Going On Seventeen: Life in a Band

Self-described "garage rock upstarts" Seventeen are a band comprising Jason Adams '92-'93 (lead guitarist/vocal), Jon Baird (guitar/vocals), Chris Baird (bass/vocals) and Tony Mellace (drums). Seventeen throw themselves into a hard rock, punk style of music. The Harvard Crimson interviewed Jason Adams to discuss the band's debut album, Bikini Pie Fight, an energetic work that meanders from punk to disco.

The Harvard Crimson: How did you get involved with the band?

Jason Adams: Well, I got to Harvard, and everybody was a hot shot in high school, so I looked for something to differentiate myself. At the time, I was doing terrible in school. I went from a physics concentration to some other disciplines and then ended up in computer science as a vocational sort of thing. I was doing so badly that I had to take some time off. I had no money and I didn't want to go back to my hometown in Arkansas. So, I stayed in Boston. I was really poor and I didn't have anything to do, so I learned to play guitar really well. When I got back to school, rather than worrying about my classes, I spent more time hanging out with my friends. Especially since there is no scene at Harvard. There's nothing to do besides sitting in a room with a linoleum floor and a keg and stumbling around with a bunch of guys.

Anyway, my friend John, his brother and their friend Nick started this band that had some real chemistry going. They were doing really well and it was along the lines of what I like to play and hear-aggressive music with big, heavy guitar. We'd go to shows and it would just be a hen party, with all these women there, and I told myself "I've got to do that." They invited me to join the band, and I was really flattered. We did an album, which took us about two weeks to record because we only recorded on nights and weekends. It was a really rough couple of weeks since we all worked 45 or 50 hours a week. We'd end up getting something like four hours of sleep a night for those two weeks. People liked that CD and we started getting better shows and the shows were getting more people. Eventually, we got invited to play in the WBCN Rumble, which is like a coming of age event, and it makes you think, "Okay, we're legit now."

THC: How did the band come up with Bikini Pie Fight as an album name?

JA: The idea came during a bonfire, you know, when anything is funny, so it was personal to us. Our manager Deb had mentioned a band called American Hi-fi and John thought that she had said "American Pie Fight." He thought that name was really funny and kept harping on it. So the other guys in the band thought that we would make a variation on that. That's how Bikini Pie Fight came about.

THC: What event would signal to you that you had succeeded in the music industry?

JA: Basically, a financially sustainable music career.

THC: Would that mean getting paid more than you are now?

JA: I am comfortable now, but that is due to the generosity of Scott Vincent, the owner of the record label we're on. When bands get picked up by a record label, the label invests a lot of money into them, and if they cannot extract the money, they get dropped. So the idea is to earn Scott's money back and to make enough money for me. I would like somewhere to live, considering that I am currently homeless. I've been couch surfing among friends for about a month and a half. It really wears on you. It gives you a crick in your neck and makes your back hurt.

THC: How do you and the other members of the band write your songs? Do you sit around and have jam sessions or do you sit down and deliberately compose each song?

JA: Well, it's never really jam style. Philosophically we object to "I can improvise all day, and do that Phish thing and we'll all just play together and it will be cool." When someone has an idea, and some guitar riffs, they'll come in and throw them out, usually with a couple of verses and a chorus, or some sort of progression. From there the group will decide if it's cool, or if it needs some work. I would call it a collaborative process; the arrangement of a song is usually hashed out by consensus.

THC: How do the lyrics to the songs get composed? There seems to be a wide degree of variation of the seriousness or significance of the lyrics.

JA: I would say that it is a result of who writes the lyrics. John seems to be the most clever and funny (although we don't try to be funny). There is usually some sort of situation that underlies the words and makes it reasonable. Usually there is also some sort of private joke elaborated upon that fuels the idea of the song. You know, in good songs, everybody understands what is going on and it has a catchy melody. But we don't really think through it that hard. A lot of it is just blah, blah, blah, blah.

THC: What do the members of the band do for fun when they are not playing music?

JA: Well, we like Sylvester Stallone movies, just because he's funny and they're usually good stories. They're just [adopts Stallone voice] "good action flicks." Some of the best times we've had are because of being in a band. Once, we went to Iceland and we got to go to these volcanic hot springs. We've also been to LA. You know, the traveling stuff is where most of the fun is. It's not like we play Jenga or Scrabble.