Here’s the next installment of My First Time, the interview series that gives a little peek into the musical firsts of some bands I’ve been crushing on as of late.This time John, Will and Philip of the band Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin dropped off some selected memories for your reading pleasure. SSLYBY’s new record Pershing comes out this Tuesday. Here’s a track from it.

MP3: Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - I Think I Wanna Die

My First Time …with Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin

First Record You Bought
JOHN CARDWELL: Boyz II Men, the one with “Down on Bended Knee,” “I’ll Make Love to You,” “Jezebel” and “Water Runs Dry” (which is still a pretty song). My parents heard me listening to “I’ll Make Love to You” in my room and took the cd away and put it on top of the refrigerator.

WILL KNAUER: I bought two records on one day: Nevermind and In Utero. I think I was 12. It changed my whole darn life.

PHILIP DICKEY: Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em. My parents let me get it because it had a song about praying. I listened to it every night in my room and danced on my bed. I could do a front flip. I thought the world was going to end because of the Gulf War. I lived in Highland Heights, Kentucky.

First Record That Changed Your Life
JOHN: I don’t know about the first record, but riding around with my dad I remember the first time I heard Like A Rolling Stone, and I was with my mom when I heard Once in a Lifetime and My Best Friend’s Girl, all on classic rock radio–all pretty obvious but all super important. Like I was really moved by all those.

First Concert You Attended
JOHN: It was a double bill of Korn and Rob Zombie in like 1997 or -8. I grew up in south Arkansas where f***ng no band goes. (Although I’m not gonna be above it and say I didn’t kind of like that first Korn album.) My first concert experience I’m proud of was a couple of years later when I found out on the day of the show that Violent Femmes were playing in Little Rock that afternoon. My friend Chris and I were just sitting around his house being stoned and we jumped in the car and hauled a** to get there on time, and it was so amazing. They just played all the hits. Sadly, it was a festival and they were kind of opening for Better Than Ezra. That was depressing.

WILL: Page and Plant reunion tour (for that lame walking into clarksdale cd)

PHIL: I went to see Goldfinger with my friends Merri and Summer in 8th grade. A couple years later, Merri introduced me to Will (our guitarist) at a super bowl party. Then she introduced me to John, our singer, in college. About the show: The Aquabats opened for Goldfinger. I thought their drummer was awesome. He hooked up with a drunk girl in front of me. Then a couple years later he got to be the drummer for Blink 182. I always thought it was impressive that I saw him in Springfield, but no one else cares. I can’t let it go!

First Concert That Blew You Away
WILL: Unfortunately that one. It was my first concert, and happened to be the biggest one I’ve ever been to. Silly stadiums.

PHIL: Wharf at my house. Wharf was Will’s first band. I invited them over to my parent’s house on a Sunday afternoon. They were so loud my mom said they played “demon music.” Then they went outside and broke my sister’s pogo stick. My mom was super pissed, I think she yelled at me. I decided my band, Thinking Version, totally sucked compared to Wharf, so I asked if I could play with them.

JOHN: That one. The Femmes. Although Rob Zombie did have the guitarist with the blood-filled guitar. And the singer for Korn kept asking the girls in the audience to show their t*ts, which they did. So I don’t know, it’s a toss-up. P.S. Jonathan Richman just played in Springfield the other night at this small a** bar where we all play. It was one of the concert highlights of my life. Then I went home and threw up in a trashcan beside my bed.

Read the rest after the jump.

First Time Playing Live
JOHN: Um, my first band played at this outdoor greek theater type thing in my hometown of Magnolia in ‘95 or ‘96. There were like twenty people there, literally all of our parents and siblings and like two of our friends. A few months after that we played at the Magnolia Blossom Festival/ World Championship Steak Cook-off, which apparently has been broadcast on the Food Network or something for the past few years or so, which is crazy.

WILL: February 1999 at Cully’s Pub in Springfield, MO. I was 16 and terrified. Tom broke a string on his bass while we were playing our second song which was about aliens trying to save all the files off their computers before their spaceship crashed. He just
took off his bass and went and sat down by the back door. Me and Kevin kept rocking out. Classic.

First Tour Horror Stories/Unexpected Great Shows/etc
JOHN: We just had no idea what we were doing. Not that we’re seasoned veterans or anything, but we’ve kind of figured out what to do, what to expect out of clubs and stuff, how to get what you want and how to not piss people off and whatnot. Haven’t figured out how to play live, though (emoticon wink.) Some of our best shows have been smaller colleges like Beloit and Carleton–those kids go f*cking nuts. The Mute Math show in Portland was pretty crazy–I think people crowd surfed. So far our LA shows have all sucked. I’m not sure why that is…

WILL: We took our van out, a 1986 Vanagon that my friend Beth had bought for us to return home from New Hampshire in. His name was Steven. The tour was only two weeks and I think we played 4 or 5 shows. I was worried Steven would break down but he held strong. It was about a week after the tour that I had gone to Mr Yens to get some orange chicken that he broke down. Anti freeze was everywhere.

First Instrument You Learned
PHIL: I started playing piano the day Bill Clinton won the 1992 election. My favorite piece of equipment is my great aunt’s Casio 401 keyboard. She played it at her nursing home and I inherited it years later. It’s on a lot of our songs: “Oregon Girl,” “Anne Elephant,” “Glue Girls,” etc. We’re going to bring it on tour with us for the first this spring. Our friend C.H. is going to be our touring keyboard player. He just graduated high school and he doesn’t have a serious job or anything, so he gets to go on tour with us. His band is awesome: Southern Hills Tunes .

JOHN: Trumpet, I think. Although I started playing guitar around the same time. I was also reeeaaaly into my crappy DOD distortion pedal back then.

WILL: I learned how to play recorder in third grade, and along with the rest of my school that had no music program, I learned such hits as “Hot Crossed Buns” and “Under the Sea” from the Little Mermaid. The first instrument I loved was guitar. I had started on bass but quickly became quite comfortable with my moms classical acoustic, The Conn. I wrote my first songs on it without knowing any chords, just putting one finger down and strumming. We still use it and it was played all over on Broom and Pershing. The song “Deadright” is all Conn, baby.

First Band You Were a Part Of
JOHN: Our name was too embarrassing to even mention. The second one was the one I’m in now. I should get out more.

PHIL: The Brain Ded Idiots. I was in 4th grade. It was me, my friend Nick, and my sister Sharon. The main goal was to request songs on Oldies 105.1. We tried to get my sister to play football with us on Thanksgiving and she wouldn’t. I think that’s why we broke up.

WILL: Wharf. WHARF!!!!

First Time Getting Press or Being Interviewed
WILL: Probably when Spin said they were going to run a blurb with a picture in the back of an issue. We went outside with my cheap digital camera and took the pictures ourselves. They ended up using one of us that John took with his hand outstretched holding the camera trying to get us all in. We were just on my mom’s porch. We gave the picture credit to our friend Merek who wasnt even there.

PHIL: Chris Baty, a writer from San Francisco, found us on the internet and wrote a review for the SF Weekly. I asked him for advice and he said we needed a better website address: www.morawk.com/boris

First Song You Wrote or Recorded
WILL: My first song was called “Bill Shot Chris’s Wing Off.” It was written on the spot when my brother was playing Star Fox 64 and Tom and myself were sitting around trying to figure out what the tuning knobs were for. Suddenly Chris yelled “Bill shot my wing off!” The rest is history.

PHIL: I wrote a song about skateboarding when I was in 8th grade. I just got back from a Jr. high band trip and dedicated it to my neighborhood.

“Look who is back in town/ Look who you wish not was around/ Look who’s gonna look you in the eye/ Look who’s gonna make you cry”

JOHN: Uh, first song I wrote was called ‘Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine’. I didn’t realize there was already a song called that. The first song I recorded was, I think, Folsom Prison Blues with an acoustic guitar onto my grandpa’s dictophone.

First Awesome Thing to Happen Solely Because You Were in a Band
WILL: Falling asleep one night and listening over and over to part of a song we had just written and recorded. Haven’t had that feeling since then. I think I was 14

PHIL: I got to hang out at a country club. The guitarist in my first band lived in Highland Springs. I would just go to his house and order mini-pizzas, drink real Cherry Coke, sneak out, watch R rated movies, call girls, smoke cigarettes, and play really loud music.

First Horrible Thing to Happen Solely Because You Were in a Band
WILL: Broke my hand.

PHIL: Nothing horrible has ever happened. We’re really scared of getting in a bad wreck.

First Reactions From Your Family When You Played Them Your Music
WILL: Both my parents liked it and were very supportive. When I played my mom our cover of “About a Girl” she said she couldn’t even tell a difference until the vocals started. The same is true today.

PHIL: They always ask about indie-music because that’s how the local newspaper describes us.

First Musical Obsession
JOHN: Well, it’s hard to say. I mean when I was a kid I was way into country, but that’s mainly because it’s all I heard and I’ve always, always loved music. I still like the country stuff I liked growing up–George Strait and Garth Brooks and all those guys, plus a lot of the classic country stuff. So I guess that was my first musical obsession.

WILL: Nirvana. Thinking Version.

PHIL: I want to say the Beatles or Nirvana, but it was actually church music. My parents let me take a tape recorder to church so I could tape the worship band. It was the first time I heard a drum set. I went to a weird church. They had dancing tambourine players. They wore weird long dresses and all their dance moves were choreographed. They were all incredibly attractive and I “got in love.” I was 6.