October 4, 2003 marked the ending of 2 crucial bay area bands: The Damage Done and For The Crown. Prior to For The Crown's last show, ScenePointBlank got an interview with the band to reflect on the band's memorable times, taking crowns on dates, and fighting off groupies. This is over a year old, sorry about the delay!
ScenePointBlank: What's your name and what do you play?
Donald: I'm Donald, I play guitar.
Andrew: I'm Andrew and I sing.
ScenePointBlank: How did Flinch Factor develop into For The Crown?
*mob laughs*
Andrew: Ok, do you want a serious answer?
ScenePointBlank: Yeah.
Andrew: We were this really shitty punk band. We played this show with a band called Figure Four from Canada and Through It All.
*laughter*
Andrew: You can say 'Haha' like laughs in there.
*Matt arrives*
Andrew: That's Matt our bassist.
Matt: Basically I run the show. No matter what Andrew says, I wrote all that shit.
Andrew: We played that show, and everyone was like, 'Man, this band sucks.' So I was like, 'Dude, I want to be in a hardcore band.' So the next day we broke up, and that same day, we started For The Crown.
Donald: Basically.
ScenePointBlank: Where did the name For The Crown come from?
Andrew: We were talking about Flinch Factor, none of us liked the name, and our drummer was like, 'Yeah, we should call ourselves Cloud Factories.' *laughter*
Andrew: And I was like, 'How about we call ourselves The Crown?' But then there was that metal band, The Crown. So we just threw the 'For' in there.
ScenePointBlank: Was it originally the number four?
Andrew: It was actually the number eight, but then we changed it to four, then we changed it to the word for.
Matt: Before the number, it was like the verb, like eating, like how I'm eating this apple right now.
*Matt is eating apple*
ScenePointBlank: How did Blueprint go for you guys?
Matt: Recording the record was hecka fun, it was really fun to record. We weren't extremely happy with how the layout came out, but I like the songs, we all like the songs and we're all happy with how it sounds.
Andrew: I think it's very diverse musically, because we wrote the songs over the course our entire time as a band. So a couple of the songs we wrote in the first two months of our existence, and some of them we wrote the night before, because we did write one the night before.
ScenePointBlank: Which one was that?
Matt: Don't tell, it'll ruin it. Find it yourselves.
Andrew: Yeah, it's like a 'Where's Waldo?', except it's a song, and it's not waldo.
ScenePointBlank: Any clues?
Matt: No... it's about buildings...
ScenePointBlank: Have you written anything new since that?
Andrew: Yeah, we wrote five songs, but they aren't going to be recorded or released.
ScenePointBlank: Why?
Matt: The reason why is because we felt extremely rushed and we wanted to put something out that we were proud of, and certain members in the band did not feel like putting the effort into it. It just didn't work out.
ScenePointBlank: Do you have any final releases?
Andrew: The demo discography thing is actually a Rick Ta Life type thing. I put that out originally at our record release show for the first twenty five people who bought Blueprint, and then Duncan A.K.A. Rick Ta Life bootlegged it and is selling at the show tonight.
Matt: It's cool, we don't mind, it's all good.
Andrew: Duncan's cute.
*Phil enters*
ScenePointBlank: What was your favorite show?
Matt: The Nick Traina Benefit we played here
Donald: And Seattle.
Matt: Yeah, and Seattle.
Donald: And Prescott.
Matt: We played here [at Gilman] for that Nick Traina Benefit with All Bets Off and some other bands. It was really good. We did a Link 80 cover, and Phil played Trumpet. It was the first time people reacted to our songs. They weren't just like 'wow, cool, new songs.' They actually moved around.