a 70s style movie, so the music had to be funky. The phrase that stuck in my head was simple: “hearts are wild, love is free”.
That’s the phrase I brought to Understanding. I added “pain is real” and Un put the cherry on top - “I was born to be”. That was all we needed. We made it sound funky, and what really took it to the next level was having fun with it. Understanding became “Cletus Fox” and that’s who stepped into the vocal booth. We did our best to capture that essence on the record, and I think you could say it worked. The song plays about five times across the two episodes, and became the touch point for a slew of other songs we wrote to complement it, which you’ll be able to hear April 14, when we release the album “Wild Heart” by The New Hippies, containing all the music we wrote for season three of Hulu’s Wu-Tang: An American Saga. R.I.P. to ODB, it was an honor to create a soundtrack for this version of your story. I hope we did it justice.
-J.P.
No Repeats
It’s getting harder and harder to breathe.
Just kidding. Repeat myself. It’s getting harder and harder not to repeat myself is what I was going to say.
-J.P.
Long Arms
I tend to overextend myself. I dream up a big plan and convince myself that I can do ten things at once and that they’ll wall come together perfectly so I can present the world with a wonderful web, spun by yours truly. Or I’ll try to take three jobs at once after not doing anything for months and promise everyone that I can excel at all of them at the same time. Once, when I was a senior in high school, I was Vice President of the National Honor Society at my school, and I also took on the role of Copy Editor for our yearbook, after explicitly being told that I could not take both positions, due to them being too demanding. I fought with the teachers in charge of each extra-curricular, and it even got to the point where my parents had to come to the school and vouch for my ability to live up to the commitments I had made. I quit the yearbook two weeks later. But what can you do? My eyes are bigger than my stomach.
I hope that isn’t the case this time around.
-J.P.
Ladybugs
I saw a ladybug today. No I didn’t. I was going to lie just to get into this thought that I just had. I don’t know why I did that. I apologize for lying. I didn’t see a ladybug today.
They say ladybugs are good luck or something, right? I don’t remember. Let me look it up.
Yep, I was right. They say ladybugs are good luck. There are differing opinions on how to measure the luck, though. Some say if a ladybug lands on you, count the spots to find out how many years of good luck you’ll have, while others say the number of spots informs you how many months there are until your your greatest wishes come true. Who knows, it could all be a bunch of bullshit. Or it could be true. People like having things to believe in.
Anyway, I say all that because today in the car I was reminded of a song I sang once.
That’s another lie. I was not actually reminded of this song until after I had the idea to put this other little song on this blog. I don’t know what’s with me today. Forgive me, I’ll be more reliable in the future.
Anyway, I once did a staged reading of a musical version of “James and the Giant Peach” when I was in high school. Paul Williams had written the music and in one song I, as James, sang “Ladybug ladybug, fly away home. Is that part of a song? Is that part of a poem?”
So one day I’m walking around my parents’ house and I’m singing that song and my grandma goes, “I know that song! We used to sing it when we were kids!” So I asked her to sing it for me and this was her version:
“Ladybug ladybug fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children are burning.”
Seriously. That was her version. Grandma was one of one.
-J.P.
Six Months Ahead
Today I’ll give you a quick peak behind the curtain
While we are introducing our second artist “The New Hippies”, I’m trying to work out our fourth act. It’s an idea that’s been rumbling around in the back of my mind for about six years, and I still haven’t been able to make full sense of it.
I’m hoping to find a way that all the pieces fit together and I’m really hoping that it happens SOON, because to debut the fourth act in October, we need to have the production done by the end of August, realistically. I had hoped that I could make a lot of significant progress while Understanding was in SOuth America this week, but to be honest, I’ve barely made any. How hard do you push on an idea? How much do you have to let it come to you? What’s the balance?
Gotta stay ahead of the game. I’ll keep pushing. It’ll come to me. I hope.
-J.P.
How Much?!
Everything costs. Most of the time it’s more than just the dollar amount too. Check in with yourself. You’re always going to have to take a risk, but be careful not to break your bank.
-J.P.
The New Hippies
Today at Beautiful Idiots LLC, we introduce our second act: enter The New Hippies.
I left Ithaca College in the winter of 2012 to pursue my music and take a year of community college classes while reassessing what I wanted to study. After a year and a half of recording songs in a friend’s bedroom, voice lessons in Manhattan, night classes at DCC, two jobs at the mall, and some work with a college counselor, I left New York for Chapman University in Orange, California in August 2014. If my memory serves correctly, it was August 25th, 2014 to be exact. I think we flew on my dad’s birthday. My family and I went to an Angels game that night, and the next day I moved into my dorm. I had been accepted to the screenwriting program in the Dodge College of Film & Media Arts and I was very excited to develop my skills as a storyteller, but I arrived with a side mission in mind too. I was going to try to find people to play and make music with if I could, and on that first day, it seemed luck was on my side.
I met Alex the same day I moved into my dorm. He lived in the same building just around the corner. We both mentioned that we played guitar and we played together a few times. Fast forward a few months to January and my friend Tanner introduced me to Zane, a kid he was taking Italian with who also made music. We all had lunch together in the caf and after a few more hangs Zane and I began to show each the songs we had made. Pretty soon after that we put together a couple ideas under the name “Captain Crush” in his room at the end of the year, which no one will ever hear. Me, Zane, Tanner, and our friend Alfonso had all decided to live together the next fall, so Zane and I went home knowing we’d be writing more when we got back.
I moved into our house on Jacaranda Ave July 13th, 2015 and Zane moved in about a week or so later. We started immediately. The day he moved in actually, we wrote “Street Dweller” and then “Temptation” not long after that. At that time we were just “Joe & Zane” recording in my bedroom. We put about seven songs together over the next couple months but when it came time to record everything and play shows we had to build a band. I knew Alex played bass so we got him on board, and Zane had mentioned he knew someone who played drums that he had jammed with a few times before. He made a call and one weekend a Mercedes G-Wagon rolled up to the house on Jacaranda. That’s when I met Understanding.
Understanding came into my room, played drums for about four hours, then played Mario Kart with everybody and spent the whole weekend at the house. He came back about two weeks later and then didn’t leave for about a year and a half. He was in the band. I still live with Alex and Understanding today. I said luck was on my side right?
Zane, being a piano performance major at the time, knew a lot of people in the music school, so he brought in Chris Traynor, who recorded trumpet, sax, and trombone on all our songs at the time and played with us for years. Zane also knew Jasmine and Alexis, who sang with us while we were in school. Chris eventually brought Sai to play sax full-time. It became pretty apparent we were getting to be a lot more than just “Joe & Zane”.
Now the question was “what are we?” I don’t think I’ve ever really told anybody this, but here’s how it happened. There was a lot going on in 2016. We were hearing a lot of music we’d never heard before, trying to rebuild the world in our minds, and learning new truths every day. Some of us were on drugs. Some of us didn’t want to be defined. Everybody felt like they were in the middle of a revolution, artistic, spiritual, educational, political and all other kinds. On top of that Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, so we were pretty sure nothing was real. And to be honest, none of that really informed the decision.
I had seen an article somewhere calling millennials “the new hippies” and I thought it was funny. In my state of general distaste and contempt for any opinion or attempt to define anything, I thought to myself “if you say so”. So I proposed the name to the group and everyone liked it enough, knowing full well none of us were hippies in the slightest.
So that’s what the name is. An empty title. If you say so, then that’s what we are. We’re just friends, who like to play music together. That’s what we did while we were in school. Then in 2019 Understanding and I started working on the Wu-Tang tv show that I’ve mentioned a few times before. We were credited as The New Hippies in the hope that eventually we would get back to playing as a group. Now, we’re just me, Zane, Alex, Understanding - Zane used to call us the core four - but that’s what we’re going to keep doing. So yeah, sure, we’re The New Hippies. Our new single Wild Heart is out everywhere April 7.
