Sunday, November 30, 2008

The Ball is Dropped Again (Fireworks Interview)

Hail the laziness of my life. I intended to compile a zine with some new material I had been working on for about a month. The material was good and I pulled together just about enough for a decent sized zine. Alas, I ended up playing Call of Duty in my underwear and focusing on trying to do the least amount of work to get passing grades in college. I decided to post most of the material here and get this blog going again for the simple fact that my boredom has gotten the best of me, and I feel like Ray Cappo would be pretty upset with my lack of an active lifestyle. The posts will probably be in rapid succession. I'll do my best to keep the pace up with new stuff to look through. More articles and stuff I guess?

Anyways, here's a quick interview I did with Chris Mojan from the band Fireworks. They just recently signed to Triple Crown Records & recorded a full length album. Check it out:

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FU: Tell us the tale that is the beginning of Fireworks…
FW:We all have been friends for years, a few of us since about 12 years old actually. We all played in other bands and decided to start something together that was fun and had the same feeling of the shit we'd all listen to when we got together and stuff. The rest is just progress.

FU: Being mostly a group of hardcore dudes, what made you guys want to write this style of music?

FW: I don't really think any of us would consider ourselves hardcore dudes. Hardcore may be pretty big right now, but I think that close knit, "work hard to find stuff out" feeling still goes along with it. It seems like whenever somebody listens to it, goes to shows, or just follows it all together, it's assumed it's their main focus in terms of music. We all love hardcore just as much as we love punk rock and say indie rock, but I can definitely say hardcore has never driven any of us to write a Fireworks song. That doesn't mean we don't mosh though, so don't even assume that. I'd like to consider each of us individual kings of the pit. got that?

FU: Fireworks recently signed to Triple Crown Records. How did this come about and what's the plan?

FW: After we recorded our EP and started touring more and recording demo's we basically just sent out press packs to all the labels we could think of. Eventually word started getting out and our shit made it's way into Fred's(triple crown) hands. We've been life partners with the Hit The Lights dudes even before our bands really did anything, so I'd assume they bugged him enough as well. The plan is to just continue to write music and tour.

FU: You guys are recording a full-length soon with Chad Gilbert of New Found Glory fame, how did you guys get hooked up with this dude and when can we be expecting it to drop?

FW: We came to realize we had a few mutual friends with Chad and that he has been starting to produce records. The dude's obviously been around and has been in the position we're in now a million times, so a little overseeing could be nice. The idea of Chad producing our record actually came from Fred at Triple Crown, it sounded good, so we're just running with it.

FU: You recently ended a tour with Hit The Lights. They definitely seem to have a following that is much different than Fireworks. What was it like playing to these crowds?

FW: Some nights it was mainly older dudes, some nights it was a way younger crowd comprised of mainly girls, so every night was interesting. I'd say playing to the younger crowd ruled, although they didn't know us, most of them seemed to really appreciate that they were seeing a band play and really showing interest in the shit we were saying between songs, even the stuff that makes no sense to anyone but us.

FU: I gather you dudes are quite the filmmakers, what's your favorite project and is there anything coming from Fireworks Studios us you-tubers can look forward to?
FW: I made a video in high school called, "We Came To Get Down" that is probably one of my favorites. It was a story of 3 gymnasts trying to make it in the gymnastics world. "Club Drugs" rules as well. We will be starting a video blog showing our recording process starting in the next week or so. This may not be a movie, but I'm sure we'll make it interesting. A few of us were in the same video production class in high school so there are definitely a few gems to be found.

FU: So, we had a very random run-in with one another pretty recently very late at night, care to tell the story?

FW: I'm dying to tell it, it's one of my favorites of recent times. After a show in Baltimore we decided to stay with a friend of ours in DC. We arrived to DC at about 12 and decided we'd like to go to the mall and check out all the monuments. At about 1am we were on our knees praying to Abraham Lincoln and you decided to walk up. So we're from Detroit, you're from Florida, yet we both happened to be at the Lincoln Monument at 1am in Washington DC though, without any previous planning. What are the odds. Fuck life man.

FU: Run For Cover just put out a new 7" titled "Adventure, Nostalgia, and Robbery" what's the info on this release?
FW: We wanted to do vinyl with Jeff before we recorded anything else for somebody else. The idea had been talked about for awhile so we decided to run with it. We recorded a Kid Dynamite cover that the world seems to hate for Copper Lung Records "Carry The Torch" Tribute record. We thought that would be of 7' fashion as would 2 old demo songs that a lot of people haven't heard. Lastly we figured we needed one new song to keep things interesting and the rest was history. We called it "Adventure, Nostalgia and Robbery" because the new song is pure adventure of doing something new, the old songs are nostalgic, and we stole a KD song. Funny. They're almost gone but there's talks of a re-press.

FU: On your most recent tour, you stopped in Tampa. The real fun began after the gig. What's your recollection of this gem of a night?

FW: Well the fun really began when we ate Alaskan Tacos down the street from all the gay clubs right before we took pictures in front of the multi-colored cassette tapes after we watched the girl puke but before we hung out with a twink and daddy about 200ft away from where a lot of people die. make sense??


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There's that folks. Chris is also in a hardcore band called Sister Cities. Download the demo here. Tomorrow I'm posting an article from my pal Nick Fit of Trash Talk road dog fame. Don't miss out on that, dudes a real nut.