The Music Freak Interviews My Head Radio

My Head Radio release ‘Everybody’s Waiting’ EP, the follow up to debut album ‘On Air’, on 7th June 2010 released on their own independent label Hotblack Records. The EP leads with the group’s take on Suzanne Vega’s classic ‘Tom’s Diner’ and is backed by four original tracks; the Talking Heads referencing ‘Walking Headz’, ‘Gag ‘n’ Squeal’, ‘Big Pig’ and ‘Love For Us All’.

The members of My Head Radio have never all met in person. Wex Wexford, a UK ex-pat beat producer living in The Hague, met vocalist Boca Smole in Michigan, USA on Myspace over a shared love of funk, jazz, hip hop and experimentation. The group was completed by guitarist/trumpet player Ruby Redharez and vocalist Foxy Yayo in Haarlem, NL in 2007 via an Internet “dating” site for musicians. Their 21st Century approach to musical collaboration is an unusually successful method for an art form that stems from jamming and close communication. Inspired by Boca’s wordplay, their ideas bounce back and forth over the web before finding their way to the band’s nerve centre, the 96 Sails studio in The Hague.

The group’s success has been solely self-made. “We have Hotblack Records, our own independent label, and we’ve been slowly building our fan base up for the last couple of years and have over 40,000 fans now.” For the third year running, My Head Radio has been nominated in the Detroit Music Awards in the Outstanding Electronic/Dance Writer/Producer category along with Kevin Saunderson and Matthew Dear.

Its weird, but its wonderful music - MusicVita

Picture this. I am 80 years of age. How can you describe the genre of your music in the most interesting way possible?

Wex: Some freak time warp meant that Jack Kerouac became psychically connected to Bootsy Collins, Miles Davis and Julie Andrews and they all collaborated individually with James Brown's rhythm section but in a brand new style to produce beat poetry, 21st Century style.

Boca: MHR has always believed in letting the music speak for it self. When people ask me what it sounds like, I say "you've never heard anything like it, it's "think music". Otherwise, I just tell them to listen to us and form your own opinion. We don't fit any current genre, so we call our sound "21st. Century music". Trying to put any other label on us never truly fits, so "listen and form your own opinion" is the best answer.

Wex: No man, mine's the best answer!

You guys met over Myspace over mutual admiration for several genre's of music. Any artists in particular that you are both particularly inspired by?

Wex: I think there's big cross overs between all of us. For Boca, Ruby and myself I'd say the biggest shared inspirations are Massive Attack, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown and Gorillaz. Ruby and I have a shared love of both jazz and funk, so you can add the P-Funk family, George Clinton, Bootsy et al to that shared inspiration. With Boca and myself, it's more hip-hop oriented, the many works of the genius Dr Dre, The Roots, I'm a huge De La Soul fan. Prince Paul is the man. And then there's Talking Heads of course, both Ruby and I are big fans. As for Foxy, we have some shared love for many bands, but as she's such a great singer, her influences tend to be more in line with the great female vocalists of all time, Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Bassey even Alanis!

Boca: I think we are inspired by everything, good or bad. We blend so many styles of music, it's hard to not give everyone credit. We're also from two different planets (basically), we both have favorite musicians the other has never heard of. We both dig Radiohead, the Gorillaz and The Flight of the Concords.... I think.

Congratulations about your nominations for the Detroit Music Awards. With most notably Eminem from such an area, what is the local music scene like round there? And in Michigan?

Boca: My Head Radio exists in cyberspace, I'd like to say I am in the streets more, but I'm not. Truthfully, I'm not into today's music as much. Detroit is FULL of unsigned, wonderful talent. The problem is exposure. Radio stations and other media are so controlled and fake (for lack of a better term), it's hard to get you material heard. Our radio stations play the same pre-programmed, 10 songs all day and the DJ's have no control. On the other hand, so much of what is out there isn't very good. I have respect for anyone who puts their heart out there, but that doesn't mean it's good. Rap is all "teeth and shoes", no one is saying anything relevant and if they are, they're not getting air play. Needless-to-say, the scene needs to change, doors need to open and creativity/individuality needs to be celebrated and not passed for cookie cutter pop or hateful nonsense.

Its very hard to do what you are doing i.e. having your own independent label to try and distribute your records. How do you run your new business?

Wex: Yes, I'd agree with that! We try and do what we can to promote ourselves online. We have the usual MySpace, Facebook and Hyves pages, along with some other sites that promote new music, such as Jango. The music industry is still in a phase of transition and sticking rigidly to one business model, such as CD sales or just iTunes is not going to work any longer. We want our fans to feel part of MHR, so we encourage people to come to our website and subscribe to our song sharing service. For €10 per year, you can download CD quality copies of our albums, individual tracks as MP3s (we hope to include FLAC soon too) and every track in our back catalogue. More importantly, it also gives you access to all our new songs, as we make them! With the traditional music business model, fans would get one or two singles and then have to wait to get the twelve track album. With our model, as soon as it's mastered, we'll put it up for download and the fans can get the latest tracks before radio, TV or press get anywhere near them.

We also want to encourage our fans to interact with us on our website, so we have a forum where fans can post their song ideas or ask us questions and we'll answer when we can. We also offer some other downloads at the moment, such as MHR wallpaper and links to our iPhone app. In the future we'd like to offer fans the chance to vote on which tracks to include on our album and perhaps even to contribute musical performaces to tracks. I think as an internet band we have to encourage interactive behaviour with our fans. Of course, our music is also available on iTunes, Amazon, Napster and the other big stores, but that way you'll miss out on all the fun?

What music are you currently listening to?

Boca: Modest Mouse (2nd cd) and Bon Iver are 2 artists whose cd I have recently discovered and am in love with

Ruby:

- Gorillaz "Plastic Beach"

- The Black Keys

- Sharon Jones

- The New Earth Group

- Balthazar (great Belgian band)

- Chet Baker

- Grace Jones

- Lemon Jelly

- Soul Coughing

Foxy: elis regina, ella fitzgerald, judy garland, toots thielemans, and rosenberg trio!

Wex: Gorillaz "Plastic Beach" - I'm a big Dan the Automator fan, Plan B and mixes of some rare funk 45s by DJ Bluewater

Tell me about your upcoming album.

Boca: Our fist album is a portrait of discovery. The 12 songs are our first 12 songs, so we were learning our sound as we went. Our second cd will blow that one away! We have "our sound" and are making songs to fit "our sound", instead of trying to find it. The first album is also a collection of pieces/songs some of which are 10+ years old. Everything on our new album is fresh and from the perspective we currently see the world with.

Wex: I agree with Boca, our latest tracks are much more cohesive as we've developed our sound over the last couple of years. As with most labours of love, we're very excited about getting down many of the ideas we've been discussing for the last year or so. There's new toys in the studio and a great feeling of optimism and positivity in the MHR camp, so we hope that will come across in the new album. I think it's going to surprise a lot of people.

Any tours or gigs you want to plug?

Boca: The first show will be amazing!

Wex: The second one will be even more amazing... it's hard to rehearse and get your chops down when you're four thousand miles apart. So, I'd like to get us all in the same studio first.

Lastly, who is the biggest music freak in your band and why?

Wex: I'd have to say Ruby. He plays all sorts of instruments, knows obscure tracks from all over (he introduced me to Frank Zappa playing the bicycle on US TV in the 50s) and he even has jazz hair!

Ruby: Well, yeah... that's gotta be me :-)

Foxy: Biggest music freak? I think that's you, Wex, with Ruby being a close second

Boca: It's hard to say, I've never even met these guys!

http://www.myheadradio.com

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