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'Youth mentality drives' Tucson punk band

When guitarist Casey Shafer wanted to start a punk band five years ago, he asked his friend Nathan Cheek to play drums.

"I told him I could play the drums, and I couldn't," Cheek said. "So I started practicing that night. At that point, it was just like, why not?"

Shafer said the secret finally came out about a month ago.

Comprising Cheek, Shafer and bass player and singer Tommy Hardy, Pasta Rocket released an EP in January called, Guys Who Dig Pasta Rocket and the Girls Who Love 'Em on the band's own Pimp-Style Records.

Playing at the University of Arizona for the first time, Pasta Rocket joins Bueno, the Elemenopees and the Dirt Bike Kids tomorrow in the Cellar for a $4 show starting at 5 p.m.

"We got into this business as an alternative to business," said Shafer, 19. "And also to get laid."

Hardy, 18, said he joined the band to have fun. "I'm all about not working," Hardy said. "This is the most fun I've had in my entire life."

Cheek, 19, said part of the reason they play in the band is "to stick it to our parents."

"I just really enjoy being a kid," he added.

Cheek, who said he reads Mark Twain and Edgar Allan Poe, writes most of the band's lyrics.

"Whatever he's listening to at the time, that's what the song tends to reflect," Shafer said. "He's the talent, we pretend."

Cheek said a lot of the lyrics are based on his family and "being the bad kid growing up. Not really the bad kid, but a black sheep."

Shafer said most of the songs revolve around Cheek's "love life, or lack thereof."

Cheek said he is mostly inspired by the lyrics of Less Than Jake.

"They're not deeper, complicated lyrics - really simple," he said. "It strikes a nerve being a kid."

Pasta Rocket was on the bill with NOFX last month at Tucson's Rialto Theatre.

"We used to talk about it," Shafer said. "NOFX was why we became a punk band."

Citing Lagwagon, Weezer and Green Day as other influences, Pasta Rocket has been playing around Tucson since the three members formed the band as Palo Verde High School students. "We grew up together," Shafer said.

"(Cheek) was a goober in high school," he added. "I was the cool geek. I was a nerd. King nerd."

Hardy said, "I was just a geek with a bad haircut."

Pasta Rocket used to play at a now-defunct downtown club called the Store Front.

"We got lucky just in the past year," Shafer said. "We play almost every punk show that comes to Tucson."

The band has played at Double Zero, 121 E. Congress St., with the likes of MxPx and Buck-O-Nine.

"We grabbed a hold of the bigger bands' following," Cheek said.

The three band members work in the pizza business, and Cheek and Hardy are roommates. Shafer lives with the band's old guitarist, who was "kicked out, so to speak," Shafer said.

The band is working on a full-length album to be called Pasta Rocket Does Your Mom, which is scheduled to be released this summer.

Shafer said the band is talking to Microcosm Records, a label based in Santa Monica, Calif.

The band is named after the childhood tricycle of actor Denzel Washington. Cheek said he heard it during an interview on the "Late Show with David Letterman" and it fit.

Shafer adds he thought "that was the most ridiculous name ever."

"I give a lot of credit to our punk rock credibility," Shafer said. "Hard core kids don't like us any more because we played the Rialto, but pop-Blink 182 kids do. You can't win either way."

Cheek said the song "Loser" was written for a girl who annoyed him, while "Senior Citizen Massacre" came about because "I ran into some problems with old people."

"My goal is to make it and stay a kid," he said, adding that he wants to maintain a "young mentality."

"I don't have any further school plans," Cheek said. "It's pretty much the band. You have to put everything into it to be successful at anything like this. It's a compelling argument that never went over too well with my mom."