The Appearance (TA) are a post-punk band out of southern California who claim influences from a wide range of genres, 80’s Metal (Guns N’ Roses, Metallica, AC/DC, etc.) to Southern California skater punk (NO/FX, Strung Out, Pennywise) to SKA. TA’s line-up — Alan Oakes (frontman), Chad Kulengosky (lead guitar), Justin McCarthy (drums) and Jason Nelson (bass) – have been working together for a year and in that year they have created a fun, energetic, polished, post-punk/alt.rock sound with hooky guitar riffs, and powerful melodious lyrics.Not the typical frontman, Alan is a soft spoken, intelligent shy guy who likes to spend time playing role-play games online. His sensitivity helps him to focus on his songwriting and enables him to understand and convey, in his lyrics, great passion, empathy, regret and loss. Personally he has a very sly sense of humour and once you pull him out of his shell a little, he is a very outgoing and engaging person. During our chat we talked about his romantic life, music, touring in Britain with the Dead Presidents and his secret man-crush on Rick Springfield. And he let me call him Rick.
We’re calling you Rick because of Rick Springfield, right? You are a closet Rick Springfield fan? Well, out of the closet now.(laughing) Yeah, yeah…. No, you know all the girls love Rick Springfield. Young and old. So that’s good.So you want to be the next Rick Springfield?I want to be the next Rick Springfield. Are you going to cover “Jesse’s Girl”?No…. even though Justin, our drummer, he’s like “oh yeah we gotta cover that song”. I’m like, "No we’re not covering that song." (laughing)So how long has The Appearance been together, with this line-up?It’s coming up on a little over a year actually. Our (former) drummer (Jon Brucher) ended up getting married. He got engaged, to his long-term girlfriend, and he has own little business and he was like, "I’m just going to concentrate on that." He got married two or three weeks ago. And so he did that.And our (former) bass player (Bryan Lee) just kind of was going through a… "music isn’t
really for me, I want to go back to school thing." It happens. I’ve seen it happen so many times because they’re like my girlfriend, she’s not really into it. Or I have school and it’s really hard to balance the two. You really have to devote 100% to music. For a long time you really don’t see any money; so you make your sacrifices. It doesn’t work out for everybody.But you have had this same line-up for a year?Yeah. And the new guys Jason and Justin we’ve known them for years. I’ve actually played in other projects with Justin so… How did The Appearance happen?Well, Bryan Lee was approached by Michael Narlinger who said, "Hey, would you ever like to start a group? I have a little extra cash I would like to invest in a band. Do you know anybody?" And Bryan was like, "well I know Alan." And he heard that I wasn’t really playing with anyone at the time so he gave me a call and said, "You know, do you want to start something no promises, just kind of see where it goes. We’ll get together and write a few songs. We have a guy who, if he likes it, he’ll put some money into a demo."
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
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