Strung Out
1/19/2008

After walking a blagillion miles to the Sound Academy, the recently-renovated, nowhere-near-a-bus-or-subway-stop waterfront venue once known as the Docks, getting to watch the drummer and vocalist from one of the most lastingly successful bands of the mid-90s pop-punk explosion arm wrestle made it pretty much worth the trip. Hell, the rest of the night could have been a total wash, but that look of everlasting victory on Jordan Burns' face would have pushed away even the darkest of black clouds.

Seriously, the Sound Academy is a long effing walk from Union Station. But that's not why we're here. After arriving, being impressed by the huge line-up outside, and then trying to figure out ways to get past it to make the interview on time, I met up with the Strung Out guys backstage. The first part of our interview wasn't bad, so much as it wasn't very good. Jordan Burns and Jason Cruz are incredibly rad dudes, but it was easy to see that they were not entirely stoked to be answering the same questions about their band they've been asked since 1992. I'm willing to bet that you reach a point where, no matter how well-researched or well-meaning an interview is, it's a lot like the other ten interviews you did today, and the day before that, and the day before that. That said, make sure to check out our mega-awesome straight interview with Jason and Jordan this coming Wednesday.

Things changed pretty quickly once the Motocross questions came out. Jordan is the co-owner of the Moto-XXX team (along with NOFX's Erik Sandin), so it seemed like as good an idea as any for a quiz. Jason, a visual artist by trade (check out ever Strung Out album you own), definitely doesn't know as much about the sport. The result was Jason answering (correctly, a lot of the time!) while Jordan sat beside him looking extremely amused. After I was all out of questions, he started adding questions of his own; which, as you can see in the video, kind of spiraled out of control from there.

After twenty minutes of name-calling and hand-size-comparing, enough nice things can't be said about all of the guys in this band. It's a little difficult to distill that amount of goofy bullshit into a three minute video, but hopefully you get some sense of the fun they were managing to have while arguing about what films Andre the Giant appeared in. How about B.J. and the Bear?

Check out a real interview with Jordan and Jason this coming Wednesday

Sam Sutherland


Strung Out "Calling"

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