Interview: Need New Body

Could you guys introduce yourselves?

Dale Jimenez, Keyboards: I’m Fizzledorf and this is my friend…

Jeff Bradbury, Vocals/Banjo: Clana.

Dale: Colonic. And that’s Sam [Zurick, Make Believe guitarist].

Sam: Semi-pro dancer. Thank you.

So, how did Need New Body get started?

Jeff: We were in high school.

Dale: High school band.

Jeff: We were in a high school band.

Dale: Marching band.

Jeff: Traveling high school marching band doing a lot of rollerskating, skateboarding, and impressionistic…

Dale: Dada.

Jeff: …Straight edge propaganda. We decided to take it to the Hilt, invested in some major equipment. [Dale laughs] I don’t know where we’re going with this. We were friends for a long time, good old friends from way back. It’s just been rolling very slowly ever since…like a dung beetle.

Dale: Or a cicada.

Those things have been coming out of the woodwork around these parts.

Jeff: [Huffs] Really? Around here?

Yeah. It’s crazy.

Dale: I have one at my house right now.

Jeff: You didn’t bring that.

Dale: I didn’t. Well, I don’t know. It’s at my house.

Jeff: You saw it. You saw it.

I was reading this article that explained how every 17 years, all the cicadas come out of hibernation and they just unleash themselves upon the world.

Jeff: Yeah. It’s a 17-year cycle and they’re only alive for hours once they get their wings. To be honest, it’s so sad to me, man.

Dale: But it’s 17 years, though.

Jeff: It’s 17 years, but you only fly for, like, 2 hours.

Dale: Who says that life isn’t like that?

Jeff: I’m just saying to me it’s sad because when you witness all the life- (Jeff is interrupted and subsequently taken away from us by an excited fan who asks if Need New Body is planning on playing Austin anytime soon).

Frank Zappa famously asked whether or not humor belongs in music. What do you think?

Dale: Yeah, it belongs in everything, man.

What were some of the underlying differences between UFO and the first record?

Dale: UFO is more refined. The last record was that spirit of a new band…excitement, inspiration. The second record was really difficult. It all came together pretty much in maybe a three-week period of time. The period before that, there was absolutely no music being written at all just because…there was a lot that has to do with the band. There are so many people, personalities, and at certain times of the year it seems like the energy of everybody at once happens in February, March, right before the Spring breaks. I don’t even know if I answered your question.

You pretty much answered it. You guys are from Philly, right?

Dale: We’re from New Jersey. We’re all from different parts of New Jersey and we all moved to Philly to try to be together and have a place to practice and rehearse.

How much of an effect do you think the city’s had on Need New Body’s music?

Dale: Oh, it’s tremendous. There’s a rawness, an honesty to this city…

How does it compare to other cities? How does it compare to maybe New York or Austin?

Dale: New York is cool. A lot of cities are cool. The energies are different. Like, if I start drawing- like if I draw here, it comes out a certain way, but then if we’re playing in Austin and I start drawing- or if we’re in Texas for a few days or something like that, there’s slight differences. I don’t if that’s exactly it, but the energies are kind of different and how you perceive energy or like you perceive- not how perceive, but how you feel in certain areas. Like certain places have different tempos. Yeah.

How do the songs usually come together? Do you guys all write together at rehearsals or does someone bring in a part for everyone else to flesh out?

Dale: It all depends. Sometimes we’ll just be playing and this magical thing will happen and we’ll have happened to record it and we’ll all try to retrace the steps. Then, sometimes it’s only maybe a part, I guess a long part or a long idea, and we try to make it as folky…just try to put it in song form the way we would put it in song form, not necessarily structured, but it’s structured to us. Just to get the point across. Sometimes it could last three seconds or…

What’s usually the point?

Dale: You know it when you’re doing it, like when you’re playing the part. With the idea, there’s a certain feel you want to come across and that feel generates ideas and we have lots of ideas so that’s why sometimes things can get kind of…crazy.

What are some of Need New Body’s long-term goals?

Dale: Long-term? I don’t know. I mean, I have a hard enough time just staying together. I have a hard enough time putting music together at times. It’s hard to see much further than the tour we’re on right now.

What were some initial goals of the band?

Dale: When we first started playing…no goals, really. We were just having a lot of fun. We weren’t even worried about playing shows just because we’d beat ourselves up with our other bands and our relationships with each other. Everybody in the group is real different from one another and we’re all real special to one another it gets really nuts sometimes. It got real nuts for a while and we stopped playing, then we came together again and Need New Body formed. There were no pre-conceived ideas about it.

Lastly, if you could choose to have any song of yours featured in a movie, which song and which movie would you choose?
Dale: “Dirty Bitch”.

For?

Dale: Anything. McDonalds’ commercials. [laughs]