Self-described "garage rock upstarts" Seventeen are a band comprising Jason Adams '92-'93 (lead guitarist/vocal), Jon Baird (guitar/vocals), Chris Baird (bass/vocals) and Tony Mellace (drums). Seventeen throw themselves into a hard rock, punk style of music. The Harvard Crimson interviewed Jason Adams to discuss the band's debut album, Bikini Pie Fight, an energetic work that meanders from punk to disco.

The Harvard Crimson: How did you get involved with the band?

Jason Adams: Well, I got to Harvard, and everybody was a hot shot in high school, so I looked for something to differentiate myself. At the time, I was doing terrible in school. I went from a physics concentration to some other disciplines and then ended up in computer science as a vocational sort of thing. I was doing so badly that I had to take some time off. I had no money and I didn't want to go back to my hometown in Arkansas. So, I stayed in Boston. I was really poor and I didn't have anything to do, so I learned to play guitar really well. When I got back to school, rather than worrying about my classes, I spent more time hanging out with my friends. Especially since there is no scene at Harvard. There's nothing to do besides sitting in a room with a linoleum floor and a keg and stumbling around with a bunch of guys.

Anyway, my friend John, his brother and their friend Nick started this band that had some real chemistry going. They were doing really well and it was along the lines of what I like to play and hear-aggressive music with big, heavy guitar. We'd go to shows and it would just be a hen party, with all these women there, and I told myself "I've got to do that." They invited me to join the band, and I was really flattered. We did an album, which took us about two weeks to record because we only recorded on nights and weekends. It was a really rough couple of weeks since we all worked 45 or 50 hours a week. We'd end up getting something like four hours of sleep a night for those two weeks. People liked that CD and we started getting better shows and the shows were getting more people. Eventually, we got invited to play in the WBCN Rumble, which is like a coming of age event, and it makes you think, "Okay, we're legit now."

THC: How did the band come up with Bikini Pie Fight as an album name?

JA: The idea came during a bonfire, you know, when anything is funny, so it was personal to us. Our manager Deb had mentioned a band called American Hi-fi and John thought that she had said "American Pie Fight." He thought that name was really funny and kept harping on it. So the other guys in the band thought that we would make a variation on that. That's how Bikini Pie Fight came about.