Interview

BRAVO FUCKING BRAVO

Mercredi 13 juillet 2005

Hey BFB, you're pretty unknown in this part of the world, so could you introduce the band and members ?
I’m the only one doing the interview, but I’m Jake and I play guitar and do some vocals. John plays bass and sings a bit, Myke is the lead vocalist, Steve plays guitar and Rob plays drums.

You're sometimes described as "the new screamo thrash sensation" and stuff, doesn't it force you to ask more money for a gig, or ask expensive food and vodka for catering ?
I’ve never heard us described as that, but that’s pretty awesome! We’ve never actually had a guarantee, as I don’t even think we’re that popular anywhere but in New England. I can get down with guarantees if you’re on tour, but if you’re playing locally, I don’t really think it’s necessary. I mean, it’s nice to get paid, but I feel that if you tell a promoter, “We won’t play unless we can get at least 100,” kind of scares people away. Expensive food and vodka would be nice, though…

When it comes to describe BFB, I often read "With two members as young as 17 blah blah"... How do you feel with this, don't you feel like a band only known for having young members?
Well none of us are that young anymore. We are all at least 18, which isn’t really that young to be playing good music. I don’t really think we’re known for being young, I guess it’s just a cool fact or something, seeing as a lot of established bands (not that we are in any way established) are older.

About your age again, do you think BFB will survive the fatal 18-22 years old part of life, where people start hard and long studies, start building their life, start being adult etc etc... Do you feel like playing the same music in 5 years for example ?
Well right now two of us are 20 and 21, and we don’t really have plans or even thoughts of stopping or cooling down. We just finished our first tour and it was the best time of any of our lives. That just makes us want to do more.

Your first MCD was released here by Abstract records, a french label... How did you get in touch with Sylvain ? Wasn't it kinda strange to have your CD released by someone you never even met in real life ?
It was only strange because it was a foreign based label. Sylvain actually emailed us about doing a record and we were stoked on it because that was right around the time we had first started sending demos to labels for that very reason.

Your first full-length is out to be released, what can you tell about this ? The recording session was good ? Are you satisfied with the final result ?
This record is a huge improvement over the last, in my opinion. The recording quality is awesome, the mastering is awesome, the art is fantastic, etc. The songwriting is the biggest improvement, though. I feel like we’ve really started to hit our stride and find ways to write songs in a way that we all feel comfortable with. In the beginning, it was pretty much me writing full songs and making the band learn them. With this record, it’s definitely a collective effort in terms of everyone in the band writing their own parts and getting together outside of full practices and trying to come up with parts that go well with someone else’s. We really came together for the writing of this record and it feels good to listen to it now.

Any bands in your area that you'd like to talk about? I'm sure there are a lot of them, but none are really famous here...
There aren’t a whole lot of bands from New Hampshire, but the rest of New England is pretty solid on good bands. We just toured with Daniel Striped Tiger, who is one of my favorite bands out there right now. Ampere is from Massachusetts, Transistor Transistor is actually originally from the same small town as we are. That’s kind of cool, I guess. They’re also one of my favorite bands. We just finished a weekend around New England with them, actually. It was the final leg of our summer tour with DST. It was incredible. I had so much fun.

The classic question asked by a basic european guy to a basic american guy : how do you feel about USA, and the way they are trying to rule the entire world ? I don't really think you could get the deep frustration feeled by almost all european people, seeing that just a few guys could decide whether our country could be attacked or not, so much power in unfriendly hands really scares me... How does it feel from the inside ? Do you sometimes feel threatened ?
I don’t know if we are trying to rule the entire world, but it seems as though someone is… I don’t really know how I feel. I don’t feel directly threatened but I definitely remember better times, i.e., when we weren’t fighting a pointless war, or when the rest of the world didn’t hate us.

Does any of you guys own a gun ?
No.

As young as you are, I think you never saw Michael Jackson being black, or did you ?
I was alive for “Bad” if that counts…

Imagine, after a boat or plane crash, you wake up on a desert island with some twenty people, like in the TV Drama "Lost". What is the first thing you would do ? Count the ratio girls/boys, immediately search for food, or collapsing and crying "it's so unfair" ?
I’ve never seen that show, and I really have no idea what I would do. Probably go to the bathroom or something.

Imagine again, still on this island you decide to create a country for these people, and you have to draw a flag for it. How would it look like ?
It would be a picture of a barracuda eating Neil Armstrong.

Back to hardcore questions now, are there any bands you really love or really hate ? I mean, bands you would kill for or bands you would kill ?
I really love the White Stripes right now. Not very punk rock, I know, but they’re so damn good. “Get Behind Me Satan” is such an incredible fucking record. Everyone else in my band is sick of them because it’s all I wanted to listen to on tour.

Have you already had the chance to play in big venues? If so, do you like this ? What's the worst gig you ever had to play ?
I don’t think we’ve ever really played a “big” venue. We’ve played on a stage a few times and I don’t really dig that much. I like audience interaction a lot. The worst show we’ve played in recent memory was a show in Exeter, NH where we got stuck last because we “headlined” and everyone left right before we played; it was on a stage so it sucked; playing last made it so that we could only play a 10 minute set; and I blew all four speakers in my cab. That show was awful.

When can we expect to see Bravo Fucking Bravo touring Europe ? Hey, come to Belgium !
Europe is a long way away, right now. I still want to get to the US west coast before the school year ends next May. If someone going to Europe asks us to go with them ::cough cough:: Transistor Transistor ::cough cough:: then we’ll see…

Now it's time for the last words, thanks for the interview and see you some day here in Europe !
Thank you and I hope to see you too.

TU AS AIME ? PARTAGE !