By Lisa Morgan
One day you’re posting a homemade video of a song that you’ve been messing around with in your bedroom, and the next day your buddy tells you that Dave Navarro just tweeted it! Now that’s something that most musicians only dream about, but for John Marek, he literally became a YouTube, overnight success.
Marek had posted the video to Facebook July 16, 2014, with a comment stating, “Me playing a song I made yesterday with guitar and drums simultaneously. I know it’s not perfect, but I just learned how to do this yesterday. Enjoy.” The song was called, “The Back of My Head”. The following day, there were posts all over Facebook, mostly John’s close friends and family, each ecstatic that the one-man-band video hit 60,000 views overnight. The video made YouTube’s homepage music category due to its popularity. Dave Navarro tweeted: “This kid, John Marek, pretty much rules,” when he shared the video with his fans. Interview requests came in by the droves. Just This Minute, a television show that reaches 68% of the country reached out to him. Marek was also featured on CBS’ The Feed’s Weekend Music Round-Up. A Canadian service provider eventually paid Marek to use the video in a national commercial. Today, the viewership of that video is just under 1 million. (see the links to all of these below)
Marek had explained to CV Weekly, back then, how he’d just been informed that the guys in his band were making the tough call to pursue other career goals. He was bummed. So he took a stab at creating and performing a song by himself. He had no intentions of it going viral. With the success of the video and new attention drawn to the band, Marek asked the guys to hang in there just a little bit longer. And they did, for a while. Eventually Julio left to focus on his very busy career. Jerryn is working on his own projects, and Marek is helping him with recording. So Ideation went into hiatus while Marek jammed with other players and bands, or played solo throughout the valley. He’s also been recording. Then, just two months ago, an excited Marek posted to Facebook, “Ideation is back in full swing!”
Marek had posted a need for a drummer for a gig in October, and Justin Wilkinson answered the call. After only a couple hours of practice two days before the gig, the guys played solidly. Then, as if it were meant to be, bass player, Ari Hozman, moved in across the street. “It’s pretty cool that we all live close to each other. We have three different practice places and we’ve been practicing pretty much non-stop.” Their investment is paying off. Ideation shared the stage at the Hood Bar and Pizza with the internationally renowned Sean Wheeler and Zander Schloss at the Hood Bar and Pizza. What fans were treated to was fantastic. It looked as though they had been playing together for years.
Ideation is now buckling down to do some recording, but they will re-emerge just after the New Year at Schmidy’s Tavern in Palm Desert. You can catch them January 2nd @ 9pm. In the meantime, you can follow them and their music at the following links:
www.facebook.com/IdeationMusic
Viral video “Back of My Head”: youtube.com/watch?v=8SKPHTo_0UQ
Blanket of Hurt: youtube.com/watch?v=t61tLQe2TYs
