IF I CAN GET REALLY HIGH

Written By Ben Fredette

Hey everyone -

Welcome back to Buddha’s Blog, and thank you so much to all of you who have been following along so far !!!!!

For today’s blog, we are going to be doing a deep-dive into EPISODE 2 of The Making Of “The Musical”, titled Big Balloon Bang

The session with Javan during this episode took place on March 23, 2022 in Los Angeles, and was the 2nd session I had here in LA for the album

For this session, Berler (our engineer) was recording out of a different studio, so you will notice we are in a much larger and really cool looking space for this one

But before I get into the session with Javan, I want to talk about the opening sequence of the episode, where you see my text messages with Wayne Jetski

Wayne Jetski is a recording artist from Long Island, New York, and we were co-workers at Barstool Sports, where he still works as a Video Producer

Also rare fact:

Jetski’s original internship interview that he had at Barstool was with Caleb, Rone, and I; applying to be the intern for our podcast we had at the time “Young & Happy” (shoutout all the listeners who shall not be named)

We ended up hiring a different intern named Mike The Bike….

Which turned out to be a big mistake, because Mike The Bike eventually went rogue and turned against us…

Causing us to retaliate in the form of a diss-track…

But luckily, Jetski still found his way into Barstool - being hired as an intern for former Office Manager Brett, and then eventually full-time as a Video Producer

During his early days at Barstool, Jetski began releasing music that he was making

And I took a liking to it quickly

After I moved to LA though, Jetski released his first full length project titled “Wayne’s World”, and I became an even bigger fan

He has a song on there called “Orange Soda Pop” that is one of my favorite songs ever

It is so much fun

So when I started working on this album, I reached out to Jetski and told him I wanted him to be a big part of it

He sent me a bunch of beats to go through that producers had sent him over the years. One of which turned into a HUGE song that you will find out about soon…

And then I sent him the paintings/beats/and concepts that I had for the songs I wanted him to help on

The first two song concepts I sent him were “Big Balloon Bang” and “Good Night’s Sleep”, both with beats produced by Jefe (the producer I mentioned in my previous blog)

“Big Balloon Bang”" serves as the “beginning of the story” for the album, and is a very important song

And “Good Night’s Sleep” serves as the “ending of the story”, so it is equally as important

I wanted Jetski to come up with choruses for each of them, and then I would either get other artists for the verses, or figure out the plan from there

The email I sent him with the concepts was on January 27, 2022, and he sent me back the demos by February 1, 2022

And these were officially THE FIRST pieces of music that anyone recorded for the purpose of the album (I will explain why I said “for the purpose” there in a later blog)

You hear Jetski’s original demo version of the “Big Balloon Bang” chorus playing during that sequence in the episode

That is the first recorded version of the “Big Balloon Bang” chorus/melody to ever exist (written by Jetski), and you will go onto see how many more versions were recorded over the years…

Shoutout to the legend Wayne Jetski, the Universe OFFICIALLY STARTED with him. A true day one

So once Jetski sent me those demos, I started figuring out the bigger plan for both songs

For Good Night’s Sleep, which you will hear later on (maybe even some parts of it very soon), I decided that would be a “posse cut” style song - with multiple artists who were featured throughout the album doing their own verses, and then each of them doing their own version of Jetski’s chorus

But for Big Balloon Bang…. it was NOT going to be as simple….

“Big Balloon Bang”

This song has such a storied history at this point, but for now I will just be focusing on the beginning…

So once Jetski sent me the chorus for Big Balloon Bang, my plan was to get a singer to perform it

And then after the singer did Jetski’s chorus, it would go into a verse from Javan, and then Javan would do the 2nd chorus alongside the singer

I felt like this had the potential to sound really cool if we could find the right singer

At first I REALLY WANTED to somehow get Owl City, the artist from the song “Fireflies”

As a matter of fact, I did end up getting the email address of Owl City’s manager (shoutout to The Gunz Show, a longtime friend of Barstool, who works in the music press industry. He saw my tweets and sent me the contact)

And the manager actually responded to me right away…

Unfortunately though, he told me Owl City wasn’t doing any features at the time

So coming into this session with Javan, I still did not have a singer to perform the first chorus

And Javan, only able to hear Jetski’s version of the chorus, did not see the full vision that I was seeing for “Big Balloon Bang” yet

He even had some choice words to share upon hearing it

But I was already set on this being the chorus, and did not want to change it

I loved what Jetski wrote and thought he did a great job nailing the concept

Plus I really felt like Javan would sound cool doing it, so I at least wanted to hear him try it first before changing anything…

He was NOT happy though !!!

Especially when I came into the booth to film him

Things were off to a rocky start….

But you can hear me tell Javan that “this is for the later on documentary”….. and now you guys are finally watching said documentary 4 ½ years later, which is pretty freakin cool !!!!!

Anyways, after Javan tried the chorus a few times and freestyled over the verses, we came back out to listen

I was upset that Javan kept changing the last line of the chorus from how Jetski wrote it

Jetski’s line went “got moon-rocks packed all in the Backwood, I’m up in orbit but my cash good”

But Javan kept ending his with just “got moon-rocks packed up in the Backwood, yeah yeah”

After listening a few times though, I thought Javan’s version sounded great, and I didn’t mind the change anymore

So then, we put the instrumental on repeat, and Javan started writing his verse

After about 10-15 minutes of writing, Javan all of a sudden lights up and says “Just like Vegeta, got hit with the Big Bang”, and that “we can’t talk about the Big Bang without mentioning Vegeta in the same sentence”

I had no clue who Vegeta was, but Javan explained that this is a character from Dragon Ball Z (one of his favorite shows), and that Vegeta has a move called “Big Bang Attack"“

Two thoughts crossed my mind really quickly

The first one being - “this song is supposed to be the start of the story for the album……. do I really want the first verse to start with a line about a character that I don’t even know?”

But then I thought - “if this is the gateway to Javan becoming excited about the song, and a way that he can relate to it, I am not about to step in the way of that”

And besides, I might not know the character Vegeta, but the reference still makes sense as Javan explained it. And there are millions of Dragon Ball Z fans around the world who will appreciate the line the same way Javan does

So once Javan wrote his verse, we went back in the booth, and he recorded his whole part in one take - which appears at 07:37 into the episode

That take you see there is THE FULL TAKE that is used on the final song. We don’t use the part after the chorus where he starts freestyling, but the verse and chorus that you see him record there are both the ones on the actual record

And I didn’t even realize it was all one take until probably two years later, when I started editing the videos together. I was going through the footage and was like “WOW that whole first take is what we ended up using, we never punched-in or did a second take or anything”. HISTORIC !!!!!

Ok now onto the next song…

“Burning Planet”

The next song you see us recording starting at 09:29 into the episode is called “Burning Planet”, based on my painting above “The Burning Planet”

So this is another song that has a very long story over the years, but for now we will just focus on what happened before and during this session…

When I came up with the initial tracklist, I knew I wanted “Burning Planet” to be a big moment on the album where it feels like “things start to get crazy” and “reach a boiling point” and "start to unravel”. This would be the mid-point in the story. The RISING ACTION leading us into the 2nd half of the album

I found an absolutely wild beat for it too, in one of the packs Jefe sent me

*Also, when producers send you beats, they always have their own names for each beat…. and for some of these: the beat name/the actual beat/the painting/and the song concept all ended up being perfect matches

For example, the beat we used for “Burning Planet” was called “Night Terror”, which is an exact fit

And then even crazier, the beat for “Big Balloon Bang” was called “Chemicals”…….

WHAT A WORLD !!!!

Back to the recap though…

“Burning Planet” came together way easier that night compared to “Big Balloon Bang”

I had Berler pull up the painting on his computer while we played the beat, and Javan very quickly had the phrase:

“Stand on the moon and watch the planet burn, i feel like a alien I aint from Earth”

Everything else just fell right into place from there

Once we finished recording “Burning Planet”, we actually stayed and recorded a whole nother song, which has become equally as important to the album as these two

But, I unfortunately did not film any footage of it that night

During these early sessions, I was trying to film as much as possible, but I wasn’t aware of the full scope of what I was making yet, so sometimes I would only get clips here and there

Eventually as the project grew, and you will see in the later episodes, I started recording at all times with multiple cameras rolling - to make sure I didn’t miss anything

But during this session with Javan, when we got to the third song, I thought he might feel more comfortable if I put the camera down for a bit…

You will hear this song eventually though !!! And when it does first show up in an episode, I will make sure to callback to this session in my blog, so that you can know what song it was

For now though, let’s move on to the next scene.…

“Dark Train Of Thought”

At 12:45 into the episode, you see my Instagram DM’s with an artist from New York City named Dusty Renoylds

I met Dusty in 2019 when I was filming a music video in Manhattan for the artist Da$H

Dusty was only a background character in that video

You actually didn’t even see his face once…

He was wearing a mask the whole time

But the whole day while we were filming, his energy and charisma were a driving force of the shoot

It is hard to put into words the amount of personality Dusty has, he is unlike anyone I’ve ever met

I followed him on Instagram that day

And then a couple years, I saw him post a video for a song he made….

This was the first song and video I ever saw of his

I was instantly captivated

I didn’t even know he made music when I met him, but it turned out he had been doing it for years

Below are a few of my favorites songs/videos/features from him

The one at the top 21GunsInMyGuitarCase is absolutely nuts

Really all of them are. He is a ONE OF A KIND

In the song directly above “Carlo” he goes “I’m Michael Angelo on xanax… flippin pianos on another planet…”

Unbelievable hahahah

He has such a cool sound, absolutely insane imagery, and all of the energy and personality that he had in person translates through his music and videos

So when I started working on this project, i reached out to Dusty to get him on a few songs, including the one you see us discussing in these messages

The beat is by Big Jerm, and the title of the painting is “Buddha & The Dark Train Of Thought”

And for most of you out there who don’t know all of my paintings, I have another painting that goes along with this one called “Buddha & The Train Of Thought”

(below is “Buddha & The Train Of Thought” on the left, and “Buddha & The Dark Train Of Thought"“ on the right)

My original vision for this album, going back to the Day 1 tracklist, had “Train Of Thought” and “Dark Train Of Thought” as back-to-back songs at the beginning of the second half of the album

As I mentioned earlier in this blog….

“Burning Planet” would be the halfway point, or end of the first half

Then after “Burning Planet” would be “Vibe Check”, a chill song to check and reset the vibe after things got crazy

Then it would go into “Train Of Thought”, a nice pleasant song about a good day and all the positive happy thoughts you are having

And directly after “Train Of Thought” it would go into “Dark Train Of Thought”, which would be about all the dark thoughts you are having when things are going wrong

So the song I am discussing here with Dusty is the “dark side” of that pairing

And Dusty absolutely nailed it

He included so many references to the painting in his verse, and worked them in so perfectly in such a cool way, still keeping his crazy style and not “watering it down” to try to fit my concept

Also his ad-lib track for this song might be one of my most prized possessions ever hahah. You can hear it playing over the instrumental while the text messages are on-screen. I have listened to them so many times, and I don’t know why, I just find them so entertaining

Shoutout my good friend Jeremy Butts who has been hearing these songs evolve over Facetime for the past 4 1/2 years. There have been many-a-nights where he says “can you play the Dusty ad-libs again?” and we sit there listening to them in amazement

There is one where he just goes “pewwww”, and somehow is able to create the sound of speed and agility with just one syllable. TRULY remarkable

Also if you watch all the way to the end of this episode, you might just get a sneak-peak of how “Dark Train Of Thought” has evolved over the years…….

BRING OUT THE RAINSTICKS !!!!!!!

And that about wraps it up for Episode 2 of The Making Of “The Musical”

Thank you again to EVERYONE who has helped me out with this project, this WOULD NOT be possible without all of you

And of course thank you to all of YOU for reading this, watching, supporting, and for being here. I am FOREVER grateful for you

Love you all and can’t wait for you to see what’s next !!!!

Sincerely, Ben

******* ALSO…. HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT

As I am sitting here proof-reading this blog, I am EXTREMELY EXCITED to announce…

THE FIRST OFFICIAL BONUS TRACK SINGLE “WORRIED WIND” IS NOW OFFICIALLY LIVE ON ALL STREAMING PLATFORMS

APPLE MUSIC, SPOTIFY, YOUTUBE, ANYWHERE YOU GET YOUR MUSIC !!!!!!

THE UNIVERSE HAS OFFICIALLY STARTED !!!!!!

HERE. WE. GO !!!!!!!!!

#TheMusicalAlbum

Ben Fredette
Next

THE FIRST SESSION IN LA