Featured Band for
May 2005
Band
Name: The Isotopes
Genre: Instrumental Rock
Geographical Area:
Rochester
,
NY
Interview with Handsome B. Wonderful by email on 4/30/05
1. What is the current line-up of your band (include band member names)?
Handsome
B. Wonderful – guitar
Trent
Steele – bass
Hercules
Rockefeller – drums
Max
Power – lights, samples, sounds, special effects
Busty
Sinclair – dancer
Chesty
LaRue – dancer
Hootie
McBoob – dancer
Sarah
Sloane – dancer
2. How and when did you get started with your band?
Back a few years ago we decided that we weren’t getting laid enough and that
if we dressed up like scientists and played brutal instrumental surf-core, we
could get lots of chicks. Well, we were right. Now its chicks galore. Non-stop
ladies. When we’re not taking turns with our go-go dancers and various
groupies, we spend some time reflecting on how cool we all are.
3. What bands or music have influenced you most?
Trent
– metal, Herc – surf, Handsome – punk, Max – who cares?
4. What is the break down of cover vs. original material in your live shows
and/or recordings?
Recordings
– all original material. At live shows we like to melt people’s faces with
our versions of TV show theme songs, video game music, Aerosmith, Iron Maiden,
Huevos Rancheros, Los Straitjackets, and some other crap. It’s usually about
72.5% original music live, but who’s counting.
5. What recording have you done?
The Isotopes ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ released on Garage Pop Records
available on www.theisotopes.com.
We also have movie trailers with a full-length movie and video game both in the
works (seriously).
6.
What kind of gear do you use?
Musical
7.
What is your band’s favorite food/beverage?
Hercules – diet coke, cheeseburgers
Everyone
else – cheap beer and vagina
8.
How do you get gigs?
Other bands ask us to play shows with them because we’re awesome and tons of
people show up to everything we do. We usually have to turn down shows because
the bands aren’t worthy.
9.
What are the difficulties you find playing your kind of music in your area?
Finding bands to put on the show that are cool enough to play with us. Most
bands fail to reach this criteria, but we’re cool about it. We’re just like,
“Yeah, we’ll play a show with you guys again some time. And by that I mean
NEVER!” Sucky bands piss us off.
10.
What positive attributes does your band have that sets you apart from other
bands (of any genre)?
Oh, I don’t know, hot chicks dancing, awesome music, light show, hilarious
samples between songs, sweet choreography, hot threads. . . I could go on and
on.
11. What have you found to be the single most effective promotional tool
you’ve used to further your band’s musical path?
Playing shows where everyone craps their pants, then they come back for more.
And if they’re not total losers, they bring their friends, because trying to
describe how cool we are to someone who hasn’t seen us is near impossible.
12. What’s the most interesting performance experience you’ve had?
This one show we played, there were so many bras and panties and thongs on stage
by the time we got done, we could’ve opened our own
Victoria
’s Secret. Sure, we’d be selling used underwear, but whatever, we touched
them so girls would totally be lined up outside the place.
13. What do you hope to get out of being a NESMA member?
A
tour in
Japan
.
OR - OR - OR - OR - OR - OR???? (You
decide...)
Band Name: The Isotopes
Genre: Brutal Surf
Geographical Area :
Rochester
,
NY
Interview with Trent Steele by email on
5/2/05
1. What is the current line-up of your band?
Handsome B Wonderful - Guitar
Trent Steele - Bass/Bongs
Hercules Rockefeller - drums and comedy
Max Power - lights, samples and catastrophic disasters
2. How and when did you get started with your band?
It is pretty much all a drunken haze.
3. What bands or music have influenced you most?
Iron Maiden, Slayer, Melvins, Yes, Morbid Angel, Melvins, Entombed, Spinal
Tap, Gwar etc.
4. What is the break down of cover vs. original material in your live shows
and/or recordings?
We have written every song pretty much from the beginning of Rock music in
general. Everyone is playing our songs
5. What recording have you done?
We have recorded how many beers it takes to get most girls to get into
threesomes, the amount of bong hits it takes
Trent
to actually know how to play the bass and we have ....
6. What kind of gear do you use?
Mostly bongs and pipes, occasionaly papers.
As far as the other gear, Handsome prefers those special fold up pillows
while Hercules likes to use that suspended swing thing.
7. What is your band’s favorite food/beverage?
Beer and whiskey
8. How do you get gigs?
They all come to us, pretty much we have to turn them down daily
9. What are the difficulties you find playing your kind of music in your area?
There are none, we fu**ing rule our town with an iron fist.
10. What positive attributes does your band have that sets you apart from other
bands (of any genre)?
We don’t suck like most of the other instrumental bands (especially surf
bands with about 30 songs that all sound the same.)
Oh yeah, and props.
11. What have you found to be the single most effective promotional tool
you’ve used to further your band’s musical path?
Beaker Bongs and pocket protectors
12. What’s the most interesting performance experience you’ve had?
Each one gets crazier and crazier but that time that we banged all of the
dancers on stage was pretty cool.
13. What do you hope to get out of being a NESMA member?
Some out of town shows and of course women.
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