When Five Friends Play

Calico. is "a boy band with instruments," drummer Ian Martinez '01 announces, and they all laugh. He describes their sound as "every possible genre strung together with hyphens . . . minus a lot of them."

Chris Bradley '01 suggests that their music is "melodic pop with a rock edge," and with mock-seriousness he adds, "spiritually, we go back to the Beatles."

In fact, it is nearly impossible to get anything but mock-seriousness out of these guys, and that might just be the key to their success. So much of being a campus band is finding the elusive balance between work and play — not just between academics and their music, but also in this case in how they approach their participation in the group itself. The members of calico. are dedicated to the band but happy to have fun with it.

The five member ensemble consists of Martinez, Bradley (guitar, keyboard, trumpet, backup vocals), Fletcher Foti '01 (lead guitar), Richard Bruno '02 (vocals, bass) and Jonathan Quigley (vocals, guitar), a student at the Catholic University of America.

They haveve been playing together for two-and-a-half years and have been seen on campus at Quadrangle, Campus and Colonial clubs, Lawnparties, Rockefeller College, and Richardson Auditorium (accompanying BodyHype).

The five members are friends and roommates as well as bandmates, and Quigley, their off-campus contingent, muses, "Well, the thing about calico. is that it's three really tall guys, one not so tall guy and a midget. But that doesn't seem to affect our playing one bit."

Martinez and Foti met as freshmen in Rocky, when they discovered their mutual interest in the band Weezer. They formed what Martinez now describes as a "wannabe metal punk band," but when Bruno (Foti's best friend from high school) matriculated the following year, and they found fellow Rocky-ite Bradley to round out the group, calico. was born.

And right away this was not just a "recreational activity," Bradley says. Each band member took the group seriously, and since they had all been in high school bands, they were prepared to work. With focused goals and an eye on the final product, they quickly began recording songs and performing. And at their concerts, they threw in some covers — songs by Weezer, as a tribute to the band that inspired them.

Bruno and Foti grew up together in Little Rock, Ark. Quigley lived on the same block as Martinez when they were children on Long Island. Bradley has been back with Bruno and Foti to their hometown.

This is a band with tight bonds and a history of collaboration. And their fans could tell from the start. Calico. has gained a large following on campus and Quigley cites not only the quality of their music but also that they are "very take-home-to-your-mom-able."

Martinez lists the e-mail responses he has gotten from audience members who have loved a concert. "Getting such reactions makes being in a band so rewarding," he says. Well, that and the beauty of the concept of audience members who watch them and become 'star-f—ked.' Martinez declares, "I score because of calico."

The band members practice intensely if they have a performance coming up, but scheduling is always tricky since Quigley lives four hours away. "Every time I go there it's like a surprise, though. They know I'm coming, but when I show up, everybody is all happy . . . and blatantly homosexual. And it's good times, and we practice like maniacs: 10 hours a day last time I was there."

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And then this year, in what Quigley deems a "valiant effort to further the closeness of the band," the group's seniors decided to room together. "In a way, it has been extremely productive," Bradley says.

They have been able to collaborate by bouncing ideas off each other in ad hoc sessions in the common room. But ultimately, it has been a difficult year for the band because, Bradley explains, students who are trying to juggle academics and extracurriculars need separate spaces to do both.

Quigley agrees that their best times together were when the juggling game was not an issue: "We spent most of August together last year when we recorded our demo and that was great. No one was doing school work. We just worked during the day and wrote and recorded at night."

Despite complications this year, they all clearly believe in each other's talent. Martinez talks of Bruno pounding out melodies for hours until they are right, with Foti meticulously refining them. "Fletcher's the stud," he says.

Bradley jokes, "I choose to think of myself as the one of us who'll succeed," but he quickly drops the pretense, confiding that the other band members were whom he hoped to find when he came to Princeton: hardworking, 'decent' students anxious to branch out from academia and put their musical training to work.

Bradley speaks about the obstacles the band faced with the campus administration. They are not allowed to store their instruments at Woolworth where they practice, and they have often been left scrounging for rehearsal space.

They made their temporary home in the Rocky Common room last year, but, as Bradley says, "that's not fair: Rocky students don't deserve to be subjected to our music at 11:30 on a Tuesday night just because they live near the common room."

He laments that this year's addition of Frist Campus Center has done nothing to alleviate the problem — it is a building designed without a lot of space for students who are not studying or eating, he says.

The band has recently begun playing off-campus as well. To book gigs at other colleges, you simply have to be in a relationship with a girl at that school, Martinez says, adding jokingly that because of this, he garners most of their invitations. It is a valid method of getting more exposure though he argues, pointing out that REM got their start by stepping from college campus to college campus in this manner.

The members have big plans for calico. "I would love to just see our demo distributed to the music gods that listen to music and say 'good, sell,' " Quigley says.

Their game plan is to finish the band's press-packets and then "send them via mail to big people and small people and hopefully the big people become interested," he explains. "But in the least, I'm hoping the small people are slightly interested." And then he clarifies, "I mean, Ian is as small as they get, but maybe he's not the right little person."

This boy band is next performing at Campus Club, 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 17. For more information about the group and to check out their demo, visit their Website, http://calico.princeton.edu.