Q&A with The B-Film Extras

Great show at the Rock and Roll Hotel on April 4! There were two stand out ideas that I have to applaud—the mobile merch girl (reminiscent of a vendor selling popcorn or cracker jacks in the stands at the ball park) and giving the crowd a disposable flip cam to record the show from their perspective. What’s the most “interesting” video footage you’ve gotten back after a show?

Our mobile merch girl is awesome. It was actually her idea to do the cigar box style vending. We like to have fun with every element of our presentation, right down to selling merch. You can look for her to get even more creative in the future. The video idea is relatively new, in fact the Rock and Roll Hotel show was only the second to implement it, but already we’ve had great participation. The best moments are always when someone is caught on tape dancing with their eyes closed to our music. The first time we did it, a really great dancer tossed the camera to someone as she danced to our song “Signs of Waking Up.” She was just so into it, and dancing so well, it made us proud to have written a song that inspires someone in that way. We’re definitely looking forward to what our creative fans do with it in the future, because, typically, our fans are pretty crazy.

Congrats on the release of a new album! You describe your sounds as “explosionism rock,” what song(s) do you think best describe this?

Good ol’ explosionism rock. That is a term we coined in the studio while working on the EP with our good friend Steve Barber of Freezer Studios in Richmond, VA. In fact, it came from our desire for the sound of certain elements of the songs to pop, or explode. I think the defining example of this is when the bass and drums enter in the opening moments of “Sad World.” After joking around a bunch, we began referring to our brand of rock as “explosionism,” and it stuck, kind of as an inside joke, but also kind of as a moniker for our sound to continually strive to make legitimate.

Your name suggests that you might have aspirations to be something other than musicians? True? What are some of the jobs you’ve had in the past?

Make no mistake, we are musicians through and through, it is our passion, and without it we would be like a PB&J sandwich without bread…a mess…and purple and brown. That being said, the two that formed the band, Jon and Clint (vox and drums respectively) come from a theater and film background. Theatricality and the art of filmmaking will always be passions, but moreover, finding creative ways to blend different mediums of art-making into a kind of synergistic, multi-sensory experience is one of our goals as a band. We’re always looking for ways to integrate film and theater into our live show, and I think you’ll find that no two shows are the same as we grow in this regard. The music is king, but we hope to awaken a sleeping giant of theatricality that great rock bands of the past were able to harness, and use to create some of the most memorable shows of all time.

Each of you has played in various bands and past music projects… what lessons have you learned from you past projects? What makes this band so special and the one to watch?

I think the very fact that we are all coming from backgrounds of local bands past, is one of the biggest reasons to watch us. We’re all taking that experience, and those lessons, and using them to create what we think is our best music, presentation, and live show yet. We could write a book on little quirks and intricacies of trying to “make it” as a band (and maybe one day we will) but the most important lesson is that who you are playing with is as important as what you are playing. I think we’ve found a perfect blend of talent and personality that makes this the band to watch. I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who can melt the guitar as much as John, but also friggin’ moon people as much as he does…

To be honest I’m not exactly an expert on B-Films, but thanks to Wikipedia I looked up a few popular B-movies during their golden age and came up with titles like: Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), and The Body Snatcher (1945). If your life were turned into a modern day B-film, what would be the title?

We’ll return the honesty…we’re not experts either. We just loved the concept of some dude who is an extra, in a B-Film. What is that guy’s life like? We may never know. Our favorite B-Film director, is Ed Wood. He just loved making movies and he was determinded to do it no matter what, and we have the same approach to our music. Only I hope our music doesn’t suck as much as his movies did. Here are the titles for each of our B-Films:

Clint: The Hot Dog Vendor
Jon: Lost in the 4th Dimension
John: Moon – Waxing
CC: A Different Perspective From Mars