{"id":3024,"date":"2016-04-06T20:59:46","date_gmt":"2016-04-07T02:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocc.org\/?p=3024"},"modified":"2016-04-06T20:59:46","modified_gmt":"2016-04-07T02:59:46","slug":"qa-with-a-bae-alex-luciano-of-diet-cig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/2016\/04\/06\/qa-with-a-bae-alex-luciano-of-diet-cig\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&amp;A with a bae: Alex Luciano of Diet Cig"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Diet Cig - Dinner Date [Official Music Video]\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LLbdLMtB1jU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Over the past few weeks, my roommate and I have actually greeted each other in the mornings\u2014not with \u201cgood morning,\u201d but with the phrase \u201cfucking slow dance\u201d and a dramatic eye roll.<\/p>\n<p>The ritual is not in reaction to telepathic nightmares, but a lyric from Diet Cig\u2019s 2015 single \u201cDinner Date\u201d which has over 85,000 plays on Spotify. We too spend the rest of our days playing Diet Cig\u2019s seven\u00a0songs on Spotify, wondering when there will be more. Or even if it\u2019s even possible to write truer lyrics than \u201cIf I told you I loved you I don\u2019t know who\/it would scare away faster.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The pop punk duo consists of New Paltz New York\u2019s own Alex Luciano and Noah Bowman, whose power chord ballads strike a balance between fun-loving and fuck you, and cut as deep as your memories of shitty hometowns and suburban-school expectations. They\u2019ve been declared \u201cA Band to Watch\u201d by nearly every online music news monopoly, and simultaneously propose to destroy the monopoly label \u201cbedroom songs.\u201d Onstage Luciano jumps off drum sets, occasionally into the crowd, and generally requires that everyone quit shuffling their feet and fucking dance.<\/p>\n<p>I stumbled upon the band in March at SXSW: first at Sidewinder, then the next day at the Stereogum showcase where a friend of mine may have had too much free Sapporo beer\u2014he asked Luciano to marry him, and then chucked an inflatable deer at her head (on accident, of course). She didn\u2019t miss a beat.<\/p>\n<p>When I asked Luciano if I could call her for an interview, I reminded her of the deer incident and she seemed receptive. Bowman couldn\u2019t make it. I sat in my bed in Colorado Springs, and she in hers in Brooklyn. We discussed Frankie Cosmos\u2019 simplicity and Diarrhea Planet\u2019s masterful mayhem, and of course, the reason why being a female shredder is essentially cooler than, well, anything.<\/p>\n<p>Catch Dieg Cig with Sorrel and Brick + Mortar opening for the Front Bottoms at Black Sheep next Tuesday, April 12<sup>th<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hannah: <\/strong>Have you ever had things thrown at you before?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Alex:<\/strong> No, nothing\u2019s ever really been thrown at me before the deer. I\u2019ve had boys hand me love notes after a set onstage but that\u2019s the extent of people giving me stuff.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hannah: <\/strong>That sounds worse than the deer. How\u2019d you like SXSW besides that? Was it your first one?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Alex:<\/strong> Yeah it was our first South by, it was super crazy. We played thirteen sets. It was supposed to be eleven but then we played two extra sets called Sessions. I thought we were gonna play two songs and they would record them and then they were like \u201cOh play a whole set in front of this audience and we\u2019ll record two songs out of the set.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s kind of a blur now looking back at it, but we had a lot of fun and we got to see all the bands. It was really fun running in the streets, running into your homies and being like \u201csee you at the show later!\u201d There was some crazy shit\u2026I stole a gnome and then gave it back but that was before I like air guitar shredded it. Wacky.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hannah: <\/strong>Dinner Date was actually the first song I heard by you guys and has since been my favorite\u2014probably because of the opening lines. Is it based off daddy issues\/a true story?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Alex:<\/strong> It\u2019s a lot of Daddy issue-type feelings. That song starts out with my dad but also touches on a lot of relationships I\u2019ve had with other people, and is me trying to convince myself that even though there are shitty people in my life that have just disappointed me or not treated me well that I\u2019m better than these experiences. I\u2019m taking power back from the people that have done me wrong.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Hannah: <\/strong>Do you feel like you\u2019re running out of shitty situations to write about? You know, like shitty hometowns or shitty boyfriends?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Alex:<\/strong> I think that life is full of shitty situations, even when you grow up and start doing what you want to. You can take the smallest ones and write a dumb punk song about them, so I\u2019m definitely not worried about not having enough shitty situations to write about.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hannah: <\/strong>If you could describe your music now in one word what would you pick?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Alex:<\/strong> There\u2019s a lot of words combined that I think would describe it. Our music is fun and also really cathartic. It\u2019s really honest\u2014I\u2019d say it\u2019s very honest\u2014it\u2019s like taking songs that like could be sad songs and making them fun. What I\u2019m writing about is shitty stuff, most of the stuff that I write about are like bad situations that have happened to me. But it\u2019s me turning things into a positive, fun situation.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hannah: <\/strong>What\u2019s your biggest musical influence?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Alex:<\/strong> I really don\u2019t feel like one artist or any thing specifically influences me. I feel like I\u2019m making simple live music that I like. But I\u2019ve been influenced by the attitudes of a lot of musicians. I\u2019m really influenced by Frankie Cosmos in the way that she just writes and writes and writes so many amazing songs and only recently has held off on releasing them because she\u2019s been writing and releasing official records and stuff\u2014but I\u2019m really inspired by the way she released her early songs She would just release them on bandcamp and not worry about who would listen to it. It was just pure, real, honest music that she wrote.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m really inspired by a lot of other like strong female musicians. l like Hop Along. I think my music sounds very different than theirs, but at the same time I\u2019m really inspired by what they\u2019re doing and they\u2019re songwriting and the fact that they\u2019re out there and doing it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hannah: <\/strong>I really love how short Frankie Cosmo\u2019s songs are\u2014it\u2019s the wave of the future you know? Everything\u2019s getting shorter.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Alex:<\/strong> It\u2019s true and it\u2019s no frills, there\u2019s no jam out guitar parts that last for like four minutes or anything. It\u2019s just like honest lyrics and music that complements it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hannah: <\/strong>The biggest thing for me watching female musicians perform in bands is that it\u2019s a breakdown of the male tendency to show off with all these crazy guitar solos.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Alex:<\/strong> It is such a masculine stereotype to do guitar solos and rip out and shred out. But I really don\u2019t like the idea that that\u2019s a male thing because I know so many female fucking shredders. Alicia from Bully fucking shreds\u2014she\u2019s amazing. I think there\u2019s definitely a place for that though. I love Diarrhea Planet and they\u2019re like the ultimate dude-shredder band. It\u2019s all four guitars and guys guitar soloing, which is awesome, but I think that it\u2019s equally as important for artists who aren\u2019t technically proficient guitar players to be represented.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>She Shreds<\/em> the magazine has this really awesome philosophy that shredding isn\u2019t your technical ability on an instrument, it\u2019s the amount of emotion you can evoke through your instrument. I really respect women, or any musician, that can evoke a lot of emotion through their music without having to completely guitar-solo shred. I also have so much love and respect for everyone who\u2019s just like slammin\u2019 out guitar solos because it\u2019s just the coolest thing ever.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>H: <\/strong>Diarrhea planet: rock n\u2019 roll done right.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>A:<\/strong> Seeing them live is a joyous experience and they represent the kind of guitar-shredding that should be the ultimate. A lot of \u201cserious\u201d musicians take themselves too seriously. They\u2019re serious musicians\u2014but they don\u2019t take themselves too seriously, which is why I think people like them.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>H: <\/strong>So what\u2019s a show that you\u2019ve seen\u2014besides Diarrhea planet, of course\u2014that\u2019s really inspired you to write or play music? A show that made you say \u201cI gotta go home and practice the guitar right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A: There\u2019s been a couple that really stick out. When I was a freshman in college at New Paltz I was just getting introduced to the idea of DIY shows and artists producing their own music and I saw Frankie Cosmos\u2019 show. It was actually hosted at my friend Chris Daley\u2019s house (he recorded our music, our EP and our 7 inch) and I saw Frankie Cosmos perform at his studio. It was a really intimate performance and I didn\u2019t really know who she was. I was just so floored by the simplicity of her songs and how beautiful they were, but also how accessible they were, and I was like \u201chey, I could write songs that are simple and honest like that, I have a lot to say too.\u201d That was definitely one of the first moments that I was like \u201cI can write songs that people will relate to and like.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Then we did that tour with Bully this year, and Alicia really inspired me to start learning more on guitar, and to want to be more rock n\u2019 roll as opposed to tweeny pop\/rock or whatever people like to call us. I\u2019m trying to find that balance all the time.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>H: <\/strong>According to Pitchfork, you just need to \u201cmature.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>A:<\/strong> (laughs) Yeah they were like \u201cWell we can\u2019t wait for them to mature.\u201d And I was like okay no one asked you to write about my record. That\u2019s the one thing about Pitchfork, it\u2019s a love\/hate thing because most blogs will write about the stuff that they like but Pitchfork will write about stuff that they like and they don\u2019t like. And at first when we had that new record I was like in the back of my head like \u201cOh my god we have to write a record that is similar to the old stuff, but mature because we gotta get Pitchfork to like it!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve realized that after touring and playing those songs over and over again that we have to write songs that we like to play. You never know what people are going to like. So the only thing that we can do is write music that we like to play and that we\u2019re proud of. This next record is going to be really awesome and I\u2019m not sure if Pitchfork will like it\u2014but I know we\u2019re gonna LOVE it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>H: <\/strong>This is hard to ask without Noah here to speak for himself\u2014but do you feel like you would have gone in a similar direction without each other? Would you be playing music with other people today if you guys hadn\u2019t met in the first place?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>A:<\/strong> I don\u2019t know. I know he would be playing music with other people because Noah\u2019s always been a musician and that\u2019s always been his path. But I had some songs that I wanted to like perform and work on. It could have gone in a very acoustic low-fi bedroom pop kind of direction or it could have been \u201cthe band sound\u201d with drums, a little more rockin\u2019 direction\u2014Noah was a really big influence in the music going in the direction that it did. It\u2019s just as much Noah\u2019s artistic vision as it is my own. Maybe I would have done something with music but I it wouldn\u2019t have taken off and been what it is now if we didn\u2019t meet.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>H: <\/strong>Do you have any words of advice for people with \u201cbedroom songs\u201d? I feel like that\u2019s a trope when people write about music like \u201cOh yeah they wrote all these songs in their bedroom.\u201d But you guys got the songs out there, and there are a lot of talented people who haven\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>A:<\/strong> Like you said \u201cbedroom songs\u201d is such a stupid trope and I feel like a lot of music writers or critics attach that label to women\u2019s music. It\u2019s so funny because Steph Knipe who\u2019s in Adult Mom wrote online that \u201cThe difference between bedroom music and dorm music: one of them you\u2019re paying 20,000 dollars a year to write your music\u201d and it\u2019s pretty funny because like what even IS bedroom music, does it mean you wrote it in your bedroom, does it mean that it\u2019s soft and you\u2019d wanna listen to it in your bedroom? I definitely can\u2019t fit a drum set in my bedroom so I don\u2019t know why people are calling my music bedroom pop.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I think some advice for people who are starting off writing songs in their bedrooms is to not feel hindered by the fact that you wrote it there\u2014that shouldn\u2019t define your music. You can write music in your bedroom and you can literally be any genre that you want. You can be anything you want.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>H: <\/strong>If you could write a song for any one person who would it be?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A: I\u2019d write one for my sister. She\u2019s 12 and she\u2019s in middle school and middle school is tough. I\u2019m actually kind of in the process for writing this one song for my sister that will probably be on this record but it\u2019s also tough because there\u2019s so much I want to say to her. I want to tell her to be herself but in a way that\u2019s not cheesy like \u201cYOU CAN DO IT\u201d because she is such a special person. <em>She rocks.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the past few weeks, my roommate and I have actually greeted each other in the mornings\u2014not with \u201cgood morning,\u201d but with the phrase \u201cfucking slow dance\u201d and a dramatic eye roll. The ritual is not in reaction to telepathic nightmares, but a lyric from Diet Cig\u2019s 2015 single \u201cDinner Date\u201d which has over 85,000 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1124,"featured_media":3025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,9,12,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colorado-springs","category-in-case-you-missed-it","category-music","category-interview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa7fJU-MM","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}