By What is Cobra Starship? The infamous question was running through my head as I waited outside the Chain Reaction, in Anaheim, for an interview.
The same question stumped thousands of MTV viewers who saw the music video for “Snakes On A Plane (Bring It)” that featured the sexed up members from Midtown, The Academy Is…, Gym Class Heroes and The Sounds parading through an airport with serpents in their luggage.
When Gabe Saporta got to the venue, he was ready to chat. Wearing a Kangol hat and gray hoodie, the 27-year-old who also fronts popular pop-punk band Midtown, could barely sit still.
The way he tapped his feet constantly and played with his gold cobra ring was reminiscent of somebody on drugs and the story of how his band formed didn’t help his case any.
“Cobra Starship started because I went to a spiritual retreat to the desert after the last Midtown tour,” Saporta said.
“I went on this long spiritual retreat outside of Sedona. I hung out with all these Native American dudes and smoked some peyote, had philosophy sessions. One day I’m meditating, and this cobra jumps out of nowhere and bites me in the neck.”
I stared back at him with sudden concern, but what started as a near-death story suddenly took a twist for the weird.
“I’m in the desert hallucinating,” Saporta said. “I see all this shit and flashing lights. I come too and the cobra is still there, and he starts talking to me. The cobra tells me that he was sent from the future to find me and to teach me how to dance and make beats.”
“We practiced for the next couple weeks just dancing and making beats. Then he just sent me off back to New York and said, ‘Now you’re ready, and you can begin Cobra Starship, in honor of the spacecraft that brought me back from the future to find you.'”
Saporta talked so fast it was hard to tell whether he was actually recalling events, or if he was reciting from a scripted story he devised months ago. But either way, I kept listening.
“I came home and started working on stuff. I just kept writing songs. I wrote ‘Bring It’ like a year ago. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do or where this was going. I kind of started to doubt the whole cobra thing. I put my total faith in the cobra. If a cobra comes from the future to find you, you got to believe what it’s telling you.”
Confused and running out of money, Saporta kept his faith. That was when The Academy Is… bassist and Internet geek Adam T. Siska told Saporta about a movie called “Snakes on a Plane” that was announced online.
It seemed too big of a coincidence for Saporta to ignore. He had to be a part of it.
Fall Out Boy bassist and friend of Saporta’s Pete Wentz won the “Snakes On A Plane” soundtrack deal, for his own Decaydance label, and Saporta signed to the label. Wentz gave him the theme song to help launch his project.
Label mates Travis McCoy of Gym Class Heroes and William Beckett of The Academy Is… helped out on the track.
“It’s a very hip-hop approach to doing music,” Saporta said of his label. “You get big, and you help out your boys. That’s the way it is. Within the Decaydance family, it’s a really close-knit family and there is no ego bullshit within the bands. All of the bands are helping each other out.”
After “Snakes on a Plane (Bring It)” took off on radio and MTV, management wanted a record in three weeks.
For those weeks, Saporta didn’t sleep. He had to make a record and put a touring band together. He recorded the whole album himself and the debut album “While the City Sleeps We Rule the Streets,” shows a different side of Saporta.
“Midtown was basically like an outlet for my personal stuff,” Saporta said.
“There is a part of me that likes to be a goofball and have fun too, and I guess that’s what Cobra Starship is.”
“Whenever I wrote the Midtown stuff, it was very sincere because it was my deepest personal issues. With Cobra Starship I wanted to reflect my fun side, but when you’re in that moment you want to go have fun. You don’t want to sit and write songs. It’s hard for me to capture that side of me and not feel forced. That took a bit of effort to not feel forced.”
The 11 tracks on the record don’t sound forced and prove Cobra Starship are a lot more than just a gimmick.
Songs like “It’s Warmer in the Basement” and “Pop Punk is Soooo ’05” are catchy and fun to dance to.
As for his band always being associated with the B-list movie, Saporta isn’t worried.
“That movie launched my career. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that movie, and I am in no way ashamed of that. I think that the vibe of that movie is exactly the vibe of Cobra Starship. It’s constantly self-deprecating. This is the party for the end of the world and I’m the DJ.”
Cobra Starship will be opening for 30 Seconds to Mars at the Avalon in L. A. Saturday Nov. 25, and will headline a show at the Chain Reaction, in Anaheim the following night.
