Description

Passion Pit's Ayad Al Adhamy and Jeff Apruzzese take a break from sound checking ahead of their show at Central Park to discuss their band's history, odd ball tour stories, and what it means to be playing their music to a sold out audience in Central Park.

Transcript

Ayad: Hey! I’m Ayad. Jeff: Hey! I’m Jeff. Ayad: Jeff plays the bass. Jeff: Ayad plays keyboard samplers, auxiliary percussion and Wood Blocks. Ayad: I had so much more than you and we’re in Passion Pit. Jeff: We at the band. Ayad: The band started in 2007, Michael Angelakos wrote a bunch of songs for his then girlfriend. It could be like I’m sorry for missing everything. So then he gave it as a Valentine’s Day gift about two months late. Ian head and knew him, said “We should make this to a band.” What did Michael say? Jeff: Michael said “No.” He said, “Ian, I hate you.” I do not want to use the hate but he didn’t want to be in a band at the time with him and then a few months passed—on the ground called up. Ayad: Actually, there was no snow because it was summer at the time. Jeff: So, he called up Ian and changed his mind and decided to plunge out the material and then the band members came. Ayad: Yeah. Jeff: Actually it was all done at Mike’s bedroom actually on his laptop and he is actually like he screams into the internal microphone on his laptop. So, that’s just like tons of clipping and distortion that just happen because it’s overloading the program. What’s a really funny thing is that Chunk of Change wasn’t supposed to be released. It was just a project and so, Frenchkiss released it and then when it got re-released on Stoney, they wanted to remaster it and to sound better. The quality of audio was so horrible, of clipping that they actually couldn’t do anything about it like they couldn’t make it sound any better because of all like the digital clipping on that thing. Ayad: I did not know that. Jeff: It’s kind of awesome. Ayad: Totally awesome. Jeff: Mike is being the songwriter and him and Nate were down there for majority of the time. With Mike writing the songs and Nate doing a lot of drum programming and it was a very non-traditional method—instead going in with all the material and recording it. I remember Mike saying at our manager at the time, he has lied to him telling him that he had all these material together, that he was ready to record and then he went to the studio and had nothing pretty much and each song was kind of like Lego. It’s like eight part phrases, so kind of a stuck on top of each other and slowly building on, eventually getting—song to have like a hundred tracks. Ayad: A hundred tracks. Jeff: We were all like huge fans of Phoenix and so, we were all like “My God!” Ayad: I went to be like “I love your stuff” and they went “I really like your stuff.” And I was like “That’s amazing.” Jeff: It’s really amazing to play a show with a band that you really admired like “Sick! I can’t wait to get them playing so we can watch Phoenix.” Like I don’t know, it’s really awesome. Ayad: I agree. Jeff: Yeah. Ayad: We all went to music on college, so yeah. Jeff: That’s ten year like that’s never going to happen. I think like, can I give something more legitimate to do in my life? Ayad: I don’t know what you thought. I thought it was legitimate. I was like, “I’m going to go to music school in direct outfit, yes.” Jeff: No but I mean, so did I but I was like, “I’m not going to go to music school and then come out and go on tour.” Ayad: Yeah. Jeff: But when -- Ayad: Jeff has a degree in Music Business, so you see it’s coming really handy. See the magic link is that when it comes to songwriting, I don’t think you can be taught and even though it has a songwriting thing, I think it’s pointless and Mike’s dad is a musical person. He’s a conductor and plays—so Mike, kind of bunch of bands before and brought up musically and when he came to writing good pop songs, he just knew it and none of us studied songwriting at college. We did a whole different stuff. So, we’re all friends and met each other and it has worked out. Jeff: We were at South by -- Ayad: Southwest. Jeff: South by Southwest in Austin Texas and we were playing the Brooklyn Vegan and Paste party and it was like the first show of the shows of your playing. It’s like 90 degrees there. We’re all like super tired, super hot playing, it’s a little tense. Ayad: Let’s drink as much whiskey as we can. Jeff: Decided we got an idea to drink a little bit and not drink that much water. And so, we’re hanging on. We get to the last song of the set, Smile upon Me and Mike starts swinging the microphone in the air. Ayad and I used to like talking on stage like I’d walk over to his side, to make this chat. Ayad: And then he got reprimanded. Jeff: And then so, as I was walking over to his side of the stage, I get smacked in the top of the head like really hard and I just like fell on the ground. I found all these pictures of people of me like on the ground like grasping my head and I was like “Fuck it out.” Sorry for that word. And I just got through it and then right after we got them playing, I had a huge lump on my head and I was throwing up everywhere. Ayad: Oh, that was making up. Jeff: No and then I fell asleep like in a corner. I grew up in New Jersey and like I use to come to New York a lot actually with my family and so, I don’t know, this is always held like a place in my heart. I think it’s kind of amazing to be even saying that like we’re playing Central Park. I think it’s like a huge milestone on our career to like say that we’ve done that. It sounds ethic to me. I’m like something I’ll always remember. How about you? Ayad: The same without the New Jersey part. Jeff: Up in New Jersey. Ayad: Ouch. Hey! We’re Passion Pit and watch us set on Baeblemusic.com. Jeff: There you go.