Interview with 286 by Jen

You guys are just great. I’m not kissing ass or anything, I just love the style of music you play. You have a mix of every metal band I was into from the 80’s. Tell me who some of the influences of the band are.
First off, thank you and we appreciate the compliment. If you look at the 80’s there was some fairly ridiculous aspects that became synonymous with the whole rock genre. At the same time, there was a lot of really good things about the era that “modern” rock seems to be missing. So that’s kind of what 286 was envisioned to be, let’s bring back the good things about rock music and leave out all the rock star crap and Aquanet. At the same time, we wouldn’t have been satisfied doing something that has already been done before so we added a hardcore element and a message. We always admired artists like, The MC-5, Rage Against the Machine, Bob Dylan, Public Enemy, Dead Kennedy’s and many others for their lyrical content. Although we don’t take ourselves very seriously, you’re not going to hear songs about us losing girls in high school or adolescent angst, we’ll leave that to the emo kids. Musically, we tend to lean toward the raw end of the rock spectrum ala early AC/DC, early Van Halen or some reviews have even said like Detroit pre punk stuff. I don’t know, when you put us all in blender 286 is what comes out. It is what it is and everyone seems to hear something different in it and I think that’s cool.
Since you guys are in the LA area based band, have you ever played the big clubs you see in the Guns N’ Roses video’s, like the Roxy for example.
We’ve hit some of them, places like: The House of Blues, The 7969, The Cathouse and other LA trademarks. The Cathouse was Ricki Rachtman’s old venue back in LA’s rock prime and you can’t get more metal that playing at a venue that used to be operated by Mr. Head Banger’s Ball himself.
You just played the House of Blues in Hollywood, have you ever played there before? What was that experience like for you guys? How many people were there?
No, that was our first time. The experience was great, they really take care of the bands there and anyone that plays in an indie band knows that type of thing doesn’t happen all the time. There was a good crowd but it wasn’t completely packed, it’s one of the bigger venues on the Sunset Strip right now so it was an honor for us to get asked to play there.
What other bands have you played with? Any terrible shows you would just like to forget, but I would like to find out about?
It’s strange, we’ve actually got to open for a lot of people that used to play in big bands that we listened to when we were kids. Some of them are in new projects and others are doing solo things. We’ve shared the stage with guys from Quiet Riot, Dio’s band, Tesla, Later Sabbath, we were supposed to open for Dizzy from the GnR days but that one got cancelled. We’ve played with some pretty cool bands that you may not have heard of too, Faceless Gray (LA) and Born to Lose (Austin) come to mind. It doesn’t always go that way though, 286 also plays in the punk the scene and we’ve been down and dirty on the floor of some of LA’s punk spots and even mixed it up with the natives at all ages shows when we were on the road or playing benefits. We’re fortunate to be accepted in the different scenes and we appreciate the support from anyone that comes to see us play. There are terrible shows where we get booked with Phish type jam bands or something way different than us and everyone ends up looking at us when we walk in pushing stacks like we are from another planet. So it goes though, a bad show is better than one hour in the corporate world.
You play a ton of shows too and it looks like they are not just from CA. How do you hook up with shows outside of the Los Angeles area?
Labels, promoters, managers, other bands – using the Internet and gaining a presence there has really helped us. The bottom line is that we try to play as many quality shows as possible whenever and wherever we can. We’re not sitting around waiting for Sony to call and give us a slick manager to do all the work, that’s not us. People see us having fun on stage but there’s a bunch of work that goes in behind the scenes to make that happen.
Where does the name 286 come from?
We get this one all the time, most people think it’s a California Penal code but we hate to disappoint everybody, it’s just the number on our practice lockout’s door in downtown LA overlooking the stunning LA river.
You guys all were from somewhere else, how did two Argentina natives, someone from New Jersey and Pittsburgh all hook up and end up in Los Angeles?
Behold the power of Craig’s List. We all shared the disappointment of coming to LA without our former projects and we all had to start again because we weren’t ready to quit music, it was too much a part of us. Now we are all happier than we ever were from a musical standpoint. It worked out for us.
If I ever made it to that side of the US again and went to one of your shows, what could I expect to see? I don’t believe there would be moshing, but I could be wrong. You would get me in for free, right?
You would see the trophy of rock! According to prophecy it shone like a rainbow in the dark from a Dumpster in a Denver venue parking lot. Not missing the sign, the noble Pete Pace rescued it and since then it has given us power and inspiration. For the record, we have now added a plastic Jesus on a spring, a 286 guitar pick, and a deer skull from Utah to increase its potency. We may not be the Kings of Rock like RUN DMC, but we do hold the trophy. Seriously (although we do have the trophy at every show) you’ll see a real rock band, nothing is done in the studio that we can’t do on stage. The way people react to the show is different at every venue. We’ve had people mosh but that’s not the norm. We would certainly get you in for free but you have to pay to touch the trophy. It’s normally 25 cents but it’s a dollar in Hollywood in keeping with the price inflation there.
If someone never heard you before, and asked what you sounded like, what would you tell them?
I guess it depends who you ask. The original add for a vocalist stated the band was looking for a cross between Bonn Scott of AC/DC and Phil Anselmo from Pantera, so that if that sheds any light on the 286 vision let us know. People seem to be liking it though and that’s rewarding from a musician’s standpoint. No matter how obscure some artists tell you they want to be, everyone wants people to like their sound.
Tell me about your CD, Profiled. When was it recorded? When was it released? What has the reaction been to it so far?
The Profiled EP was recorded in January of 05, we wanted it to be a 5 song introduction to what 286 is. We released it in the Spring but we have sporadic distribution so it came out at different times in different places. It’s still coming out in some places. You can now get it digitally on MP3 tunes, Napster, and I Tunes. To buy the hard copy you can get it from our website, at CD Baby, at Interpunk, and at tower records online. There are some stores that are carrying it but this isn’t a commercial. The reaction has been tremendous - We’ve been getting a lot of press and reviews back and they have all been good. For us, we are happy people are understanding what we are trying to do and enjoying it.
Are you currently writing new material, or are you just trying to do everything possible to get this CD out there?
Of course, the EP is only half or even less of our current set. We are constantly working on new stuff and evolving the older material with new twists. We do play the songs from the EP live, we aren’t that band whose CD you buy and when you see them live they don’t play any of those songs. We have too much respect for our fans to do that.
Any label interest yet? Are you guys looking and contacting labels?
The whole Label thing doesn’t mean as much as it used to. We work with some indie labels that help us with distro and such, but I don’t know that there’s an interest from any majors. For us, that’s something we have no control over. What we do with or without a label is play 286 music as much as we can and to as many different folks as we can; we can control that. “Signed” or not we are going to be doing the same thing and continuing the work ethic that’s gotten us this far.
Alright, that about does it for me, anything else you would like to plug or say?
Stay true to your art and yourself and only good things can happen. If people want more information about our project you can visit 286music.com or myspace.com/286music . We also want to thank your badass metal corner of the Internet for helping us get the word out about 286!
http://www.286music.com
http://www.myspace.com/286music