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• Catching up with...The Burninators

After the wave of Pygmalion Music Festival shows finishes sweeping through Champaign-Urbana, it will be nice to sit down at a bar and take in a local show with familiar faces. One such local act is punk rockers The Burninators. I recently spoke with singer/guitarist Michelle Razor about the band’s upcoming shows at Memphis on Main and Cowboy Monkey.

buzz: Tell us a little about The Burninators and what you do in the band.

Michelle Razor: We’re a punk rock band. We do a pretty old school style of punk rock. It’s just me on guitar and vocals, The Rad Baron on bass, and Hurricane Andrew on the drums. We’ve been together for about a year, but we all played with other bands before that.

buzz: Who do you take inspiration from musically?

MR: Wow, if you asked each of us [the same question] we’d each give you a different answer. I listen to a lot of bands like The Ramones and the Lunachicks out of New York. The Rad Baron listens to a lot of power metal. He’s really into Iron Savior right now. Andrew listens to music like 88 Fingers Louie, Macabre, and The Misfits.

buzz: How do you feel about the CU music scene?

MR: We really like [the scene]. It’s a good scene with lots of different places to perform at in a good-sized town with a lot of people who support local music. I mean, there’s a great bar scene, but there’s also a really good all-ages crowd that comes to basement shows and places like the McKinley Foundation.

buzz: Which do you prefer, the bars or the all-ages shows?

MR: I personally like the bars because you can hang out and party, but there is an energy at all-ages shows that you don’t get at bar shows. That [energy] makes it a lot of fun.

buzz: Tell us about your upcoming shows.

MR: Well, we have two shows this coming weekend. The first is on Friday [Sept.] 25 at Memphis on Main with Jason and the Punknecks. They’re a rock and roll band with an old country feel mixed in, kind of like Johnny Cash. That’s at 8 p.m. The show on Saturday [Sept.] 26 is with Koffin Kats at Cowboy Monkey at 9 p.m. and costs $8. They’re a rockabilly band from Detroit. I saw them up there once and they put on a really energetic show. I’m excited to play with them.

buzz: Do you have a website where our readers can find out more about your band?

MR: We have a MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/theburninatorsrock. If you just search “The Burninators,” you tend to get a lot of gaming guilds. We also have a Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Burninators.