Hey Violet and Jessarae At The Echoplex
Richard Griffiths ran Epic in the U.S.
Harry Magee ran A&M in the U.K.
Together they run a Modest! Management, most famous for handling One Direction.
But they also manage Five Seconds Of Summer, whose success they built on the back of 1D.
And now they’re building Hey Violet on the back of 5SOS. Jessarae too.
Hey Violet used to be known as Cherri Bomb. They were punk/power popsters signed to Hollywood Records, genius on paper, a band for fans of the same age, barely pubescent, with Disney synergy, but Cherri Bomb failed in the marketplace, the band reformed as Hey Violet and Richard and Harry took them on.
I was not impressed.
The two Lovelis sisters, the singer and the drummer, were incredibly cute. It’s just that they were a great garage band, running on enthusiasm more than quality.
But they were working it hard. All over the social networks. Doing pop-up live shows for fans. Of which there was a loyal number, after all supporting 5SOS you get recognition.
My initial exposure to Hey Violet was at Wembley Arena last June, 2015. I saw them about six months later at the Troubadour, in their hometown of Los Angeles. The fans were adoring, they knew every word, but you would not be impressed.
But neither were the brass.
It was agreed the material was not there yet, and this was a big problem.
This is why so many can’t do it alone, why there’s still a need for the major label, for the experience of those involved.
So last night I took my life in my hands and journeyed to Echo Park. Beyond the lake featured in “Chinatown” I parked by the homeless and walked by a mini-mart out of Guadalajara as opposed to the Westside and wondered…when I walked back after the gig would it be safe? You wanted to lock the doors and keep up your speed in the seventies. But now Silver Lake is so hip… I’m not sure. But the derelicts and denizens lounging around had my wits about me.
As for the gig itself…
I had to wait in line. Jessarae started to play. But the guy taking names was barely literate and everybody in front of me had a story, why they were entitled to get in. I’m getting frustrated, what am I doing here, I’m too old for this!
But when I got inside I was confronted with one guy with a guitar singing his songs, and he was GOOD! You can tell. Because few are, good, that is. It’s like porn, to paraphrase the Supreme Court, you know it when you hear it! Jessarae is American but he moved to London and got connected with Richard and Harry through Kobalt and they signed him, put him on the road with 5SOS, and… I got it.
But then it was time for Hey Violet.
Now a couple of weeks back, I got an unsolicited e-mail, from an adult, who pointed me to Hey Violet’s cut “Brand New Moves,” he said he liked it. Which is completely weird, this music is for teenyboppers and how would he have even stumbled upon them?
But I checked it out.
I was stunned. IT WAS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SOUND! It took a while to hit the change, but when it did, I said to myself…this is a hit or close to it.
Turns out the track was written with Julian Bunetta, who worked with 1D.
And I’d be lying if I told you Hey Violet nailed this track last night.
And I’m listening to their old stuff, the little girls are cheering, but then they say they’re gonna play some new stuff, stuff they’ve never played before.
Snooze, right?
But no, these were the killers! All three! They played an acoustic song written in the desert that had alienation stamped all over it, you know, the kind teenagers identify with, the kind they spin incessantly in their bedrooms.
But the songs were not the only revelation.
The other was Rena Lovelis.
She was no longer a teen running on enthusiasm, she was of age, legal, she was eighteen, and now she was slinking and slithering evidencing sexuality and…
Suddenly I realized I was watching Debbie Harry, just a bunch of decades younger.
All those gigs, all that experience, she’d BLOSSOMED! She now owned the stage, she was not playing to the audience, she was LEADING IT!
I knew this girl, not very different from your next door neighbor, albeit world-weary, but now…she was a STAR!
I was stunned.
Now I’m not saying that Hey Violet’s records will immediately light up the Top Ten. I’m not saying the music is so original you’ll be floored. I’m just saying that Richard and Harry took an unformed blob and polished it into something salable, the transition was astounding, what I thought had little chance, something that was running solely on data, socials and the rest of the internet crap, was now on the cusp of a breakthrough!
And the new music sounds nothing like what came before. Adolescents pogoing to poppy nonsense is out the window. The new tracks are denser, more ethereal, more produced. You’d wonder if the fan base would be alienated, but the truth is the fan base is so small that…they’ll come along with the new music just to say they were there first and…it’s about the mass, you can’t be so loyal to your tiny starter fans that you can’t take a left turn, that you can’t grow.
Now the best of the new tracks is “Pure.” I’ll link to it below. Put your professional hat on, listen as a business exercise, I don’t care if you like it or not but whether you can recognize its quality and its workability.
After that you can listen to “Brand New Moves.”
That acoustic song from the desert is not on Spotify.
But those old songs that didn’t register, you can check them out, to see the difference, the growth. I’ll link to their most played song on Spotify, from the previous EP, “I Can Feel It,” which is closer to Warped Tour than Bowery Ballroom.
So, Richard and Harry are leveraging their experience and their success to give a new act its best shot.
And you wonder why you can’t break through.
A few people are so talented, so fully-realized, that they don’t need any assistance. But they’re few and far between. The rest need help. There’s nothing original about Hey Violet, but they’ve got a fan base built on the back of 5SOS, they’ve got A level material, they’ve got a shot.
Without Richard and Harry they’d just be wannabes.
