Let's just say this out loud: The Hippos are a party band. If You think that music needs to be depressing, non-linear, and full of allusion to convoluted literary theory, you'll be wasting four minutes of your time here. For the. rest of you, The Hippos are getting ready to release their second album, "Head Are Gonna Roll." Skate-punks who got their hands on some Beatles and Police records, The Hippos are rocketed by a three-piece horn section, multiple keyboards and contagious songs. Their ridiculously fun live shows (and there are plenty of them.) have made them club headliners nationwide best known as "a six-piece that actually plays thirteen instruments live." 
"We'd play for two people, but the next time we came around there would be four people," says Ariel Rechtshaid. The Hippos built their amazing fan base from touring pretty constantly for a whole year; while their buddies back home were hanging at the beach, they were busting their ass across country. "We were doing what we thought was fun. Like, I could be in 12th grade or be in New Orleans." 

Here's the best part., they wrote most of those songs for the first album when they were fifteen and sixteen. That was four years ago, when Ariel and James hooked up at the same skateboard arena, and eventually the conversation turned to music - specifically pop-punk groups. They got themselves a drummer and started a three piece Green Day rip-off outfit. With Kyle on drums, Louis arrived on the scene with a trumpet, drafted Danny and Rich from jazz camp and the line up was solid. 

Christened after Ariel's childhood imaginary friend - the "Dangerous Hippo" - The Hippos became a fixture of the LA music scene. Their DIY first album, Forget The World (on Vagrant/Fueled By Ramen which is co-owned by the drummer from Less Than Jake) found 20,000 fans as far as Japan, and got them some airplay on big fat commercial radio stations including KROQ. They toured with MxPx and Face To Face, did some '99 Warped tour dates and a bunch of soundtrack work. While all of this was taking place, somehow they found time to record their new album. Produced by Mark Trombino (Blink 182, Jimmy Eat World) the creation of this album took place in sonic environments ranging from the big Chateau Chaumont (which is really the manager's old roommate's living room) to Mad Hatter in Silver Lake and Sound City. The record was later mixed by Phil Nicolo (the rock half of the Butcher Brothers of Ruffhouse fame) at Studio 4 in Pennsylvania. 

"We had a lot of fun," Ariel laughs. "Working in all the keyboard stuff we were starting to get into. Rich had an old recorder. Farfisa. Melodicas. A Casio. We'd mess around at practice. We had all these ideas, and we tried them. Example: horns don't just mean 'ska.' "Paulina" was acoustic ballad that made other plans when it met the tuba and the upright piano. "We did an old-school Dixieland intro, miked up live." 

"He Said" went from acoustic folk song to -- "I can't even explain the sound" according to Ariel. "They Might Be Giants? I don't know. That's why it is last on the album - it was the last song written and bears the least resemblance to our past. Now it's really one of my favorite songs." "Wasting My Life" went 60s pop after someone brought in an old Vox AC30 amp, the sort the Beatles might have used. They started fooling with the "Taxman" lick, and soon it evolved into a classic Hippos rave-up. "Struggling," Ariel says, was a funny case. "A throwaway song before Rich threw in an insane 80s Moog solo, Oingo Boingo style. So rad. And suddenly it was cool.-- You know, when all else fails, do a solo." 

"Always Something There To Remind Me" was actually originally recorded in about three hours for the "Before You Were Punk 2" compilation of 80s chestnuts (even though technically, it's a 60s song, covered by Naked Eyes in the 80s). They liked it so much, they voted to put it on the album. "There were tons of songs that we wanted to do, but didn't think we could pull off in three hours. Then we had to go back in for another quickie session to record "Our Lips Are Sealed" so we could actually have a track for the compilation," which also includes superstars of the scene like NOFX, Lagwagon, The Suicide Machines, MxPx and Rocket From The Crypt. The Go-Go's track they eventually recorded also features guest vocals by Rachel Haden, formerly of That Dog. 

One of the rallying forces behind The Hippos is Ariel's ear for a pop hook -- "My songs are the high school boy-girl stuff that runs my life. Cliches with a twist. I'm a dork about girls you know, I can be cool with everyone else, but if I like a girl, it's like I'm in junior high." He begins each song on an acoustic guitar. "And the way we present the music doesn't stray from the song," he says. "You can still play each one on an acoustic guitar. I would never let anything get in the way of the song. I'm not saying I'm satisfied in any way with what I've done but that is what I'm shooting for. This time we barely hit the tip of the iceberg. We got some of it across, but there's so much more coming. There's already half of a record in my head." 

Covering the spectrum would prove difficult; the band's musical tastes could fill an entire record store. The partial list includes The Pixies, Fugazi, The Beatles, Weezer/The Rentals, The Police, The Specials, Fishbone, Elvis Costello, Nirvana, Built To Spill's "Nothing Wrong With Love," The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan ... 'So many different influences. And sometimes I want to, but I cannot leave out Guns N' Roses. And Poison.. Glam of the 80s and 90s. You've gotta represent." Ariel's dad was a big music fan, so records by the Byrds, the Kinks and the Who got him kick-started in rock. "He got really excited when I picked up a guitar. Okay, maybe not when it was that hot pink Kramer, Eddie Van Halen guitar." 

So the reprise of "Paulina" at the end was a deliberate nod to all old records that all had reprises. "No one does that anymore. We had to do it." 

Final notes: One, The Hippos are aiming beyond the borders of the ska-punksphere; you wouldn't want to be reduced to a seven-letter hyphenated word, would you? And two, we invite you to waste some more of your extremely valuable time at their website www.thehippos.com. 

from http://www.sonicnet.com/artists/ai_bio.jhtml?ai_id=509147