sandiegopunk.com

Hollywood Heartbeat

SDP: Who's in the band and what do they do? Hollywood Heartbeat: our band is made up of Jason who’s on vocals and the occasional keyboards, Taylor who’s on guitar, Mikey who plays the delicious bass guitar and Andrea is our full time synth woman of wonder. Also, we like to call our inert drum machine Wesley. He has 0% personality. SDP: Briefly describe your music. HH: Well, first and foremost we’re a new wave band, but we experiment with different sounds and genres everyday. People have described us

as “new” new-wave and all the other newly created electronic genres but we don't find a home in any one of them.

SDP: Why should people listen to your band?
HH: People seem to like us because we’re new, fun, and interesting. When we’re performing we try to make the audience have as great of a time as we are by encouraging dancing and using witty humor. We want kids to stop crossing their arms at shows and let loose.

SDP: How long have you been a band for?
HH: We can’t seem to figure this question out. We all got together as Hollywood Heartbeat sometime around last winter. We had all been in
other projects that didn’t seem to be much fun or successful. When we all teamed up we knew it was going to work; the chemistry was right.

SDP: Where did you get your name from?
HH: After a zillion other shitty ideas and temporary names we came up with Hollywood Heartbeat on a whim. Hollywood Heartbeat seems to embody the witty and sarcastic tone of what we’re all about.

SDP: What makes Hollywood Heartbeat different from every other band out there?
HH:I think listening to our music will answer this question completely.

SDP: Do you have a single song that has a special meaning to you?
Jason: My favorite song of ours is “The Way I Feel at Three AM” because of its extreme hyper-ness juxtaposed with really personal lyrics. There is something about belting out the words “Nobody loves me anymore” that seems to embody the whole beauty in music.
Mikey: Hmmm Hawww my favorite song of ours would have to be “Dear Helen” namely because of the musical quality. For some reason when we perform that song live it ends up being the most enegertic and exciting song in our set.

SDP: What bands, people, books, etc. have had the biggest influence on your band?
HH: As a band we’ve all been heavily influenced by bands like The Faint, Metric, Soft Cell, and new-wave as a whole. We love all different types
of music and we’re inspired by almost all music and shows we take part in. All music has some appealing quality to us and this is partly why we’re all over the place.

SDP: What is your live show like?
HH: energetic to say the least. Expect to clap, dance, and scream. We stress our live show, we try to make each show different and better then the last. We’re always trying to top ourselves.

SDP: What are the advantages and disadvantages to relying heavily on electronics?
HH: In our opinion there are endless advantages to using electronics. With synthesizers you can write a melody and completely change its mood from super happy to extremely sad by simply changing tones. The same thing applies to drum machines, you can express far more ideas with all the different tones you have at your disposal. People tend to think electronic music is hard to breath emotion into, but really there is so much room for it. With all the electronics we have a lot of room for technical difficulties. When we play live we have to play our songs perfectly or the whole thing won’t work, our die hard fans have witnessed this.

SDP: What about the band are you most proud of?
Mikey: I’m most proud of the amazing friendships we’ve created within the band and the people we’ve already reached. Were much more than music. I’m also proud of the music we create and our writing process, it’s involved and clever.
Jason: I am personally most proud of setting out with a personal goal years ago and seeing it materialized every time Hollywood Heartbeat comes together. I love music but am always dissatisfied with what’s out there. We make the music we want to hear and aren’t hearing anywhere else. I’m extremely proud that we’ve successful created music that doesn’t conform to anything but is still enjoyable and fun.

SDP: What CDs are currently in your stereo?
HH: Metric’s “Old World Underground, Where are you now?”, Kissing Tigers’s “Trebuchet” EP, and The Aeffect.

SDP: Do you have any closing comments?
HH: We’ve been working really hard on our EP for the past couple months. We’re doing everything ourselves and it should be finished up by early next year. We want to say thanks to all the kids that have already started showing up to our shows and all the bands we’ve networked with.

Official Website: http://www.hollywood-heartbeat.com/
mp3s: http://www.purevolume.com/hollywoodheartbeat

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