Oh No! and the Tiger Pit

Warning: This band will hot box your cigarettes, fire your phernomes and explode upon your eardrums like foil soaked in muriatic acid, so exercise caution when going commando on the decibel level.
Established in 2003, Oh No! and The Tiger Pit made their first kill as three-fourths of The Fauxmones; a Ramones cover band born out of house parties thrown by guitarist Jason Sanchez, bassist/vocalist Eric Gordon and vocalist/guitarist Ben Mattison, with good friend Jesse Bryan providing the thumps. The newly-wrought group further honed their skills opening up for Gainesville heavyweights Morningbell, before evolving into full Shere Khan status with the addition of drummer Evan Mitchell (formerly of Brickfoot Ninja Squad), who filled in after Bryan moved to New York.
“We had good chemistry,” says Gordon, “so we started writing original songs.”
This included the sandy, distorted blast of BTR favorite “Surf N’ Girth,” the ‘abrupt-end-to-going-steady-in-the-50’s’ swing of “Ripped Out My Heart,” and the hairy-knuckled libertine punch in the face that is “You Know What I Mean.” Indeed, Oh No! and The Tiger Pit proved early on that they were going to be unpredictable, much like the wild beasts stewing below the straw facade in their namesake.
“We all like all different sorts of music,” says Gordon. “We’re kind of like a Venn diagram – it comes together in the middle. Originally we were going for a 60’s garage sound, but we now attack it from different angles. When people ask what we sound like, I usually say ‘no pretense rock and roll.’”
The aforementioned songs (as well as “Cosmonaut,” “Diet Coke,” and “White Pony”) comprise the group’s first release, the Ripped Out My Heart EP, which the band recorded at Morningbell’s studio and then released on the Gainesville-based Orange Records.
As for the most excellent moniker of Oh No! and The Tiger Pit, Gordon says it came about during a conversation he had with Mattison, long before the group formed. “Ben and I were sitting around, just talking about funny band names. We really liked the idea of having ‘the something and the something.’”
However, neither Gordon nor Mattison dug the idea of putting an actual person as the first “something.” So they continued talking, and Gordon mentioned a cartoon he had seen online.
The picture, which someone had drawn by hand and posted on a website which may or may not have been ebaumsworld.com, depicted a guy with a girl. The guy is looking down and seeing that the girl has a boner, saying “Oh No!”
It fit perfectly, and with the first “something” solidified, the “and The Tiger Pit” part materialized pretty quickly.
“We liked the non sequitor aspect of it,” says Gordon, “though my Mom thought we should change it to ‘Viper Pit.’”
As good as that may have sounded, snakes are too stealthy a creature to represent the quartet’s music. Oh No! and The Tiger Pit thrive on a brazen sonic assault brimming with the confidence of a jungle predator, as if bent on bringing the balls of rock and roll back to a proper girth. It’s a welcome respite from the glut of soft-served “indie rock” bands out there. So many of them have lost the sand for making music this raw, stripped down and charred.
Just listen to a song like “Pink Giraffe,” in which Oh No! and The Tiger Pit devastate first and harmonize later, like Liars on Drum's Not Dead. Or soak up the Rhett Butler strut in the lyrics of “Black Holly,” before hearing Mattison push his voice to Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist heights in “Yeah!"
Those three gems, amongst others, can be found on the band’s debut full length, Radio Ga Ga, which they recorded a few months ago at the Springs Theater in Tampa.
“We had 5 days in the studio,” says Gordon, “so we laid all the music down in 2 1/2, and spent the next few days mixing and mastering. We were listening to a lot of live Johnny Cash at the time, and The Real Kids, M.O.T.O, the Oblivians - stuff with a lot of grit.”
“We’re very, very happy with the sound of the album,” says Sanchez. “I want to buy the equipment we used to record it. I used a 1961 Gretsch guitar amp, which is an incredible amplifier - has that old, raw, punchy rock and roll sound, like the Supro amps that Jimmy Page used on Led Zeppelin I and II.”
A few weeks after the recording, on May 11th, Oh No! and The Tiger Pit celebrated the release of Radio Ga Ga with their final show in Gainesville, playing to a packed house at The Atlantic. Immediately following the set, Gordon left Florida to search for an apartment in Brooklyn, where the band was planning to relocate.
He came back a few days later, rented a 24' Budget moving truck, and drove back to New York with Sanchez, their respective girlfriends and mutual friend and roommate Zack.
"Just imagine driving one of those through the streets of Brooklyn and across the bridges of New York," says Sanchez. "Pure insanity."

Mitchell and Mattison just finished moving up to Brooklyn a few days ago.
The band is now looking for a practice space, and hoping to book their first New York show by the end of the month.
“It’s tough, because we were finally getting to a place in Gainesville where people knew about us,” says Gordon. “Still, we feel like we got to a good place in Gainesville, and we’re hoping to continue that momentum in New York.”
After the hassle of moving and not being able to practice, Sanchez can’t wait to get back to playing live with the rest of The Tiger Pit.
“I’m always afraid during the downtime between shows, like, are we ever going to play again? I hate that time. I live for playing shows.”
New York, ye hath be warned.
Link to this article:
http://www.breakthruradio.com/index.php?b=artist.php?id=125


- Matt Lehtola
- BreakThru Radio.com

Oh No! and the Tiger Pit: Interview with Jason Sanchez

from volume 02 issue 02 // MacKenzie Pause
Oh No! and the Tiger Pit
Interview with Jason Sanchez
Words: PJ Cheng
Photos: PJ Cheng

On May 11th, Oh No! and the Tiger Pit played their last show in Gainesville as local residents before moving as a band to New York City. Ben Mattison, Jason Sanchez, Eric Gordon and Even Mitchell have gone from playing covers to recreating a post-punk sound. This summer will mark a new beginning for the Tiger Pit but before their farewell roars are heard, they wanted to comment on the place they've called home for the past several years by speaking about the scene, working with the brothers of Morningbell and reflecting on some of the more memorable show experiences.

REAX: Can you tell us a little about the history and formation of the group?
Jason Sanchez: Eric, Ben and I were 3/4ths of a Ramones cover band, The Fauxmones, that played some shows and house parties around town. We're good friends with the Atria brothers of Morningbell and they had us open for them at the Shamrock a few times. All of the Fauxmones shows at actual venues were disasters, glorious train wrecks where equipment broke and we played out of tune for most of the sets. But, that first Oh No! show was actually pretty smooth. A friend of ours said that "I rocked his balls off," and really, what else can you do with a show? Then Ben started writing originals and that forced us into thinking of ourselves as more of a band and less of a straight cover band.

REAX: You have a sound that references vintage post-punk. How would you describe your sound and how does that translate to the Gainesville music scene?
JS: There's no one dominant songwriter in the band. All of us come up with different things that we incorporate. If you see us live, it becomes quite obvious that I'm highly influenced by Angus Young of AC/DC. We were called indie rock once and I just think that's wrong, perhaps just too vague a label to apply to anything nowadays.

REAX: How do you feel about the music scene in Gainesville? Has it changed in the last few years?
JS: The Gainesville music scene is a funny thing. There are a lot of good bands and a handful of great bands at any given time in Gainesville and different sounds/genres, too. I've heard people say there's too much hardcore punk or some electronic musicians will sometimes complain that they're overlooked and thumb their noses at rock bands but the whole thing is silly. A great scene needs to have good hardcore, good electronic, good pop, good R&B, good rock and roll and there's always enough room for all of that. The scene is always in transition because of the whole college town thing and the turnover that it creates with people. Old timers look back fondly on old venues and the supposed hey-day of Gainesville music that churned out such "great" acts like Less than Jake and Sister Hazel (whose face I want to smash every time I see those damn Village Jeweler commercials around town). But again, that's the nostalgia talking because the good old days are always better when you look back on them. I think now, the scene is doing pretty decently.

REAX: Tell us about your previous and future releases?
JS: We put out the six song Ripped Out My Heart EP last year on Orange Records. We recorded that in a weekend at the Morningbell compound in Gainesville. We're putting out a new LP on May 11th which we recorded over a five day period in Tampa at the Springs Theater. It was a great experience and the guys there are total pros and I would do a cable access commercial for them.


REAX: What's your most memorable show?
JS: We played a few shows at Tijuana Flats which has its perks like free beer, burritos and good pay;and its downsides like everyone is more interested in beer and burritos than live music and 2 hour long sets. We played at an ice cream shop once and we had to clean it up because of the kids and families. The weirdest show was the O'Connell Center show. It was a benefit to raise money to fight cancer and we were (playing)down on the floor. Nothing seemed organized, we didn't really sound check and above us, people were walking on a track to raise money to fight cancer. So we played and it was so hard to tell if the crowd even wanted us around. No polite claps after songs; no reactions to anything. It was just a bizarre event all around and we played after the national anthem was sung barbershop style by a group of girls. - Reax Magazine

Gainesville, Florida boasts a reputation of being the South's hotbed for punk, just ask any Less Than Jake or Against Me! fan, but what truly makes this city's music scene shine isn't its endless supply of ska-infused, over-produced gloss-punk. Our best-kept secret isn't some Indie Rock (capital "I" and "R") band, but a group that's more Sonics than Sonic Youth. And, honestly, with a name like Oh No! And The Tiger Pit it isn't surprising they grew to be hometown heroes.

Now that the Oh No! boys have released their first LP, Radio Ga Ga, and are MOVING TO NEW YORK, I can't think of a local band more deserving of good press. If the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (or at least where I'd hoped they'd go after Take Them On Your Own's promising "Going Under") can elicit nods of approval, then there's no reason "You Know What I Mean (Reprise)" can't find a place in the hearts of music enthusiasts nationwide.

Their live shows are theatrical (liquor bottle for a guitar slide, anyone?) without being trite or antic-driven. While the throwback, garage-rock element is the most noticeable aspect of their music, I find it difficult comparing Oh No!'s sound to that of other bands. More coherent than the Willowz, less bluesy than the Black Keys? A Jon Brion or Claire Denis soundtrack in the making? Each has some truth to it but not enough to convey Oh No's unique blend of '50s and '60s garage-rock and late-'70s New York punk.

With songs such as "Gypsy Girl" perhaps they're an iPhone commercial waiting to happen, but I mean that in the most flattering sense. It's no small feat for a band to write a track catchy enough to be considered that marketable and yet underground enough to be deemed "cool."

In the end, the members of Oh No! And The Tiger Pit are extraordinarily talented musicians who know that a band's objective is synthesis and not proving how well one can play their respective instrument. "Handlebar Moustache," while not their greatest achievement, is fantastic at showcasing each of the band members' talents. Take one great voice, combine it with a backing chorus, well-placed drum fills, and a catchy bass line, and add a guitar solo for garnish. Voila. Radiance.

I've yet to encounter another band that stays true to their roots while concurrently pushing the boundaries of their genre. Songs such as "Yeah!" are more than enough for me to conclude that the members of Oh No! are music makers, not music emulators; they are the ones people will follow. - The Stypod