Schatzi

"When it comes down to it, we’re a pop band."

Fifty Reasons To Explode. Recorded in Lawrence, Kansas with producer Ed Rose (The Get Up Kids, The Anniversary), the disc is bristling with spirited guitar melodies, artfully treading the line between mature sensibilities and youthful exuberance. Death Of The Alphabet perhaps exemplifies the band’s twin impulses to both toe-tap and head-bang, mating lovely backing vocals from The Anniversary’s Adrianne Verhoeven with a driving guitar interplay and a pummeling rhythm section. If Death Of The Alphabet sounds familiar, that’s because it, along with the rocking "Sucked Into Something," the more wistful "Song For Stephanie," and the beguilingly bitter "The Spider Smells Disaster" were culled from the Fifty... sessions for the 2000 Death Of The Alphabet EP.

Schatzi has toured with the likes of The Get Up Kids, as well as At The Drive-In, Jimmy Eat World, The Anniversary, Dynamite Hack, and many others. "If you see us live it’s a little bit different experience that listening to it in your car or something like that. That’s where the John Bonham/Zeppelin part comes in," he says, referring to some of the further details of his spunky metaphor for the band’s music, from which you’ve been spared. For his part, Chris says, "There’s just a lot of really great pop bands that are coming out right now, and I just want to be another band that provides something besides negative, angry music." And bringing Schatzi to the people is a big part of that. "We just want to play as much as we can. Every band that I like and respect got where they are from touring. We do music because that’s what we do. We’ve been doing it for years without anything. We just want to play a ton of shows."