-"The Youth Ahead - Friends Starting from Scratch" -EC Rocker, March 22, 2000.

 
 
 

The Youth Ahead are a band with a short, but bright history. These guys haven’t played in 20 other bands, they haven’t been studying their respective instruments for their entire lives, and they haven’t fallen into the trap of changing musical styles because of what is popular at the time.

What these guys do have is a friendship that most bands lack. Two out of the three members learned their instruments just by jamming with each other. They did what they wanted to do; they had fun hanging out and writing funny songs. You can always find that guy at the party who can play guitar and used to know how to play “Stairway To Heaven” or maybe a Ramones tune, but that’s usually as far as it goes.

The Youth Ahead started out this way, rocking out with some friends in the basement, but they took their act to the stage and were welcomed with open arms. In a relatively short time, these guys went from being kings of their basement to one of the best bands on the local circuit. With a little good ol’ fashioned hard work, they’ve done some touring, released two full-length CDs, as well as numerous compilation tracks, and the demand for The Youth Ahead is growing. They are great friends with each other and friends of mine and what follows is our conversation at their home, the local diner.



AW: So what’s the how, when and where behind The Youth Ahead? And let’s not talk about Jay’s behind.

Sean: It started right after Christmas in 1995. It was just me and Jay; we didn’t have a bass player.

Jay: We were sitting in a pizza place. I had just gotten drums, Sean just got a guitar, and we said, ‘Hey, let’s start a band!’ We left the pizza place and went to my house and played every day for about six months. We used to cut 12th period to go play.

Sean: It all started when people would come over and watch and think that we were pretty good.



AW: So Chris, what’s your story?

Chris: I met these guys after the singer in my band had died in a car accident. When he died, I just quit music. I was pretty depressed about it. I put an ad in The Aquarian just to give it another shot. I went on about 30 auditions and stuck with these guys. These guys were the most serious.

Jay: We started in ’95 with a bass player, but he left. When that happened, we thought we could either stop doing this or really start ‘a band.’ We tell people we started in ’95, but in my eyes, I think that we weren’t really serious until Chris joined the band about two years ago. We didn’t want to do a CD unless we were serious about it. Then Chris joined, and we started recording a month later.



AW: So where are you guys from?

Jay: I’m from Old Bridge.

Sean: I’m from Old Bridge/Matawan.

Chris: I used to live in Ocean Township, now I live in Manchester.



AW: Right now, the Jersey music scene is pretty strong, but how was it when The Youth Ahead began?

Sean: It was really strange. When we started out, there really wasn’t the pop-punk bands that there are now. Everyone was doing the Nirvana alternative grunge thing, and there were no local ska bands except for Inspecter 7, at least that I can remember.

Jay: A lot of bands that we first started playing with broke up or got into new bands that started playing the punk scene. Then those bands broke up and started ska bands, and we played with them. I think now, the scene has punk and ska bands and not one more than the other. It has kind of leveled out.

Sean: There are really good hardcore bands, really good ska bands, and really good punk bands.



AW: The Youth Ahead records seem to have a light-heartedness about them. Knowing some of your background now, when you first set out to create a band, did you want to do something funny? What do you think of bands that are overtly political?

Jay: When we first started playing, we did not know how to play. We didn’t know anything about anything. We were just two guys [who] wanted to have fun. So that’s what we sang about.

Sean: We were subjected to the things that we write about, every day. We were still in high school, a lot of songs are about teenage life. The crowd can relate to what we’re singing about because they were all going through the same things.



AW: So what motivated you to start playing in a band? With no musical background, you started from nothing.

Jay: I didn’t have a clue, the first time I played with Sean was the first time I set up my drums.

Sean: It was just fun. Honestly we didn’t think it would get this far. We would write songs about baking soda. Friends would come over and we would write songs about people [who] came down the stairs. We would do it every day and we got compliments from our friends. We got an offer to play our first show at our high school. We got a bass player and we had a great time.



AW: Who would you guys cite as musical influences? When learning an instrument, you kind of take on a style of what you’re listening to.

Jay: Less Than Jake, Weston. I was listening to a lot of Weston.

Sean: Green Day. I was so impressed that he could take the same four chords and make them sound so cool. Billie Joe is someone [who] I really studied a lot.

Jay: Influences on The Youth Ahead, I think, MXPX, Green Day, Weston. I’m a huge Less Than Jake fan, Millencolin, the Bouncing Souls. Chris is a big Yanni fan.



AW: Keeps Ya Movin’ is The Youth Ahead’s first record. That was put out on Red Iguana Records. How did you get hooked up with them?

Jay: Felix Frump hooked us up. We played with them a few times and they were the band that put out their hand and helped us out. They put out their CD on Red Iguana, and Miguel came down and hooked us up with all of the connections that we needed. Those guys put us on our feet. They really helped us out a lot with shows.



AW: What kind of touring did you do at that time?

Sean: We played out of state in Pennsylvania and New York, but no real touring.



AW: ‘I Want Your Girlfriend,’ ‘Ode To The Dollar’: most of your songs are about chicks. What’s that all about?

Jay: We sing about what we know. (laughter) Your best friend is going out with this real hot chick and you’re thinking, ‘Wow, I want your girlfriend!’ There you go. ‘Ode To The Dollar’ kind of speaks for itself. In the song it says, ‘I call Jay, he calls Mike,’ Mike is a good friend of ours. The whole ode to the dollar story is, I called Sean during the day to see if he wanted to go to the nudie bar with us, but he was in school. Well, 20 minutes later, guess who cuts out of school and goes to the nudie bar? So the story is Jay and Mike call Sean, Sean drops out of school.

Sean: This is not to discourage anyone from their education.



AW: The second record, A Day At The Park, was put out on Punkture Point Records. How did you get hooked with Annie and Punkture Point?

Jay: We wanted to put out the second record and Annie wanted to put out a record on Punkture Point. So a friend called us, said ‘hey, call Annie,’ and we put out the record.



AW: What was the time frame from Keeps Ya Movin’ to A Day In The Park?

Sean: Almost a year. The only thing was that Keeps Ya Movin’ was recorded in January and released in the Summer, where A Day In The Park was recorded in June and released the next month.



AW: Now you’ve got two CDs under your belt and some great opening spots with Shades Apart, Fenix TX, and an upcoming Less Than Jake show. What do you think of people who think The Youth Ahead are a new band because they’ve never heard of you before?

Jay: Some people say, ‘You guys came out of nowhere.’ But we’ve busted our asses for years. When we decided to just get serious, we did nothing but try our hardest and do the best that we can.

Chris: We pay our dues. We practice twice a week, we do whatever needs to get done. We work.

Sean: A lot of our really true friends know what we’ve been through since the beginning. When we played with Quiet Riot and they see us now, we know what we’ve been through and what we’ve done. We also know that we can’t please everybody.



AW: What are some of the more immediate plans for the Youth? Touring? Concerts East has been helping out a bit, right?

Jay: We played [with] Shades Apart and that went well. Concerts East has been great to us, we’ve played with Jimmie’s Chicken Shack, Fenix TX, and we will be playing with Less Than Jake. My future plans for the Youth Ahead would be for more touring. Everyone has been helping us out. We also just finished recording for a 7´´. It’s going to be us, Bum Rukus, a ska band from Florida, and Cooter. It’s going to be a four-way split, and it will be four songs for $2. I think we’ll just put it out ourselves.

Sean: It’s something new every day.



AW: You’ve said that The Youth Ahead have a few things happening out West? How is that going?

Jay: This magazine, Virtual Alternative, that goes to radio stations and record labels. It just keeps you updated on what’s selling. This record store, Now and Then on RT. 35, was selling our CD pretty well. The magazine called up and wanted a CD. We sent them one and the guy liked it, and they put us on a compilation that they do every month. Garbage, Bare Naked Ladies, and Primus are just a few of the bands that are on it. This got sent to radio stations and they started playing our song, ‘F.Y.M.’ We’re just trying to do as many comps as possible.



AW: Any last words?

Jay: I just want to say thanks to everyone for helping us out. Check out the website at theyouthahead.com. Our girlfriends, Concerts East, all the bands that we’ve played with. Michelle at The Aquarian, she hooked us up.


(At this point Jay doesn’t want the interview to be over so he gave me a few questions.)

Jay: Usually we get asked what bands that we would like to give a shout out to. If you ask, I’ll give you an answer.



AW: Okay, what bands do you like playing with?

Sean: Dodgeball, both sexually and musically.

Jay: Local bands that we love? Dodgeball, LWL, Last Perfect Thing, Shades Apart, Lanemeyer, Day 19, Seti Alpha Six, there are just so many great bands.

Sean: And Isabella (related to the Seti Alpha Six crew) can make one hell of a chicken parmesan.

Jay: Another person [who] we really have to thank [who] we sometimes overlook and forget to mention is Mike the webguy. He does a great job and we have to thank him. He really hooks us up, and I always feel bad because I forget to mention him. So if you’re reading this Mike, ‘Thank You.’