Ben Stiller, Meet Been Stellar
The NYU-based indie rock band and the actor who inspired their name saw two worlds collide this past weekend.
NYU-based indie rock band Been Stellar and the actor that inspired their name, Ben Stiller, finally crossed paths this weekend. The crossing-of-paths happened at a recent concert honoring Stiller’s high school punk band, Capital Punishment.
Back in 1982, before Stiller was a movie star, the teenage punk band released a really abstract, bizarre LP called Roadkill, which faded into obscurity as the members of the band split off into their respective careers (the bassist, Peter Swann, is now an appellate judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals, apparently). Years later, indie music label Captured Tracks, known for releasing music by Mac DeMarco, Wild Nothing and DIIV, among others, picked up the album and rereleased it. Along with the rerelease of their album, Capital Punishment agreed to have a showcase of the album at Le Poisson Rouge to share the insanely weird music that Ben Stiller and his friends came up with in high school. That’s where Ben Stiller and the members of Been Stellar crossed paths.
Been Stellar original hail from Michigan. That’s where Sam Slocum, on vocals and keys, and Skylar Knapp, on guitar, (both pictured with Ben Stiller above) first met up in high school and created the foundations for what would later become Been Stellar. After graduating from high school, both Slocum and Knapp decided to attend NYU, and soon after the semester began they started adding new members to fill in on other instruments, adding Nando Dale on guitar, Nico Brunstein on bass and Laila Wayans on drums. After forming their lineup, the ensemble started to rehearse and looked at the possibility of throwing their hat into the ring of the DIY NYC punk scene.
I spoke to Knapp and Slocum over the phone and asked them about their reaction to the by-chance run-in with the famous actor.
“We’ve been in this band for six years and we’ve been under the name ‘Been Stellar’ the whole time,” Slocum said. “Kind of coincidentally we’ve been saying sort of his name for so long.” Slocum added that Stiller reacted very positively to the band name. After meeting, Knapp and Slocum were able to give Ben Stiller an old Been Stellar CD, recorded when Knapp and Slocum were still in high school.
“I went up to him at the end and I was like ‘Hey man, I get it if you don’t wanna take this but here’s our CD and even if you didn’t know, you had a big hand in us,’” Knapp told me.
It’s like Been Stellar and Ben Stiller have been destined to cross paths, kind of similar to the members of Greta Van Fleet meeting the members of Led Zeppelin. When they’re not meeting up with Ben Stiller, the band has been working in the studio on an upcoming album. Listen to their music on Bandcamp.
