NHA: So aside of Thomas’ Apartment, what do you guys do?

Nam: I am a computer programmer at NCR Teradata by LAX. 

Pete: I am a technical support technician at a database company in Irvine.

Bao: I have the PhD thing. 

Billy: I am a 3-D character animator at MeniThings.com. 

Thomas: I started a company that does mobile game consulting. We work on games, we do porting. We do games like Tetris, Bejeweled, Collapse a lot of popular games you see on Verizon are done by us.

Pete: I also work for Thomas as well.

Thomas: Yeah, I also do music for mobile phone games and I also use Pete to write music.

NHA: In today’s generation, would you say there’s a lack of quality music in the mainstream?

Nam: Lack of quality? I think lack of diversity more than lack of quality I would say. They don’t seem to take a lot of chances. 

Bao: Yes! Less chance-taking nowadays.

Pete: I think it’s on both sides it’s understandable why music is of lower quality these days. Like, from a music industry perspective I think that since they’re not selling as many records because their music is low quality, that causes less people to buy music and in turn it causes companies to lose profit and they’re less willing to invest in artists that are actually new and fresh and talented. They rely on sex symbols and whatnot to sell their CD’s and stuff. Yeah, I definitely think that there’s a decline in quality.

NHA: What makes you different from all the other bands out there right now?

Billy: We don’t have one style. Seems a lot of the bands you hear on the radio, every song sounds very similar to the last and they stay within that margin.

Nam: The funny thing is like, I would just go around and ask friends and fans and stuff “Oh, what’s your favorite song?” And like everyone has their own individual favorite song. 

Pete: I’ve actually been part of being a part of other bands in the past and also doing the solo things. I’ve noticed that this band is extremely, extremely organized. They function as a business. Like, I was blown away when I came to their first few rehearsals and they actually had a laptop recording every single rehearsal, every single song, every single take, so that if any good ideas came up and if anything needed to be fixed they would be right on top of it. And that is what continues to blow my mind. It just makes me so excited to be part of something that is so organized and so well thought out and I think that’s the key to succeeding. 

Thomas: I think that we all have a really, really good synergy. Like when we added Pete we wanted to make sure we added someone that we knew would gel with the band perfectly. And we all have a really, really good constructive energy about us.  We could talk to each other without having to feel afraid of offending someone. Also another thing that makes us different is we’re all friends first, we’re not like a Backstreet Boys that got plucked out of an audition or whatever.  So I think that really builds to the cohesiveness of who we are. 

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