Leeds Festival 2019: Patent Pending: "Rock Music Is Dying, It’s Time For New Things To Happen&q

New York’s finest Patent Pending spend most of their weekends selling out headlining tours, chowing down on Wagamama’s and storming festival stages with their ecstatic, off-the-wall personalities that become infectious amongst their audience, resulting in purely beautiful insanity with their live performances.

This time they were wreaking havoc on the stages of Reading and Leeds, bringing their latest single ‘Punk Rock Songs’ along for the ride. After 10 years of making music and travelling around the world its been a rollercoaster ride of a time for Patent Pending. We managed to chat with them at Leeds Festival to talk about the past 10 years of changes, whether Rock is really dead, the key to longevity of musicians and the superior UK foods.

You guys played Leeds today and you just came from the stages of Reading yesterday. How’s it been so far?

Joe Ragosta (Vocals): ‘It’s been amazing, it’s actually been one of my favourite festivals ever.’

Corey DeVincenzo (Bass): ‘Chaos! It’s great.’

Joe: ‘The weather by the way?’

Corey: ‘The weather has been insane.’

Seeing as you guys have toured the UK so much, do you have any favourite experiences here?

Joe: ‘Non-professionally I want to take it back to the first time I had Wagamama, it changed my whole life. I’ve spent a whole fortune there, I ate it the whole week.’

Any other food restaurants, I know Nandos is a favourite?

Corey: ‘Oh my god!’

Joe: ‘We’ve been going hard at Nandos.’

Joe: ‘Well some of the things for us is the first time we got to come here, we were blown away. Bowling For Soup brought us here too and it built an immediate fan base for us which was incredible gift that they gave us. Then we’ve been headlining our tours and selling out venues ever since which has been amazing to watch as we grow.’

You guys have great chemistry, if you had a sitcom what would it be?

Joe: ‘Our sitcom show would be perfect because Corey is dark and moody and I’m just a big ball of “look at me.” It’s a perfect odd couple show.

Like “What happens when Joe breaks Corey’s controller- find out next week” kinda thing haha.’

You guys have been going since 2001 and the climate for music has changed a lot since then. What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in the industry as a band?

Joe: ‘Dude the first time we went on tour my dad drove us because we were children AND there wasn’t GPS so we had to print out directions from mapquest.com.’

Corey: ‘Instagram and social media, it has really changed things like man, it has changed everything.’

Joe: ‘You used to have to send actual packages to record labels to get booked. Now you can just email it.

But musically, here’s what I’ve learnt, only the good songs survive and that’s consistent. Blink 182 is a good example; the thing is with them their hits remain no matter where they are in their career. But all these bands who survive are the ones who have great songs and the bands who are faking it break up. For better or worse we’re still here, we didn’t fake it.’

Corey: ‘We’re still dragging ourselves along!

Speaking of songs you guys released your single ‘Punk Rock Songs’, it’s your first single since 2015. Will there be any follow up album, anything you can reveal to us today?

Joe: ‘Here’s what I’m gonna say, I think Rock music kinda sucks right now. The genre is dying, it’s not dead and is alive and well here in England. But before The Grammy’s air they give The Children’s Album Of The Year, The Gospel Album Of The Year and this year, they gave the Rock album of the year BEFORE The Grammy’s aired. Rock music doesn’t even have enough respect to be aired on national TV. Hip Hop is thriving but Rock music isn’t because it isn’t taking any chances, it isn’t dangerous and hasn’t been since MCR- except for Twenty-One Pilots.’

Corey: ‘Yup, that sounds right.’

Joe: ‘What I’m saying is maybe we’re not the dangerous people but we’re gonna try and do something different, it’s time for new things to happen we can’t keep rehashing Skate Punk and Hardcore. Something crazy’s gotta happen so for better or worse we’re gonna do something weird and it might suck but something new has to happen.’

“I think Rock music kinda sucks right now. Rock music doesn’t even have enough respect to be aired on national TV. Rock music isn’t taking any chances, it isn’t dangerous and hasn’t been since MCR, except for Twenty-One Pilots.”

We’ve got to wrap this up sadly, but I leave you with this question. As you speak of being dangerous and out there and we’re at Leeds Festival, what is one band or artist Patent Pending would collaborate with that’s completely out of your genre?

Joe: ‘I would collaborate with the person I actually believe I’d be in another life, Lizzo. No questions asked, I’m convinced here and me have the same brain.’

Corey: ‘Mine’s obviously The 1975.’

Interview - Yasmine Summan