how did you get to play together? Vincent: Thru a series of emails on www.craigslist.com and thru family and friends of the other band mates Joe: The emcee and the dj were a two some and were looking for live instrumentation and they found the bass player and the drummer on the internet. Eventually they found Me andd my cousin Tony (keys, vocals) and we started from there. Basie: It started when I answered an ad placed by VInce and Gary. We played for a bit with a couple of drumemrs before settling with our original drummer, who in turn brought in Tony and Joey. - how and why you decided to take part in Emergenza? V: two mornings in a row at different times of the day, Joe Fikany Guitar, heard a radio advertisement and our Manager, Jess made the arraingements. J: I was actually the one who found out about emergenza. Every morning I wake up to 88.7 fm on my alarm clock. Afetr about three times of being woken up by the emergenza commercial, I felt like it was asign and we had to act upon it. so I had outr manager sign us up , not thinking we would manke it this far. B: t seemed like a cool thing to do! - what the Emergenza experience means for you, and for your local up and coming music scene? V: Emergenza comes into town and thru a series of shows allows the bands to showcase their draw/fanbase... (the result of the bands hard work)... in the Detroit area, we feel like Emergenza helped bring together the local talent and helped us build familiarity and thus friendships with a majority of the bands that we went thru Emergena with. J: So far I think the emergenza experience has been great. We got to meet alot of bands hoping that it will lead to show swapping in the future. B: it's been a tremendous opportunity for us to meet and play with bands we haven't had the chance to yet. - Did you expect to win the national final? V: Never and expectation, we only focused on one show at a time, did our best and were rewarded. J: We absolutley did not think we would win the finals. We were on The warped tour for a week and a half and our last stop was the finals in Boston. We would have been crazy to think we were going to win the finals in a city that we were not from. But everything worked out just right. B: Absolutly not - there were at least 3 bands that I thought would place higher than us. RPM from washington DC especially. - How do you feel about the Grand Final? V: Very excited to musically experience what the rest of the world is doing. We''re extremely interested in doing a tour outside the United States, and this is a great first step. We are going to do the best we can to give our passion for the music to every person at the festival J: I am quite excited to go tot the finals, considering most of us have never been to Europe. - how would you describe your music? V: Fun and Original Detroit Funk & Hip Hop J: I would describe our music with one word, FUN! - what about your relationship with your fans? V: Our fans are the most loyal in the city... they turnout at every show... J: Over the whole festival I guarantee we have made some new fans, especially in our hometown of Detroit. B: Our fans are the most important thing in regards to what we do, We feed off their energy as much as they feed off ours. I know we have made a lot of friends thru Emergenza. Do you think their number has grown up since you have played in Emergenza? V: We have received a decent increase in the number of new faces at our shows since our win in Detroit. - More projects for the future? V: We are on our second year with the Van''s Warped Tour, Code of the Cutz Stage "Hip Hop Stage" Plans to have 2nd independent CD release by Thanksgiving 2005. J: We always have projects popping up, we are also planning a release of alive album in the fall and a new studio album to take over the world on November 23. - Any special comment/thank you about Emergenza? V: To<