pleasure 💜 gabanti

Back around 2013-2016, when I was still hugely into bandom and Cobra Starship in particular, I would spend ages trawling YouTube, Flickr, Buzznet, and so many other annals of the internet for obscure or interesting CS pictures and videos. Though (almost) all of my old CS posts can still be found on my original/main blog, that blog has LONG since moved on, and the Cobra posts there would be very hard and tedious for an interested viewer to find.

As CS seems to be back (in a manner of speaking) and here to stay, and in the general spirit of media preservation and proliferation, I wanted to dust off this old URL and use it to repost all of the photos and curios I found back in the day, on a shiny new dedicated blog where it will be MUCH easier for interested people to find it. Photos and videos will come as I can post them from my old hard drives— but if there’s anything in particular anyone would like to see or know about, please feel free to send in an ask, and I’ll see what I can do. I would love to share my files and my memories with other people before it’s all lost to time!

A couple of disclaimers: this blog is intended primarily as an archive for the sake of media preservation, and for a band that holds sentimental or nostalgic value for myself and many others. The owner of this blog stands with Palestine and its people, and does not condone or agree with Gabe Saporta’s current political views.

Also, as you might expect from a blog with the url rygabe, some of the posts you see here might be RPF or have RPF subtext to them. That was a huge part of bandom back then, and it strikes me as a bit revisionist to ignore that. The owner ALSO does not condone asking real people about RPF or bringing it to their attention. Don’t be a creep! Keep your play-pretend dolls on the internet.

Finally, just a bit about me, the blog owner: I’m a gay transmasc in my late 20s (he/him only, please 🤗), and I was most active in the Cobra part of bandom when I was in my mid/late teens. I never got the chance to see them live before the breakup, but my husband got to see them several times back in the day! Hot Mess is my favorite Cobra album, Ryland is my forever favorite member of the band (😔💔), and my absolute all-time favorite song of theirs is Living in the Sky with Diamonds. At the moment, it’s just me running this blog— I doubt that I’ll ever add any other mods for it, but if I do, I’ll certainly let you all know!

Cobra Starship - Tainted Love (Soft Cell Cover) (TRL, 2007)

Cobra Starship's Buzznet Videos - Alex Interviews "Yung Nate" at the Snakes on a Plane Soundtrack Premiere (2006)

Cobra Starship's Buzznet Videos - En Route to the AOL Sessions (2006)

I was going back through my files the other day and realized that this Buzznet video never got reuploaded to this blog. Oops!

Cobra Starship - The Scene Is Dead; Long Live the Scene (2011 iTunes Sessions)

In 2011, the band put out an iTunes Sessions EP, containing new renditions of several Hot Mess tracks as well as a single song from Night Shades. This version of The Scene Is Dead is much more acoustic-focused and has a comparatively softer sound than the album version.

Cobra Starship - Monkey Magic (2009)

(Ten seconds of silence have been inserted into the beginning of this track to dodge Tumblr's copyright detection. Mind your volume!)

This song was included exclusively on the German deluxe iTunes release of Hot Mess, and has never been made available for streaming via Spotify. It's a cover of the song of the same name by the prolific Japanese rock band Godiego, which was originally released in 1978 and was used as the theme for the anime series Saiyuki/Monkey.

Citizens For Our Betterment: Welcome to the New Administration Mixtape - Cobra Starship Interlude/Outro (2008)

(Watch out! This audio track is a little loud. You may want to turn down your volume before pressing play.)

This interlude features Gabe and Ryland bantering and joking around a bit, and then mixtape host Clinton Sparks recapping the artists who appeared on the mixtape, over an instrumental version of Cobra's Hot Mess track The World Will Never Do. Of some note is that this mixtape was produced and released before Folie a Deux's release date was delayed, hence Sparks' proclaiming the release date as November 4th.

(Warning for flashing lights in this video!)

Alex and Ryland, appearing as their electronic side project GRVRBBRS, perform a live instrumental cover of Kanye West’s Love Lockdown, with Alex playing lead guitar and Ryland on bass. October of 2010.

Cobra Starship - I Kissed a Boy (2008)

(Watch out! This audio starts with a pretty loud sound effect. You may want to turn down your volume before pressing play.)

As far as I've ever been able to find out, the band never gave any word on why they chose to cover Katy Perry's I Kissed a Girl for the CitizensFOB mixtape, and this cover was never officially released as a single or as a track on any of their studio albums.

This track is also sometimes listed as featuring Fall Out Boy, but to the best of my knowledge, this is a misconception, and no members of Fall Out Boy were involved in the production of this song in any real way. My guess is that incorrect attribution started back in the file-sharing days, when someone may have seen that this song came from a Fall Out Boy mixtape and assumed that the band was directly involved.