Yr My Favorite (Lady)Bird.

Trevor Kelley is a sharp-tongued, pencil thin, super cute, extra white punk rock kid from Simi Valley, California - who loves wearing those hyper-flamboyant gangster flat brim baseball caps. He always leaves the shiny manufacturers stickers on them - as this lets the world know that he's made it through a tuff life on the streets of S.V. - struggling his way past violent vegan pot luck brunches and oppressive all-ages shows at Gilman Street. Little dude just wrote a totally whip-smart book on emo culture with his lady bestie, Leslie Simon, the strikingly beautiful head honchette from Alternative Press magazine. (It’s entitled Everybody Hurts Everybody Hurts and will be released on April 24th through Harper Collins. You can find out about it at www.myspace.com/theemobook)  

He's accomplished a lot for a boy of his tender young age (just turned 22!)

Someday if you wanted to, you could have a job just like his.
 
TK, you've been writing bout rock bands since you were just a wee snippet. You had yr own punk rock fanzine called Stop Breathin. Why is it spelled without a G?

Ummm... actually, it wasn’t. But if I published it now, seeing that I wear Roc-A-Wear gear on the regular, I would have spelled “Stop Breathing” without a “G” because it’s hood.

Speaking of hood, a few weeks ago at a Fall Out Boy show, Jay Z offered me a piece of Orbit gum and I actually turned him down. I have no idea why I did that. Maybe because I’m anorexic.

Tell us all about your ‘zine. Who were some of the most influential makers of music thatcha got to meet as a result of doing this?

Well, I didn’t technically get to meet him, but Michael Stipe. He was actually a fan of Stop Breathing, and mentioned to his publicist that he wanted to do an interview with me, which seems totally insane now.

You have to understand, this was in the early ’00s, just before “Around The Sun” and “Reveal” started showing cracks in R.E.M.’s pop star armor. So it was really a big deal. It would sort of be like if Morrissey did an email interview with a webzine. Just totally unexpected and thrilling.

Anyway, the interview was great and, about six years later, my friend Brian ended up taking me out to drinks with Michael, at which point I tried to explain to him that I had talked to him many years ago for a fanzine I did.

He didn’t remember, but I managed to completely embarrass myself by asking him about his dog (who is now dead) and drunkenly referring to him as “Mike” when we said goodbye at the end of the evening.

What mags do you write for now?

I write for Alternative Press and Spin and a couple others magazines run by some rather forgiving editors.

But I would love to be part of headline-writing team for The New York Post. That’s my dream job. I mean, if I could come up with one-liners like “Britney Shears: Inside Spears’ meltdown,” I could finally wake up in the morning, look myself in the mirror and say, “Trevor Kelley, you are somebody.”
 
You got to go on like a 4 day booze cruise with My Morning Jacket or The Flaming Lips or whoever it was, I totes can't remember. Was it awesome? Give us the gossip on this.

Yes, it was totally awesome... until about 4:00 PM on the first day, at which point I realized that I was trapped on a boat with a bunch of drugged up retards for the next 72 hours. Ughhh.

I think I went to sleep at 10:00 PM the first day. The next morning I woke up and, at that point, we were docked in Mexico. I ended up wandering around the streets of wherever we were, trying to find some drugs. Obviously, that makes me sound like a terribly irresponsible journalist, but it makes sense in context of the assignment.

When I originally talked to my editor, the whole idea was to really soak in the culture of  professional partiers, and turn in a sort of Hunter S. Thompson-like essay on it. But the problem with such an idea was that (A) I’m not Hunter S. Thompson and (B) once I began talking to these people and revealed I was a journalist, they all stopped talking to me.

Also, I couldn’t find any drugs on my own, so I really had nothing to offer them. Basically,  I looked like a mooch or a narc to everyone I talked to, which, apparently, are two things that professional partiers frown upon.

Anyway, in the midst of this rather miserable assignment, two people overdosed and were allegedly pronounced dead. Because of this, we all had to wait five hours to debark when we docked back in LA. The FBI ended up searching every cabin for drugs but, considering this was the last day of the cruise, they had all been consumed.

That was the inaugural year for that ridiculous festival and, surprise, they never made it to a second year. Thankfully, my story got downsized from a three-page essay to a news piece on the deaths, with commentary from the organizers and Wayne Coyne of the Lips.

The whole things was a bust. However, the Pina Coladas weren’t half bad.
 
Do you like Avenged Sevenfold? Discuss!

Yes, in fact, I do!

I really enjoy the song “Bat Country,” but when I tried to download it as my ringtone, honest to God, it didn’t work. Somehow this seemed ironic. Or karma.

What was the worst interview situation you've ever been in and why? What was the best?

Hmmm... maybe the booze cruise thing? That was pretty awful. The best? Duh, this one.

Are my questions ever so boring? I'm having a totally difficult time being silly right now. Feel free to re-write any of my questions in order to make them funnier.

No, no, no... confidence is the most important part of any interview, Teeter. I believe in you. Perhaps you should ask me why I keep the stickers on my fitted hats. That’s something that Jonah Bayer would definitely ask.

Okay, how come?

Actually, that’s a really personal question. Next!

Okay, let's discuss Everybody Hurts. Les-o and you got a book deal the day after yr 21st birthday! I know this because we had just had a big surprise party for you at Applebees and you had that lethal combo of an entire Bloomin' Onion and four or five too many Long Island Ice Teas. Remember?

I do. Unfortunately, I puked all over the velour Roc-A-Wear sweat suit I was wearing. That was kind of a bummer.
 
Why do I tell you every time I see you that someone needs to give you a pork chop?

The answer to this question is obvious, Teeter: Because no one has given me a pork chop in the time that I’ve known you.

That, and because I’m anorexic.

Who are some of yr fave bands of right now?

I like Dr. Dog a lot. I also think the new Modest Mouse and Fall Out Boy records are fantastic.

However, there hasn’t been an album that was released in 2007 that has been as good as this season of “The Surreal Life Fame Games.” That show is a little bit of magic sprinkled onto each and every one of our lives.

 Yr funny. I like you. In closing, someone needs to give you a porkchop.
 
-www.myspace.com/theemobook-