Patent Pending: Battle of the Bands 2012 Northeast

Describe your sound and your audience in your own words.
Our fans are out of their minds, as is the band. It’s this weird place where status doesn’t seem to matter and just a weird community where everybody, no matter what they look like, or what clique they’re from or what music they listen to outside of Patent Pending, all these people just come together and just party. And I don’t mean that in like the Ke$ha type of party. I mean like a celebration of all things awesome every time the band gets together with our crazy, crazy out of control fans.

Tell us about your first gig ever — just how awkward was it?
It was the most awkward, terrible, waste of time for anybody that came. And we couldn’t have been happier. Afterwards, we were like, “Alright, we’re famous now.” My brother was in the band at the time and he didn’t want to play any instruments and he didn’t want to sing anything. His job was to sit on stage – he ate fruit cups while we were playing. None of us knew how to play our instruments. Somebody may have taken their shirt off at one point. [The set] was like 11 Blink-182 covers, four MXPX covers, a Nirvana cover, five Green Day covers.

What’s the strangest thing anyone has ever said about your band?
Our band is weird because in certain cities, I guess, we’re a huge band. People really think that we’re famous and people know about us. But most of the places we go, we couldn’t get arrested if we tried — no one knows who we are at all. So we played this huge college show where we were billed as one of the big bands. And I guess the girl who wrote the article for the school paper didn’t know about our band because she was from out of town. So she wrote, “The semi-famous (I guess) Patent Pending will be joining our stage for Spring Fest.” We actually read that and dedicated at least three minutes on stage to talking about it and reading it out loud.

Why should you win this competition?
I mean if you want the God’s honest truth, I checked out all the bands that made it this far, and I don’t know that we should win it. All these bands are awesome… But, I guess if we were to win, it should be based on the fact that we are a battle band. We battle for every single piece of everything that we have. We started with nothing. Absolutely no knowledge of what we were doing. And we bought a van and we left home because the venues at home wouldn’t let us keep playing after we were so bad. We hit the road and we learned how to play and we learned how to write songs and we accomplished a lot of cool things.

What’s your next project?
We’re leaving for a nationwide tour with Bowling For Soup. If we win Battle of the Bands, we’re playing the Billboard Awards. Then after that, we’ve got Warped Tour coming up this summer. We’re doing probably half of it or a quarter of it and then we’re expecting to head overseas in the fall.

What’s the weirdest thing to ever happen to you on tour?
We were on this tour called the Bamboozle Road Show with America’s sweethearts, Hanson, and they were a difficult band to meet on the tour because you know, it’s Hanson. I was starving, there wasn’t any food in Houston that was open. I heard an ice cream truck so I jumped out and went to it and when I got there’ they were at the ice cream truck and I hung out with Hanson. We ended up doing a choreographed river dance routine. Together. With Hanson. Like Zach, and Isaac, and Taylor. It was 3 a.m. in Houston outside of a venue there downtown. There’s footage of it on our YouTube page.

If your band had to come up with a plan for total world domination in the next 10 seconds, what would it be?
Ice cream, pizza, and oh my god, I got this. Wait, Nutella flavored ice cream and pizza mandatory breakfast, lunch and dinner. Because who can be pissed off at each other if they’re eating that for all of their meals? I imagine that’s the closest thing to world peace that we can possibly come to.

Interview by Sarah Maloy

“One Less Heart To Break”

“Dance Til We Die”

Patent Pending Members:

Joe Ragosta, vocals
Rob Felicetti, guitar/vocals
Marc Kantor, guitar
Travis McGee, bass
Anthony Mingoia, drums

Patent Pending’s Bio:

From the basements of Long Island to amphitheaters across the nation, Patent Pending has been attacking the world with their anthemic brand of pop-tinged punk rock.

From the acoustic soliloquy “Spin Me Around,” to the acclamation that is the title track, the band’s fourth album, 2011’s “Second Family,” delivers an unforgettable set of sing-alongs.

PP has also been enjoying the success of music videos for “One Less Heart To Break” and “Dance TIl We Die,” gaining rotation on MTV2 and being featured on MTV’s The Real World. After years on the road, the Long Island, NY five-piece continues to deliver an over the top and unforgettable live show. Having opened for Gym Class Heroes, Cobra Starship, and Bowling For Soup nationally, as well being veterans of the Vans Warped Tour and earning a slot on the 2012 Bamboozle festival bill, Patent Pending is showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

In a recent interview Joe was quoted saying “This band isn’t just something that we do, it’s the only thing that we do.” This attitude matched with the undying support of the “Second Family community” the band has built from the ground up is the force that drives this band to places they never dreamed they could get to. “Welcome to our Second Family.”

Website: PatentPendingmusic.com
Twitter: @PTPGOfficial
Facebook: Patent Pending