Send to a Friend
			Printer Friendly Format
			Leave Feedback
			Read Feedback
			Nerve RSS

e Your Own Pet's noisy tangle of guitars and self-assurance makes you feel like you could bend the world to your will if you attacked it the right way. None of the band's four members are over eighteen, but they've already had a successful European tour and are criss-crossing the U.S. Their self-titled debut album came out in June.
   On the phone, Jemina Pearl sounds like an average teenager: blasé attitude, sentences peppered with "like." Singing, she's a fierce, snarling presence, her voice alternately shrieking, warbling and occasionally melodious. She sounds at home with lyrics like, "I am an independent motherfucker / And I'm here to take your money / I'm wicked rad, and I'm here / to steal away your virginity."
— Sarah Harrison

promotion

Where are you?
We're at Thurston Moore's record store in East Hampton. We're about to go get hot dogs.

You went to the Nashville School of the Arts together. What was that like?
You have to audition, but it's a pubic school. It's like pretty much any other high school except you get to have one or two art classes a day. It was better than going to a school where there are stabbings.

Did you graduate?
No, I just left. Jamin and Jonas graduated, and Nathan is taking online classes, finishing up.

What did your parents think about you leaving high school?
They weren't too worried about it. My sister quit high school, too, and she's doing fine. As long as you're motivated to do something I don't think it matters so much.

Is it ever weird to be in an industry where everyone's older than you?
I don't think it's that weird. It's not really that new of a thing for people to be young in bands. Steve McDonald started in a band when he was eleven. And everybody in The Jam was like seventeen or eighteen.

I heard something about you puking into a shirt and throwing it on the audience.
At this festival, Reading, in the U.K., I got sick on stage. We didn't have time to eat that day, and dancing around and drinking lots of water made my stomach upset. And then I started to puke a whole lot. But we were gonna throw this shirt out into the audience, and so then I rubbed the shirt in my vomit and threw it out into the audience. It happened once or twice after that.

Have you had any other embarrassing onstage incidents?
We played this one show in the U.K. recently and all of a sudden half the audience started yelling, "Get your tits out!" At another show in the U.K. some dude jumped up on stage tried to make out with me. Jonas, the guitar player, had to grab him off me. People over there are too horny for their own good. All the time people will just try to grab at me and kiss me and yell stuff like "tits." It's never happened anywhere else except the U.K.

What kind of partying do you do on tour?
We just got a beer bong for this tour. It's like a funnel and a tube and it's called a "Beer Blaster." We've been using that pretty much every night before we play. I think I'm kind of done because the other night I got totally shit-faced and I almost got in a fight with someone who didn't exist. And I went and puked all over the toilet. It was pretty bad.

How did you learn about sex when you were young?
When I was in kindergarten this boy used to come up to me and tell me he wanted to have sex with me, and he always used to walk in when I was using the bathroom. So one day I asked my mom what sex was and she explained it to me like you would explain it to a kindergartener. And then my two older sisters and I started talking about it, and we figured everything out.

In one of your songs you say, "I'm gonna steal away your virginity."
Jamin wrote those lyrics, and he was originally gonna use them for his other band. I was like, "You gotta let Be Your Own Pet use it. Those lyrics are way funnier coming from a girl." 

Click here to buy Be Your Own Pet.

© 2006 Sarah Harrison and Nerve.com.