The House of Blues gets Trendy

Gabe Gott

Former Kent State student Aaron Brooks and his band, Trendy, will be releasing their new CD, Stupid Generation, at the House of Blues Cleveland tomorrow night. PHOTO COURTESY OF TRENDY

Credit: Carl Schierhorn

Aaron Brooks, singer and guitarist of Cleveland-based band Trendy, said he would totally vote for Christopher Walken if the actor ran for president.

Brooks, who had just been interviewed at a local radio station, said he had seen a poster of Walken on the wall of the radio station, which is how the subject came up.

Brooks was at the radio station to promote the upcoming release of Trendy’s new album Stupid Generation and the CD’s release party at the House of Blues Cleveland tomorrow.

Corresponding with the CD release and the show, this week Trendy will also re-launch its revamped Web site, www.trendypunks.com.

Stupid Generation, in a sense, is the pop-punk power trio’s debut album.

“This is the first album that all of the current band members have played on,” Brooks said.

Stupid Generation, Brooks said, is the theme to the album.

Trendy CD Release Party

Playing with Hope on a Rope

Where? House of Blues Cleveland

When? Tomorrow, 7 p.m.

How much? $8

“It’s about the public’s quickness to judge something they don’t know anything about,” he said. “It is also about the stupidity of everyday society.”

The song “United States of Stupidity,” he said, is about Catholicism’s extremist ideals.

On the album’s cover is a picture of a de-evolving man, which Brooks said is meant to be a humorous representation of the album’s theme.

Stupid Generation is technically Trendy’s fourth album – the previous album was a 10-song untitled compilation that the band self-made and handed out at shows around the country. The compilation makes up the majority of the 20,000 albums that the band has sold to date.

But it was Brooks’ antics after he had been called onstage by Green Day to play with the pop-punk band at a show that caught the attention of Green Day’s old management.

“We signed with Green Day’s old management,” Brooks said. They were also the management of Papa Roach and Staind when the two bands were in their prime, and one of them is currently the road manager of Switchfoot.

The band is planning a tour behind the new album, he said, which will start by this summer at the latest.

“We’re going to wait until a couple months down the road – until we know what’s going on,” Brooks said. “We have a couple of things in the works right now.”

He would not say exactly what that entailed.

“It happened a little differently than we planned, but it’s in our best interest that we wait,” Brooks said.

If it was in the best interest of the band, he said, they would also consider signing to a record label. He would not rule out that possibility, but getting on the road is what the band members really want to do.

“We are a live-show, touring act more than anything,” Brooks said.

Trendy’s live show is normally crazy, chaotic, and full of “comedic sexual acts,” he said. In addition to the normal craziness, the band has surprises in store for the CD release show.

“It’s going to be an awesome show,” Brooks said. “It’s going to be the best $8 that anyone has ever spent – at least I hope so.”

Contact ALL reporter Gabe Gott at [email protected].