Little A
SPB: Is there an album or concert that inspired you to start to playing your own music?
Bryan – drums: It may be a standard answer for folks my age, but Nirvana's Nevermind album changed everything. The rawness and energy made me want to be in a band, because it also sounded like something I could do, make loud music with my friends. Since then, all my best friends have been made through music in some way.
Elliott – wrote and played drums on “A Love Song to Danger”: I grew up just a bit over a mile from Fort Reno in Washington, DC and used to bike up to the free summer concerts as a teenager. I saw a lot of bands there in my later youth (Fugazi shows dominate most of the memories) through today, but I distinctly remember seeing Velocity Girl there (August 3, 1992 - I had just turned 15 that summer) and being inspired by them to find out more about local bands and play music. Something about the approachability of seeing bands and meeting people in the punk scene at Fort Reno was a big deal for me at that age - it felt community-focused and accessible in a way that I think the punk scene in DC still very much is.
Kiki Suthard – vocals: If I had to choose just one album or concert, I’d go with the album that inspired the earliest and purest feelings of “I love singing along with this” and “I feel everything that this song means so deeply.” That would be The Cranberries’' No Need to Argue. For me, that album accomplishes everything I want to accomplish with my music. It pushes boundaries without being inaccessible, it’s poetic without being saccharin, and it expresses rage with a precision not mired by intellectualism. I also listened to Hole’s Live Through This a lot around this time of my life, and I was very, very young. I saw Dolores O’Riordan and Courtney Love as these two women who were so imperfect and so tapped into and unashamed of that imperfection. They seemed to have no fear. I was gobsmacked by them both as a child. Several years later I’d tap into that confidence myself.
Garrett – guitar: Frodus playing at Tower Records in Fairfax after Scholastic Aptitude Test Preparation Class in 1997, it was wild. Shelby ran around with a bullhorn and they were sloppy and fun, so I figured I could do that (I was wrong). I did really well on the test too. Win-win.
Dozer – bass: Music was always a big part of my life, starting with piano lessons, watching the debut of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video with my folks, and then my dad buying me the Thriller LP, which was my first record. My folks bought me Run-DMC’s Raising Hell for Christmas 1986, which began my fascination with ‘80s hip-hop like Run-DMC, Public Enemy, N.W.A., and Boogie Down Productions. I was drawn to the political nature of the music, and how it offered me, a white kid in Worcester, MA a window into what was going on in the world beyond my small corner of it. I was in high school when Nirvana broke, grunge dominated the airwaves, and it was inescapable. Discovering Rage Against the Machine when I was 15 drew connections between the hip-hop I grew up on and the hardcore and punk scenes slowly coming onto my radar. My childhood best friend and I went on a double date to see Stone Temple Pilots at the Worcester Centrum in August of 1994, the opening bands were Jawbox and the Meat Puppets. A year later, in August 1995, I moved to DC for college, fell in with some punks and skaters, learned about Dischord putting out Jawbox records and the Meat Puppets having been on SST, started going to shows at the Capitol Ballroom, the 9:30 Club, the Black Cat, and later DIY shows kids I went to college with were putting on and/or playing talking about issues important to our scene and the DC community. My college roommate was a punk, complete with liberty spikes, bondage pants, and a leather jacket with the Operation Ivy logo painted on the back. He played guitar. The summer of 1996 I bought a bass, so we could play together, and 30 years later I’m still playing bass in DIY punk bands.
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