Gabe Saporta: Yo Ryland, what do think the abbreviation for our band should be, CS or CSS?
Ryland Blackington: We can’t be CSS because of CSS - the Brazilian band.
Gabe Saporta: But I like CSS!
Music News met 'CS' aka Cobra Starship when they landed in the UK for their debut tour... When Gabe Saporta discovered Nirvana at age 13 he believed anybody could be in a band. Forming alternative rock group Midtown and making a record he loved, in time he reached a crossroads so set about finding a different kind of nirvana. And here’s where his tale deviates from most.
Indeed he started a side project, much like musicians do, but Gabe did it... because a snake told him to.
"I went to the desert and had a spiritual experience where this cobra came from the future. Do you know about this?" he asks as guitarist Ryland Blackington sighs at his inevitable 'any excuse to tell the story' attitude. "He’s heard this a million times!"
And you can quite believe it - that much anyway. Legend, or rather Gabe’s tripping memory, has it he was mid-meditation when out of nowhere a cobra bit his neck and then telepathically revealed he’d arrived to teach him "how to dance and make beats". Truly inspired by this "epiphany" Gabe returned to his home in New York to create Cobra Starship in honour of his serpentine guru until it dawned on him.
"I was like: 'Gabe weren’t you smoking peyote for like six straight days with all these Native Americans and couldn’t some of that just have been in your mind?'" But in a further reptilian twist, Samuel L Jackson’s infamous hit movie 'Snakes On A Plane' then threw up a soundtrack opportunity and Gabe was finally convinced "this was all part of the cobra’s plan".
As people went crazy for the title of the film alone, the potential of 'the plan' could only be realised by a full-time band. Snatching Ryland from The Ivy League, along with their bassist Alex Suarez, plus Armor For Sleep's drum tech Nate Navarro and Victoria Asher for keytar, Gabe made his once side project a permanent venture. Although Ryland begs to differ:
"Gabe is a professional but his real nine to five job is getting kicked out of every place we go."
"You know it’s a not a good party unless you get kicked out of it," he retaliates.
And again there’s a story or two. Recently Gabe was barred from his own gathering after things got personal with the doorman over something as trivial as smoking.
"Sometimes it’s much worse," he admits. "Sometimes it’s about like throwing drinks, acting like an asshole and getting into fights with girls!"
"Or running away from security," prompts Ryland, who divulges the details despite Gabe seeming fit to burst with those points himself. "I don’t know how he even remembers this," he continues describing Gabe’s mischievous exit from a fashion show via a huge stack of chairs. "He just runs - for no reason at all - dives in all his gangly glory and knocks over 100’s of chairs. They’re all going down, he gets right back up..."
"No I couldn’t get back up," interrupts Gabe. "I was stuck so you had to come help me up. I’m like inside this pile of chairs!" And, like a scene from a cartoon, he's finally chased outside by some "big dudes" only to foil them by removing his hoodie and cap and gatecrashing a sedate, group conversation.
Now that is highly believable! Cobra Starship's debut album 'While The City Sleeps, We Rule The Streets' is flecked with characteristic playfulness, brimful of beats and ringing with party spirit.
"We just wanna make music that’s fun for everybody and can make anybody have a good time, forget about the differences, forget about the probs and just shake their asses. The world’s going to Hell, we all have very, very conscious recognition of this but we’re just going to enjoy it."
And they brought a few others along for the ride, too. Signed by Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz - a "totally nice bro" who they "can’t say enough good things about" - Cobra are part of the Decaydance label community et al touring with their mates and inviting The Academy Is..., The Sounds and Gym Class Heroes onto their album.
"It’s like the hip hop approach to doing music," says Gabe. "We come up from the streets and you bring your friends along. Granted our streets are the suburbs, but you know. We have streets in suburbs!"
'While The City Sleeps, We Rule The Streets' is out now Cobralicious
