Home Performing Arts TAB the band: A Band Worth Rooting For .

TAB the band: A Band Worth Rooting For .

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TAB2

Tony:  Not originally.

Adrian:  It’s actually a reference to a line in our favorite show, Arrested Development (love it.)  In an episode where Buster walks in on Lucille and Oscar, Buster hears them “making noises” and says, “I hear zoo noises.”  I just thought that would be a great album title.  Then when you think about it, Pet Sounds sounds really nice and sophisticated.  Zoo Noises is sort of like the bastardized crappy equivalent.  So, it works on many levels…and we put a bat on the cover and that’s an animal and animals are in zoos…So that’s three things.

Lou:  Bat spelled backwards is TAB.  Four things.

SCV: Did you think of that afterwards?

Lou:  Yea.

(A collective laugh from the table.)

SCV:  How did you guys first start out?  Were you two (Adrian and Tony) the original beginning of TAB the band?

Tony:  I’ve been in bands with Ben and Lou before.  At first, it started out with just trying to do rap. Then, we thought why not just become a band.

Adrian:  Tony and I never really played in a band together.  We used to just mess around when I would visit him (in Massachusetts from Los Angeles.)  We’d come up with rap songs.  Lou would come over.  It was really just me coming over to goof around on their sessions.  Finally, one winter we thought, let’s come up with some rap songs.  It’ll be fun.

SCV:  Do you mean legitimate rap, or Lonely Island stuff?  What are we talking here?

Adrian:  We wrote songs about colonial America and stuff.  We were ahead of the curve on that one.

Tony:  But, this one particular time we wrote something that was a little more rock.  We thought, well maybe this shouldn’t be a joke.  Before we knew it, we wrote five or six songs and we booked a show.  Now we’re here.

SCV:  Is it safe to say you like rap?

Ben:  I love it.

SCV:  I was listening to a few of your songs last night, and they sounded a bit like early Rolling Stones.  Is it fair to say that this is a band you respect or perhaps emulate?

Adrian:  There is always going to be an influence, but I think off this record we expanded our horizons a little bit, as far as allowing ourselves to explore different styles within the rock milieu.  Whereas our first record, we actually set parameters: no acoustic guitars, no guitar solos.  We almost kept it as a punk record and we were definitely listening to a ton of Stones at that time.

SCV:  You guys played at John Varvatos.  How did that come about?

Adrian:  He’s a friend of mine.  He took over CBGBs and gets bands that he likes, and up and coming bands.  I mean he had Peter Frampton in there not too long ago.  I think he throws a party every month.

SCV:  How do you feel though when you walk by 315 Bowery and there is no longer a CBGBs, but a John Varvatos?

Tony:  Well, it could have been a restaurant.

Adrian:  It could have been a Chipotle.  Not that there’s anything wrong with Chipotle.  I don’t think anyone of us wouldn’t like to see CBGBs come back.  But, I mean, look John’s a great guy.  He loves rock and roll.  It could be a lot worse.

Tony:  If anyone were going to take it over, I’m glad it was him.

SCV:  I’m a huge Howard Stern fan.  I read somewhere that you had a few songs spun on his program.  How did that happen?

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