Cobra Starship

Sun 31st Aug, 2008 in Features

It’s comforting to know that somebody, at least, is benefiting from the recent rash of disasters befalling Qantas Airways. “You wanna hear something fucking awesome?” Gabe Saporta asks me. “We came over in this jumbo jet designed for four hundred people, and there were seriously only forty of us on it – just us and The Academy Is… We tried to work out how much each of our tickets would have been worth, considering we could each have a row of our own to stretch out in. I just took a Xanax and slept the whole way. No, that’s a lie. I gave all my Xanax to Victoria.”

Gabe is Cobra Starship’s lead singer, while Victoria handles back-up vocals and the keytar. Along with bandmates Ryland, Nate and Alex, they’re one of the sassiest acts in modern music, bringing a mix of biting wit, seductive tease, and energetic joy to their shows and albums. Apart from the plane ride from the USA to Australia, Gabe’s not had much luck with sleep lately, though you’d never know it to watch him bounce and dance across the stage throughout Cobra’s performances.

“I’m pretty much just running off the energy of the kids in the crowd. They put out so much and I feed off of that. I’ve had hotel beds for the last two nights but my body doesn’t know what to do with a real bed, because we were on Warped tour for months and caught our plane here straight from the last night of that, and so I’m used to sleeping in the little coffin-beds of the bus. Not that I’m complaining about any of that! I don’t want it to come across like I’m pulling one of those – œacting is hard!’ whines.”

The possibility of Gabe projecting any such entitlement is laughably unlikely. Cobra Starship, despite international popularity, are accommodating and generous with their fans above, and beyond the levels most other bands could even imagine. “We wouldn’t be anything without these kids; I know that,” Gabe explains. “We aren’t superstars. I didn’t expect anybody in Australia to even know who we are, because we don’t sell many records here.”

I suggest that this might be partly due to the fact that most of the people I know who own Cobra Starship’s two albums bought them directly from their record label’s website. Last year the band ran a promotion in which each copy of Viva la Cobra! came with a Polaroid photo taken by the band. Lots of the Cobra fans I know got their copy of the CD in that deal, meaning that many of the Polaroids are now down under.

“That is crazy,” Gabe says, apparently unable to fathom the scope of the band’s fan base across the world. “And look, I know albums are hard to find here a lot of the time. They get released later, or not at all, and so kids download the songs instead. I don’t give a shit about the downloading stuff, because when an Australian crowd sings along with me at a show, that’s fucking mind-blowing. I don’t care how they got the songs.”

Because both Panic at the Disco and The Academy Is… are already running pre-show meet and greets on the tour, there isn’t the time or logistics for Cobra Starship to do a formal signing session. So, on the first night of the tour, they could be found at the merch counter in the foyer after the set, giving out autographs and attention to all who asked for them.

This same philosophy of gratitude to fans extends to the band’s interactions online, where Gabe and Victoria cheerfully venture into the wilder corners of fandom to interact with their followers. It’s not many bands who’d willingly spend time amongst macros and trashy gossip, but Gabe’s enthusiasm for a chance to chat with his fans remains undaunted. “I’ve got nothing but love in my heart,” he explains in response to a comment from me about his positivity and how unlike it is from the negativity which infuses much of the internet. “Hate’s a waste of time.”

Cobra’s online life is also noteworthy for the attitude the band displays to slash fan-fic. Victoria has been known to leave complimentary and thankful feedback on stories starring her, and Gabe has mentioned in a number of interviews his appreciation for the queer-positive message present in the hobby. I tell Gabe I find this attitude really admirable, since simply agreeing with the politics of the genre also brings along with it the doubtlessly awkward fact that these stories are about him having sex with people he actually knows.

After laughing for a little while, Gabe answers in a tone that’s lighthearted but sincere. “I’m a fan of anything that can encourage people to be creative,” he says. “I’m only able to do what I do now because I was inspired by the bands I grew up listening to. Whatever makes kids and to think and imagine and create and write is awesome…and if they want to write stories about me sucking my friend’s dick, that’s cool.”

Conversations with Gabe tend to wander to places one might not have guess they’d end up. At one point, we get into a conversation about the band Insane Clown Posse, and how that band’s fans have been largely responsible for the continued production of the soft drink Faygo, due to ICP’s demands that the fans drink it. “Oooh, you called them by their initials. You’re outed as a fan,” Gabe teases. I protest the allegation, and suggest that maybe Cobra could pick a product to endorse in the same way, and skew the course of capitalism. “You just blew my mind right there,” he replies. “I think we’d do it with string cheese. In Canada they call it cheese string and I got really confused.”

The iconography of Cobra Starship is an eclectic thing. It encompasses an eighties electronica aesthetic, a two-handed gang sign resembling a cobra snake’s hood and fangs (to make the gesture is to – œthrow the fangs up’) and Gabe’s chunky gold necklace featuring a photograph of Justin Timberlake.

“I can’t wait for his new CD,” Gabe enthuses. “Have you seen Black Snake Moan? It’s got Justin Timberlake and Samuel L Jackson in it.” Since Samuel L Jackson was also in Cobra Starship’s first music video, for the song Snakes on a Plane, this puts Gabe only one degree of separation away from JT. “Yeah, and I’ve got a friend who knows him. I haven’t met him though. I don’t think I want to meet him. It’d be hard to live up to the expectation.”

And, to answer the most important question of all: what would Gabe do if he faced a zombie horde? “I’d throw the fangs up,” he answers promptly. “Make them all Cobras.”