TEPI LURUS
1. How are you guy’s, tell us about Tepi Lurus and where do you guy’s from?
Bobby: We are doing fine dude!! we started a band in late 2010 when me and ijey (TOS member) were missing to play old school hardcore. This was happened by listening to Get The Most and Mindset that made us so in love with them. GTM and Mindset reminded me to the old school 88 or youth crew cause they play their song quite similar with youth of today, minor threat.
We are five lads, Meidy on vocal, Ijey & Vani on the guitar, Anton on bass and me on drum; we live in Bogor and we are so proud to be bogorians cause the city is not too big so that we can easily catch up without mind about the distance. But the traffic is shit right now cause many people from neighbor cities coming just to have a vacation by riding their cars and motorcycles.
2. Your guitarist is a female guitar, just like Black Flag with Kira Roessler in 1983. What is it like to have a female guitarist? which kinda rare in hardcore scene,
Bobby: Yeah dude, we didn’t refer to black flag or other bands but we just want to get rid of negative perception that hardcore is only unskilled and noisy music as people think that they got no tunes or even its clear lyrics, it sounds like we have no future. But by plotting a female here so that people could slightly change their negative perception, people here mean everyone who knew Vania, they will think about hardcore differently, it is not easy to find kinda girl like her in hardcore by looking at her daily activity as an architect in one of architecture companies and also she lives on the straight edge as well although some people don’t understand what is straight edge but they can see the positive life she has.
So that we want to build this perception from the little scope first maybe it starts from vania’s friend.
3. What is Straight Edge to you guys? is it similar with Ian Thomas Garner Mackaye said back in the day’s?
Bobby: Yeah, we just refer back to what Ian Mackaye stated on his song lyric (Out of step). We started this band because we are really comply to sxe philosophy so then we named our band “Tepi Lurus” which means the real translation of Straight Edge.
4. How you implemented that philosophy today?
Bobby: in our opinion, there is no big disturbance to live sxe today because I think people in our age (24 – 30 year-old) are really appreciate and understand the way you choose. Reversely, the big problem to live straight edge is ourselves that can probably broken because you want to try something new or you might not strong enough to control yourself to do what your colleague do, for instance drunk, promiscuity or any negative things.
Our principal is not to make ourselves drown to those negative environments but why not we try to influenced our good thing to those negative environment. At least people can admit your good life and their respect it so.
5. Tell us about your home town, how’s the scene there?
Bobby: The scene here established a long time ago, it is about ten or fifteen years ago we might be still in elementary or junior high school. but anyway, most of us engaged to hardcore when we were in senior high school and the scene right now is really good cause so many HC kids living here. They like to play old school and melodic hardcore, you can also find many bands here who really active to release their ep or full length album. We got a good generation to keep hardcore still live, as you know that we are not that young anymore so that some of us are starting to more focus on working and also mind to get married
But the nice things, you can still see the new generation which is the younger kids here try to start a hardcore band and make an independent show or even support some local or international tour bands. The bands such as Grave Behold, Common Goals, Stand Clear (My favorite one) and many more are really loyal and keep this scene alive. They are also got a place to stay for sharing, living or brainstorming not only with hardcore people but with any too. Actually the place is a store that sell hardcore punk stuffs (Eternal Store) but they got neighbor store who owned by one of the famous Rap Band in Indonesia (fade to black). For us, this is the nicest things i ever seen that people here are so open minded, sometimes those two stores are collaborated to make one event such as a show, charity activity by selling some used stuffs or just do some other positive things.
6. What’s the craziest thing ever happened to you guys on stage?
Vani: Maybe it’s not as crazy as you think. I remember the night when we had a gig at Rossi Fatmawati, Jakarta. When we started the song, we played our song on, my guitar, Ijey’s guitar, n Anton’s bass had not been tuned correctly. Our tune was shit but the crowd had not been noticed cos the room was so noisy and they were moving. I thought it was a bad show, but i got facebook’s friend requests on the next day, who watched the show and someone told me we were great. lol. I don’t know if he lied or not but It was exciting though hehe.
Bobby: hahahaha … We always do crazy thing on the stage dude! .. if you are not crazy on a stage, you might not into hardcore
7. Let’s talk about records, when you record coming out?
Vani: Actually We already have one EP in 2010, and we got some new tunes for the full album, we just haven’t got time to record them. we are working class kids who have been super busy especially Bobby.
We’re always talking about this just to make sure that in weekend, we can meet up to work in the studio. so…we’re still waiting for the right time.
Bobby: This is really sucks man!! I got no enough time right now cause too many things I need to do especially for working.
8. Do you go on tour to promote it?
Vani: I think Promotions can be easily done nowadays. we usually do the promotion via social media, friend-to-friend, and clothing store. We haven’t been on tour yet but we’d love to one day, after we finished the album.
9. If your’e on tour which place you like to go and why?
Ijey: Boston!! Because there are a lot of cool bands and a lot of my favorite bands are from there hehe
10. What’s hardcore means to you?
Ijey: Hardcore is a state of mind. it’s very meaningful to me, not just about music, but also my passion, my energy. HC is always giving me a big motivation to survive in the real world, HC is about friendship, positive message, and attitude. So I guess I call it home.
11. Last words and quote?
Anton: Bangkit, semangat, optimis! (just like our song, “OPTIMIS”)
http://www.reverbnation.com/tepilurus
http://www.twitter.com/tepilurus
interview by: Garth Spencer
feartheapocalypticrebornzine 