One group that knows how to get a mosh pit going is the Huntington Beach based band Pulse. The punk band came to LBCC to talk about their band on a special episode of Kitchen Sink.
Pulse is a five piece band consisting of sisters Alana (20) and Ava Johnson (17), brothers Aidan (19) and Mason Atkinson (17), and friend Michael Jarrah (20). Alana is the frontwoman, Ava is a guitarist, Aidan is the drummer, Mason is the bassist, and Michael is also a guitarist.
Everyone in the band has been playing together for years in various different bands, especially Aidan Atkinson and Alana Johnson, who have been playing together in punk bands since their sophomore year of high school.
The band initially started with three members: Alana Johnson as lead singer, Aidan Atkinson on drums, and Mason Atkinson alternating between guitar and bass.
“I always knew that I wanted to do a punk band, like we were just talking about it so much, how we really just wanted to start a punk band again, how we missed playing. It started with just us three jamming,” said Alana Johnson
The band was getting ready to play at a Halloween house show when Aidan Atkinson ended up asking Jarrah to join their group.
“Yeah, so I was jamming with him like a week or two prior and then he texted me about the house show and he was just like ‘we need another guitar player or bass player,’” Jarrah said.
Aidan Atkinson then told Jarrah and his brother that they would both be on guitar and they had to fight it out.
Mason Atkinson self-admittedly lost, becoming the band’s bassist with Jarrah as their guitarist.
At first Ava Johnson didn’t want to be in the band, but changed her mind when she saw them playing and having a good time. She became the band’s second guitarist.
“Like a week before Alana was like ‘Ava come over and jam, we’re doing a show’ and I was like ‘no, that sounds stupid, I don’t want to’ and then I saw them play and I was like ‘okay,’” said Ava Johnson.
The first show where all five of them got to play together as a group, was at a Huntington Beach store Vinyl Solution, a record store many in the band grew up visiting.
“It’s like a Huntington Beach local legend spot,” said Alana Johnson
“I think it’s always been sort of an adolescent dream of mine,” said Aidan Atkinson. “Like ‘one day my awesome rock band will play at Vinyl Solution.’”
“It was kind of unimaginable when it happened, I was like ‘what the f—? We’re playing at Vinyl Solution?’” Ava Johnson said.
A stand out moment of their performance at the record store was their big closer “8686,” which ended with Aidan Atkison on the floor, throwing himself over the drumset.
“It’s not technically my drumset, it’s my little brother’s drum set. So, I was in charge of keeping it in my care and keeping it nice and clean and not scratched and then I broke his poor little trust because at the end of the set….I was just like, ‘it would be really cool,’” Aidan Atkison said.
Mason Atkinson added some more information on what Vinyl Solution is all about; supporting local artists.
“Vinyl Solution always supported small bands. You go in there you’ll find like records, cassettes, shirts of all small bands. So it’s nothing out of the ordinary for them to just be down to do that and let people play there,” said Mason Atkinson
At Vinyl Solution, the band played a full set, including tracks “Spaghetti Western,” “Live Fast” and “8686.”
One of their favorite songs to perform live is “Spaghetti Western.”
Jarrah came up with the riff on the song, the inspiration for it ended up coming from movies.
“A lot of the times if I’m drawing a blank, I just like go around and I’m just like ‘what does this riff make you feel?’ And everyone has to like say something really quick, and I think like three of you guys were like, ‘it makes me feel like I’m in a movie,’” Alana Johnson said.
Meanwhile “8686,” was created by Mason Atkinson, back when he was in a former band of his and Ava Johnson’s.
“I wrote that riff back in like 7th or 8th grade and I’ve just been kicking it around for years just trying find something to work with it, and it was one of our old bands, it was done for a little bit, and it didn’t have a name for longest time it was just called ‘untitled’ and we couldn’t think of anything but the time structure at the time went like eight bars, six bars, eight bars, six bars,” said Mason Atkinson
“I would always introduce the song for some reason as ‘this is a song Mason wrote,’ and everyone would always be like ‘I can’t believe Mason wrote those lyrics,” Alana Johnson said.
The band went on to discuss how people often compare them to other female fronted groups, despite not sounding anything like them. These comparisons seem to be based only on gender alone.
“The spectacle of seeing us should have nothing to do with the fact that there are girls in it,” said Alana Johnson.
“That’s another running theme in the band is that we always kinda resent a little bit, like ‘oh you sound like –’, you know – insert one of five female fronted bands like, ‘you sound like Bikini Kill,’” said Aidan Atkison.
“We’re not a girl punk band, we’re just a punk band, who you know, there happens to be girls making the music and being a part of it. And I just think that’s the big thing, like we’re just people, it’s not about necessarily what gender we are.”
An artist they feel very strongly for and are inspired by is the female fronted rock band, Amyl and The Sniffers. That influence can be heard on many of their tracks, especially “Live Fast,” one of their first songs.
“Our first practices were literally us just covering like five Amyl and The Sniffers songs in a row,” Alana Johnson said.
They are one of the bands that she idolizes, seeing them 6 times within the last year.
“The thing that was always so cool about them was like even though she’s literally wearing only underwear and a bra, somehow she’s not just like putting her sexuality out there just as like a draw, it’s just like she is completely half masculine and half feminine at the same time. She literally just demands your attention,” Alana Johnson said.
This is something that can clearly be seen being applied in Pulse with how both Alana Johnson and the rest of the band demands people’s attention, keeping their crowd engaged.
Pulse plans to record their songs. The specifics are unknown at the moment, but fans have something to look forward to.
The band also teased a major show coming up on August 5th that, according to Alana, could be described as a ‘punk rock Woodstock.’ It will start at 7 p.m. going to 7 a.m. the following day and is set to feature 20 bands. The event will take place in Palm Desert.