MANILA, Philippines - If you happened to be in any of the Ayala Malls last week, you may have noticed or chanced upon a full-on rock concert featuring five bands taking the stage. All from the US and brandishing their own style of pop-punk meets electro-dancey rock type steez, they were fully decked out at the shows as well as at the interview, I just had to ask them a few questions on their style and Get Up Kids (pun intended). Here are conversations with three of the five bands.
A+ Dropouts
YSTYLE: Your video Someone New shows a guy going all goth, then reggae the next, then ”scene”? Is the song written about somebody in particular?
CHESKA ZAIDE: Not necessarily, the whole song is basically being like, true to yourself. Because every day I wish it’s you, but every day it’s someone new. So it’s kind of like, you don’t have to change who you are for other people to accept you kind of thing. So, I thought that was a cool message to get across.
Band sense of style?
CHESKA ZAIDE: (in unison with band) Stripes!
LUCAS TOMLINSON: We really like to wear stripes.
EVAN APODACA: And black and red.
LT: Cheska and I enjoy Converse.
CZ: Too much.
EA: I’m more of a Vans type of guy.
LT: I brought like four pairs of Converse on this trip.
CZ: My mom only let me bring three.
EA: It’s all about the belts.
CZ: My style is really unique, with a heavy duty belt. I would describe it as punk, cool… awesome. (laughs)
LT: My style is Lucas. This is it. Like, unique.
Style icons?
EA: Well, I do enjoy sewing stuffed animals to my pants and going shirtless and being Flea (of Red Hot Chili Peppers).
CZ: At first I used to look up to Avril for her style, because hers is kind of different and I kind of played on that and then I just started doing my own thing.
LT: I’ve looked at Captain Jack Sparrow as sort of an inspiration.
EA: Actually in all honesty for our official photography Facebook pictures I kinda went out to look like everyone from Green Day, kind of more like that. They’re cool.
LT: Yeah, I kind of like the way they dress.
Forever The Sickest Kids
How would you guys describe your personal style? Is it “scene-y?”
JONATHAN COOK: I think we all dress differently but we all care. Every one of us knows fashion, stores and trends and every one of us has our own style.
AUSTIN BELLO: I wouldn’t really describe it as scene.
KYLE BURNS: Since Day One we’ve always just dressed up. We’ve even talked about, you know, maybe we should be uniform with each other and we tried it several times but it didn’t work.
The nice thing about FTSK is that we’re all different individual people, our styles are different, our tastes are different.
Jonathan Cook: I guess we’re (gesturing to Kyle) bright fellers, and they’re more (pointing to Austin and Caleb) into outdoorsy, earth tones.
Caleb Turman: Yeah, I have it tattooed somewhere — give me green or give me death!
The Ready Set
The most seriously musical dude I’ve met, so I mostly asked him questions about — you guessed it — music. But I did ask him about tight pants.
What about tight pants?
Jordan Witzigreuter: Um, I’m for ‘em. These are kind of tight, but not super tight or anything but. I like tighter pants. I just feel more comfortable for some reason. I tried to wear ones that weren’t as tight, it just wasn’t for me.