New Found Glory Drummer Cyrus Bolooki Talks To TheFeed
San Diego-based emo-punk act New Found Glory is hitting the road this fall to support its latest Suretone/Geffen Records effort, Coming Home, due in stores September 19th. Ironically, the band will be heading as far away from home as possible when they hit Japan in November before actually coming home again.
Formed in 1997, the band -- Jordan Pundik (vocals), Chad Gilbert (guitar), Steve Klein (guitar), Ian Grushka (bass), Cyrus Bolooki (drums) – released its debut EP that same year, and followed it up with the full-length debut Nothing Gold Can Stay in ’98, which got re-released the next year on Drive-Thru Records, who signed with MCA for a distribution deal.
The band’s first full-length album on MCA was their self-titled 2000 effort, which really put the band on the map. Sticks and Stones launched them into the Billboard Top 40 at #4 in 2002, following tours with Blink-182 and a slot on the Warped Tour. The album spawned two hit singles "My Friends Over You” and "Head on Collision." By the end of that year they were headlining the Warped Tour. New Found Glory released Catalyst in May 2004 and it debuted at # 3 on the charts. After years of constant touring, they had finally made it to the big time.
New Found Glory drummer Cyrus Bolooki was kind enough to chat with TheFeed about the new album, videogames and movies before heading out on the road. So if you dig the rock, and even the roll, read on…
G4: Hey there, drummer of New Found Glory. Aren’t you guys working on a new album?
CYRUS: Actually we’re getting ready to go back out on tour. The new record comes out September 19 and is called Coming Home. The tour starts at the end of September, so it’s the first tour for us to showcase the new stuff. Last May was our last actual show on tour, so it’s been a while since we’ve been around. We wanna let kids see us again. We’re gonna play a lot of our old hits, play some new songs as well, but it’s really gonna be a fun thing for anybody who’s a fan of our shows.
G4: Where ya heading on this jaunt?
CYRUS: It’s a U.S. tour that’s gonna spill into Europe. Then we’re also gonna break off and go to Japan for about a week in November.
G4: How is this album compare to your other albums?
CYRUS: Well, we started off by kinda changing up the whole process going into the record. We took a little longer of a break then we ever had, before we even sat down to write the record. We took a couple months off and in those couple months everyone in our band kinda grew up and experienced things that we had never done before, you know. A couple guys got married, a couple guys had kids, and, all in all, everybody on their off-time really got a grip on what’s been going on with us. We hadn’t really had a time to do that before, so I think it really helped us get a little more comfortable and confident in what we do.
Then we all went to Malibu and moved into a house to write the record. That was way different from anything else I’ve ever done before. We were around each other 24/7, for two months, sitting in this house. Ideas are coming at 9 o’clock at night, and 9 o’clock in the morning, just at random times. So put all that stuff together, you get this record, and it really reflects us more then anything we’ve ever done before. It reflects who we are right now. And we feel really comfortable about putting it out. We continually say this is the best New Found Glory record yet, and that anybody who’s a fan of New Found Glory will definitely like this record. But it also has this appeal that we’ve never ever had before, an appeal that anybody should be able to take something from this record. We always write stuff that’s true to ourselves. We always write from the heart, and this record’s no different. It has a lot of songs about relationships, but they are a little more positive this time. Our last record was probably the darkest record that New Found Glory has ever written. It was still about relationships, but more in kind of a negative way. On this record, its like, “Hey listen, a lot of us are in relationships now, we’re still going through the things that a lot of people are going through, but why not focus on the good things that come out of relationships?” So most of the songs are uplifting in a way.
G4: What’s your favorite song off the record?
CYRUS: As of right now, my favorite song would probably have to be the title track, “Coming Home,” because I want to see it played live and we haven’t had the opportunity yet. I guess it could change after we play it live, but the chorus has this big group sing-along, and I just picture, after a little while when the record’s out, everybody in the crowd totally screaming their hearts out. And our fans and people who to come to our shows have always been amazing, where they don’t just come to our shows to sit there and watch, they come to participate. So it’s like a competition, where kids are trying to sing louder than our singer. So if they follow that mantra and go into some of these new songs, especially “Coming Home,” it’s gonna be amazing. It really encompasses a lot of the energy we have on the record, but also sounds a little different from us and shows off some new sides of our band.
G4: Are you guys gonna get all Vince Neil on us, like, “People! I wanna hear it clear out in the rafters!”
CYRUS: Yeah! “All you people in the nosebleeds!”
G4: Exactly. Maybe you guys can get some of those ramps that go out to the back, so you walk out to the back of the arena and scream, “Now, you people out here! I don’t hear YOU singing!”
CYRUS: We’ve done a lot of that! Whether it was purely for fun or we were remembering bands like Motley Crue and trying to mimic them. Either way, we’ve been fortunate enough to play big shows, where you kinda have to do that. When you’re in an arena, and you look out and there’s 20,000 people out there, it’s a little harder to get everybody to identify with you, to make every person in the arena feel like they’re just watching a show and not watching this huge-ass spectacle. So we make efforts to make people feel they’re at a smaller show, and get right up in their face, jump into the crowd, and run all the way around the arena.
G4: Awesome.
CYRUS: We always have taken pride in our live show. That’s what we are probably the best at. So all these reasons add up to why I’m so anxious and excited to get back out on the road.
G4: Speaking of the road, you know, I’m calling from G4TV…
CYRUS: You got the videogames!
G4: Exactly.
CYRUS: I watch the TV station!
G4: Do you guys play s lot of videogames on the road?
CYRUS: Oh, definitely! And not just on the road; when we are recording and stuff, we always have a system. A whole bunch of us have systems now: Playstation, you name it, we’re all playing it.
G4: What are games that you guys play against each other or against other bands?
CYRUS: When we were on the road last year, we were huge Halo guys, Halo or Halo 2. We bring bands on your bus as well and challenge them. On buses, usually you have a front and back lounge, so we always try to have two systems, and link the front and back TVs. So we get four-on-four action, which is a lot of fun. There’s definitely late night Halo action going on. When we got on the road in about a month, I’m sure we’ll find some newer games too.
We always play a lot of sports games against each other, I’m a huge fan of Madden and so is my guitarist Steve, so we have this everlasting rivalry. I dig Saints Row and there’s a couple of us who are into the Grand Theft Auto style games. Another game we will bring out next time is Guitar Hero. Our guitarist bought that last year and was been raving about how awesome it was.
G4: But you’re a drummer?
CYRUS: I actually do pretty well. Hey, I beat our guitarist.
G4: That must be really humiliating to your guitar player. You know, ‘cause he is a guitar player, for crying out loud!
CYRUS: Well, see, I was able to put in perspective for him. Like, “Listen, there’s only five little buttons on this thing, and tons of frets on your guitar, so, let’s not worry about who’s winning this, let’s play on real guitars and see what happens.” Then he comes back to me and says, ‘Hey remember, you were playing guitar twice as long as me, so you should win.”
G4: You were a guitar player before being a drummer?
CYRUS: Oh yeah, I’ve been playing guitar twice as long as I’ve been playing drums. In most instances, the people in my band will agree that I probably play guitar much better then they do.
G4: Why’d you make the switch?
CYRUS: I made the switch because of convenience. When I was young, before I even met the guys in this band, a couple of my high school friends and I started a band. The next day, we all came to school and said, “All right, what instrument are you going to play?” The first guy goes, “guitar.” The second guy goes, “I guess I could play bass.” And I wanted to be on guitar but said, “Um, I guess I could play drums.” So I began playing drums. It was that kind of nonchalant.
G4: It must have bummed you out when you realized how much more gear you had to schlep as a drummer than everybody else.
CYRUS: Yeah it kinda sucks, but at the same time, it didn’t bum me out when I realized that nobody could ever tell me to turn it down!
G4: Right! You have the power!
CYRUS: Plus, a majority of the people in the world that I’ve met always say, “Oh man, I’ve always wanted to play drums!” I’m like “Cool, come up here, try to play,” and they can’t play. So it’s kinda cool for me to know that I’ve been able to get myself good at something that is a little tougher to do then most instruments. I never realized how hard it is for a lot of people to get the independence between their limbs. With me, it just comes natural. When I first started playing drums, it wasn’t like I was Neil Peart or Blink 182 when I first started playing drums, but I was having so much fun that I didn’t realize I was getting better. Ironically, that being said, I should be good at videogames and, while I’m pretty good, all the guys in my band are better. I can’t beat my guitarist at Madden, if my life depended on it.
G4: Interesting.
CYRUS: We played Madden ’07 yesterday and I was getting killed in the 4th quarter, but I was starting to come back. I got all the way within 7 points, with 20 seconds left, and I had to do the historic onsite kick. It didn’t work out in my favor though. I just don’t know how to beat those guys.
G4: And yet, with Guitar Hero, it seems like being an actual guitar player almost hinders your abilities. Like it seems like guys who don’t play guitar rule at Guitar Hero, and guitar players are a little underwhelming at that game.
CYRUS: Quite possibly. Maybe they’re treating it a little TOO realistic.
G4: Have you had any songs in videogames?
CYRUS: We actually had a song in Madden ’05. That was huge for us because we were huge Madden gamers from back in the day. I remember playing Madden on Genesis.
Being the age we are, we were old enough to realize when Madden first started putting actual music in the games, there was a lot of potential. There were some songs that we weren’t familiar with, but by the end of playing Madden for one week, you knew every song on that soundtrack. Yellowcard was on it once, and I had friends here in Florida who don’t listen to any rock music at all, that knew Yellowcard’s entire song from Madden. These kids are the biggest kind of hip hop gangsters you’ll meet and they know Yellowcard’s song! There’s a huge audience that’s probably a lot easier to get to when they’re playing Madden then it is just to sit down and have them listen to your music. We saw the business aspect of it, and we saw the fact that it was a huge audience. Not to mention it was just cool for us in our personal lives, like “Hey! We’re on Madden!”
G4: Why do you think movie makers have so much trouble translating the videogames into good movies?
CYRUS: Maybe it’s the fact that some directors are really trying to spice things up and make it too much of a spectacle, and not just a good movie. I watched the movie Final Fantasy and don’t remember what that movie was about at all. I just remembered that it was all CGI. Is that really a sign of a good movie? Or is that just a sign that they spent years creating that film?
The biggest part of any movie that makes it good is the story and the script. In a videogame there’s a whole other set of logistics with story and script. You could make up an imaginary world a lot faster in videogames, and probably a lot cheaper, than you could in movies. So they tend to spend more time trying to recreate the world of the game, then they do on the script.
You know what was probably the best videogame movie ever? The Wizard, with Fred Savage! It wasn’t really inspired by a particular videogame, but it was one of the first movies to reference videogames.
G4: The other one I remember from that era was TheLast Starfighter.
CYRUS: Oh, yeah! Last Starfighter! C’mon! That’s how he gets into that whole world, by being in a videogame.
G4: And then, of course, there’s Tron, which is sort of the Citizen Kane of that genre.
CYRUS: Well, that was one of the first movies that straight-up had a videogame that was exactly like the movie, or at least everything they did in the movie, you could do in the videogame. And that was before all the CGI and stuff! So people just need to go back and figure out how they were able to make movies back then, and make them so good.
G4: Well, I think you kinda hit on it when you said it seems like they get so caught up in recreating the visuals of the game that they kinda lose sight over the plot elements and character and just making an interesting movie aside from the visuals, you know?
CYRUS: Nobody can deny the powers of videogames, whether it’s making movies, or the marketing of music. Every part of entertainment, whether it’s movies, music or TV, will probably end up going hand in hand with videogames at some point. Just like music isn’t the same it was a couple years ago, movies aren’t seen the same way they were a couple of years ago. Everything’s changing and people have to admit that videogames are becoming such a huge part of society now. And it’s not just for kids, it’s for older people too.
G4: Agreed. So anything else you want the G4 audience to know about New Found Glory?
CYRUS: Look for us out there, because we are avid gamers and are gonna try to do some contests and promotion, through videogame companies, websites, Xbox live, and that kinda stuff. There’s gonna be chances for people to find us online and play, so you can try to make us actually back up all the trash I’ve been talking.
G4: Excellent! I’m always looking to back up some trash.
CYRUS: I might not beat anybody in Madden, but I’ll sic my guitar player on you and he’ll kill you!
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