March 17, 2007 @ TLA Philadelphia with Gabe Saporta and Ryland Blackinton
1. Q. Tell who you are and what you do in the band.
Gabe: I’m Gabe and I sing in Cobrastarship.
Ryland: I’m Ryland and I play guitar in Cobrastarship and sing.
Gabe: I play guitar too… just not in Cobrastarship.
Ryland: I play the banjo too, in Cobrastarship.
Gabe: I play the triangle! I don’t really play the keyboard very well but I can press the keys.
2. Q. Give a brief history of Cobrastarship.
Gabe: Actually, I’ll let Ryland answer this one.
Ryland: The first time that I met Gabe was in the summer of 2004 when I moved to New York and I met him in Misshapes. The truth is, his girlfriend introduced me to him because at the time I was hanging out with his girlfriend and that’s how we met. Then he asked me to be in the group awhile after he had worked on all the songs already.
Gabe: You left out a whole big part of that.
Ryland: Oh yeah, that. No one wants to know that you met me at a bar. “Oh I met Gabe at a bar and I tried to take him home.” That’s not interesting.
3. Q. Explain a day in the life of Cobrastarship.
Gabe: Ryland wrote about this recently for a school newspaper.
Ryland: Basically the way that it works is around 11:00 or so I wake up and make myself a couple cups of coffee and I watch Willow, which is a movie starring Warwick Davis.
Gabe: You know, I think this is a day in the life of Ryland because I don’t think anyone in Cobrastarship wakes up before noon.
Ryland: That’s true. I’m the early riser. We play mariokart collectively between 3-4 hours a day. We spend a lot of time nudging Gabe. What we do is we wake up Gabe once at 3:00 and then we wake him up again at 4:30 and for a third time at 5:30.
Gabe: It’s like hey it’s serious, you gotta get up the show is starting. And then I’m like, alright I’ll get up.
Ryland: He puts on a happy face and somehow everynight he’s able to do it.
Gabe: Well no, first I have to drink some alcohol then the happy face goes on automatically.
Ryland: We need three things in order to play a show. One is a good attitude and the other two are vodka tonics.
4. Q. What’s your inspiration behind the music you write and who writes most of the songs?
Ryland: This is a question for Gabe.
Gabe: When I was first starting Cobrastarship I had this kind of vision of what I wanted to do and I asked these dudes to be in a band, Ryland and Alex, and they both said no. So then I had to go make the record myself without them. So my inspiration for making this record was really like the kind of isolation and rejection that I felt by Ryland and Alex not wanting to be in the band compounded of course with all the musical influences I had growing up as a kid. I wanted to make a record that wasn’t just a punkrock record.
[interupted]
Gabe: Yo, dude your getting IM’d!
[Gabe takes my sidekick and starts talking to our friend Stefanie]
So anyway, I kind of wanted to make a record that had a lot of beats in it that you could just dance to and have a good time to. That was kind of my basic inspiration for the record.
5. Q. Are you writing any new stuff at the moment?
Ryland: Yes. We’re working on stuff slowly. The tour bus isn’t the most condusive environment to write music. After spending all of this time together with one another we’re all kind of listening to similar music and I think that when we all sit down to write music it will be good.
6. Q. How do you think the internet has helped your band?
Gabe: I think if there was no internet we would have no band. All the early stuff that got Cobrastarships name out, “The Hollaback Boy” and “Snakes on a Plane” was all internet fueled.
Ryland: Yeah, Snakes on a Plane was ONLY successful on the internet. The movie bombed with the internet phenomena. People were blogging about it for ages. People couldn’t believe it was real and it just became a big phenomena and only on the internet.
Gabe: Before they even knew what it was about they just knew there was a movie coming out called Snakes on a Plane and that just got people excited. People that are bored can be like “holy shit there’s a movie coming out called Snakes on a Plane.”
Ryland: Yeah, let me send it to my friends. And the funny thing about it all, someone said this but not me, the best thing about the movie was you didn’t have to buy a ticket for it.
Gabe: Another thing about the internet is it gives you a great opportunity to automatically connect with your fans and anyone who supports you really quickly.
7. Q. Gabe, does it help being known already from being in Midtown, as in did it help the success of Cobra?
Gabe: Absolutely without a doubt, yes. I mean it was really hard for me cause one of the things I was really scared of was having to start from the very beginning. When Midtown started, the reason why we were able to get a fanbase was because we played everywhere and anywhere. We played in people’s houses, garages, basements, trailer parks. And it didn’t matter because we were like 19 and 20 sleeping in kid’s houses who were 16 and 17 and it’s like cool we’re having a sleepover, you know. Now I’m older and that’s weird to sleep in some kids house who’s like 17. So yeah I was just really scared to start from the beginning. So it’s great that I think Cobrastarship picked up where Midtown took off from.
Gabe: Are you ready for your next question? You look really excited!
8. Q. What made you go from the pop-punk Midtown to the more electric Cobrastarship?
Gabe: I think it was a couple things. First of all, on the last Midtown record I was kind of getting sick of that whole pop-punk emo scene. I felt like a lot of bands were starting to sound the same. On the last Midtown record I felt that we made a different record than that whole scene which is kind of a weird record, it was more of a rock record. [CAN YOU STOP IMING PEOPLE DURING THE INTERVIEW IT’S REALLY DISTRACTING!]
[Kristen gets all sad and serious and apologizes.]
Gabe: No, I’m just kidding. (laughs) She gets all excited to ask the question and then starts Iming people!
Back to the question…
Gabe: So I felt like I got to do everything that I wanted to do in Midtown and in a rock environment.
9. Q. What’s your favorite song to play and why?
Ryland: “DJ”
Gabe: “DJ” is one of my favorites too but it’s the first in the set so it comes and goes so quickly. I really like to play “Diamond Girl” because I get to tap Ryland in the neck and do the “ah ah ah.” So that’s one of favorite parts in the song.
10. Q. What is it like to have a girl in the band? And what happened to Elisa?
Gabe: It’s Uh-lees-a and second of all, I don’t know who you’re talking about. (Laughs). Thirdly, next question!
Ryland: No, having a girl in the band adds a different dinamic. It’s cool. It’d be different if the guy was playing the keytar.
Gabe: I think for us, one of our biggest things is we wanted to separate ourselves from everything else going on. A lot of bands get keyboard players and that wasn’t enough for us we had to get a keytar. We wanted to make sure it was a girl because we want girls to be like ‘hey I can be in a band also.’ You see a lot of bands all the time with dudes all the time. And little girls like dudes but they also want to see a girl rockin up there.
Ryland: It’s a diversity thing.
Gabe: Plus, it brings a lot of sex to the stage. We’re all about the sex.
Ryland: Yeah, we bring it back. See the thing is, J-Tim is doing this thing where he says he’s bringing sexy back. Bad news, he stole it from us! It’s like he’s in a car and he’s going to pull into the sexy parking lot and look who’s already parked there. And we’ve been idoling there with our engine running.
Gabe: Dude we parked our car there and went into the sexy club and he can’t even get in.
Ryland: He’s like “what do you mean I can’t get in.” And there’s us over in VIP spillin vodka not even caring.
Gabe: He’s like “Yo I got these shackles on.” Yeah you got shackles on and you can’t get in.
Ryland: Yeah. Look at the sign, “No Shackles Allowed!” It’s like that.
11. Q. What are your pet peeves while being on tour.
Gabe: Ryland.
Ryland: Interviews.
(Laughs)
Gabe: No, I’m just kidding!
Ryland: Well, me and Gabe have a mutual pet peeve. There’s two doorways on the bus which are two and a half inches shorter than our last bus. Gabe and I are taller gentleman. So if we have a hop in our step we hit the top of our eye. Typically me, Gabe did it a couple times the first week.
Gabe: And then I learned my lesson.
Ryland: I’m a repeat offender. I hit my head so many times on that bus. That’s a pet peeve.
Gabe: Ryland has been hit so many times. At the beginning he would scream at the top of his lungs and I would feel bad for him, like Oh shit are you okay? Now I can’t even feel bad for him I just have to laugh. It’s been a month dude, you know that thing is there.
12. Q. You head out on the Honda Civic Tour next month with Fall Out Boy. How do you feel about these arenas and how do you think the fans will react.
Ryland: We had a little appetizer with that when we went out with Panic at the Disco.
-We discuss Panic at the Disco and I realized that this question was never really answered.-
13. Q. Are you guys doing Warped Tour this summer?
Gabe: It looks like No.
Ryland: I don’t think we are. But if we do, it’s only going to be doing the eastcoast although I’m pretty sure we’re not playing it.
14. Q. Do you have any upcoming tour plans?
Ryland: Any that we didn’t already talk about? Well the Honda Civic Tour.
Gabe: And then we just found out that we’re going to Japan and I think Leeds also. This is our first year as a band and we’re getting to go all over the world. We’re going to UK next month.
15. Q. What do you think about the downloading of music and the leaking of new albums before they’re actually released. Because if I’m correct, your album was leaked.
Ryland: Sometimes that’s helpful, I mean if it comes out at the right time. I mean I’m sure our record labels and management wouldn’t like it but in a way it just adds to hype. I don’t think people don’t buy the record because it leaks.
Gabe: I mean you’re asking a question that people in the music industry debate for hours and years. It’s been seven years since Napster came out and they still haven’t figured out what the fuck they’re doing with downloading. Yeah people are downloading music and they’re not buying it anymore but they still like music. So you have to find out other ways to make money from music. If you’re going to cry about the fact that the CD is dead, in a couple of years CDs are not going to exsist. People don’t understand that. Yeah it hurts CD sales but it brings more people to shows and makes people buy merch.
Ryland: It hurts the sale but it helps the band in terms of like getting more kids to come out.
Gabe: Getting songs downloaded gets kids to our shows and that’s all I give a fuck about.
Ryland: I think it’s sweet that people even make the effort to download it.
16. Q. What is the worst date you have ever been on?
Ryland: I got barfed on by a girl.
Gabe: When I was like 19 I went on this date with a girl, back in the early days of the internet, and we were talking on some aol punk chat or something, she was vegan and I was vegan so we went to this veggie restauraunt and it was so bad. In some of her pictures she was kind of cute but then I met up with her and I wasn’t attracted to her.
Ryland: Check please! (laughs).
Gabe: Yeah. I just felt bad.
17. Q. If you were no longer in a band what do you think you’d be doing?
Ryland: I’d probably try and get a municipal job like toll collecting or garbage collecting or something it would be really hard for me to get fired from.
18. Q. Do you have any advice for fellow bands?
Gabe: I think the best advice I ever got was from Mr T. Experience and he said, he was never a good musician or song writer but he loved what he did and kept banging it out. So if you love something just keep working at it and something good will eventually come out of it.
19. Q. Was this the best interview ever?
Gabe: It was pretty good guys, I’m not going to lie, I can’t lie. Heres my advice for you-when you ask a band a question and they avoid it don’t let them. Just keep banging away at them until they answer your question.
