Say a band lacks a record deal, an actual fanbase, or product to purchase, yet possesses a lifespan that’s as long as the cash in the drummer’s pocket holds up. Would that be the sort of band you’d like your local alt-weekly to dedicate 4500+ words to? If you live in the greater Phoenix area, you’re in luck, because Hollywood Heartthrob, an act that can’t even get its official site on the first page of the Google search for its name, is on the cover of the Phoenix New Times this week!
While the music coverage in the Phoenix New Times has been significantly better under the reign of current editor (and seemingly nice guy) Martin Cizmar, the spectre of former editor Niki D’Andrea still haunts the publication’s pages. (Yes, I’m aware she made this year’s Da Capo Best Music Writing anthology this year for one of the articles in her extended series “Phoenix Novelty Acts Who Can Barely Play Music.” You’ll have to take that up with Nelson George and/or Daphne Carr.) It seems so unjust that while the Loveblisters (who actually have an album available now, have won national contests and play around town every weekend) are relegated to the back pages, these clowns make the cover.
Ted Myers doesn’t laugh at that one, because he’s a drummer — and he’s not the stereotypical, dumb, party-drummer. In fact, when he won the Health & Wealth Raffle, Myers wasn’t just an ad salesman. The fair-skinned 23-year-old was also a talented musician and aspiring rock star, and months before he won the money, he’d already devised a plan to transform his band into superstars. He’d even found a few potential investors, because the plan was somewhat intricate — and very expensive.
The day he won the raffle, Myers called all his would-be investors and told them to never mind. Then he called his bandmates and told them not to worry about money anymore. He had an investor who would pay for everything.
Myers’ first step was to fix Faucet. That was the admittedly drippy name of his band. He decided that Hollywood Heartthrob sounded much more glamorous, and he hired a graphic designer to create a neon logo around a hot-pink heart with white, feathery wings.
This band was going to be about flamboyance and glamour, just like a young Mötley Crüe or Poison — but cooler and stuff.
Being young and hot is an important part of the plan. None of the guys in Hollywood Heartthrob is older than 25. The bass player, Nate Beilmann, isn’t even 21 yet.
Every member of the band fills a role. Ted Myers is the undisputed leader, the steady-handed drummer with the game plan. Tall and wiry, Beilmann’s the subtle wisecracker of the band.
There are two lead guitarists — Frank Littlefield, a big guy with long blond hair, and Brent Sutton, a pretty, dark-haired boy with a lip piercing, both arms covered in colorful tattoos. Littlefield’s the quiet one, the skillful, bowed-head ax man who focuses on his guitar while his face hides behind his hair. He gives the band its metal edge. Sutton’s the showman/partier, the bad boy who can take a shot and a punch back-to-back. The pair’s dueling guitar solos and layered harmonies are the most impressive parts of Hollywood Heartthrob’s songs.
Like Sutton, singer Grady Melton’s got tons of tattoos and a chiseled, cover-boy face. He’s outspoken and snarky (favorite comeback: “Whatever”), and his vocals contain both the impassioned wails of emo and the nasally ring of punk. He’s shorter than the other guys in the band but makes up for it in rock star attitude.
Melton helped Myers come up with a trendy new image for Hollywood Heartthrob, and everyone in the band pulls off the rock star look better than many bona fide rock stars (they may even do the satellite-dish-size sunglasses thing better than Bono).
For awhile, I thought maybe Niki was going to examine the idea of manufactured music in the digital age, ruminate on the concept of pop music itself, look at how money can’t buy fame…nope, let’s just read about the band a bit more.
In fact, Myers hired Tom Garrett to not only manage Hollywood Heartthrob but to be chief operating officer of his new label, Juiced Records. Coincidentally, Garrett had recently moved to Phoenix from California when he met Myers through Mike Fix, a Phoenix drummer who’d done session work with the likes of Peter Murphy and Liz Phair.
Garrett’s musical background is mostly in the jazz and New Age genres. The 60-something Oklahoma native did programming for jazz radio throughout the ’80s, and he says he did some independent record promotion for people like Luther Vandross, David Sanborn, Yanni, Dr. John, and Cocteau Twins. He’s an energetic, super-talkative guy with a master’s degree in psychology. He refers to his business and marketing plan as “The Takeover” and likens Hollywood Heartthrob to The Beatles, himself to Brian Epstein. The Beatles are always a lofty comparison, considering they had 34 singles and nine albums in a row hit number one on the Billboard charts. But, hey, Garrett thinks big.
“Hollywood Heartthrob owns this town,” Garrett says, during one of those managerial hype talks. “These guys are going to be huge.”
Myers says they talked to a few record labels about potential distribution for the record, but that he never really wanted to be signed. “I don’t want people to think this is some sort of vanity indie label,” Myers says of Juiced. “We decided to put this record out ourselves because we wanted to, not because nobody else was interested in putting it out . . . We’ve got everything a major label has, as far as promotions. We just need to arrange distribution.”
Distribution is vital if the band wants to sell records. Myers says he’s currently in talks with local Epic imprint Modern Art Records and Sony Music Canada about getting The Takeover in stores, but nothing’s been nailed down yet. Worse, Hollywood Heartthrob have no digital distribution whatsoever. The band’s music isn’t available to download on iTunes, Amazon, CD Baby, or any other Internet site, which is a basic first step for most bands.
As for touring, Garrett says he’s talking to Live Nation about some possible spring opening spots for national acts, and to Vans Warped Tour about a summer festival slot, but everything’s still up in the air. The band doesn’t plan to play at the annual South by Southwest music festival in Austin, either.
Maybe there’s something between the lines criticizing the act and their approach, but I missed it. Even if the article is an elaborate left-handed attack on the band’s relentlessly phony aesthetic, isn’t a cover shoot and 4500+ words of coverage playing into Hollywood Heartthrob’s hands? I’m not here to condemn pop, but it seems to be just a bit too highly coincidental that Hollywood Heartthrob and its label, Juiced Music, have purchased multiple full-page color advertisements with the paper in recent months (to the extent that someone asked me recently if I had any idea who they were, since they seemed to have an ad in the paper every week). Now they’re getting more coverage than any Phoenix-area act has received in recent memory? One reader wondered aloud in the comments if the story was a prank (the New Times has a tradition of running one phony cover story a year), which seems like a bad sign on the journalistic front as far as the subject matter goes. D’Andrea might be just trying to cover a band on the rise, but the New Times seems to have a bit too much invested in the band’s success.
Hollywood Heartthrob: How a Lucky Break and a Lot of Cash Made the Band [Phoenix New Times]
Remember that thread about the bands we hate?
I would rather knock out my teeth, glue them to my hands and then try to eat my own face off with my hand-teeth than listen to hollywood heartthrob for even one second. What a bunch of drips.
Idolator needs to start exploring the wonders of alt-text. That photo is just screaming for a subtly withering caption.
Hollywood Heartthrob vs. Hollywood Undead would be a great face-off of terrible manufactured bands of ’08/’09.
two lead guitarists = oxymoron?
“He’s outspoken and snarky (favorite comeback: “Whatever”)”
Oooh! Burn! I never saw that coming!
“… he did some independent record promotion for people like Luther Vandross, David Sanborn, Yanni, Dr. John, and Cocteau Twins”.
Uhhhhmm… one of those seem slightly out of place.
That article would make a boring press release. Does anybody really care who thier favourite bands press agent is? Shouldn’t that person be invisible? And how much money did this guy get from a frickin’ raffle?
Worst alternative weekly cover story since Ultragrrrl appeared on the Village Voice?
OK I clicked on the full article and read it. I’m speechless.
It just gives and gives. From the lack of distro mentioned above to the party with Pete Wentz, to the description their cd release show where they became relegated to opening band status after spending 80k on the thing and having the promoter renegotiate the contract behind their backs to have Unwritten Law headline, to the fight with the Hispanic woman…
But the best part was undoubtedly their plan to reinvent themselves undercover. As if anybody actually gave a shit.
Amazing.
“Hosted by local radio station KISS FM, the annual Phooson festival features Top 40 headlining acts like Fall Out Boy, Rihanna, and Katy Perry. Garrett couldn’t get Hollywood Heartthrob on the main stage, but he booked them for the pre-show VIP party through an account executive at KISS. Basically, he paid for most of the party (along with tons of on-air ad spots) so the band could play in front of a hundred young girls and KISS personalities JohnJay and Rich.“
Cough.
@sicksteanein:
Someone should tell them that you have to be covered before going undercover.
Seriously, how much was the damned raffle? Seven figures?
@Ted Striker: Part of his prize was a house. In Arizona. And he still works to pay off his mortgage.
Say it with me: O-ver-lev-’raged.
It really was probably seven figures. That damn raffle gives away cars and houses etc
@Maura Johnston: Do they all live togehter in the house like the Monkees? That would be mildly interesting.
“The Beatles are always a lofty comparison, considering they had 34 singles and nine albums in a row hit number one on the Billboard charts. But, hey, Garrett thinks big.”
You think?
I’m betting on this being a joke.
wow, that full article is quite a read. it actually seemed pretty subjectively transparent. sure, i can see that these guys are total pop wankers, yet for catching a lucky financial break, they certainly are doing everything right to become the rock stars they want to be.
what would really be entertaining is the same article 5 years from now, after they’ve since blown up with the teen girls and the girlies have out-grown them, and all that remains are a couple of un-remembered artistically bankrupt hits, alcohol and cocaine bloat, and hey now they really hate each other (at least whoever remains of the band, aside from the drummer). oh and all the money is now gone! bummer, dudes…
I was reminded of Menswe@r.
What is the world coming to when a band named “Hollywood Heartthrob” is from ARIZONA?
@moomintroll: I wish. The gig at the Celebrity Theatre actually appeared to have happened: [eventful.com]
@Cos: I guess Phoenix Philanderer and Don TuscJuan were already taken.
It’s the reciprocity of life and art. Not to go off on too much of a diatribe here, but what do we expect when we as a culture ogle at and fawn over talentless celebrities and devour their gossip relentlessly? It’s inevitable that ‘artists’ would begin to rely more heavily on gimmick than on substance when popular culture seems to be demanding that they do so. It’s actually clever marketing, it’s just a shame that they don’t have the courage to use that cleverness on something more praiseworthy; like, oh say, their music.
ps- thanks for the shout out to the loveblisters.
@Dan Gibson: Man, this whole thing read like an Onion article, and it’s real?
“Worse, Hollywood Heartthrob have no digital distribution whatsoever. The band’s music isn’t available to download on iTunes, Amazon, CD Baby, or any other Internet site, which is a basic first step for most bands.”
Good grief. It’s absolutely easy to upload your stuff to Tunecore, pay them $30 (or however much it is) and have your album out there. That’s so incredibly basic and so pitifully easy in this day and age, it makes it hard to take these clowns seriously if they can’t even do that.
Well, you guys aren’t giving this band a fair shake. For one thing, they’re admittedly making pop music geared at teenage girls, not brainy college-types who comment on music message boards. They’ve done the whole struggling band thing for almost ten years as Faucet; now they’re focused on trying to make it as a national act, and that has meant being adaptive and paying more attention to things like image and self-promotion. As for musicianship, most of the guys exceed par for a rock band. Teddy for one is an extremely solid and well-practiced drummer, and Frank has the foundation in music theory to back up his shredding skills. And you don’t achieve such a polished sound and coordinated performance without some serious rehearsal, so this nonsense about them “spending more time on their music instead of their image” is way off target.
It’s fun to talk shit, but I happen to know these guys and know what they’re really about, so I’ve got to speak up. Hollywood Heartthrob is not some group that was hand picked by money men to engineer as the “next big thing.” They’re a rock band from Glendale, AZ, that is trying to engineer ITSELF as the next big thing, and that makes all the difference. If you’d seen how far they had come before Teddy won that prize I don’t think there would be such a negative reaction. And that Teddy had the balls to invest all that money in himself and his dream is fucking admirable.
This is the point where you’re supposed to take a more balanced view and think, “Yeah, they’re just a bunch of young guys taking a risk and really going for it in a big way. I guess that is pretty cool and worthy of some press.” Sorry to ruin anyone’s fun!
I can see why they went with the story, since it is a fairly interesting angle, but the article is so dry.
While the ban absolutely Sucks and I agree that the Love Blisters should have had more coverage I would argue with the Paying for the cover story part. If this were the case Audio Express would have a cover story, don’t they have like 5 full pages in the paper every week?
No, this warranted a story (maybe not the cover) because these kids are spending a ton of money to manufacture themselves into a good band. Look at the media coverage the Monkees got way back when, or what the Back Street Boys & NSync got. This story is just a sad tale of how people can piss money away, and could have done it so much better! It is not hard to get music on ITunes and CDBaby is even easier! This kid is just going about it all wrong to have a lasting impact on music and this is lining up to be an EPIC FAIL.
I wrote this about Ted Myers and his band right after he won the raffle money: [asuwebdevilarchive.asu.edu]
Now he’s all famous and being mocked on Idolator, haha.
Read that ASU article above. The guy freaking works at the Phoenix New Times. So he runs all those ads with some sort of employee discount (or they’re house ads), and the lazy music writer just had to walk down the hall to interview him.
Awesome.
@kevoAZ: If they are just a pop band looking to sell records to teenagers, they are going about it all wrong. You don’t sell pop records to teenagers with newspaper stories about your promoter. This cover story is not their big break; it’s just boring. They may have been hoping for Tiger Beat, but they got Hit’s magazine.
@kevoAZ: Honestly, I couldn’t really care less about Hollywood Heartthrob (although I think they were better off plugging away as Faucet), but my irritation is more with the fact that the New Times ran a huge article that was basically an extended ad for the act.