 "Photo: Courtesy Photo")
Transistor Transistor are:
Nat Coghlan (UNH Junior, 24, Guitar/vocals)
Garrison Nein (24, Bass)
James Moller (25, Drums)
Brad Wallace (29, Guitar)
TNH: Describe your band using only verbs.
Garrison: Touring
Nat: Drooling, crying, fighting
Garrison: Crippling's good . . . grating is good. We grate, as if the audience was a block of cheese . . . Crumping.
TNH: Where do you guys practice, and when?
Garrison: We practice in James' mom's basement regularly.
James: like probably once every month.
Garrison: Well that's not true . . .
Nat: We don't really have any real practice regimen like most bands do. We practice whenever and play Fooseball for easily a quarter of the time that we're actually playing music.
James: And then we make butt jokes.
TNH: Your band's songs are pretty complex and varied, yet they maintain a straightforwardly rocking bent. Can you describe the band's songwriting process, or else, who in particular should I credit for pumping out the jams?
Garrison: I think it's kind of like 60/40 Nat and Brad [respectively] as far as writing the bulk of the riffs. James and I fill out a lot of the parts - we write a lot, but the general riffs come from Nat and Brad, typically.
James: I would say it's very collaborative, and Nat and Brad bring in the riffs and we all just jam for a while.
TNH: Jam?
James: Jam!
TNH: Let's be honest: no one can hear what you're singing half the time. What are the general lyrical themes of your songs?
Garrison: There's a song we have that Nat described as being about killing yourself at the mall.
Nat: Which means it's about killing yourself in front of a large, public audience of people who don't know you.
Garrison: Generally, girls.
Nat: The lyrics of the last two records are mostly about being in a band, like observations about being in a band, like kind of putting a very critical slant on your own life, for the most part. A lot of the time if there's a song, and there's that undefined "you," and a lot of venom being spewed at that "you" in the lyrics - that's about me more often, rather than about an ex-girlfriend or something. There's also a song about gas prices.
TNH: How would you describe the evolution of TT and its songs over the years?
James: I would say as soon as Brad and I joined the band it got 50 times better, and when Garrison joined it got ten percent worse.
James: Both Garrison and I have been friends with them and have been around and have seen the shows have heard the records from the very beginning of the band, though we were not in the band at the time. so we are very familiar with the progression. If you listen to the records including all the crappy split 7"s it makes sense. I think if somebody listened to our latest record and the first recording that TT did, there's kind of a fairly large stylistic gap, but I think it makes sense.
Nat: I think right now, we have no one to impress, so we do whatever we want.
Garrison: I think we came together as friends, more or less, and kind of realized that we didn't really care about making records and going on tour and being huge or whatnot.
Nat: Our last record starts with 45 minutes of feedback, that wasn't like a commercially genius move. As time goes on more and more we realized like, let's just do this for us, let's just play music for us.
TNH: What or what kinds of venues are most fun for you to play?
Garrison: I'd say a cross between a legitimized club and a basement show, where it's like, you're playing on some manner of a stage and there's a good PA, but it's not total anarchy like people sh***ing on the floor.
Nat: I think generally, anywhere where people are enthusiastic. We've played places that are totally rad venues where there's not anyone who gives a crap, and I doubt we have fond memories of them.
James: So as long as there's no one crapping on the floor.
TNH: Who have you most enjoyed playing with on a given bill?
James: I watched a dude smoke crack in the bathroom
Garrison: And he died that night.
Nat: There was a girl with half of her face tattooed and colored in, the other half tattooed and not colored in. She had a mechanical leg and she was making out with some dude who was like, eating pizza . . .
Garrison (interrupting): Playing with Converge was probably my favorite.
James: I thought playing with Fear Before the March of Flames and Circle Takes the Square was awesome . . .
Band Concensus: playing with Hot Cross was always fun.
Nat: [playing with] Gospel was fun, but we were always worried that they were going to get arrested for driving around on mushrooms.
TNH: Where's the farthest place from here that TT has played while touring?
Garrison: Slovenia. There were like communists, communist supermarkets, like really weird and mess-- people just looking like child molesters in sweatpants . . .
James: I have to say that the show we played in Slovenia was one of the top five days of my life. It was right on the Adriatic Sea, and it was Mayday, which for former Communist countries is a huge deal . . . so they were like totally stoked on it and flipping out.
TNH: Are you guys a Marxist band?
Nat: We were that day.
TNH: Any favorite stories from the road?
James: I thought seeing Beethoven's house was pretty cool.
Nat: We had a gun pulled on us once.
Garrison: Yeah, that was something - I feel like we're missing something . . .
Nat: Oh, when you guys beat those Italian kids at Fooseball.
James: Europeans are serious about Fooseball.
Garrison: Yeah, it was at this weird punk hostel compound in an airplane hangar, and then James and I beat these two sh***y street punks at Fooseball, and it was like a national victory.
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