Ads
Olivia’s teaching me about ads today because I suck at them. She says I probably shouldn’t target the whole world. I think she’s not considering the bigger picture. By the way, on a scale of 1-5, how bad is the idea of fending off a bear? My mom said 2. My dad said 3. Ok, back to ads.
-J.P.
Compression
I’ll be honest, I’m a bit concerned with how compressed our release schedule is this month - songs out April 7, April 14, and April 21. It’s suggested these days to release a new song every 4-5 weeks. (Yeah no problem let me just turn out a new idea once a month because that’s regular at everybody’s job right? To create something new from scratch every 28 days… you all do that right?) With all this music coming out so soon I’m a little afraid that releases will step on each other’s toes and that audiences may start to feel a little fatigue when I’m pushing all this product constantly, but that’s part of the point of starting the label and releasing music under four different names. It gives us the opportunity to build four separate audiences that only overlap when they come to see that it’s the same people in all these acts. We’ll see how it goes. “Boom” by Roe’s Garden, out Friday April 21.
-J.P.
Support!
‘I’m not blaming anyone, and I’ll only say it once, but it’s a shame that not even all my friends take the time to listen to the music we release. Just one time through this album would take 35 minutes of their time, and would go a long way toward making this endeavor commercially viable. If they took two more minutes to share the project with their circles it would increase the music’s reach exponentially, creating countless more opportunities for the music to find an audience. Maybe, their closeness to me personally makes the whole thing feel more amateur, more a hobby or just something that they don’t need to do anything about. Maybe they simply never see the posts about the music because of the algorithms on the platforms I use to promote it. Maybe they’re not really my friends. Maybe they don’t think about it at all and if I went out of my way to tell every single one of them individually to listen and share it they would. Maybe I have to make it pop somewhere else so when it comes back around to them it looks more legitimate. Who knows. What I do know is that in this age, the kind of support I’m asking for is essential to my success, and the kind of support I’m asking for is free, and I’m not the only one that’s doing this. There are lots of really talented people making really great things, and they’re all sitting at home wondering why their friends won’t give them that support. That’s a shame.
-J.P.
Wild Heart - The Album
Well folks, today’s the day. “Wild Heart”, the new album from The New Hippies is out today. It’s been five years since the “Variety Pack EP”, the last project from the band was released, and the world looks a whole lot different now, to say the least. This album was made under completely different circumstances than the first, since it was mostly myself and Understanding working in a vacuum under the time constraints of An American Saga’s schedule to try to get as many songs featured in the show as possible, but I think the spirit of The New Hippies is still in it, and hopefully it opens the door to more opportunities for everyone to do something similar in the future.
The style of the album was out of necessity - the music had to fit the parameters of a single episode of the show this season, and considering that I think we did well. I don’t think the album is particularly indicative of the future sound of The New Hippies but I could be wrong. “Wild Heart” was specific to Wu-Tang: An American Saga, and I like to think of it as proof of our versatility. For instance, if another show came calling asking for original songs for a TV show and they had a particular style in mind, we could do that. Just sayin. Anyway, we’ll see where it goes in the future, but I genuinely had a lot of fun making these songs and hope you have a similar experience listening. Here’s a quick note on each of the tracks.
Malfunktion
Malfunktion was one of a few tracks that Understanding made almost completely on his own, which was a bit of a new experience for me. I walked in the studio and he had tracked drums, bass, keys and one of the guitars. I added one guitar part, and Understanding, Erica, and I layered the vocals. It wasn’t until after the show that we decided the track would be the intro, and I added the Spaceman monologue, welcoming the passengers aboard.
Wild Heart
I wrote at length about this song last Friday when it released as a single, but the idea here was to create an anthem for Dirt McGirt, the alter-ego that ODB personifies in the allegorical episode that tells the story of the making of his solo album “Return to the 36 Chambers”. Luckily, we found a lot of success with this song - it was placed multiple times throughout episode 2 and episode 3 of season three of the Wu show, for which us Beautiful Idiots are extremely grateful.
Tip Toe
Tip Toe was a fun song to write because it marked one of the first songs where Understanding and I collaborated on lyrics. The song was born out of me messing around on bass, adding keys, guitar, and strings, Understanding playing the drums, and me asking Un for a title. He said “tip toe” and we both got to writing. About an hour later we both tried all our ideas, and ended up mixing it all together. I think Rick Rubin says something like “best idea wins”, which is generally a good philosophy when you’re writing a song. We put Understanding’s verse first, went into his chorus, put my verse next, added my idea for that floating “inner voice” you hear towards the end, brought back his hook and reprised my verse for the outro. It felt like a very natural back and forth. Then we had Erica sing it, which always makes everything better, so it became Tip Toe featuring Roe’s Garden, allowing this song to be the first official link between tow of the artists on the Beautiful Idiots LLC roster. It’s also one of my personal favorites.
Pressure
This is actually the first song we wrote out of the whole bunch, back in January 2022. We hadn’t even seen any of season three of the Wu show yet, but as soon as we finished the instrumental I turned to Un and told him it was going in season 3. Sometimes you just have a feeling. This was a shower idea. I literally hummed the bass part into my phone as a voice memo, got out of the shower and tracked it with Understanding on drums. I had the hook pretty soon after, but we tried rapping on it at first, and it was thematically very different. We rewrote it eventually after we saw the first episode and it turned out much better the second time around. It plays for the end credits in episode 1 of season 3, which is one of my favorite placements we got in the show. It really feels like a song for a movie.
Baby Be Mine
This one is for Bryana. I wrote what I felt and it’s a very special song to me. There’s a scene in season 3 episode 1 where two characters, Dennis and Shurrie are in their apartment in the morning and it felt right that they would have the radio on, listening to something smooth. Our initial goal was to take inspiration from Curtis Mayfield, but it might have turned out a little more Temptations or The Manhattans than Curtis. Either way, I love this song.
My Dance
This is another track that Understanding made almost completely on his own. I’m pretty sure I got back from walking my dog and he had done everything again, save one or two guitar lines he wanted me to add. For a long time it was a very short instrumental, because I wasn’t really sold on the “do my dance my dance and lose control…” refrain, so we kind of let it sit for a little while. Once it was decided that we were going to put all these songs together as an album, we revisited the session. We stretched the track out a little bit and I asked Understanding to lead us through his dance as Cletus Fox, as if Cletus was hosting a party. I never could’ve predicted any of what he said, but I love it. I dare you to listen to that track and not get up and groove.
Dog Days
Everything about this song stems from that first descending line you hear. I was just noodling around on a keyboard and happened to play it, then Un and I kinda just caught a vibe and ran with it. The lyrics were tag-teamed again and I had fun singing it. We tried to place the instrumental during the second set of opening credits in the comedy club in season 3 episode 3, but the show opted for Wild Heart there instead. It works, but we do think it’s a shame Dog Days doesn’t appear in the episode. It’s another favorite for sure.
Stop Playin
Stop Playin is more of a bonus track, honestly. It’s like a button at the end. We wrote it on an off day at RZA’s studio when we were working on season 1 of the Wu show, sometime in 2019. the drum track was originally called “Peanut butter pretzels” in my MPC, and it was the first time Understanding took on that new character with his vocal. His brother Mel was there that day too, so he added some extra bass, and we filled it out with a bunch of RZA’s keyboards and machines that he would let us experiment with. Then the song just sat on our hard drive for years, until it became obvious to us that it was the perfect finale for this funky experiment. It’s one of my favorite performances Understanding has turned in to date.
That’s the track list, and a little bit about each song. I hope you have fun with it - I hope it makes you dance, smile, feel warm in your heart, and takes you on a wild ride. The New Hippies will continue to release new singles for the rest of the year, so if this is the first you’re hearing of them, buckle up, it’s about to get crazy.
-J.P.
April 13
A little late on the west coast again so this software is dating this post for tomorrow.
Do you ever fart so much you crack yourself up? I was sitting by myself this morning, laughing out loud farting nonstop playing video games. Life is good. And The New Hippies new album is out tomorrow.
-J.P.
April 12
Running out of ideas. Lots of days left in the year. Nevertheless, onward.
In other news, I gave my dog his anxiety medicine when I left him on his own, hoping he wouldn’t scratch himself until he bleeds or chew at his tail like he usually does, but his anxiety is stronger than the medicine. This dog is something else, man.
-J.P.
Toeing the Line
On this journey to the top of the mountain that us Beautiful Idiots have embarked on, I find myself contemplating: how much do I give?
A familiar piece of advice that I’ve heard in regards to using social media and digital platforms to build an audience is “be authentic.” My conundrum is that I authentically despise most all of the platforms I’m using. The trends make my stomach turn, I don’t want to be easily identifiable as one thing, my music isn’t informed by the latest hot sounds. I have no desire to be defined, or to be of my time. I do hope to reflect the world in which I live, but in a way that broadens the perspective, or explores the universal nature of our specific conditions. In short, I’d much rather be timeless.
I find myself constantly compelled to say “fuck that” to just about every obstacle or parameter I encounter on our path, but I don’t want to turn people off. So how much of myself do I give? How much of my authentic self do I keep at bay, in hopes of finding people who like the music? Or will the music find the right audience if I lean in, and always do it my way?
There’s supposed to be space for everyone, right?
-J.P.
Facebook, Too
I’ve been complaining all week about how poorly “Wild Heart” performed over the weekend only to finally check The New Hippies page on on Facebook today for the first time in literally four years to find people commenting on our old posts looking for the song.
Remember to check all your socials before you decide nobody likes you.
-J.P.
