While stumbling upon his catalogue Jerry Joplin &The Hell Raisin’ Hippiesexpressed the love for music and showcased the compositions that have overwhelmed the fans and followers. This interview gives a brief about the qualities of this great musician –
Q. Hello, I’m overwhelmed that I met you on this certain day. It feels great! However, first of all, I would like to know how are you doing in the music industry?
A: Thanks for the interview! The music industry can be very hard to break into for individuals, especially if your primary theme is individualism! Your interview really helps us a lot, so thank you very much indeed! We’ve found that our information-based society puts a lot of “power” into the hands of established musicians and we’ve now reached the point where we have become “established” musicians! The Hell Raisin’ Hippies are always trying to find the best way to utilize this power in a way that reaches the most people and is consistent with our progressive hippie ideals.
Q: While dealing with music and its associated things did you find everything going on your favor?
A: The individualistic approach to music is very difficult, but very satisfying. Most music you hear has been professionally and algorithmically modified, engineered, and mastered. Though this process produces a familiar sound and structure, it can reduce or eliminate the individual’s contribution to the art itself. In music, if you consider the “art” to be the entirety of the work including video and social media presentations of the art, then music contains a lot of aspects in which you’ll need to become proficient to effectively convey a message on individualism. It has been difficult, but we’ve been thrilled and overwhelmed by our ability to communicate with the whole world!
Q: When you released the track ‘Aliens Are Programming Our Brains’ how was the reaction of your fans?
A: Thank you for the great question, the song “Aliens Are Programming Our Brains” was designed to get a reaction from people, and it is off to a great start! In the age of “Musical SEO” this has been our best effort and your interview helps in this regard too, so thank you! The song is positioned as a warning to society conveyed amusingly. This warning essentially says that humans may not be at the top of the food chain in our galaxy. The reaction has been great, the reaction has been so good that we “own” the concept of “aliens are programming our brains” on the Internet and each day we receive listens or views just from people interested in the concept of aliens modifying our brains.
Q: What does the song represent?
A: Advanced alien species would find it remarkably easy to program human brains to perform certain activities, or think in a certain way. This ability has largely been used in a medical capacity or utilized by intelligence agencies, but the song represents the concept of aliens modifying our brains driven by a heavy EDM beat. We tried to develop the distinctive bass EDM riff in a way in which will always relate the riff itself to the concept of aliens, and especially the concept of aliens programming our brains in the listener’s mind. In other words, when a person hears the riff – they’ll think of aliens! In a way – we’re programming the listener’s brain in a way that aliens could easily perform to further the concept.
Q: You have already listed some of the excellent music compositions. So, if you fans want to hear the best song, which one will you recommend?
A: Fans often say our best song is Psychedelic Invention #6, Variations on a Theme by Jimi Hendrix, or a metal number entitled “The Pit.” Yet we have much more popular songs that reach far more people. For this reason, we have found Electronica and EDM style music more effective for reaching wider audiences across the world and especially for reaching young people than either metal or a more traditional blues-influenced Psychedelia.
For EDM fans, we have two song recommendations. A first recommendation is a chilled-out number from our album Hippie Trance entitled: “A White Whale” which is easy to listen to for most people. Also from Hippie Trance is the extended version of “Aliens Are Programming Our Brains” in “Aliens Are Programming Our Brains Again” which has proven to be more engaging on Spotify than the original number and focuses much more on the heavy EDM beat than the original number.
If you liked “Aliens Are Programming Our Brains” you’re certain to love “Aliens Are Programming Our Brains Again!”
Q: Do you give preference to the live performances?
A: We have oriented most of our music for trippy sounding soundtracks or music video snippets. In fact, if you’ve heard a soundtrack that was extremely “trippy” or “spacey” it may have been us, so be sure and check the credits for “The Hell Raisin’ Hippies!” Still, this approach translates very well to performances using the psychedelic style of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd. Performances are targeted to a smaller and very chilled-out audience with accompanying psychedelic visuals. When it’s 4:20, it’s time to chill out to one of our psychedelic sets!
Q: If you are asked to collaborate with any of the famous icons from the music industry whose name you will love to pronounce?
A: When we (Erica and Jerry Joplin) were married, the first event on our honeymoon was a Rob Zombie concert with a mosh pit in Dallas, Texas. We love both the music and films by Rob Zombie and any collaboration with them would be an immense privilege, especially if we could meet Sheri Moon Zombie! We think Rob Zombie may have captured the creepiest scene in film history in his 2007 Halloween showing a young Mike Myers in the police car after his first murder spree. Jerry still goes back to trance numbers from Rob Zombie for motivation and inspiration. We also love his guitarist, John 5!
Q: Tell us something more about the features that make a track truly powerful.
A: It is shocking to realize how much power our society gives to musicians. Our first encounter with this power came when we released a YouTube track in coordination with a rock festival and targeted the audience attending the concert on Facebook. The track went viral! It was provocatively entitled “Date With A Dominatrix” and hinted at forbidden erotic content. Yet the track is actually rated “G” and is a tongue-in-cheek view of both music videos and people searching for erotic content on YouTube. People “got” the joke! We had 100,000 people listen to the song in a single week!
From that experience, we learned some of the power that can make a track a success in the age of the Internet and SEO. Aliens Are Programming Our Brains, and it’s follow-up, Aliens Are Programming Our Brains Again are two examples of our reaching out with music and video over the Internet to convey a universal message.
Q: What are the main skills that have made your track unique?
A: The track contains a distinctive EDM base beat that instantly makes the listener think of a contemporary trance festival, or a dance club. As the track reinforces the theme of aliens modifying our brains, the beat becomes synonymous with the unique concept itself to further reinforce both the track and the concepts conveyed. Many people upon hearing the audio version will search the Internet for the concept, and they find us! This reinforcing combination has been remarkably effective and we hope to build upon this concept much more in the future.
Q: Tell us about your career – the ups and downs that you have faced so far.
A: All of “the downs” we’ve faced so far have helped us grow. If you approach music as an endeavor in individualism, then putting together a final product can be much, much harder than you ever anticipated. For example, how do you “master” a track? How do you create a high-resolution music video? How do you market yourself? These are all things we’ve had to learn as we go and it can be extraordinarily difficult. The usual approach is to “master” a track using a professional service, but then the artist gives away much of the sound which makes it unique to the individual. It has been extremely hard to excel at particular aspects of music and to keep it individualistic.
On the other hand, it has been extremely fun to experience “the ups” in our musical career. We often laugh together with people’s positive reaction to our track in Burma, India, or elsewhere. Then we love to compare that reaction to how people in Libya or Morocco feel about the number. We often find that people all over the world are very similar but have distinctive characteristics that we’ve grown to love. For example, did you know that Libya is an Arab culture where women play a leading role in society? We didn’t know this before getting into music, but now we do! And more interestingly to us, for some reason Libyan Arabs like our music more than other Arabs! The entire experience of putting together music that people listen to in Libya has been an incredible ride for us and we feel like we’re just getting started!
Q: Being an icon in this industry how will you love to contribute to society?
A: This might be fanciful, but one of our causes is the worldwide legalization of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, mushrooms, or MDMA. People neither become addicted nor do they overdose on psychedelic drugs and their effect can have a substantial positive effect on the treatment of other addictions of mental conditions. Additionally, people living in the pre-Columbian Americas largely used psychedelic drugs as a spiritual and creative experience. For example, contemporary archaeologists are pretty sure the Nazca Lines were created by people tripping out on mescaline. There are broken pots lined with mescaline all along the paths of the Nazca Lines. Look at the wonders created by people using psychedelic drugs in antiquity! We believe that if the prohibition on psychedelic drugs was removed, the human psyche would be opened to unanticipated creative and spiritual gains.
Q: Is there anything you will love to share with your fans?
A: Thank you so much for this interview! It gives us a chance to say a very big “Thank You!” to everyone that has supported us, or listened to our music, or watched our videos! We are shocked at how much exposure we’ve received and are working diligently to make sure we keep getting better and better.
Thank you so much and stay on the lookout for more craziness from The Hell Raisin’ Hippies!
Connect with Jerry Joplin & The Hell Raisin’ Hippies on social sites :
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheHellRaisingHippies/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehellraisinhippies_official/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HellHippie
