East Bay rockers Adventure Playground recently released the magnificent Alright Already record. To celebrate the release, the band’s John Spencer took a few moments with TGEFM to discuss their sound, meeting at band camp and what’s next for the band.
Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview and congratulations on the recent release of the Alright Already album! What should our readers know about the members of Adventure Playground and your sound?
Adventure Playground is a pop punk – and *OTHER STUFF* – band from the East Bay. We live to create supreme drum fills, tasty bass lines, creative guitar parts, and explosive vocals. We live to create, period :).
What album or band or significant singles made you go “Yeah, this is what I want to do” Not just an influence but who or what was the catalyst?
For singer Noah, catalysts were Prince, Bob Dylan, the Modern Lovers, Alannis Morisette, The Talking Heads, David Berman, and the ethos of punk music. Prince for the surreal ecstasy, Bob Dylan for the poetic blur, Alannis cuz when I started singing I was vibing with her moody expressiveness, the Modern Lovers because Jonathon Richman sounds so cool when he talks, The Talking Heads because of David Byrne singing “Once in a Lifetime” in Stop Making Sense, David Berman for making pain felt, the ethos of punk music for allowing experimentation in singing and transferring pain into catharsis.
Being a band from the East Bay, I’m sure you get tired of the question that’s coming but it’s such an interesting and diverse place and has bred so much amazing music. Why do you think the area churns out so many brilliant musicians and songwriters? How does the area feed into the music you are writing, if at all?
Cities with strong leftist movements, a ton of venues, and a bunch of party people churn out art! Art makes people happy and wise 🙂 The Area feeds into our music definitely in terms of the venues we’re lucky enough to play at – the Gilman being a favorite spot where east bay punk history stews in the air.
The band originally met at a Music Camp in California, but over the years since Adventure Playground’s members have performed a variety of genres and styles while attending schools in Cali, Connecticut and NYC. How important is the diversity of sounds in your backgrounds during the songwriting process?
The variety of genres is very important because it gives us a large set of influences to draw from when writing. For some of our songs, we have a specific idea of a sound that we want to create, and we write a song to capture that sound. For other songs, they just come to us and out of us naturally. All that is heavily influence by our musical upbringing and our current favorite artists. Although we started this band with a heavy “pop-punk” sound, we are quickly breaking out of that mold and are transitioning into a rock’n’roll band with a more diverse sound.
One of our obligatory questions in these interviews also tends to be the one I have found most important on a personal level. Who are some bands on your radar that TGEFM readers may not know about, but you think they should?
We just played a show with Gloomy June, they are amazing. Also love The So So Glos, an NYC punk band that’s not as active anymore but has had a big influence on our drummer especially. Speaking of NYC, we have to shout out bands like Bueno, Namesake (formerly Honduras), and Gym Shorts.
What’s next for the members of Adventure Playground?
We’re back in the studio recording new music, which we plan to release later this year either as a set of singles or an EP. We’re staying active with shows in the Bay Area and are planning a short West Coast Tour later this summer.
Thank you again for chatting with us. Before we close out the interview, was there anything I missed that you’d like to share or dive deeper into with our readers?
Thanks for taking the time to learn more about Adventure Playground!
Roll of the Dice is a short interview format with a variable amount of questions. A Pair of dice is rolled and the total, between 2 and 12, is the amount of questions we can ask. All questions are given to the interviewee(s) at once, and no follow-ups are allowed. The interview may be lightly edited for content and clarity.
Bad Dad (occasionally called Ed) has been on the periphery of the punk and punk-adjacent scene for over twenty years. While many contributors to this site have musical experience and talent, Ed’s musical claim to fame comes from his time in arguably the most punk rock Blockbuster Video district in NJ where he worked alongside members of Blanks 77, Best Hit TV and Brian Fallon. He is more than just an awful father to his 2 daughters, he is also a dreadful husband, a subpar writer, a terrible dresser and has a severe deficiency in all things talent… but hey, at least he’s self-aware, amirite?
Check out the pathetic attempts at photography on his insta at https://www.instagram.com/bad_dad_photography/
