ACTIONREACTION

Interview by Alexa & Mandy
January 30, 2006
http://www.myspace.com/actionreaction

Estrella: Can you please state your name and what you do in the band?
Jason: My name is Jason and I sing and play guitar.
Sal: My name is Salvatore and I play bass and I sing back up vocals.
Bella: My name is Bella and I play keyboard and back up as well.
Jason: We’re like the shortest band in the world.

Estrella: How has The Invisible Slideshow tour been so far?
Bella: It’s really fun.
Jason: It’s been crazy. It’s like how many times can someone say, “Yeah, this is my first tour and it’s been sold out almost every night”, ya know?
Estrella: Yeah, I bet there’s about 500 kids in there.
Jason: Yeah, definitely.
Estrella: Because 450 is limit, then you add guest list and that kind of stuff.
Jason: Yeah.
Sal: It’s been two years since any of us have toured. We were all at one point in full time touring acts, then we stopped for two years, so it’s good to be on tour, you know what I mean?
Bella: Yeah, it feels good.

Estrella: Could you describe to someone who’s never heard it?
Jason: It sounds like…
Estrella: Don’t say sex, I already read the bio.
Sal: What? You don’t agree?
Jason: It sounds like metamorphosis. It sounds like the duality of animals.
Sal: What’s our answer?
Jason: It sounds like music, I don’t know.
Bella: Sounds like fun. I’d say it’s fun.
Jason: Sounds like fun.
Bella: You know, smile. Sounds like fun.
Sal: Couldn’t you say it sounds like fun?
Estrella: Yeah, you can dance.
Bella: It’s like a dance party.
Jason: It sounds like fun.
Sal: I’m not wind milling anybody, but I am moving my keister.
Jason: It’s like way easier than a floor punch too. I hate getting punched in the face.
Sal: Is it okay if we talk amongst ourselves? Because we don’t give straight forward answers.
Estrella: It’s okay. You don’t give us the subtle yes, no.
Jason: Yeah, we don’t do that, that’s the worst.

Estrella: Who would you say some of your major influences are?
Bella: I don’t know.
Jason: Honestly, one of my biggest influences is Winston Churchill, that’s serious though. Just his moral stance, you know. He was a great man.
Bella: Me and Sal are really influenced by oldies. Like Motown.
Jason: Cyndi Lauper’s always cool. I like Cyndi Lauper.
Sal: It’s hard.
Jason: You know what it is, we were just talking about fun, right? Like, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, like all those songs were fun.

Estrella: Who are you currently listening to and would like to let others know if know one knows the band.
Bella: Electric Light Orchestra.
Sal: Yeah, ELO.
Bella: Everyone should listen to them, at least once and just dance.
Sal: That’s one of the groups we love.
Jason: Elbow, the new Elbow record called “Leaders of the Freeworld.” They’re a band from England, they’re incredible.
Bella: Number 5.
Sal: Who else, what do we got?
Bella: Beatles. Always Beatles. Beatles are always being played.
Sal: You can kind of take this as influences too, obviously.
Jason: I like Neil Young a lot.
Bella: Neil Young.
Jason: We’re supposed to be saying new bands right?
Estrella: Yeah.
Jason: Well, Elbow worked.
Estrella: Yeah, I don’t know who they are.
Bella: You have to listen to them, they have 3 albums and they’re amazing.
Estrella: Oh 3, I’m slacking.
Jason: Let me think, let me think, let me think, who’s a new band that’s great? There’s a band called Test Icicles. They’re pretty cool. I’ve only heard the songs they have on their myspace, but they’re great.
Sal: Rogue Wave.
Bella: My Morning Jacket.
Jason: Yeah. Rouge Wave, My Morning Jacket.
Estrella: My Morning Jacket’s getting big.

Estrella: How would you say that the website Myspace.com has effected your band?
Jason: It’s been our only avenue so far to talk to people, I love it, it’s cool. It’s great. We’ve all been on it. None of us are on the internet, well I’m not addicted by any means, I haven’t even been on it in a few days.
Estrella: That’s the first step.
Jason: Yeah, whoa. But it’s cool, we’re not into the internet.
Sal: We don’t need a ten step program to get off Myspace.
Jason: I’ve gotten to contact to old friends. I’ve met so many people on there. Comments, messages, all that whole things, I love it. It’s a cool way to keep in touch with people.
Estrella: If it wasn’t for Myspace, I wouldn’t have an interview right now.
Jason: Really?
Estrella: Yeah, the website wasn’t working, so I had to email you and ask who to get in touch with. Because the website was down or something.
Jason: The website has never been up yet, it was just a splash page up now, the full site will be up in, I’m going to say two weeks, but you know what that means.

Estrella: What would you be doing if you weren’t in ActionReaction?
Bella: Being in another band with a different name, probably.
Jason: There’s no such thing.
Sal: Yeah, we all work together on a lot of things. So if we weren’t doing that, we’d be doing another band.
Jason: We like to think of ourselves as cosmically bonded.
Bella: Which is the other thing, we’d probably go to school and become astronauts. Astronomy.

Estrella: Do you have a crazy fan story or tour story yet? You know, van breaks down in the middle of the desert…
Jason: Well, I don’t know seeing as this is our 7th show ever as Action Reaction, yeah, I don’t know. Nothing yet. I’m sure there’s going to be something crazy though, there always is. We’ve already had van problems. But that’s not very crazy, everyone has van problems, that’s why Chiodos is not here right now.

Estrella: Best Halloween costume you’ve ever worn. That you’ve worn, not your friend. Unless it was really spectacular.
Bella: I think my favorite was when I was a red crayon, like it had the hat and you had to walk weird.
Jason: I don’t know. I was Bruce Willis once, that was pretty cool. Your Halloween costume this year was great.
Sal: I was a special ed mongolian samuri. It was amazing. Not to knock special ed.

Estrella: What should we be looking out for from you guys in the year to come?
Jason: A lot of aerobatics. Some light vivid colors and music. We are a band, we play music. A new record in June, I’m told. On Hope Division Records, which is the new subdivision of Equal Vision Records, that’s right, three visions in one sentence. First expansion, they’ve done.

Estrella: Any last comments or closing statements.
Bella: Give us a try, you’ll like us.
Jason: I feel free.
Sal: That’s funny cause I feel free too.
Bella: But I feel free too.
Sal: No, we do. We feel really free in this band. I think we’ve broken a lot of strong holds from our youth playing music.
Jason: Dude, Chiodos. That was great, keep going.
Estrella: We still going?
Jason: No, no you gotta get this dude. Sal, we gotta get this.
Sal: Well, I’ve got to miss this (referring to their van.)
Jason: No, I’ll move it. That was great, you were in a roll…
Estrella: With the free speech.
Sal: This band has been extremely free in experience. We were all in bands before but basically, right now, it’s like we know we sound different then what’s going on right now in the market, hands down, we definitely do. Our relevance is like we’re just happy with what we’re doing. You know what I mean? There’s going to be a lot of unacceptance and crap like that but we just sit around a room, we play music, we write, at the end of the day we fall asleep and we think, “I’m happy.” It’s why we do it. It’s simple.
Estrella: Alright, thank you for the interview.
Sal: Thank you very much.