Interview with Ordstro!

-Lets start. Who are you and what do you do for the band?

O: Henry- Guitar/vox Chris- drums/vox Carlos- vox that's it.

-How would you describe your overall sound?

O: We are really influenced by the wave of powerviolence that was around in the bay area in the 90's. we all really like Fugazi too. as far as our sound goes, we feel it should describe itself but those are definitely important pieces we drew inspiration from.

-What does ORDSTRO stand for? What central theme do the lyrics revolve around?

O: ORDSTRO is a meaningless word we came up with, we wanted the name to represent our sound too. I guess in a way when the name is pronounced it sounds like the way the music sounds. a lot of bands care too much about superficial things including names, we like to concentrate more on our music, i remember when we decided the name of the band it was done in a matter of seconds. now the lyrics, to be honest a lot of them are nonsense but we are still experimenting we don't think we have a central theme necessarily we just write about whatever we feel like, but i guess most of them come from dissatisfaction with things we see and experience in life.

-Haha, I like it. What do you want listeners to experience while listening to your songs?

O:listeners should experience.... raw power? i don't know.

-What are some best and worst memories connected with the band?

O: let's start with worst- there are a few of them to be quite honest the worse was on our way from San Diego to Phoenix. we decided to drive overnight on highway 10 after the show at the point loma music trader in san diego and this was our last date with koalacaust meaning, we were going to Arizona by ourselves. so we drove overnight which we didn't realize could be dangerous but the highway goes parallel to the mexican border after a few hours we stopped at this random rest stop and decided to watch a movie on our friends portable DVD player and this guy starts flashing his high beams on our van as if signaling someone so we got really freaked out and got ready to leave and he turns his car on and pulls over next to us so we ignore him and take off and he does too.... we get back on the freeway and we can see his car just following us its like 2 AM and we start speeding like mad, and in the distance we just see his lights it felt like a horror movie suddenly we passed one car pulled to the side of the road and after we pass it, it started following us too and then a car appeared in front of us going fairly slow we thought were gonna get boxed and then murdered or something. so we tried to get off the freeway and get back on going the opposite way luckily there was an exit nearby and a gas station so we went there and hung out for a couple of hours i think we were a few miles from the border in Arizona obviously we're fine, but that sucked. same night, we got stopped by a border patrol immigration check point and there were maybe 8 of them, four k-9's and they just straight up open our van's door and flash their flashlights at our faces asking if we were citizens so pretty much that whole night was shit the song.... "i hate traffic" is about that whole experience. best memories- anytime after a show hanging out with our friends.

-Any band inside jokes?

O: oh man, the freshest ones in my mind are the ones from our Winter tour with Deers a couple of months ago. we watched the movie Friday multiple times, and pretty much that whole screenplay became an inside joke Chris from deers was ridiculous the whole tour
he took on this persona of the ultimate white man and would speak in a country accent and mispronounce words in other languages purposely Casa De Fruta... got all the fruit... lol the first tour with Flat Out was fun too, James who played bass would scream out loud "i seeeeeeeee youuuu..." out of the car window so every time a band took a break from songs we'd just yell that out loud from the crowd. err i'm sure there's more.

-What are some of the non musical things in the past year that have kept you inspired?

O: how about... everytime a crustie pulls out an iphone from their ripped denim jean jacket and more positively, whenever a stranger lends a hand or lets us sleep at their house or lets us play at their house or feeds us for no reason, i think that human contact with people none of us would have ever imagined to meet or somehow interact with is what really keeps us going.

- How many shows have you played so far? What was the most memorable one and is there any you consider to be a total wreck?

O: shows, a lot of them.... i started making a show history on my computer just for fun using old fliers and stuff but i got tired but i mean we've also been a band for two years now so i'm sure in comparison with "bigger" bands, as far as percentage of shows played per any given period of time, we're pretty low-scale um, last show with Commissure in SF was a total fucking disaster we pretty much played a noise set because we kept fucking up and took forever to set up since, the mics wouldn't work and we had to go back and get more equipment from the van that we forgot about ....five blocks away... so yeah, we played a shitty set that night

-What is the toughest lesson you ever learned while being in music scene?

O: toughest lesson... a lot of people are full of shit and how you market yourself/money speaks and for some weird reason really matters aka, who you know, who your band is associated with stuff that shouldn't matter at all. also learned, we don't like "scenes."

- REAL, What have you guys recorded and hope to have out soon? Labels?

O: we recorded in the fall at thatonegarage aka now named Unholy Grounds in Olivehurst with this really nice guy Andy from wearethekids who broke up a couple of months ago... that "session" should be coming out soon as a 10-inch split with Commissure we've just had issues with the order we just wrote three songs and were polishing them before we started this interview and that should be coming out the soonest as a split cassette tape with this rad power-violence band from Indonesia and we just released a live split
with Deers! that we recorded on tour that one is a CD but we don't have any because Ryan wanted to add something else to the packaging after we got back so hopefully those will come soon in the mail and labels... we could talk about them forever thrashmouth is our friend Nick's distro/tape label he supports us and sometimes helps put stuff out but everything so far has been self-released Carlos is thinking about starting a tape label himself so that Ah-!!! split will probably be its first release we like having control over it and feel really rewarded when someone buys a tape that we spent weeks putting together so if any labels wants to help along the way we're more than down but i don't think being signed or anything will ever happen.

-Thats awesome guys. I wish Carlos luck with the Tape Label. That was an awesome interview. Thanks! Any last words?

O: thank you! no last words... we're not important enough to have "last words"

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