|| The Sound Faction (dot com) ||

The last time I talked to Hasket it was an interview of basic starter questions. I recently got a chance to talk to Mikey again learning what he thinks about the music industry, how he feels about being in a band so young and what kind of shoe he would want to be. I am not going to lie, this is one of the most intelligent interviews I have ever read and got to be a part of. I loved Mikey's answers and I think he has some good views on the industry and his band.

The Sound Faction ladies wish nothing but the best for this band, and highly recommend that you check them out. If you see them handing out Cds or playing some acoustic songs at shows go and say hi and get a cd! They are such nice guys and they work really hard at everything.

“So I was like, instead of just sitting back and complaining, why don’t I try and make a difference because that’s how stuff happens.”
- Mikey Reale – Hasket

Roll call, part two! Who are you and what do you do for the band?

I am Mikey I play guitar, write some songs and do some singing in Hasket.

Okay, so everyone knows how Hasket came to be, but what they don’t know is that the average age of the group is sixteen. What are the disadvantages to being in a band so young and do you feel there are any advantages to it?

To start off with the advantages is that we are so young we have time on our hands. Like there are some bands who are maybe a bit ahead of us in terms of the trip to stardom or whatever, but they are five years older than us. We have time on our side. We have time to make mistakes, we’re still living at home. In terms of disadvantages, I guess people doubt us. In terms of like, they don’t believe we have what it takes at such a young age. And it’s also obviously hard to get to shows and stuff. Like when we first started none of us could drive. Slowly we are getting there. And I guess another advantage is we are the same age as the people we are trying to appeal to so we can kind of connect with them. And I think if the band is like, twenty-five and they are trying to appeal to sixteen year olds it’s going to be hard to make that connection.

What exactly inspires your lyrics and is there one that means the most to you?

Um, I guess just life inspires our lyrics. But we don’t try and have lyrics that are just going to kind of go over peoples' heads. We want them to be catchy, but also meaningful. Also most of the lyrics in the songs are kind of linear, they don’t repeat themselves except the chorus. They are telling a story. Like the song we played for disBand is probably going to be the single off our EP, it’s called The Change In Weather. And it’s called The Change In Weather because it starts off in a more optimistic mood and ends a little bit more pessimistically. It starts off saying, “I will meet you at the place where we always used to meet,” and end's saying, “These moments, they end tonight. I feel sick.” So you can kind of feel the change in weather. Like, it’s happy and it’s sad. I think that’s a really good feel to have in the song instead of just having three minutes of just being like, ‘na na na na.’ Love Blink 182, but there is no story in that song! (Laughs)

What are your practices like and how do you go about recording your songs?

Um practice is just like, just every Tuesday we get together in my basement and we have a pretty good set up. We play some video games and eat some food then get down to business. It’s pretty solid. We have fun, it’s not that serious.

You just did some shows for something called Save The Scene. What is Save The scene?

It’s something I’m starting because to be a band right now it’s kind of tough in the fact that shows on a local level are kind of disappearing. And when they do happen they aren’t nearly as big as they could be. Like I remember I got into music because I would go to shows with tons of people and now it’s hard for the same kind of bands to draw even a hundred people. So I was like, instead of just sitting back and complaining, why don’t I try and make a difference because that’s how stuff happens. If everyone just sat back and didn’t try to make a difference nothing would ever change. For Save The Scene I kind of put together one full show and helped a friend with an acoustic show so far and the focus is on making sure the people know how to get to the shows like giving bus route information and making the show affordable and choosing good venues and stuff like that. That’s definitely…the first show went really well, it was sold out. So things are going to go good from here.

You just did disBand (A Canadian Much Music television show), what was the experience like and what did you take from it?

It’s a weird experience because like, you have a camera on you all the time and it’s weird because at first you are very aware of the camera and you don’t know how to act but then it sort of disappears and you start being yourself again. And it’s gonna be weird to see how people see us. If you’re in a setting where you have something rehearsed to say to a camera that’s a bit different. This was just us being us. They had the camera on when we weren’t even focusing on that, like we were just being ourselves. So it was a really interesting experience.

Our friend signed us up for it. I don’t think it’s something we would have jumped into if she hadn’t done it for us. It was exciting though. We got to play in the MuchMusic studios, have all our friends come out, they couldn’t let anymore people in it was at capacity. It couldn’t have gone any better…we played our song. The judges had some good things to say, of course on the other side they did tell us to disband, but what’s that? That’s a television rating right? All they do is say that to create drama to make people watch the show. It’s advertising, it’s not the music business. So I’ve only drawn good things from this. Our song is going to be on TV and I’m really happy with the song. We couldn’t have done anything differently. We did everything the way we wanted to and we were really happy with it.

Speaking of the crowd…there were tons of people there. What is your favorite thing about your fans?

I just like the fact that…it’s not really about them, it’s how we interact with them. We don’t treat people like they are below us, or they owe us anything. We owe them everything. We have a younger audience, we are a younger band so people took the bus, the subway some convinced their parents to drive them three hours. Like that’s ridiculous! They are our best friends. We high five them, we hug them, we talk to them like they are our best friend. We go up and down line-ups at shows and give people free cds and play songs for them because that’s what music is about. Music is not about being separated from the people you are playing for, it’s about bringing people together.

That is awesome, Mikey! It was honestly a really good answer.

What keeps you guys playing music?

I guess it’s just like this drive that is internally ingrained in our heads. Like we grew up falling in love with music. Like to this day I stay up until three in the morning listening to music on my iPod. It’s just that music is better than everything else. And regardless of the economy or society, music will is a constant. Like, what the sound of it is and what the songs are about changes, but music is consistent. Like if the economy is doing really well, which its not, it’s doing horrible, music is not going to change. There will still be bands playing shows, people can still scrounge up ten dollars to go see a band play right? That’s what it’s about, like people need clothes, they buy a band t-shirt.

If you were in charge of the music industry what would be the first change you’d make?

Honestly, I think things need to be built from the ground up. Honestly at this point, it’s really messed up. Like, what I was brought up on was watching MuchMusic and seeing Sum 41 or Blink-182 and that was like, the most popular music MuchMusic was playing. And now it’s like, Pussycat Dolls and all this rap music. And obviously it has a place in the world, but the focus should not be one hundred percent on that sound of music. MuchMusic in general has just become more commercial, and they used to be a really good link for the music industry because MTV became more commercial before MuchMusic.

Like, if you’ve ever gone to the States and watched TV, they don’t even play the whole music video and MuchMusic used to always play the whole music video and now they don’t play the whole video. They are a music channel and now they are playing Gossip Girl and The O.C. I’m going to quote William Beckett from The Academy Is… he was just saying that the best thing the music industry could do right now is go back to people selling records out of the trunk of their car because that’s how record labels started and that’s how it should be because a record label should be about getting people music and giving bands the opportunity to play. It shouldn’t be about commercialism and all that stuff.

Awesome! Okay it’s your shameless self-promotion spot! Tell people anything you think we should know about Hasket!

Okay. Um basically we are the band you want to make friends with because we are not going to leave you behind. We are all about hugs, high fives, talking to people and hanging out. Obviously the music is very important but we’re so much more than that. We are friends. We’re bros! We will party hard with you! (Laughs) we are going to the top so you might as well jump on early!

(Laughs) Excellent! (Does an air guitar!)

Okay so are you up for some random questions?

Go for it!

Okay, if you could morph into anything what would it be and why?

I think it would be f*ckin rad to be a bird because you could go wherever the f*ck you want!

What girlie movie to do you secretly love?

Girlie movie? …Oh man. I’m going to have to say…Hilary Duff, the one where she goes to Rome. That would be pretty badass.

Wasn’t that The Lizzie McGuire movie?(Laughs)!

And um, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, New York Minute. (Laughs)

We were actually talking about that the other day.

I love like the Disney endings and the happily ever afters and insanely ludicrous plots.

If you had to be a woman's shoe, would you be a Stiletto, Flip-Flop, Flat or the boots that come up to someone's thigh?

I think I would be a Stiletto. I would be this like, fancy shoe and everybody would be like, it’s simple, but it’s classy as hell. A nice shoe. Not a whore shoe! It’s like the kind of thing where this women walks into a party wearing this nice simple black dress and these hella nice shoes and everybody is just like, ‘that woman is sexy.’

If you had to admit defeat to any Disney star, who would it be and why?

So I’m like dueling a Disney star?

Yep. They are just like, better then you at everything! We did have a choice between Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato…

Oh, well I would have to go with Miley Cyrus just because I made up this pretty badass rap about her!

(We convinced him to do the rap…but unfortunately it is not going up! Sorry! Talk to Mikey about it, he might sing it for you! We also tried to convince him to cover Stanky Legg!)

Love that we talked about covering songs because…If you could cover any song what song would it be and why?

We wanted to do one of Taylor Swifts songs.

Put in a little rock twist?

Yeah. Cause she has some songs that are like, they have that sort of like jump up and dance pop-punk feel to it but it’s kind of like tone down country.

We would like to thank Mikey from Hasket again for taking the time to talk to us and rap for us! Check out Hasket at their myspace at www.myspace.com/hasket. Also check out Hasket's new YouTube channel, And keep checking back to the Disband website to see when the disband featuring Hasket will air.

Also! check out Hasket as March's Band of the Month!