Interview: My Head Radio
Thursday, December 17th, 2009 – 12:47 pm
Dear My Head Radio, it´s nice to meet you! I visited your homepage www.myheadradio.com and really loved the look of it. Have you done the design and programming all by yourselves?
Sadly no, none of us are that web-talented. Our wonderful logo was created by our great friend Mjon Stark at Soup Royale and the rest of the site was created by two webmasters known only to Ruby. We’re glad you like it. Important part of the site is the Downloads-section with some free music and ALL our music after paypal-registration.
If I understand right the band members of My Head Radio live in Birmingham, Amsterdam, and in Detroit. So how do you organize the work on your music?
Actually, that’s not quite right. Boca Smole, our male vocalist is based in Birmingham, Michigan, USA and the rest of the band are based in the Netherlands, in The Hague and Haarlem. So, yes, getting together for a jam does pose a few problems. We work on our songs mainly via the power of the internet. The nerve center is my 96 Sails studio in The Hague. All roads lead to here for MHR. The band consists of myself (Wex Wexford (aka Dooa Doob)), Boca Smole, based in the US and guitarist/trumpet player Ruby Redharez and vocalist Foxy Yayo, both also here in NL. Foxy and I work on recording vocals together, but Ruby mainly works from his studio in Haarlem and we collaborate via the web. This is another reason that our sound is 21st Century.
How does it come that Boca and the rest of the band never met before but you produced a complete debut album without even meeting the other band members?
That’s one of the exciting things about MHR. The whole band has never been together. I met Boca via MySpace back in 2006, when I was working on solo tracks and Boca was looking for more musical inspiration. The entire band exists because of the Internet. Then in 2007, I also met Foxy and Ruby via an Internet “dating” site for musicians. This band could simply not have existed 15 years ago. Luckily we all share musical roots and influences and can bring all those to the MHR party. We hope that many others will follow in our web-steps and that international musical collaboration will continue to bring people together. I can’t think of many scenarios that would normally bring an American, an Englishman and two Dutch folks together!
Are you signed to a label?
We have our own independent label, Hotblack Records. So far we’ve been focussed on online retailers and Internet promotion. As we’re an Internet band, that seemed like the logical starting point. We’ve been slowly building our fan base up for the last couple of years and have over 40 000 fans now. We have produced CDs and sold a reasonable number, but we want to try and strike a partnership deal with an established label in 2010, to bring our music to a wider audience.
How do you promote your debut album “on air” and what does make sense for promoting your music in the Internet? Which ways of promoting your music online do you use?
As mentioned above, we’ve been promoting online. Of course, we have the usual MySpace, Facebook, Hyves and Twitter pages, but we’re also on a lot of the Internet music promotion “radio” stations, such as Last FM, Jango, Reverbnation etc. We’ve used the online retail route of Tunecore to get our tracks with the major online retailers such as iTunes, Napster, Amazon etc. Like anything in life, if you want to make it a success, you have to put the hours in.
How did the work on your debut album look like? Who wrote the lyrics and who produced the beats?
We work in what a lot of bands might consider to be a pretty strange fashion. Typically, most tracks start with a vocal. Boca will write and record a piece and then send it to me for inspiration. I will then listen to the piece a few times and get a feel for the subject matter and the tone of the delivery, before working out the tempo of the piece (and by the way, this man Smole has the timing of a metronome). I then work out a rough “feel” for the music, usually starting with the basic percussion and a bassline or synth hook. Once we have the skeleton of the track worked out, Ruby will add his funky injection, Foxy will sing her heart out and I’ll mix all the ingredients to a fine paste and then it’s in the oven for 45 minutes before… oh, no hang on, that’s Christmas Cake isn’t it? But no, it’s a lot like that. Everyone adds his or her ingredients and I mix it all together. It’s not a rigid process though, sometimes Ruby will come with a whole track say, like Lady Foxy and the rest of us have to add our contributions to that. So, it keeps things fresh. One constant refrain is that if we sound like this working in isolation, what might a couple of weeks locked together in a studio in the country sound like?
Your second song on your album is called the “21 century”. What do you think about it, what is your opinion about the development in this society and what makes you observing it and putting it into a song?
The song title actually refers to how we describe our music – 21st Century. I’m sure you’ll agree, we don’t drop neatly into a jazz, pop or electronic genre, as we are a mix of many styles of music. So, we decided that in order for people to get a handle on us, we’d better create one, hence 21st Century music.
The development of society is a huge topic, not least because as a band, we’re not all experiencing the same society. Personally, I think that mankind is standing on the precipice of a great new age, with a number of technological innovations hopefully around the corner that will revolutionise life as we know it. Once we can solve the reliance on fossil fuels and crack something like nuclear fusion power, we can make great advances as a species. On the other hand, I think we need to let go of out dated institutions such as religion, capitalism and 2 party politics and explore some of the other options that are open, dedicate ourselves to “humane” sciences (so, not just weapons development) and try and move forward as a species. But of course, many people who have spent a lot of time and trouble building their empires as they are (you know who I mean) don’t want that to happen. They would prefer everyone stays at home in front of their TVs, too scared to go outside, with just enough money to keep buying things from the shopping channel.
I find different styles in your music, even a little reggae off-beat is there to find. What is your influence and idea behind your music? What is the main message you have with your music?
Our influences are enormous and varied (please check our MySpace page for further validation). Both Ruby and I are big jazz fans, but I grew up alongside Hip Hop, my first 12 inch single purchase was Doug E. Fresh’s “The Show”, so that’s where the love of beats come from. I was also a House and D&B DJ for 12 years during the 90s and early 00s. We share common musical inspirations, like Talking Heads, but I think the variation is what makes us so interesting.
As for the message, we’re keen on trying to promote people to think about their lives. We want people to find something useful in our music that may help them to change the way they think about things. Our motto is Expect Nothing! Which kind of sums it up I think. We hope that our lyrics and song topics will be an inspiration to the young and a word to the wise.
What is your experience with promoting your music online? Did you make also any negative experiences?
Well, like any online band we get people sending us messages that they think we suck. Which is hardly surprising, I doubt hardcore death metal fans will like Racing Rats for example. But we appeal to a huge and surprising range of ages and musical tastes. Of course, promoting music online is a bit like trying to catch flies in the dark with chopsticks. You’ll never “gross dollar one” from online music sales unless you are already an established act. We’re not in it for the money, but it would be nice! All you can do is keep spreading the word and hoping that you’ll get co-promotion from an established star or DJ that everyone knows and respects. I think that’s what all indy bands are ultimately striving for.
If you had the choice: What would you change in the recent music market?
Wow, good question. It’s funny, a lot of musicians hate manufactured music, me included. Things like Pop Idol, Iceland’s Got Talent, X Factor etc. A lot of these acts are getting famous from doing mediocre cover versions of minor hits and everyone laps it up. It’s killing the market for real musicians who are trying to get their art noticed and appreciated, whilst keeping a roof over their heads.
Having said that, without “manufactured music”, we’d never have had Motown. It’s tricky. If we could wrap Simon Cowell in chains and drop him in the middle of the South Atlantic, that would do me. I’m with Sting on this one.
Interview by S.K.
