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We're Not Listening
I Was Born Blue - Olli Lolli, pt. 1
What the hell is it about the ukulele that makes people think they’re bound to be a rock star? It’s like everybody thinks that the beautiful instrument makes them “quirky” and “different” from anybody else just because they’re not playing a “regular guitar.” It’s something the world may never know.
Well, our next subject – a three-person band – started off kind of like that. Our story begins with Oliver Hansen, the youngest of nine siblings. Growing up, he’d always been a literal ray of sunshine, even if that sunlight got a little too bright for some people and annoyed the living shit out of others.
And as much as he tries to fight it, Oliver – or, Olli, as he prefers – is the heart of this band. He’s the one composing the music and writing the catchy lyrics, singing them with a crazy amount of control for someone with such a high voice. He played the piano when he was in grade school, took up the guitar in fourth grade, and by transitive properties, he’s able to play pretty much anything he got his hands on. With his experience in choruses all through school, the kid’s insane.
Really, his best friends and two bandmates are no better. Joshie Kempinski, a tall Jewish guy with a nose ring, had been intertwined with Olli since junior high, and even picked up bass in seventh grade as an excuse to make some music with him, since Olli was so caught up in the way music could change lives. And he’s been known to complain about certain things not going right, but with a push (and that push happened to be Olli), he could probably even become halfway decent at playing his instrument.
The duo met Gabriel Jackson when they entered their freshman year of high school way back in 2004; he was a chubby ginger who played the cymbals in the marching band, with a drum set in his garage that gathered dust from periods of inactivity. He had nobody to play with, and Olli, with his head on straight, put some puzzle pieces together – why not just make a damn band?
The three of them were actually kind of geniuses. No, really. You ever heard of the International Baccalaureate program? It’s this program you go through in high school where you take college-level classes just to take all of the exams at the very end of your senior year, and it’s just a pain in the ass according to anybody who goes through it. These three dudes were no exceptions, hence all of the whining they were so good at when they had to do anything they didn’t want to. (Procrastination runs rampant, no matter what school you’re at.)
But what the hell does their high school life have to do with anything? Most of the bands on this label started in high school, but none of them had it play such a big factor into their career like Olli Lolli’s did. The Miami trio had to grow up a little too quickly in order to keep up with the music dream they all shared – not like they would’ve changed it.
Olli brought his acoustic guitar to school with him almost every day. He’d sit in the hallways before school started and played twinkly songs for the folks who rushed past him to get to their classes, and during lunch he’d jam out with Joshie and Gabriel, who were always willing to sing along with him, even if neither of them sang as well as the skinny smiling kid. They’d play at coffee shops and talent shows, playing songs that Olli wrote about pressure and heartache, not fitting in, wanderlust.
And they didn’t have time every night to get together, obviously. There was homework, there were essays and assigned reading, and eventually there were 150 hours of required community service that they had to pull off before the end of their senior year. To be honest, none of them really anticipated going anywhere until at least after high school, and even then it was a long shot. They were perfectly happy playing music for anybody who listened.
Except for Olli, sort of. He went out of his way to avoid procrastination whenever he could so that he could write songs and play his guitar without feeling guilty or weighed down by an avalanche of homework, though his bandmates weren’t the same, preferring idle time over work. It was a small difference that didn’t amount to anything in the end, but even they had to admit that Olli could be a little annoying when he was plowing through a 4,000-word essay.
There were no sour feelings that ever arose within the trio. All of the pressure came from outside of them, but since they’d dealt with it so often, over the years it became just a subtle hum in their ears – not the sound of shrieking static in stereo.
Well, our next subject – a three-person band – started off kind of like that. Our story begins with Oliver Hansen, the youngest of nine siblings. Growing up, he’d always been a literal ray of sunshine, even if that sunlight got a little too bright for some people and annoyed the living shit out of others.
And as much as he tries to fight it, Oliver – or, Olli, as he prefers – is the heart of this band. He’s the one composing the music and writing the catchy lyrics, singing them with a crazy amount of control for someone with such a high voice. He played the piano when he was in grade school, took up the guitar in fourth grade, and by transitive properties, he’s able to play pretty much anything he got his hands on. With his experience in choruses all through school, the kid’s insane.
Really, his best friends and two bandmates are no better. Joshie Kempinski, a tall Jewish guy with a nose ring, had been intertwined with Olli since junior high, and even picked up bass in seventh grade as an excuse to make some music with him, since Olli was so caught up in the way music could change lives. And he’s been known to complain about certain things not going right, but with a push (and that push happened to be Olli), he could probably even become halfway decent at playing his instrument.
The duo met Gabriel Jackson when they entered their freshman year of high school way back in 2004; he was a chubby ginger who played the cymbals in the marching band, with a drum set in his garage that gathered dust from periods of inactivity. He had nobody to play with, and Olli, with his head on straight, put some puzzle pieces together – why not just make a damn band?
The three of them were actually kind of geniuses. No, really. You ever heard of the International Baccalaureate program? It’s this program you go through in high school where you take college-level classes just to take all of the exams at the very end of your senior year, and it’s just a pain in the ass according to anybody who goes through it. These three dudes were no exceptions, hence all of the whining they were so good at when they had to do anything they didn’t want to. (Procrastination runs rampant, no matter what school you’re at.)
But what the hell does their high school life have to do with anything? Most of the bands on this label started in high school, but none of them had it play such a big factor into their career like Olli Lolli’s did. The Miami trio had to grow up a little too quickly in order to keep up with the music dream they all shared – not like they would’ve changed it.
Olli brought his acoustic guitar to school with him almost every day. He’d sit in the hallways before school started and played twinkly songs for the folks who rushed past him to get to their classes, and during lunch he’d jam out with Joshie and Gabriel, who were always willing to sing along with him, even if neither of them sang as well as the skinny smiling kid. They’d play at coffee shops and talent shows, playing songs that Olli wrote about pressure and heartache, not fitting in, wanderlust.
And they didn’t have time every night to get together, obviously. There was homework, there were essays and assigned reading, and eventually there were 150 hours of required community service that they had to pull off before the end of their senior year. To be honest, none of them really anticipated going anywhere until at least after high school, and even then it was a long shot. They were perfectly happy playing music for anybody who listened.
Except for Olli, sort of. He went out of his way to avoid procrastination whenever he could so that he could write songs and play his guitar without feeling guilty or weighed down by an avalanche of homework, though his bandmates weren’t the same, preferring idle time over work. It was a small difference that didn’t amount to anything in the end, but even they had to admit that Olli could be a little annoying when he was plowing through a 4,000-word essay.
There were no sour feelings that ever arose within the trio. All of the pressure came from outside of them, but since they’d dealt with it so often, over the years it became just a subtle hum in their ears – not the sound of shrieking static in stereo.