Band Interview : February is a month for feelings.

7 Feelings that is!

by a.illumi

hile tooling around the internets, trying to put an “Auntie Wicked” stamp in every corner, the Aunties had the idea to revamp Wicked’s old myspace to use it for the Sanctuary! Lumi looked high and low for new friends and occasionally just randomly added people for an hour or more. During one of those fantastically long drooling sessions of friend searching she came upon the band – 7 Feelings!

Lumi has a loooooong history of loving punkish bands but this is more than just another punk-ish ensemble! And lumi would tell you what they are except, refuses to be be labeled and boxed into any one category .In Silver Line-In, their very first studio album, there are just seven songs but you don’t come away feeling like you got cheated – instead you come away really convinced that more incredibly good stuff will be coming from this band of young rockers. In fact, they tout Silver Line-In as just the first of the “Time Trilogy” yet to come. Lumi, for one, can’t wait to hear all of it but until then…Wicked and I will settle for a good long e-talk with the surprisingly fun and light-hearted guys that make-up the best band you haven’t heard yet…ladies and gents, We give you the guys of 7 feelings. WAIT! just one more thing, we would like to say here and now that if these guys do blow and up and get famous – we have first “I told you so” rights! 

Here’s and artists rendering of the logo:

AND NOW WE COMMENCE WITH THE BEST INTERVIEW WE HAVE EVER DONE WITH A BAND: The Guys did a phenomenal job answering our questions and giving us just a little taste of what it’s like to hang out with Rob, Chris, JD, and Miguel.Aunties: It seems you guys have a penchant for taking pictures of your band from the waist down!

We loved how different everyone was dressed so that one could actually identify different members of the band by their pants! So we attached a picture and would like you to fill us in left to right: Whose pants and what they do in the band?

RoB:I don’t know if our friend who took the picture planned it that way but I personally like unconventional types of pictures. So anything that’s not of the norm prevails in my eyes. I’m the first one from left to right, you can tell by my trademark black & white sk8er type sneakers … I’m a guitarist … of sorts … and primary singer I suppose.

Chris: I’m the second one, I’m wearing the pants with the square design on ’em

RoB: Yeah the pants aren’t the only one whose square

Chris: You’re just jealous cause I got the coolest pants in the band …

RoB: … you forgot the part about what you do in the bandChris: Oh yeah! On many songs I co-write … with RoB … and do back up vocals on some of the songs … uh … but I sing on the one’s I writeRoB: Yeah I always encourage the guys to sing their own songs cause there’s no one better to sing your song other than yourself.

Chris: … and I’m the rhythm guitarist

RoB: Yeah, that part probably had a bit more importance than just being a back-up singer

Chris: Shut up! I’m just a simple guy man; I just play the guitar and sing … freaking poppers!JD: Well .. I’m the one on the drums and I was wearing dickies cargo shortscause I like to show off my legs!Miguel: I’m the last one and I’m the bassist … (after a long pause) … what else I can say … I have skinny legs! (everyone laughs)*THE AUNTIES HAD BEEN WONDERING AND WONDERING where were the people who could actually wear skinny leg jeans! Lucky You Miguel!*

Aunties: We saw nothing on the ages of the members of the band and we are SUPER curious because the nature of the lyrics and the music is pretty intense and seems informed by a wide variety of influences: So we need to know old souls or just wise old guys that look young?RoB: Or maybe wise guys with old souls! … between all of us we probably have a combined age of about 87 but that’s whenever I feel my age cause one day I’ll wake up feeling 18 the next feeling 64 so it varies.LUMI DOES THE MATH: 87/4= an average age of 21.75Aunties: The name: We have to talk about it, even though you covered it very well inthe blog BECAUSE, (if you want to read their blog on this you will have to go friend them on myspace and maybe ask really nicely cause it’s not visible to just ANYONE ) Lumi is DYING to know if the choice of the name had anything to do with the Confucian/Buddhist debateof the four feelings you are born with and the seven feelings you come to acquire?

Seven Feelings:

RoB: Well when I first was contemplating the name I remember finding the Confucian philosophy on the net but I would be lying if I said it was truly borrowed from there … but it definitely had a part in having the final say so in my mind. I would say it was a combination of various things that helped with the decision of the name … I remember when we first set out to name the band we came up with a bunch of names (this was back when it was just me, Chris & Noriel: the band’s 1st drummer) and then I had this idea of “how cool would it be if a band could symbolize the ‘mixed emotions’ that comes with listening to different styles of music & even with different song types in same genres” … so that would become the foundation of the name and it became the basis of my research … I’m really trying to make a long story short here, but, here goes; I google and/or wikipedia everything

(I must admit I have learned a lot more off the internet than I ever did in high school) … I remember looking for it on google (mixed emotions) and found out it was a Rolling Stones song and (no offense to the Rolling Stones but) I don’t wanna be named after a Rolling Stones’ song! I wanted something original. So then it was back to the drawing board but I was definitely attached to ‘mixed emotions’ and was trying to find something that in essence symbolized my original thought … so I got a trustworthy thesaurus. Obviously emotions and feelings were a simple choice but I didn’t want to use feelings cause I thought it was a little too mainstream of a word and it didn’t fit too well with mixed. I remember using a number of variations to the name (I remember one being Hybrid Sentiments) but none of them ever seemed to fit. So I continued with my OCDish quest and I looked up the definition of music. Then that led me to the number seven, because it represents the notes of the major scale in music ‘Do,Re,Mi,Fa,So,La,Ti’ – and this might sound a bit corny but I remember in 3rd or 4th grade being introduced to the “Sound of Music”

and I remember the end of that one song ‘Do, Re, Mi’ and it has always been a fond memory to me cause I was so fascinated with the ideology of building a song and how they mixed up those same seven notes and made a very groovy tune ‘Do,Mi,Mi-Mi,So,So-Re,Fa,Fa-La,Ti,Ti’

– so that’s when I decided on the seven because until that instance (when I was surfing the net to find a name that made sense) I really never counted how many notes were in a major scale … and I remember thinking like “wtf is up with the number seven anyways is it like some sort of riddle that the Universe or God or Buddha is putting right in front of us so we can figure out some hidden mystery or something?” … so reluctantly I says to myself ‘seven feelings?’ … I didn’t like it … but then I explored all of the possibilities in my head as to what is the meaning of the words ‘seven feelings’ (laughs out loud) … I thought “was it a step forward beyond the six senses” you know a whole bunch of deep crazy thoughts on the subject. I was insanely over thinking it before asking the guys. So of course, I googled it ,and found the japanese and korean neo-confucianism philosophy on the seven feelings of course and I read about it some and thought to myself “did I subconsciously remember this from my visit to Korea years earlier?”

Regardless of if I did or not it was completely fascinating. According to the philosophy the seven-feelings were

‘desire, hate, love, fear, grief, anger and joy’ or ‘

desire, hate, love, fear, sorrow, anger and pleasure’ …

at the time, though, I must admit I didn’t know what the hell they were talking about! But now I get it, see, I really didn’t understand the difference between hate and anger; or between love and joy … I just simply thought it was the same emotion. But a few lessons in love and hate later-on sure showed me. So then I asked the boys and they agreed on the name.

Aunties: And a fine name it is with so much intense meaning…actually, most of the songs on Silver Line-in are INTENSE. War, freedom, conservation, hypocrisy, COFFEE. What impact do you hope your music has on these issues?Seven Feelings:RoB: I dunno .. I guess everyone wants the world to be a better place you know … but … when I write lyrics I usually write them from my point of view, like; from what happens to me or from what I see in the news or what I read in a newspaper (not that I do that often) and whenever someone has an opinion on any subject, there is always someone else who views it in an entirely different light. So yeah … I guess everyone hopes that their music or their art or that their product would help with all of the world’s problems, but I believe that the way to reach a solution on everybody’s concerns is not to bitch about it (as I do) but to just take all those different concerns and get the world’s greatest minds from every nation and stick them all in a room together and find some solutions …

but if it’s just a matter of hoping I can have a tiny role in that, then, I hope that someone with enough power or someone who is a leader of some sorts just listens to our music and says “wow, you know … we need to make this better … we need to listen to these people out there, cause I don’t think we’ve been doing a good job of it” Aunties: You band has maintained a myspace music page since 2007. Do you feel like it will continue to be a place for new and unsigned bands to connect with fans? Seven Feelings:RoB: Well I don’t know where myspace is going, a lot of people I know don’t even use it anymore, but that’s mostly because it has become a bit commercialized and I guess used for the wrong reasons … but for it to stick around I guess they’ll have to come up with some new ideas and I guess compete with Facebook. JD: If they don’t catch up and get up to date with all the other social networks, their won’t be any more users signing into myspace. Miguel: I hope they come up with something new … (asking The Aunties) why don’t we make a new one and be the next Mark Zuckerberg?!?

YEHS TOTALLY – CALL US KAY? We would be totes into being a part of the next big social network yet to come and not opposed to making millions of billions off of it either;PAunties:Offering your music for free is awesome and ballzy. Do you think that offering your music both for pay and for free will continue to be a priority for the band? (The aunties liked their free copy of the song “Free” so much that they went over to iTunes and bought another one!)Seven Feelings:RoB: Yeah I don’t know why giving away your music for free is such a big deal. Hopefully, if it’s ok ,with the guys we can continue to do this cause not everybody can fork out 20 bucks for an album or do they have the means to download a song for 99 cents (i.e. like with a credit card) … and I’m sorta glad that the old business model of the 20 dollar album with 12 song structure is almost completely out the window cause I really hated it when I anticipated my favorite band’s new album only to find that after spending so much of my money, the 12 or 14 songs on it were mostly crap and basically not worth the time which was sometimes better spent watching your favorite sitcom … and because of this, something else that has me really upset me is the fact that iTunes and most of the other big company download sites out there do not allow us to set the price of Silver Line-In to $2 as we did with CD baby and as we do live, cause, basically Silver Line-In is only 20 minutes long and $6.93 is a rip-off for that much time! But that’s ok cause our next album will have 27 tracks and will be approximately 80 minutes long, so then iTunes nor anybody else for that matter will be able to detain us from setting a fair price! Miguel: Yeah I agree to me it’s never been about the money, I remember when we first used to get together and play; to me it’s always been about hanging out or getting together with my friends … you know and have a good time. JD:We’re just glad that people get to hear our music and like Miguel said; it’s just bout having a good time.Aunties: You said you don’t like to talk about what your songs are about(mean), so we will totally understand if you won’t answer this question, BUHT we wants to know about this uncle who inspired “Coffee Time”? – we are aunties after-all!Seven Feelings:Chris: Actually it’s a funny story, I have this uncle right, you know and he’s always super hyper and every time he comes over he asks for coffee and starts repeating the same words “coffee time, coffee time!” and that’s where I got the inspiration for the chorus of the song JD: Yeah dude’s totally crazy

Aunties: We really enjoy listening to your songs as an album, this is kind of rare these days. Did your band make a conscious effort to assemble an album that flowed well together or were you just lucky?Seven Feelings:RoB: One of the reasons I wanted to be in a band was to make albums. I love records where you could listen from start to finish and say “masterpiece!” and it’s kinda sad that this is going away cause in the late 60s and 70s it was all about the album man. So … we didn’t exactly say “ok first we’re gonna have a song like this and then one like that”, cause that’s not fair to the songwriting process and it should never be that restrained, and this was the case except for the last song in Silver Line-In cause it uses the same notes and has the same melody part of “where have all the blue skies gone” from the first song on the album (which was written 5 or 6 years earlier) but yeah I guess it was a semi conscious effort. Our next album will be similar in that sense but it will be a lot longer … and we have enough songs in the bank already to hopefully continue this tradition. So if we have anything to say about it; albums will be around for awhile.Aunties: In our last blog, the Aunties posted a blog on our man-heroes. Does Seven feelings have any man-heroes in music? Everywhere else?

Seven Feelings:

RoB: ok … this one’s hard … it’s kinda hard to have one male hero in music that hasn’t been mentioned a thousand times before … and really to tell you the truth I’m not inspired by many of the lives that rock stars live, who wants to die at a young age? not me. I mean I can mention a few but they would all be obvious and I suppose this is mostly because (famous) musicians are known for their beautiful songs and not for who they truly are, or rather, what kind of people they were or what they did to make the world better … though recently I have been very intrigued in the life of Howard Hughes.

Now that’s my type of guy. The inventive ‘thinking outside of the box’ kind. Like I’m not saying he’s a good role model for your kids or anything, mainly because he led a very controversial life but what I mean is that the accomplishments that he was able to do before his sickness were extraordinary … he did things in his life that we now take for granted. He made film and aviation better. Another person I consider a hero would probably be Leonardo Da Vinci.

Again a revolutionary type of guy! He is mostly remembered for being a great painter but he was so diverse; he made the concepts for and arguably had the principle ideas for the airplane; he was a scientist … I own a large hardcover book where I believe all of his sketches are published, and … it has that one famous picture that has been plagiarized countless times appearing on all the exercise commercials now, you know the one where the guy has four hands and four feet … as if he was doing jumping jacks … I dunno how it’s called but that’s on the cover; and then inside the book you have all these anatomy studies and it’s amazing to see the detail of his drawings of the human body external and internal; he was a pioneer in that field. JD: First of all Robert, “The Vitruvian Man”is a work of art that explains how the body is divided and proportioned based on mathematical equations.RoB: pffff I dunno .. if you say so. (JD and RoB laugh)

Miguel:Like RoB said I can’t say I have one man hero in music cause of all the obvious choices like the Beatles, Hendrix, Cobain but my musical hero I guess would be the kind that thinks outside of the box, doing his own thing … but if your question is who’s my favorite band then that would be Incubus. JD: I admire a few drummers, singers, guitarists, but as a graphic designer most of the people who really influence me; are painters, designers and visual artists. RoB: Yeah plus he’s a graffiti enthusiast! JD: Yeah that’s true, among other things. RoB: What about you Chris? Chris: My favorite male-hero? … Spiderman? Batman? I dunno, I’m just a guy who plays guitar and sings man; I’m no hero! (everyone laughs)

Aunties: What’s the best thing about going to a seven feelings show? Seven Feelings:Chris: …this is a hard one … well I guess the only thing we offer is our music … RoB: … that and the promise of making you smile somehow or getting you up and cheering or … Chris: .. pumping you up ...

RoB: … yeah we don’t like people un-entertained Miguel: I’d say it was the Free Beer RoB: What do you mean? You saying we’re gonna give free beer to everybody? Miguel: No .. free beer for the band; you know the band drinking for free. RoB: Oh, ok. I agree with that … wait a minute no I don’t – Kids don’t try this at home, remember, beer’s the nectar of evil!!!

JD: I’m just gonna say that to me the best thing is the excitement of the moment, watching people enjoy our music; it’s what really pays off … and beer ain’t the nectar of evil. (RoB and JD laugh) Miguel: Yeah, I’ve noticed that when we play we get people’s attention; people usually stop what they’re doing to come towards us and listen; and we use that opportunity to share our message. RoB: what message; free beer? (everybody laughs)

Aunties: Ahem, moving on from those inspiring messages for youth, Guys, what is the best cure for Insomnia?Seven Feelings:

Chris: Sleeping RoB: yeah no duh! (laughs out loud) but if I’d know anything on the subject of sleeping, I would’ve written about something else … like instead of “sleep never” it would’ve been, I dunno, “I’m so broke” or something! Miguel: I don’t know; I don’t have that problem; “dammit Jim I’m a bassist not a scientist!” JD: the best cure for insomnia .. ummm … I’d say … a few sinus pills alcohol. RoB: alcohol again! JD: No wait I haven’t finished the mix .. ok … alcohol and some easy listening lounge-y crazymusic…

RoB: That must be why I can’t sleep then cause I don’t listen to anything that starts with easy listeningAunties: And finally, your band receives the award for best new artist of the year…How do you feel about that?Seven Feelings:

Miguel: We do? JD: (laughs) Chris: Well I would be ecstatic, I would be excited, I would be happy, I dunno … maybe a little afraid; cause people would start paying more attention than usual to us and that would be scary you know … Miguel: yeah everything would change cause we would feel a lot of pressure; and feel the need to maintain that status or whatever it’s called RoB: yeah fame would be scary … I don’t know how celebrities handle all the BS … sure anyone likes a little praise but I think that at the level of fame where the Lindsay Lohan’s of this world are … that just consumes you; who wants that? JD: … I guess I would be happy and over excited about it … but then after everything would be said and done we would go back to our normal lives … which, already are pretty damn exciting! And there you have it folks – the pretty damn exciting lives of the young men of 7 feelings. After reading this you pretty much HAVE to go and have a listen on their myspace, otherwise you may die of curiosity wondering just what these clever lads sound like – cause we aunties, aren’t telling…go look see listen for yourself…here’s the links…and BTW we can tell if you have been clicking on our inks or not – YOU ARE BEING Watched…

7 Feelings on myspace: myspace should thank them for being there7 Feelings on CD Baby: get one free song and buy the others for less than popcorn at the moviesDon’t forget you can find them on ITUNES as well!7 Feelings on facebook: see more pictures of interesting man pants

7 Feelings music video: watch them play music while cops beat them upLumi will spare you are usual long list of places to find us since we want to save all your clicking strength to support the four of 7!We Aunties will be back very soon with hints on picking up girls and Lumi burning things – so keep checking back! In the meantime, have a look at some of our other blogs!

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