Weird Fun: 'Soup Kitchen Rock'
Weird Fun is, as they like to call it, a “soup kitchen rock,” band from San Francisco CA. The group consists of Mitchell Marinaro (vocals and rhythm guitar), Grace Cardinale (drums), Alex Santana (lead guitar), River Manochio (bass) and Alex Varni (“hype man”). Let me just put out there, on the record, if you haven’t seen this group live, you haven’t been going to the right shows man.
Let’s take a trip back in time, to hear the story of how it all started…
“Although our band is 4 musicians, we have a wider sense of community within our group. Mitchell Marinaro (Vocalist and Guitarist) and Alex Varni (Hype man) met first out of the group. They had met before, but at a town festival they were both attending, they heard Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond, and an empty stage. They looked at each other and both hopped on the stage and performed completely unrehearsed yet flawless choreography to the song. After this, the members met through mutual friends in high school, but didn’t realize that they all played instruments. But after a couple jam sessions, the spark was lit and Weird Fun was born.”
If that’s not a story for the books then I don’t know what is. I wish all bands could have as great of stories as this one does! I mean, we asked about the background behind the name and this is what they told us,
“A while ago, a rock fell from the sky in our drummer’s backyard. Upon seeing this rock, we decided to open it up and what was inside shocked us. It was 2 words but in strange font and barely recognizable. We took this rock to a professional and the 2 words were “Weird Fun”. After hearing that, we felt it was necessary to name our band that.“
That, dear reader, is what we call, fate. The more the interview went on, the more I completely fell in love with the band, and I have a confidence that you will too. I asked them what some of their major influences were, or some artists they felt inspired their music, they answered,
“We take a lot of influence from like 60’s garage rock like Iggy Pop and The Stooges, some psychedelic rock here and there. We like some heavy stuff like Metallica or early Marilyn Manson but also the lovely beautiful sounds of the Beatles and the Beach Boys. Occasionally we’ll some different stuff such as this electronic artist SOPHIE and of course Ariel Pink.”
To quote the great masterpiece of cinema known as Almost Famous,“Iggy Pop! Amen!”Lester Bangs would be proud.
So what’s the next step for Weird Fun? What are their ultimate goals for the future?
“The next step for us is just to keep going. We’re playing our first show in So-Cal this weekend and hope to record and release an album as soon as we can. Our main goal is to build a community, or universe if you will, of people who love music and love each other and can change the world through musical experiences. We want everybody to feel comfortable and express themselves in any way they want. We really just want to create a world around our band.”
I’m going to be 100% honest, this is probably one of the strangest interviews we have on our site, but that’s what makes it so amazing. It seems like this group was destined to be together, their music and energy as a whole just proves our point. Check out Weird Fun on Soundcloud, and stay updated on all of their upcoming shows which fully live up to their name (weird, and fun).