Far too often, the producers who really deserve the attention for making incredible, mind-boogling beats don't get the shine they should. Bubbling beneath the surface is a plethora of untapped talent the entire music loving world should know about. Ethan "Headnodic" Parsonage not only has the talent, but also an established career. As a member of the Crown City Rockers hip-hop collective, he's been pumping out high quality beats since the late '90s. Along with fellow members Woodstock, Raashan Ahmad, Max MacVeety and Kat Ouano, Headnodic released three albums and several EPs. Although the group isn't active anymore, they recently reunited at Hiero Day on September 7 in Oakland. Headnodic also caught up with Raashan Ahmad and recored the second volume of Low Fidelity, High Quality, which is available at www.raashan.net. In Part I of the RAPstation interview, Headnodic talks his origins and what led to the Crown City Rockers becoming a group.
RAPstation (Kyle Eustice): Let's start at the beginning. Where are you from and when did you first fall in love with music?
Headnodic: I'm originally from Englewood New Jersey, right outside of NYC. I guess I first got into music listening to 98.7 Kiss FM and Z100 back in the mid '80s. I would make mix tapes of all my favorite songs off of the radio and listen to 'em over and over. I remember taping a jam with a sample from Inspector Gadget, which blew my mind because I was of course into cartoons. It was either "The Show" or "The inspector Gadget Rap" by The Kartoon Krew. The next day, I went to school and there was a dude standing out front. He had a gigantic boombox and was blasting the songs from the same DJ Red Alert show that I recorded. There was just something so insanely cool about that radio. At that point in my life, 8-years-old or so, I thought the G.I. Joe aircraft carrier was the coolest thing on the planet and I always wanted one, but this big-ass radio was way cooler. I never got that aircraft carrier, and I'm sad to say that the biggest radio I have is a Tisonic and it's busted so it only works in mono. I do have the lion Voltron though. What was the question [laughs]?
Did you have a musical household?
A buddy of mine name James Clevette left his electric guitar at my house for the weekend. It was a wrap. I couldn't put it down. I just sat around watching TV trying to learn every theme song / commercial jingle / musical phrase that I heard. Eventually my big brother convinced me that we should both get instruments, but he should play guitar and I should play bass. I didn't know what a bass was at that time, but he told me that it's bigger and has less strings to worry about. I've been playing bass ever since and my big brother, Noah Parsonage, is a virtuoso acoustic finger-style working on his third album now. My mom is a painter and my dad used to sing in night clubs back in the '60s. Neither of them necessarily got me into music, but they were the most supportive parents you could ever ask for growing up. When I got into jazz in high school, my folks bought me a bunch of CDs to see what genres I was into which was hugely beneficial to my development. I remember my mom came home with Return to Forever, Romantic Warrior, The Best of Duke Ellington, Miles Davis Kind of Blue and some spyrogyra album. They can't all be winners. The first three are still some of my favorite albums to this day.
What led to Crown City Rockers becoming a group?
It was a mutual love for hip-hop and all of its musical ingredients, and a respect for everyone's individual versatile tastes in different musical genres. We really brought some cool stuff out of each other. In the early days of Mission, Kat was pretty sick of playing classical music by the time she got to the Berklee College of music where we all met. But Moe and Raashan really pushed her to bring some of those elements to the table, and that's how we made the song "It's The," which really proved to us that we did our best work thinking outside of the box. We all had pretty different musical back stories and luckily realized that we needed to bring those elements to the table. We were very adamant about not sounding like a bad rip-off version of the Roots. There were already enough of those playing around the scene.
You've never officially broken up, right? I know you just did a show at Hiero day. How did it feel to be back together again?
We have not broken up and I don't think we ever will, but I don't forsee us making an album anytime soon. We live all over now. Woodstock and I are in Oakland, Max MacVeety is in LA, Raashan is in New Mexico, and Kat lives in Hawaii. Playing together this last month was absolutely fantastic, but the best part was just hanging out all week prior to the gig, rehearsing, making and recording music. We're a family and love every occasion that we can get together.
Headnodic: The RAPstation Interview - Part One
Far too often, the producers who really deserve the attention for making incredible, mind-boogling beats don't get the shine they should. Bubbling beneath the surface is a plethora of untapped talent the entire music loving world should know about. Ethan "Headnodic" Parsonage not only has the talent, but also an established career. As a member of the Crown City Rockers hip-hop collective, he's been pumping out high quality beats since the late '90s. Along with fellow members Woodstock, Raashan Ahmad, Max MacVeety and Kat Ouano, Headnodic released three albums and several EPs. Although the group isn't active anymore, they recently reunited at Hiero Day on September 7 in Oakland. Headnodic also caught up with Raashan Ahmad and recored the second volume of Low Fidelity, High Quality, which is available at www.raashan.net. In Part I of the RAPstation interview, Headnodic talks his origins and what led to the Crown City Rockers becoming a group.
RAPstation (Kyle Eustice): Let's start at the beginning. Where are you from and when did you first fall in love with music?
Headnodic: I'm originally from Englewood New Jersey, right outside of NYC. I guess I first got into music listening to 98.7 Kiss FM and Z100 back in the mid '80s. I would make mix tapes of all my favorite songs off of the radio and listen to 'em over and over. I remember taping a jam with a sample from Inspector Gadget, which blew my mind because I was of course into cartoons. It was either "The Show" or "The inspector Gadget Rap" by The Kartoon Krew. The next day, I went to school and there was a dude standing out front. He had a gigantic boombox and was blasting the songs from the same DJ Red Alert show that I recorded. There was just something so insanely cool about that radio. At that point in my life, 8-years-old or so, I thought the G.I. Joe aircraft carrier was the coolest thing on the planet and I always wanted one, but this big-ass radio was way cooler. I never got that aircraft carrier, and I'm sad to say that the biggest radio I have is a Tisonic and it's busted so it only works in mono. I do have the lion Voltron though. What was the question [laughs]?
Did you have a musical household?
A buddy of mine name James Clevette left his electric guitar at my house for the weekend. It was a wrap. I couldn't put it down. I just sat around watching TV trying to learn every theme song / commercial jingle / musical phrase that I heard. Eventually my big brother convinced me that we should both get instruments, but he should play guitar and I should play bass. I didn't know what a bass was at that time, but he told me that it's bigger and has less strings to worry about. I've been playing bass ever since and my big brother, Noah Parsonage, is a virtuoso acoustic finger-style working on his third album now. My mom is a painter and my dad used to sing in night clubs back in the '60s. Neither of them necessarily got me into music, but they were the most supportive parents you could ever ask for growing up. When I got into jazz in high school, my folks bought me a bunch of CDs to see what genres I was into which was hugely beneficial to my development. I remember my mom came home with Return to Forever, Romantic Warrior, The Best of Duke Ellington, Miles Davis Kind of Blue and some spyrogyra album. They can't all be winners. The first three are still some of my favorite albums to this day.
What led to Crown City Rockers becoming a group?
It was a mutual love for hip-hop and all of its musical ingredients, and a respect for everyone's individual versatile tastes in different musical genres. We really brought some cool stuff out of each other. In the early days of Mission, Kat was pretty sick of playing classical music by the time she got to the Berklee College of music where we all met. But Moe and Raashan really pushed her to bring some of those elements to the table, and that's how we made the song "It's The," which really proved to us that we did our best work thinking outside of the box. We all had pretty different musical back stories and luckily realized that we needed to bring those elements to the table. We were very adamant about not sounding like a bad rip-off version of the Roots. There were already enough of those playing around the scene.
You've never officially broken up, right? I know you just did a show at Hiero day. How did it feel to be back together again?
We have not broken up and I don't think we ever will, but I don't forsee us making an album anytime soon. We live all over now. Woodstock and I are in Oakland, Max MacVeety is in LA, Raashan is in New Mexico, and Kat lives in Hawaii. Playing together this last month was absolutely fantastic, but the best part was just hanging out all week prior to the gig, rehearsing, making and recording music. We're a family and love every occasion that we can get together.
