Cobra Starship have made their second visit to Australia as part of a super-tour with labelmates The Academy Is... and Panic at the Disco. The band is a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a purple hoodie -- there's no telling what you might learn about yourself and the world when you set out to interview any of them.
It's comforting to know that somebody, at least, is benefiting from the recent rash of disasters befalling Qantas Airways. "You wanna hear something fucking awesome?" Gabe Saporta asks me. "We came over in this jumbo jet designed for four hundred people, and there were seriously only forty of us on it - just us and The Academy Is... We tried to work out how much each of our tickets would have been worth, considering we could each have a row of our own to stretch out in. I just took a Xanax and slept the whole way. No, that's a lie. I gave all my Xanax to Victoria."
Gabe is Cobra Starship's lead singer; Victoria handles backup vocals and the keytar. Along with bandmates Ryland, Nate, and Alex, they're one of the sassiest acts in modern music, bringing a mix of biting wit, seductive tease, and energetic joy to their shows and albums.
Apart from the plane ride from the USA to Australia, Gabe's not had much luck with sleep lately, though you'd never know it to watch him bounce and dance across the stage throughout Cobra's performances.
"I'm pretty much just running off the energy of the kids in the crowd. They put out so much and I feed off of that. I've had hotel beds for the last two nights but my body doesn't know what to do with a real bed, because we were on Warped tour for months and caught our plane here straight from the last night of that, and so I'm used to sleeping in the little coffin-beds of the bus. Not that I'm complaining about any of that! I don't want it to come across like I'm pulling one of those 'acting is hard!' whines."
The possibility of Gabe projecting any such entitlement is laughably unlikely. Cobra Starship, despite international popularity, are accommodating and generous with their fans above and beyond the levels most other bands could even imagine.
"We wouldn't be anything without these kids; I know that," Gabe explains. "We aren't superstars. I didn't expect anybody in Australia to even know who we are, because we don't sell many records here." I suggest that this might be partly due to the fact that most of the people I know who own Cobra Starship's two albums bought them directly from their record label's website. Last year the band ran a promotion in which each copy of 'Viva la Cobra!' came with a Polaroid photo taken by the band. Lots of the Cobra fans I know got their copy of the CD in that deal, meaning that many of the Polaroids are now down under.
"That is *crazy*," Gabe says, apparently unable to fathom the scope of the band's fanbase across the world. "And look, I know albums are hard to find here a lot of the time -- they get released later, or not at all, and so kids download the songs instead. I don't give a shit about the downloading stuff, because when an Australian crowd sings along with me at a show, that's fucking mindblowing. I don't care how they got the songs."
Because both Panic at the Disco and The Academy Is... are already running pre-show meet and greets on the tour, there isn't the time or logistics for Cobra Starship to do a formal signing session. So, on the first night of the tour, they could be found at the merch counter in the foyer after the set, giving out autographs and attention to all who asked for them.
Source: mtv.com, flickr.com, maryborsellino.com, wkimedia.org
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