When the sign-ups for Spring Sing 2007 rolled around, guitarists Greg Imamura and Jack Reilly wanted to enter the competition in the best band category. However, they had one problem: They didn’t have a band.
Luckily, Jack Reilly’s friend Max Griffith was a drummer and his brother Chris Reilly was a bassist. In tune with how most bands start, Chris Reilly happened to know a guy ““ Mike Cooper, a third-year theater student ““ who played the keyboard. And both brothers had already performed with singer Jarell Perry, so they asked him to provide the vocals for their makeshift band.
“I figured it was Spring Sing, so it was a one-time thing, so the idea was to put as many people on stage as possible,” said Jack Reilly, a third-year civil engineering student. “So we got three horn players. We should have got a string section and a river running through the middle of the stage for ambient noise.”
The band, which they called JP and the Ambassadors, decided to perform an original Motown-influenced song ““ a throwback to the 1960s. Just in time for Spring Sing, the two brothers came up with the melody for “Hopeless,” and Perry came up with the lyrics, turning the tune into a song about feeling hopelessly in love.
“As soon as Jarell came up with the lyrics, I guess it really just came together,” said Chris Reilly, a third-year physics student. “It was a long whittling down process to get the sound right, but you rarely get that opportunity to just focus on one song.”
Much to their surprise, JP and the Ambassadors won as best band entry for Spring Sing 2007, cementing the fate of the six members as bandmates.
“In essence, Spring Sing really did change our lives,” said Perry, a third-year communication studies and political science student. “Without it, we wouldn’t really be doing anything.”
Realizing that they could not survive on just one hit song, JP and the Ambassadors went to work writing new material.
The band members have spent the time since their win performing around the UCLA campus, playing places that “pay us with food,” Jack Reilly said.
The band will be performing this Thursday at 6 p.m. as part of the Fowler Out Loud series.
Although the band members retain a strong friendship, each has a different musical background, causing difficulties in coming up with a cohesive sound.
While Perry had been a gospel singer in a church choir since he was a young teen, Imamura had shuffled between instruments before finding that guitar fit best with his love for rock music. The two brothers had been highly influenced by modern alternative rock, and Cooper had been playing jazz piano since he was a kid.
After settling on a music style highly inspired by Stevie Wonder, modern soul and alternative ’90s rock, then hitting up almost every location on campus, Perry said, the band decided to record some of their material for an EP titled “PerkElation.”
“You can hear shades of (those styles) in the song,” Chris Reilly said. “It’s more built on an old pop style, but you can hear a bit of modernity in the songs.”
The band members self-recorded and produced their debut EP in a rented shed-turned-professional music studio in Sherman Oaks and edited the album themselves.
“The recording process was great; the editing process was a pain,” Jack Reilly said. “You got six people in a band who are particular about certain things, and we’re all slow. It was impossible for us to get together. We recorded it in 10 hours, and it took seven weeks to get it done.”
On top of the challenges of recording, the band found it hard to find practice time and space ““ an uphill struggle that all fledgling bands face, especially when they have to accommodate busy college class schedules.
“Having a band in college is extremely hard because you don’t have houses to practice; you have apartments,” Imamura, a third-year civil engineering student, said. “And, people get mad when it gets noisy.”
However, Chris Reilly blames the struggles the band faces on the fact that the band is split 50-50 between North Campus and South Campus members.
While the North Campus members argue that the band’s appeal is the strong social implications of its lyrics, the Southern half of the band claims that people like the wavelengths and frequencies in the band’s music ““ causing what Chris Reilly calls “a bitter divide.”
“Jarell wrote this song called, “˜Magnet,'” Reilly said. “I said to him, “˜You have to be careful about changing the song because you might induce an electric field.’ It’s a great joke; it’s one of the fundamental laws of physics. Only the South Campus majors laughed.”
Though their lives have changed since Spring Sing, the band members joke that they have not reached the pinnacle of campus popularity.
“I didn’t get nearly as cool as I thought I would ever since we won,” Jack Reilly said. “It’s a huge disappointment.”
While there may not be fans throwing themselves ““ or their clothing ““ on stage yet, the band has received some increased attention due to their Spring Sing celebrity status.
“We don’t have any sex and drugs. We’re all celibate and drug-free,” Griffith, a third-year global studies student, said. “But, every once in a while someone says, “˜Are you the drummer from JP and the Ambassadors?’ and that makes it all worthwhile.”