Cobra Man: Moms Like It, Skaters Like It

At first, it felt like a twisted recipe, featuring a little White Zombie, a pinch of the Ramones, some R&B and a hefty dose of New Wave synths, but since my first taste, I’ve stopped trying to pin down what makes the sound so good, so different, so nostalgic, without being redundant or cliche. Because while pyrotechnics and pleather may call to mind an inherently 1980s aesthetic, Cobra Man has created something new, and detached from any one decade. It’s LAPD — L.A. Power Disco — and the group’s origin story is as individual as their newborn genre’s sound.

From skate clips, to Jackass, to selling out stages with a full, seven-piece band (not including Manramp), office is excited to introduce the enigmatic, energetic Cobra Man— as well as their latest video and single, Cool Nice, released today.

Alright. I’d love to get right into the story of how you guys came to be…

Andrew Harris— Basically, I went to school with Tom and Steve Mull [of Worble]. I didn't really know Steve at school, but I lived with Tom for a year and he had already started the Worble, it had existed for a while, and I just remember he was always editing skate videos. Well, I was always in my room making music— but we never thought to do anything together for some reason. Then after school, I moved to LA and we lost touch, until one day Tom called me and he was like, "Yo, we're coming to LA. Can we stay with you?" I'm like, "Sure." So the Worble dudes started staying with me. I let them crash, all seven of them or whatever it was. I let them crash in my room and it just kept going on. I remember every night I would go to my roommates and be like, "Yo, do you care if they stay for another night?"

…Then eventually they started getting really pissed. They were like, "They can't stay here anymore," and it got to the point where my roommates moved out, because they were so annoyed with me. Then Tom and everybody moved in and so they started getting more traction. Once they moved out here, they got some connection at Thrasher, and Thrasher was going to post one of their videos, but they needed music that wouldn't get flagged on YouTube. That was for the first Manramp video. So I made the theme for Manramp, and put it out. It was fun. I liked it, and then Tom had another video that came out and he needed more music. He was like, "I want to make a disco song."

Sarah and I had recently been introduced by a friend and we talked about disco, so I hit her up and asked if she wanted to sing on it. We went to a friend's studio and I think I had a very basic disco track and we wrote it in the studio, and it was a really fun day. The dudes we were working with were like, "You guys should start a band," and I was like, "I've always wanted to have a big disco band," and coinciding with that, Tom and all them were getting more traction and they were like, "We're going to put out a full length on Thrasher, but we need more music. Do you want to make all the music?" So that's when Sarah and I started making the first soundtrack, which turned into the first Cobra Man album.

It just kind of started snowballing from the day that we put the video out, Goner Records hit us up and we signed a record deal with them. We started working on the music for the next video, and so it started out of utility where we need this music and people responded to it, which I wasn't expecting. So as the Worble got bigger, we would make more music and our fan base started to grow, and that's really how it's gone.

Well, I just learned a lot.

AH— We should add that we were playing just the two of us, but because of the production of our songs, there's a lot of parts. Eventually, we realized, to do it justice, we needed a live band. I've always wanted to have a big band, a spectacle. So we added everybody! And now we're about to go on our first tour in July with the whole band, and all of the Worble.

That's so crazy. And bold.

Sarah Rayne— We need a bus because we can't fit everyone anywhere else.

I feel like I can't think of many other bands that came about that way. It's really interesting, how skate culture has been woven through with music in so many roundabout ways. I was talking to someone in music media recently about skating, music, and fashion, and how they're all really interconnected, but they're also very segregated in their narratives, in the media space and editorial publications. These creative communities aren’t included in the same conversations about culture in a unified way, or at least it’s not always shown how and why they’re so connected. There’s music used in skate clips, but it doesn’t always go deeper than that. And to discuss this on a fashion platform adds an extra layer.

AH— Yeah, it is cool how it's all interconnected! One thing I wanted to add is that after Tom and all of them moved to LA, we all got a warehouse spot off Craigslist that we lived in and we started throwing these big parties where I've been getting involved in like the local DIY music scene. We were basically treating it as a venue, where we were trying to get the parties to be as crazy as we could. The parties started growing and we started doing sort of art installation type things for the shows. We built a guillotine and we cut Dave's head off. We built a Trojan horse that people popped out of, and we built a giant pigeon that shit out confetti. We were just creating this wild environment, which we really translated to the Cobra Man shows and the Worble premiers.

So I've heard!

AH— It kind of evolved from that. It's kind of a big mix of a lot of different things.

That’s something that I like about your work overall — the origin story of how you guys came about is as unique as the music that you're making. It's different. I don't hear contemporary musicians playing the kind of music or producing the sounds and experiences you are. That's really exciting.

AH— To me, we're referencing a lot of different eras. Maybe that's what helps it be that, but when I listen to other bands, sometimes I hear almost a more sophisticated version of a specific angle of what we're doing. Somebody might take one of the facets that we like, and really lean hard into that. It's the terracotta, incense version of that, where it's very subdued with shirts on the drums and it's very 70s. We're trying to mix a bunch of to recycle things and explore ways that genres mixed back in the day that maybe they stopped being explored. That's the idea.

SR— It is a mix. It's what we want to hear. We've talked about shows we want to see and what we want to hear, and this is all of that put together. So it's just a necessity thing. This is what we want to be hearing and happening, so we're going to do it.

AH— I think probably the most interesting part about it is the fact that because everything we've been putting out we've written for a skate video, that's really influenced the energy level that we try and hit. Where it actually pushes it because sometimes we'll write something and it might feel energetic, but when you put it to video, you never want the music to be less energetic than the skating. That's what you're going for. Sometimes the contrast is nice where it's really energetic skating and a 60s Motown song or something, but trying to hit this level where it supplements the video has really influenced the power disco thing.

SR— Yeah. That's created a lot of purpose and drive toward the communication of the songs.

Well, that is a very concrete goal. That is also something that's obviously adding to what is setting you guys apart from other bands— the references existed, but this way of going about things creates something that's definitely new and brings an energy and an ethos to the work that's inherently unique.

AH— Yeah, and it's interesting doing this kind of music in the music industry landscape right now, because a lot of it is jumping on what's working. It can be tempting to try and dip our toes into those avenues to get it more traction in the industry, but I feel like what we're seeing is the more that we just lean into what we're doing, we're organically growing a fan base that's growing with us as we get better at making music.

Do you feel like your fan base is separate from the skating community, is it a mix, or is it mostly people that are coming to your music through Worble? When I first heard you guys, it was through my friend who's a skater.

SR— Yeah, it's a mix, but that's definitely a good outlet to have. I feel like we turn people and the demographic is very wide. Moms like it, skaters like it.

AH— I mean, I think that that's kind of a testament to also the idea we've had about creating universally, and this sounds cheeky to say, but, an empowering concept. With a lot of our songs and our choruses, we're referencing back to songs where the whole stadium sings it and it's not really about “I”, it's about the “We”. Music now feels very much about the “I”. We just wanted to do something different. Also, I don't think that my problems aren't necessarily way more interesting than somebody else's and I think that there's a place for people to relate to that kind of thing, but it's just not what I gravitate towards.

SR— I don't want to hear songs like that.

AH— Tired. That's my main emotion. I'm tired. We don’t want songs about that. We want to say, "Let's tear down the wall. Let's all sing, let's tear down the wall."

Back to the idea of “skaters, like it, moms like it,” there's something to the idea of nostalgia triggered by music that's so powerful in what you’re doing. It’s another empowering element. Just like scents, and how they recall memories, music can do the same. Whether the nostalgia is for a time you yourself experienced and it takes you back, or new, imagined nostalgia that transports you in some way. Whether we hear that energy related to skating, or musical references our ears pull out of one of your tracks that’s reminiscent of a time and place and another generation, it's all evoking emotion and creating an experience. 

AH— I think that's a really good point. Pre-internet, if you wanted to listen to Black Sabbath, you would have a physical old record and you knew it was old— but the way that music is consumed now with streaming, where you have this massive catalog of music, if you're a young person, you don't know when something was made. Everything is kind of new in that sense, so listening to music now, when we reference older stuff, it's not necessarily because we love the 80s or whatever. It could be new to me, even though it was released a long time ago. We’re approaching it as if it was released today. I feel like some bands that have references to nostalgic music, they really try and present themselves and they want to be in it.

Well, it's easy to get corny. It's really easy for it to be corny.

AH— Yeah. It's like, "I'm from the 50s." Authentically down to the underwear.

SR— Deadstock underwear. High and tight.

AH— “I am from the 50s. Everything down to what I eat. I only eat homegrown beans. I don't know. Gravy. Biscuits and gravy.”

SR— Yeah. I think a lot of people tend to put us in categories of eagles.

AH— Lasers.

SR— Yeah, and we're like, "Huh?"

AH— Rad. Rad 80s, but we've never wanted to be an 80s band. It's just, Yeah. A lot of the shit that I like from the 80s, that's when synthesizers were really being explored and high energy dance music was being invented, and I just think it's so sick to think about the fact that disco and rock fans back in the day hated each other, and it's like, "Oh, so that's why that music never got mixed together," because it was like, "Fuck you if you like that." So, all right, let's mix it.

Yeah. That's awesome.

AH— At the same time, I would say that we're winging everything. We're figuring it out as we go along. Like I was saying, utilitarian. It's very utilitarian. We need a music video. Okay, let's figure out how to make one. Or we need album art. All right, let's figure it out. We don't have somebody holding our hand through this. Touring or the live show, especially. Figuring that out from the ground up.

SR— I think that's what makes it good too though, and concise, and we're always going to be doing that. This isn't putting anyone else down, but when we've done that, it's hard to get someone else to do the creative aspect of it. We've talked about it for, I don't know, thousands of hours. It's something that's very specific, but also, Yeah. We're figuring it out. How the fuck do we do this?

AH— Yeah. It's a lot of trial and error.

Well it's tangible and you're pulling it off even just based off of the live shows experience and how elaborate that is, and will be especially on this tour. And speaking to being in a streaming era, and going on your first national tour, how do you approach the live experience?

AH— It’s really important. And something that a lot of people struggle with— you might get on some good playlists, have good streaming numbers, but if you don't have fans seeking your music out, it's really hard to get people to your show. I mean, that's part of why we've leaned into the spectacle part, bringing along the Trojan horse and pyrotechnics and all that. But since we have the big band, we don't do that stuff as much anymore, because it's just too much. Eventually we'll probably bring it back. Since we've mainly done our shows in LA, and the Worble video premiers, we're taking that on the road because a lot of people haven't gotten to experience that.

Catch Cobra Man and Worble on their tour, beginning July 14th, for the full, unforgettable experience.