You're Making a Scene, Housecat

This never-boring Haverford bred band made up of always-bored band-mates consists of Class of 2016ers Nick Lucia, Dan Hopkins, Dylan Verner-Crist, Ryan Gooding, and their newest member, Braeden Reinoso of the Class of 2018. They have a bassist, two guitarists, a trumpeter (it is unclear to me whether or not this noun exists in the English language but for my sake let us just pretend it does), a drummer, and according to their Bandcamp page, a singer of dumb words. You’ll probably find this electric group of gents tusslin’ on a Saturday night, and when the ground beneath you begins violently quaking at the DC during dinnertime, odds are it’s a Housecat practice tussle occurring in the basement. If “sugar, spice, and everything nice” made the Powerpuff Girls, then Professor Utonium would drop the essence of You’re Making A Scene, Housecat into a vat of Chemical X, and then that would create You’re Making A Scene Housecat.

I’m not sure what else you were expecting from any of that cartoonish logic, but what you should have interpreted from it is that this band is gathering buzz and packing up James House- and occasionally, abandoned and potentially haunted squash courts- because they are a prime example of a college-campus boy band that provides us Haverfordians with witty lyrics, sweet, eclectic jams, and such a cliché liberal arts hipster vibe, you’d think they were Scott Pilgrim and Sex Bob-omb in top-notch disguise. But if there’s anything you can take from the following interview, it’s that the members of Housecat are anything but a cliché. Their ingenuity, their genius senses of humor, and their genuine enthusiasm for their music-making, makes the experience of a Housecat performance transcendent of mere auditory pleasure. It’s no wonder then that these “sad” boys get the liveliest of crowds. And so, without further ado, here’s You’re Making A Scene, Housecat:

1. What is the genre of your music? My sources state that it is not alternative rock, because if you played alternative rock, we would all be, quote: So, so, so, so sorry. Unquote. 

Uhh Post-Calypso Gypsy Fusion

2. How does it feel to be the hottest/only boy band on campus? Do the pressures get in the way of the collaborative process? We have yet to collaborate. Also, who called us hot? (Need names/numbers).

3. If you could choose another boy band to perform with, who would they be? Why? PS: I'm taking NSYNC and New Kids On The Block here. Maroon 5 is not preferable, but it is acceptable. 

The Spice Girls, definitely. We love Dave Grohl.

4. Your band's description on Facebook is "Bored college students with feelings." How has being in college and having feelings influenced your songs?Author’s Note: Before proceeding with the following response, which is quite hefty, the reader should note that the author of this article had to tamper with a bit of the language that was used in this response. Sometimes, it was gnarly, but most of the time, it cussed a lot. I wouldn’t want to spoil your delicate ears or eyes with vulgarities, because you’ll need those in their most purest form for Housecat listening later on!           Anyways: Dialogically speaking, the ultimate answer to your question lies in happenings antecedent to the religio-socio-historical moment in which you have located our band. It begins when my (the first person is here acting as both a unifying and a flattening mechanism; it shall speak as though we are one when in fact we are many, and as though we are many despite being one) mother first caught my father’s eye at a dog park on the worse side of a divided city back during FDR. She smiled and he waved, and they both enjoyed Foucault and 19th century proto-feminist novels, so naturally I was conceived. This decision has generally been regarded as a mistake by many who have since met me [Dylan Verner-Crist].          Flash forward sixty years: now history is in my hands as well – both as the gentle creases on my palms and the hardened calluses on my fingertips. Twenty years of farm work makes a man out of a boy, but one urban microbrew IPA will make him into an utterly intolerable, self-righteous, pile of garbage interminably (as they say). It was around this time that I first met Ryan, and at this point music, college, and feelings still felt very far away from me. He didn’t have a full gee-tar – just some old string his mother had left to him and a whole ‘lotta heart. We started playing the blues together. It was while we were buskin’ in St. Louis outside of this one CVS for change so that we could buy cough syrup to get hecked up and reminisce about experiences we didn’t actually share that we ran into the youngest Dan Hopkins you’ve ever seen in your life. He was the only one of us with any real talent. He had his own bass, and a degree in law from Harvard. But when he heard me and Ryan yowlin’ like alley cats he straight dropped his whole thing. He cried the first tear of his life in that moment because, for the first time, he felt that there might be something meaningful in life after all.           Now we really had a stew cooking. Word was starting to spread, and we started applying to colleges. It was around this time that I developed a horrible, no-good, very bad case of the feelings. This disease would continue to afflict me for the majority of my adult life. I started seeing a psychologist by the name of Dylan in hopes of being treated. He determined my case to be terminal. Nonetheless, we shot the frick for a bit, debated about philosophy, and literature, and women, and men, and whatever may lie in or above this little green pea of a planet. ‘Ventually he got round to telling me about how, in his youth, he had dreamed of being a college man. Naturally, I told him I was part of a little crew playing music and trying to get into college. Never have I seen a grown man disavow stability and quit a comfortable job so quickly. Our team had grown to a size of 4; street corners weren’t holding us too well anymore. We needed to get into college so that we could meet other like-minded individuals who also had cases of the feelings and might want to make play drums for our little lonely-hearts-hardcore-ish.           After we got rejected from all the Ivy League schools, and had taken a real steady thrashin’ from old man Johnson for using his sunporch for practice sessions, and it became clear that all possible hope was lost, we were begrudgingly accepted to Haverford College. We packed up what few possessions we hadn’t pawned for cigarettes, or prostitutes, or both, and marched our way through snow and thaw to the great and noble city of Philadelphia. And then we turned around and marched out way back to the crappy stuck-up useless motherfracking suburbs of the Main Line. It was within only a few moments of climbing out of our raft and stumbling ashore that we were met by the quaintest little cherub named Braeden. He fed, bathed, and clothed us in our time of need. We told him of our quest to become college men and play sad music for indifferent hipsters in cities all up and down the Eastern seaboard. After touching himself inquisitively for several moments, he volunteered himself to round out our quintet with his rousing drum playing. A great celebration was held in light of this revelation, and much cough syrup was consumed, and I had absolutely no sex with anyone whatsoever.           In the morning, we began practicing seriously to become the greatest, indifferent, sad boy band in the history of History Channel. Unfortunately, Nick’s case of the feelings took a turn for the worst when he accidentally made eye contact with someone he found relatively attractive while she was fixing her hair and he had to be hospitalized for several months. In this time, Ryan pawned his last pair of trousers to buy a real guitar. By the time Nick was discharged, the rest of the band had written an entire album. They played it for him eagerly, but being a completely pompous shartschnitzel he said it wasn’t sad enough and made everyone rewrite everything.           And now we’re about halfway through doing that. So, as you can see, it is not only that feelings and college influenced our music, but also our music is actually coextensive with the geographization you have presumptuously delimited for our gratitudeness. Thank.

5. Provide one word to describe each of your band mates.Sad.

6. How has being in a band augmented your experience at Haverford? How has it challenged it? This band has been nothing but challenges. We give it another week, tops.

7. Dream venue? The American Football House.

8. Why is Housecat making a scene? Unresolved Oedipal complexes.

Think you’re indifferent enough to nonchalantly and ironically become a fan of Housecat? Check out these links: boys will be tusslin’ pretty soon. This upcoming Saturday, February 7th in fact, in the basement of HCA 34. Get there, and make a scene.