FIFTEEN are a great melodic pop punk band somewhere between STIFF LITTLE FINGERS and the STEVE MILLER BAND (if that makes any sense). With a 7" and and LP under their belt, they're carving a nitch for themselves in the local scene.

MRR: Ok, who's who and what do you play and whatever?
JEFF: I'm Jeff and I'm 20 and I play guitar and sing.
MARK: My name is Mark and I play drums and I'm 20.
JACK: My name is Jack and I try to play bass.
MRR: (to Mark) You were in another band, right, EAST BAY MUD?
MARK: Yeah, and that's how we knew each other.
JACK : And he knew all our songs.
MRR: Is that true?
MARK: No...
MRR: But it was a pretty easy transition for you?
MARK: Yes, we knew each other and I kind of knew their songs from their tour.
MRR: So when you were on tour did you learn any weird habits about each other? Like does anyone talk in their sleep? Or what about tour stories...
JACK: We didn't get arrested this summer...
JEFF: Westbrook, CT. That's where it all ended. That's where his crankshaft broke. And we had to give the car to this guy named Woody. But Woody was nice. He let us camp in his parking lot.
MRR: Was that officially the end of the tour?
JEFF: Well, actually I went on to New Hampshire to play in my cousin's cover band. And went water skiing and stuff. They live on Golden Pond. On the actual pond where they filmed the movie.
JACK: They kept us there and we got new clothes and bathed and rode a mountain bike.
MRR: What FIFTEEN did on their summer vacation...And what happened in South Dakota? ALL: We got kicked out!!!
JEFF: We were hanging out in FILTH'S van and chasing these kids from South Dakota in a car shooting bottle rockets at them and they were shooting bottle rockets at us. Unfortunately, there was this woman in a car behind us who was getting hit a whole bunch. When she got to her house, she called the police and this cop comes out and stops us and tells us how they're gonna I.D. our bodies for dental records and told us to leave South Dakota and took all our fireworks, except for some of them which I kind of hid. They didn't take the beer either. They just cared about the bottle rockets.
MRR: Wow, getting out of a whole state.
JACK: Well, just one. It's kind of disappointing.
MRR: Hadn't you planned the tour before the record came out?
JACK: It was released the day we left.
MRR: Was it hard to book it without having vinyl out?
JEFF: No, we didn't even have a demo out.
JACK: We didn't even have to say "Jeff Ott" once...Well, maybe a couple times. Mostly all you have to say is that you're a Lookout band.
JEFF: Yeah, Jake FILTH and I were talking about this the other day: you live in Berkeley, churches feed you everyday, punk rockers let you stay at their houses and Lawrence puts out your records. It's kind of utopian-ish...Except that it sucks, of course.
MRR: Are you sticking with Lookout? What's happening with that album?
JACK: Yes, Lawrence is pretty good to us. We're sticking with Lookout. And Mordam Records is good to us too.
MRR: Have you been having problems with people comparing FIFTEEN to CRIMPSHRINE? Like is it a stigma for you guys?
JACK: CRIMPSHRINE is my favorite band, how could I be offended by that? But I think people are wrong in comparing us.
MRR: You don't think you sound like CRIMPSHRINE?
JACK: NO, CRIMPSHRINE was a good band. Oh, and before you ask the next question, I have to say JAWBREAKER and Very Small Records. It's very important that I say FIFTEEN will be on Very Small Records someday.
MRR: Does Very Small Records know that?
JACK: Kind of...
JEFF: And there's gonna be a FILTH / FIFTEEN split LP one day, when we have money.
MRR: Back to this, do you worry that people are going to lump you with CRIMPSHRINE, like you're the new CRIMPSHRINE or whatever?
JEFF: I kind of look at it like I was in one band and now I'm in another band, and my hands are the same hands and my throat is the same throat. So I guess people are gonna do what they're gonna do, and I should just let them and not be bothered by it.
MRR: Well, also with Mark on drums now, your style seems a little more Aaron-esque.
JEFF: Nah, Aaron played hell of crazy. Like, he played good, but it was all technically wrong somehow. (Laughter). I don't know. This is the first time other than EAST BAY MUD, where I've been in a band where the drummer situation wasn't really weird musically or at least difficult for one reason or another. It's like, he practiced with us four times and we've played four shows.
MRR: Do you think because of that FIFTEEN'S sound is more accessible? 'Cause like you were saying, at least playing-wise it's a lot more proficient.
JEFF: We try and make it more accessible, so I guess it's a good thing. Next time...more on EAST BAY MUD / touring / CRIMPSHRINE / etc...
MRR: So FIFTEEN has toured twice?
JEFF: Yes.
MRR: How extensive were those tours?
JEFF: On the tour before last, there were less shows than I have fingers. On the last one we played 20 or 25 shows. A lot of shows close together. Jack booked the first half. Here up the coast, across the top of the country, the East Coast. He did a really good job. Not too many days without shows and all that. We would have gotten a bunch of shows if the car hadn't busted.
MARK: We were gone for about 30 days and we played about 25 shows.
MRR: How did you all get home?
MARK: Me and Mike, the old drummer, took greyhound. Jack took Amtrack.
JEFF: I caught a ride with my cousins from Conneticut up to New Hampshire. Then I took Grehound. Greyhound is wonderful by the way. Things stop working and they don't fix them. The other great thing I didn't realize before I got on the bus. I was in New Hampshire and the Greyhound station in Portsmouth, NH was in a smoke shop. They don't have taxes in New Hampshire. Cartons of cigarrettes were like eight bucks. My uncle had given me $100 to eat and smoke with along the way, so I bought a couple cartons of cigarrettes to smoke on the way back. So I got up on the bus and sat down. This guy comes on the loudspeaker, "There's a new law that says you can't smoke on buses anywhere in the United States." So I was sitting in the back of the bus with some dead heads. We ended up knocking a hole in the wall of the bus and smoking out of it. Here's the trick: When you get off the bus, you walk out to the back left hand side of the bus where the bathroom is. There's a little window thing with a lock on the outside. You've got to unlock it everytime you get off the bus. Sometimes the driver will go back and lock it. So you've got to do this everytime. That way you can open it from the inside and let the smoke get out. Otherwise, it's total fuckin' fines and all sorts of shit.
MARK: It seemed like at every stop, five people went running off the bus to smoke cigarettes.
MRR: I always end up sitting next to one creepy guy that falls asleep on me or something.
JEFF: People always tell me stories. Despite all the discomforts, I had a really fun time. There were these dead heads that were transporting a bunch of mushrooms across the country. They had all this vivaren. They were getting loaded and I was taking all this vivaren. There's all these women with their kids. They would go to sleep and we would take care of their kids. Once again it reaffirms my faith in the idea that sometimes minor and major inconveniences are laid down upon people as a way of making them coagulate. Like earthquakes and hurricanes. People get forced into a situation where they can't go, "Fuck, I don't want to be with this guy. He's the wrong color. The wrong this. The wrong that.: I think as long as people keep fucking up, shit like this is going to happen. Might even be why we have conflict and shit like that. Because people don't come together at all.
MRR: I don't know that it will solve people's problems just forcing them together.
JEFF: I don't think that it will solve problems. But everyday, we wake up and go do something. Most days we ignore what we learned in that day. Sometimes, drastic things will happen. Sometimes it will be so severe that even if we don't want to face up to it, we wind up doing things that's not normally us...
JACK: Did you say anything about the Bay bridge yet?
JEFF: Oh yeah, the conspiracy theory!!
JACK: Jeff was trying to tell me the other night that for every good that's done, there's bad that's done. I can't explain what he was trying to explain, but I thought it was a bunch of shit. We did come to the conclusion that the only time good things happen is when bad things happen. Like when the bridge came down, everybody started coming together, because they finally started to realize that they needed each other. So what do we really need to happen for people to learn the big lessons? And then remember them becaues a year later...
MRR: Yeah, it was like a big party in the city when the earthquake happened. Everybody came out and got together. Then the next day, everything was back to normal. It was almost depressing how life just goes on.
JACK: So the ground that we neglect everyday, that we walk on, that we pull trees out of, that we pave, shakes and kills a bunch of people and then we take notice. Like that one day a year we call Earth Day...It's fine I guess, but to just have one day to take notice of things that should have started a long time ago...And still we're pulling up trees out of the ground to build houses.
JEFF: That's another thing that occured to me. You can be sitting around your house, watching tv with the family. Then the electricity will go off. All of a sudden, the whole family is sitting around playing monopoly by candlelight. Everybody is together and not just staring at the television.
MRR: Earthquakes, in a way, take away everything artificial. Artificial lighting...television.
JACK: It's a distraction. If you can't turn on the television, you can't distract yourself.
JEFF: Taking all that shit away. It sort of humbles people. People are scared shitless. We used to be food for some things.