Interview: The Hood Internet

Five Minutes with The Hood Internet’s Steve Reidell:

USD Radio caught up with The Hood Internet’s Steve Reidell before his performance at UCSD’s The Loft on February 22nd.  Who would have thought Dead Prez worked well with Grizzly Bear, or Rusko and Soulja Boy… even DMX and The XX?

By: Jessica Fahey and Marisa Marlowe

So Hood Internet’s 4th Birthday’s coming around the corner?  How’d you get started?

Close to 4 years, yea.  We weren’t really touring when it first started, it was a web only project.  We were in a pop, Beach Boy influenced band together in Chicago, making tracks on the side for fun. It sort of started to take off when the internet grabbed a hold of it, and a friend recommended playing local shows, like some DJ sets, and we had no idea what we were doing.  Our first couple shows were really a mess, but then we started getting a hold of things.

How would you describe your music to someone that’s never listened to it before?

First I would describe the idea of what a mash up is so they can understand the basic concept, and then from there there’s a lot of rap, hip- hop, indie rock, electronic stuff… it’s basically a mess.  And then I would wait for their reaction.

You have an eclectic mix of songs, how do you go about deciding which songs to mash up?

Really stuff that’s in our music collection, stuff that we are listening to, stuff that we’re  feeling.  Sometimes its a little loco and go farther back and grab a Cindi Lauper song that matches up or something. But a lot of it is trying to lend an ear to songs that match together in terms of melody or vocal cadence, just really throwing stuff against the wall.  At this point we’ve made over 400 tracks and some of them are good.

Thinking back to early childhood what was your first experience with music? What song or band do you remember most as a child?

My parents listened to a lot of The Beatles . I also remember really liking the song “Africa” by Toto.  I loved Phil Collins and I still really love Phil Collins. And then I played in band in elementary school- I played the trumpet. In high school I kinda got tired of that and started playing the guitar and bass guitar.  Then I moved on from there and have always been interested in making songs and all kinds of music.

What’s next?

There is touring throughout the rest of the year for sure. It’s something that happens on a lot of the weekends…this is sort of a rare Tuesday night show. Hopefully its not laid back.  The next big thing for us is that we’re making a record that’s not a mash up at all; it’s sort of all of our own original music and production.  We’re working with a bunch of different people from a bunch of different bands- none of whom I’m going to say anything about since its not done- but that’s coming out in the fall.  Me and aaron work in different states now, he lives in north Carolina and I still live in Chicago but the internet makes it easy to work.”