Guitar Knives
Monica Gallegos—The Tech
Band Members:
Kevin Rustagi: guitar, drums
Alex Arambula: lead guitar
Tom Cervantes: bass, piano, guitar
Website/Email
www.theguitarknives.com,
theguitarknives@mit.edu
Where does the band practice?
The Burton Conner music room.
How and when did The Guitar Knives get started?
Alex met Kevin during his orientation at some random Christian smores night (even though Alex is not religious). Kevin was wandering around the student center trying to rush freshmen for PBE, and Alex was looking for smores. The two hit it off and Kevin brought Alex to a jam session during Rush. Tom knew Kevin from FLP their freshman year. He learned bass his freshman year and started to talking to Kevin about it — this is when Kevin invited him to jam sessions at Burton Conner. After that, the three of us started jamming together, and officially became The Guitar Knives early March 2009.
Band’s influences?
Kevin — Weezer, Jet, Boston.
Alex – U2, Kings of Leon, The Killers.
Tom – The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Queen, Parliament, and Funkadelic.
What are some of the crazy/notable experiences the band has had?
We tend to take field trips as a band. We took one to a U2 concert and were about fifteen feet from Bono; it was pretty inspirational. It was a crazy experience, and our car almost got towed, but that was the point when we saw where the top of the top was.
What has been your best performance so far?
October 16, 2009. We were playing in the Mez. Lounge in an LMC show, and we had just finished writing out last song the day before the show (it’s practically tradition: we always finish a new song the 48 hours before we perform). The song is called “Get Away.” When we started to play it, everyone started dancing and kept dancing for the
rest of the concert. It made us feel awesome that everyone was grooving with us.
How did you guys decide on your band name?
So Kevin has been trying to think of anagrams of his name since high school and apparently didn’t know that the internet could do this for him. One day he was working out with the MIT ski team and thought of the “guitar knives.” He loved it and was thrilled when he realized that it was a perfect anagram of his name. The band had been searching for a band name, and Kevin pitched the idea to them under the guise that it was a really cool name and the domain name wasn’t taken. After he admitted the anagram part and since Alex and Tom didn’t mind, the name stuck.