Green Beret is a new(ish) band featuring the majority of the members of Social Circkle. Like Social Circkle, Green Beret takes older influences and plays an older sounding style of punk, but with their own twist on things that puts them head and shoulders above the overwhelming amount of generic bands in the all encompassing ‘raw punk’ genre. In a scene that aims to sound as formulatic as possible, Green Beret does a good job of staying inside the walls of the raw punk frame while expanding those walls in a way that others are either unwilling or unable to do. Expect a new 12″ out this year (2012). Questions by Erik SN, answers by Matt Smith.
Erik: Green Beret was originally started as a Social Circkle side project. How did this come about, and now that Social Circkle is officially finished, will Green Beret become more serious?
— Green Beret was created around some riffs that would never work as Social Circkle songs. We learned and recorded the demo tape in a day, with vague plans of turning it into a band some day. This band is as serious as our lives permit, unfortunately. We live four hours apart and are busy people. I would love to play out more often, but that’s not really possible.
With members living from New York City to Boston and being involved in various other projects at all times, how often are you able to get together for practices and shows?
— Very rarely. We’ve had two practices as a four piece and we’ve played two shows.
Who is in the band currently? Is the music written by all the members, or are some members just there for the live shows?
— Right now band is Matt, Ryan, and Jamie. We played a show with Jeff playing guitar, and a show with Cliff playing guitar. Ninety-five percent of the music and lyrics are written by Matt.
Green Beret is a pretty good band name. How important is a name in terms of image, originality, and ‘marketing’ of the band? Why not just name the band Dis-Social Circkle? Did you intentionally stay away from words like war, total, victims, and other cliche and overused words for the name?
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-ESN
