00:00It is the world famous KROQ. My name is Postmaster Johnny and I'm here backstage at the Vance Warped Tour
00:05in Long Beach with my good friend Christopher of the Ataris. What's going on, man?
00:10Hello. Hello, Warped Tour. It's really, really awesome to be back at Warped Tour again.
00:14You're a vet. You've played more Warped Tours than maybe anybody here, but not less than Jake, though.
00:18No, no. I think we may have been on in various ways maybe eight times. Full tour. I don't know.
00:26Mike, our bass player. How many times do we do the full Warped Tour?
00:30Five? Well, without you, we did a couple times as well, but yeah. Nine times.
00:35You said nine times. Nine times.
00:37Wow, that's insane. I mean, whenever I think of Warped Tour, I always think of you guys. It's a close
00:41association. Same with Hot Topic. I'm like, Warped Tour, Hot Topic, the Ataris.
00:46Yeah, we definitely made our rounds here, and it was always some of the greatest memories of my life.
00:52Our song, our first single on our most known album, So Long Astoria, the song In This Diary, was literally
00:58just a diary of my summer on that Warped Tour in 2002, I believe.
01:04And just a lot of great memories of that feeling of being young and free and going into truck stops
01:11at two in the morning and just feeling like you are a passerby in someone else's life.
01:16Showering with wipes in a Buc-ee's bathroom and stuff like that.
01:19There were definitely some, yeah, really questionable, gross heights.
01:23Like, I remember going into the Warped Tour the first day to shower.
01:27We played, like, dead last, and there was, like, water, black water from all the workers up to my ankles,
01:32and I'm, like, standing on the edge trying not to fall in the water.
01:36And I'm like, yeah, Mom, this is rock and roll.
01:39This is what I signed up for.
01:41Well, I want to talk about, we have such a rich history, the Ataris and K-Rock.
01:46And do you remember hearing your single on air for the first time?
01:50Can you elaborate on that?
01:50I do, I do.
01:51It was Jed the Fish played our song San Dimas on his show, like, Late Night.
01:57And, man.
01:57Jed's catch of the day.
01:58Rest in peace, Jed-em, fish-em.
02:00Yeah, he was really good to us, and that was before we ever had any radio play.
02:04So K-Rock has always been so great to us, and we're, like, forever, not going to kiss your butt,
02:09but we're forever in debt to you guys.
02:10Thank you for everything.
02:11Thank you so much.
02:12Well, I wanted to ask you, too, how do you feel about, like, new generations of listeners discovering the song
02:16and not even knowing Boys of Summer was a cover?
02:19Yeah, you know, I think it's an honor for me because I think back,
02:25and there were a lot of songs that I loved that maybe I learned later
02:28that it was not the artist that wrote them, that recorded them.
02:32And there are a lot of cases in point of that.
02:35I mean, think of, like, oh, my goodness, there's so many, like, oh, I can't think of them on the
02:41spot.
02:41Let's say, like, Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush.
02:42Yes, that's a solid one.
02:43There's so many songs.
02:45So to turn somebody on to a song that maybe they wouldn't otherwise know
02:48or somebody come up and be like, hey, we heard you cover Jawbreaker,
02:51so I checked them out.
02:53That, to me, is really great because so many bands were a gateway drug for me into other artists,
02:59and I think that's what great music does is it turns you on to the next thing.
03:04And so to see young kids like our bass players discovering all these bands
03:10and teaching us about music, that's really cool to know that punk rock and indie rock
03:15and everything just keeps growing.
03:16And long after we're gone, these songs by all these artists will still be being discovered
03:21by the next generation of people, and that's amazing.
03:24Well, I mean, totally.
03:25It just, like, totally lives a second life, and it's just, like, you weren't expecting it,
03:28and then here we are, like, two years later on TikTok.
03:30It's, like, viral again.
03:32100%.
03:32Yeah, you would never think.
03:34Like, I remember when I was a kid, like, you know, when Wayne's World broke.
03:37I was a fan of Queen in the 70s because I'm old,
03:39but then suddenly you see Bohemian Rhapsody in a movie,
03:42and everybody's, like, going around banging their head to Queen.
03:46And the same, like, the Beatles come back around for multiple generations
03:50and the Stones and everything else.
03:51That great music lives on forever, and that's what...
03:54Period.
03:55Yeah.
03:55Period.
03:55Well, speaking of movies, I wanted to bring up the fact...
03:58Okay.
03:58If you could write a song for any 80s movie, what movie are you writing for?
04:03I have an answer for you because I think it would match you perfectly,
04:06but go ahead.
04:07I want to hear what you got.
04:08Any 80s movie, that's really hard.
04:10Well, my fiancé and I, we went to the Stand By Me town
04:14on our way down from Vancouver this week
04:17and also the Goonies town of Astoria, Oregon.
04:20So those two are fresh in my mind,
04:22so maybe Stand By Me since we already name-checked Stand By Me
04:26and San Dimas because it's got the perfect amount of heart
04:29and nostalgia, and it's, you know, somber but also uplifting.
04:32So, yeah.
04:33The blueprint of Atari is right there.
04:35What was your choice for me?
04:36I was going to say, I look at you and I hear you.
04:38You are definitely writing a song for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
04:43The cartoon, though.
04:44Go, Ninja, go, Ninja, go.
04:45The cartoon, though, not the live action.
04:47Oh, maybe the live action, yeah.
04:49I remember seeing the first one in the theater as a kid,
04:52but I don't know the second one well enough.
04:55But is it good?
04:56You don't need to.
04:56It's okay.
04:57We'll leave the first one as the best one right there.
04:59Well, thanks for thinking.
05:00Now I have a reason to check it out.
05:02Maybe we're talking a new existence.
05:03Maybe Mirage or Nickelodeon hits you up and they're like,
05:05oh, Christopher, the Atari.
05:07Was that MC Hammer that wrote the song?
05:09Vanilla Ice.
05:09Vanilla Ice was two.
05:10MC Hammer was one.
05:12Yes.
05:12Okay.
05:13Ninja Rap.
05:13So I don't want to take any credit from Vanilla's song.
05:16I don't know.
05:16What was his song in the movie?
05:17Ninja Rap.
05:18He was like, ninja, ninja rap.
05:20He was a little goofy with it.
05:21Man.
05:21It was 91.
05:22What do you expect?
05:23Well, I appreciate you coming by.
05:25Yeah.
05:26I appreciate.
05:26I hope you have amazing fans.
05:28No, we're super stoked.
05:29We just finished a new album and it's hopefully coming out in the early part of next year.
05:34We've been talking to, well, we've been finalizing a new label, a really big label that we can't
05:39announce yet, but we're pretty excited.
05:42And thanks for playing our new single car song earlier in the year.
05:46That was really rad.
05:47So thank you, K-Rock.
05:48Well, I hope you come back next year after it comes out and you come by and do an acoustic
05:51performance or a live performance.
05:53I would love that.
05:54Anything for you guys, anytime.
05:56Christopher, the Ataris.
05:57Cheers.
05:58Have a fun Warped Tour, everybody.
05:59Thank you, everybody.
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