(Due to similar names, NCA's Josh Nacho will be "Nacho" and the Beautiful Mistake's Josh Hagquist will be "Josh")

Nacho: Is it true you're named after a Better Than Ezra song?

Josh: No. We got the name from an e.e. cummings poem that I read. We had like, fifty band names and all of them sucked.

Clair: Could you tell us some of them?

Josh: No.

Nacho: Probably like, the All-American Rejects, the Lyndsay Diaries...

Josh: Yeah, the Lyndsay Diaries, Rufio, Tora Tora Torrance, Noise Ratchet...

Nacho: You have a song called "For a Friend" which is on the EP and your debut full length, "Light a Match... For I Deserve to Burn", and the beginning of it says, "I'm disappearing on this cold night", however you are from Riverside, California...

Josh: (laughs) Ok, cold is relative. For us, it was a really cold night in Riverside.

Nacho: What's that, like, 95?

Josh: It was like, 65 degrees out.

Nacho: That's warm for us.

Josh: But my dad lives in Arizona, so when he says cold he means 80.

Nacho: It would just be better if you were from the east coast and had to deal with all these stupid seasons because, you know, we didn't have fall this year.

Josh: Yeah, we don't have seasons. A little bit of rain or it's sunny.

Clair: Did you know that one of your shirts is being sold at Hot Topic?

Josh: Yeah. One of our friends hooked that up. It's awesome more people will have access to our stuff, you know.

Nacho: Let's talk about the CD now because it's a really good CD. I actually like that not only is there a good title for it, and a title track, but when the title is actually incorporated into a song in a good way, which you do.

Josh: Cool. It's nice to hear feedback.

Nacho: Is it difficult to be not "emo" or hardcore, but just kind of in between?

Josh: I think it's been cool because we can play with both and we have a lot of friends in bands who would be considered straight up hardcore and some that are really more mellow like Mineral. We like being able to play with both bands, but I think we like playing with hardcore bands more. I like energy when I go to shows. I like Saves the Day, but I don't want to see them throwing guitars around. But when I see a band like Atreyu or Hopesfall, I don't want them to just stand there. We're actually going on tour with Atreyu and Hopesfall in December on the west coast.

Nacho: No! The east coast!!

Josh: We played our CD release show with bands like that, and it was like, "All right, we gotta step it up". We played with a ska band the other night... Mustard Plug. And we played with Common Rider.

Nacho: That guy goes to my site. You have a really good hardcore breakdown though in "Anonymous vs. California".

Josh: We're playing that tonight.

Nacho: Good, that's what I like to hear.

[Editor's note: Time got cut short and they did not play it]

Nacho: I think a lot of people who are trying to mix melody and hardcore or whatever, kind of do the verses hardcore and then have an emo chorus... Or just like... They have it very separated, and I think your combination just flows very well because it can just go from the crunching guitar chords and loud to the little intricate guitar parts (I try to sing out a part from "Stabbing Backwards")

Josh: Yeah, the guitarist and I write most of the songs ourselves and then we arrange them on a whole, as a whole band. But he's been in hardcore bands for most of his life and I'm really big into Brit-pop.

(Scott Windsor comes asking for an interview, I tell him to come back later)

Nacho: So you have a debut full length called "Light a Match... For I Deserve to Burn", and now to promote it, you make matchbooks?

Josh: Right.

(Everyone laughs)

Nacho: I just saw it and was like, "This is the best freaking idea ever".

Josh: If I would have thought of it, I would have been pretty stoked right now, but our label thought of it. They are actually really cheap. But we can't make them any more because we maybe held liable for some kid who like, lights his school on fire or something because on the matches it says to.

Nacho: But you could always just blame Marilyn Manson. And those damn rappers.

(Everyone laughs)

Nacho: Do you think that Drive Thru kind of sucks now that the Militia Group could be the new Drive Thru?

Josh: I'd love to see Militia get huge... We love them. I can't say enough good about those people. They're friends of ours too, so it's like family. They just sign bands that they're really into, they don't give into what other labels seem to. They just got a new distribution deal too, so now they have the same distribution as Trustkill and Victory. They're awesome. They just sign bands I think they really like and a lot of labels sign bands I think they think are just going to make them money. And then bands end up hating the label and the labels have to defend themselves to each of the bands on their roster every day. I think Militia really does have its independence from outside money. They just do things on their own terms, and they've only been a label for a year and a half but they even just did their own CMJ show. For us, that's awesome to have a label that people actually respect and to be a band that people actually like. Hopefully if people buy our record or the Lyndsay Diaries or Noise Ratchet, they'll be turned on to something else on the label because they'll know it's hopefully a quality product as well. We're very pro-Militia.

Nacho: I think if they were to be the new Drive Thru though, the Lyndsay Diaries could be Dashboard, and then !TTT! would be like RxBandits even though they don't sound the same, just because they're both crazy and out there.

Josh: I think they're like the Hives and the Strokes, but better than those bands. It's like suddenly everyone decides to play through practice amps and copy MC5. It's ok, but it's been done a million times. Tora does it really well though, and they've been doing it before it was cool and they'd do it regardless of the hype.

Clair: The Hives are the #1 band in Europe.

Josh: I don't get that. There are tons of great bands in Europe! Go to England and check out some real bands. New Order, Catherine Wheel, In Flames, Vader...

Nacho: Even ABBA does.

Josh: Yeah. David Hasselhoff. He's better than the Hives. And Claudia Schiffer released an album in Germany, I'm sure she's better than the Hives. Refused is better than the Hives.

Nacho: You guys do well on MP3.com but aren't you on the emo charts?

Josh: Yeah. Yeah. They ask you and I guess just like the rest of the world MP3.com has to classify us... But I'd rather be with a lot of our peers that play similar types of music are in that. Like Saves the Day, Dashboard, the Juliana Theory, Further Seems Forever and us.

Nacho: Well, then if bands like you are emo I guess emo's ok.

Josh; There are a lot of other genres, you know. I just hope people check them out. Like melodic hardcore, popcore...

Nacho: Applecore.

Josh: Applecore.

Clair: Afrocore.

Josh: Afrocore?

Clair: Coheed.

Nacho: Yeah, Coheed is like the one band in afrocore.

Josh: Awesome. That's awesome. Whenever people ask me about them, I say they're like Bad Brains meet Rush.

Nacho: Well, Claudio listened to a lot of Cyndi Lauper growing up in his mom's car. Could you just imagine having videos of that?? You'd get like, a thousand hits per second on your web site. And I just keep picturing that kid on the Notorious B.I.G. CD cover.

(everyone laughs)

Nacho: Just think about that.

(more laughter)

Nacho: Do you remember that time we called you outside Stingrays, and you were like, five feet away from us?

Josh: Yeah, that was like, a half hour ago.

Nacho: That was pretty cool, huh?

Josh: Yeah.