Spring Break
Cheap Seats serves up 'retro pop' for all
Chris Sannino
Issue date: 10/30/09 Section: Arts & Entertainment
I was hanging around World Café Live for their "Live is Five" fifth anniversary show; I'd come for the Dock Street Brewery sponsored drafts and eclectic mix of original local Americana artists but ended up staying after meeting Paul Sipio, keyboardist for Cheap Seats. The band soon took the stage and ignited a dance party that was first a low key gathering of opening acts and greeting supporters.
Featuring former members of The Starting Line, Days Away, and Capitol Risk, Cheap Seats is a crowd-pleasing machine manifested in an upbeat energetic pop band with a unique '60s soul twist complete with catchy horn lines. Front man Vincent John commands the stage with resounding vocals and an animated performance filled out by Paul Sipio, Chris Frangicetto, Tom Gryskiewicz and Sam Serinsky. They opened with "Chained To Me," one of their most fun crowd sing-a-longs and a rhythmically driving demonstration of their lock tight vocals and finesse. Their next show is Oct. 30 at the Marathon Bar in University City with another big show Nov. 9 at World Café Live. I talked to Paul and Vince while they were in Brooklyn recording.
How did you guys get started playing and how's that going?
Vince: The band started when The Starting Line was kind of falling out and I met up with Tom, our drummer, and at the time Matt from The Starting Line was playing guitar with us and we were called The Seventy Six. Matt slowly faded out of the picture and decided to go into management and he'd been a close friend through the entire process, but this left just myself and Tom. Then we recruited Paul to be a part of the process, and he and I reconceptualized the whole project. We called it Cheap Seats, and then we found our two missing links Chris and Sam, our bass player and guitar player, respectively.
I hear you guys are in the process of recording an album right now?
Vince: We are doing a few tracks to kind of see how it goes with some guys up in Brooklyn and so far it's going real, real well.
Featuring former members of The Starting Line, Days Away, and Capitol Risk, Cheap Seats is a crowd-pleasing machine manifested in an upbeat energetic pop band with a unique '60s soul twist complete with catchy horn lines. Front man Vincent John commands the stage with resounding vocals and an animated performance filled out by Paul Sipio, Chris Frangicetto, Tom Gryskiewicz and Sam Serinsky. They opened with "Chained To Me," one of their most fun crowd sing-a-longs and a rhythmically driving demonstration of their lock tight vocals and finesse. Their next show is Oct. 30 at the Marathon Bar in University City with another big show Nov. 9 at World Café Live. I talked to Paul and Vince while they were in Brooklyn recording.
How did you guys get started playing and how's that going?
Vince: The band started when The Starting Line was kind of falling out and I met up with Tom, our drummer, and at the time Matt from The Starting Line was playing guitar with us and we were called The Seventy Six. Matt slowly faded out of the picture and decided to go into management and he'd been a close friend through the entire process, but this left just myself and Tom. Then we recruited Paul to be a part of the process, and he and I reconceptualized the whole project. We called it Cheap Seats, and then we found our two missing links Chris and Sam, our bass player and guitar player, respectively.
I hear you guys are in the process of recording an album right now?
Vince: We are doing a few tracks to kind of see how it goes with some guys up in Brooklyn and so far it's going real, real well.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Jenna
posted 11/02/09 @ 10:23 AM EST
I love Cheap Seats! And I absolutely love the Beach Boys reference. You can definitely feel the influence in the music.
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