The Bright Light Social Hour is an independent rock group with its feet planted firmly in the 21st century. They have a popular series of videos on YouTube and a moustache fetish that’s famous. Also, they play really good music. Music so good you should feel slightly embarrassed if one of their songs isn’t on your playlist. Buzzbin had the chance to interview the band and discuss the online music scene. If you look up the Turkish guy on Wikipedia, you’ll be impressed, too. 1. How did you meet? What brought you together? Curt and I met at Southwestern University. He sent out a campus wide email looking to get a band together- he cited a lotta wild stuff that I didn’t think anyone else listened to out there, Dillinger Escape Plan, Blood Brothers, …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead from Austin. After a few lineup changes we found Jo via craigslist (he was playing in the local high school drumline) and A.J. was a friend of my brother’s that I’d always known. The four of us started playing together coming on 4 years ago, I think that’s when we started developing the sound we currently have. 2. You guys come from an area of the country with a fantastic music scene. What do you think of the music scenes in other areas of the country? It varies, but we’ve been surprised by great crowds in a lotta places, including Ohio. Brooklyn’s music scene is an obvious one, always really creative and fresh sounding. What’s particularly good is their awareness of the culture of the current electronic scenes, so it’s awesome to see how those sounds work their way from club based environments to a more traditional band setting. I think it’s a big part of why Brooklyn bands tend to lead the way in setting musical trends. It’s a lot harder to comment on most other city’s music scenes right now since most places don’t have a particular “sound”. It seems that micro-genres have sort of replaced the scenes that certain areas tended to cultivate. Instead of being into Detroit rock because you’re around that scene or because you like that area’s music, nowadays you instead tend to discover a genre and find out about new bands from blogs and other online outlets that cater to your small genre of choice. 3. Your music incorporates a wide variety of elements and influences. How would you describe yourself? We usually say we’re a hard funky indie rock and roll band. We’re influenced by a lot of classic rock, blues, old funk and soul, and house music. Booty shakin’ music. 4. The way media is being delivered is steadily changing. You’ve grown your fanbase quite a bit thanks to your presence on the internet, including your use of social media and your videos. You bolster that with quite a bit of touring. Is it hard to keep up with everything? Yup, but all the time spent in the van is a good time to keep up with that. 5. Who, in all of history, had the mustache of all mustaches? Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey. 6. We’re hoping for a new album in 2012. Anything you can tell us about material you’re working on? We’re not sure when it’ll be done, but we’ve got a few written so far that we’re testing live. Two of them, and one in particular are borrowing some arrangement patterns from house, and another two are really drawing from a more southern feel. 7. How collaborative is your songwriting? It’s very collaborative [sic], all four of us are there for 100% of the songwriting. Sometimes we jam to build ideas, and other times one person will bring in an idea that we’ll work with and build on. 8. Can you work on new material on the road or does it work better when you have down time? So far it’s been pretty hard to sit down and write on the road because it’s tough to get everybody in a practice space. We’ve definitely written parts out of jams playing live though, and then work on those slowly over multiple jams and then really work with it when we get back home. 9. Which artists most influenced you? Sly and the Family Stone, Led Zeppelin, Daft Punk, WAR, Pink Floyd, Bob Ross. 10. Anything you would like to add? We were all conceived to “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love” by Barry White. Not just us. Everyone.