Content staffer Trevor Harrison sat down with one of our freshman music staffers, Cole Billings, to get his thoughts on everything from Beyblades to pizza and of course, KJHK.
Trevor: What’s your major Cole? What do you do here at KJHK?
Cole: Film and media studies. I don’t have a minor yet, but I have an idea of what I want to do.
Trevor: So, what do you want to do?
Cole: I don’t know, I’m taking a psychology class this semester to see how I like it. Um, it’s alright. I enjoy it, but I don’t know if I can study it. So probably some sort of journalism.
Trevor: Do you have any hobbies?
Cole: Playing video games.
Trevor: What’s your favorite video game?
Cole: My favorite game right now…that’s hard. The one I’ve been playing the past few days (is) RuneScape, because me and the boys are getting back into it. Yeah, I played Apex (Legends) for like a week and a half and I already don’t enjoy it. So I guess old school RuneScape, you can never go wrong with it.
Trevor: Did you play that as a kid?
Cole: I never knew what I was doing. I would just run around and kill cows.
Because I knew I was getting HP from it, so I was like I might as well.
Trevor: What do you like to play when you DJ?
Cole: I guess within the Punk realm, anything like 90’s style or 90’s emo. I’d like to play more hip hop but it’s hard to play rap and stuff just because they cuss a lot, and I’m too lazy to cut stuff out *laughs*.
Trevor: I’ve been told you make your own music; can you tell me more about that?
Cole: So, I picked up guitar like a few years ago because I’ve always wanted to play it and I just decided one day that I was going to do it. My dad plays guitar, so through his exposure I just picked up one of his guitars. It’s like very rough Alex G inspired, DIY solo stuff in my room. Most of it’s acoustic because its easier to do that. I don’t really ever tell anybody I do it. I just do it and put it out there.
Trevor: What’s with the Gambino’s pizza shirt?
Cole: I worked at Gambino’s pizza in Gardner at 616 East Maine for like two years and I was a manager there.
Trevor: Oh, wow.
Cole: Yeah, all my friends work there and I basically got them all the job.
Honestly some of the best pizza I’ve had in the area. It’s kind of biased, but I think it’s some of the best pizza. Like I never got tired of it and I worked there for two years. I don’t ever see them anywhere but apparently they’re all over Kansas, there’s a number of them. I honestly have never got pizza from another Gambino’s. I don’t think I ever will. That’s just my Gambino’s. I know who’s making it. I know how it should be made.
(at the insistence of one of our music directors, the subject of Beyblades is brought up)
Trevor: Oh, do you Beyblade? I’m intrigued.
Cole: So senior year of high school me and my friends wanted to start a Beyblade club, because that was the cool thing I guess. But we didn’t start it because they (the high school) wouldn’t allow us to do it, but we would literally we had like five or six… what do they call it?
Trevor: Beyblades?
Cole: No like the actual bowls.
Trevor: You had the actual bowls?
Cole: Yeah! and we would set him in different classrooms, and during seminar somebody
would go and grab like a couple of them and we would literally just do it in the halls. But we
would get in trouble for it. So that’s probably why they wouldn’t let us have a club.
Trevor: Wow. Were you in any other clubs in high school?
Cole: No. I was in this mass media class, I guess it was kind of a club.
Trevor: …I still can’t get over this beyblading.
Cole: I still have them, they are in my camera bag. I have like three of them. Because I would take my camera bag to school every day, because I was that kid. Because you never know when you need a camera. I literally have three Beyblades just sitting in the front pocket of my camera bag if I ever needed them.
Trevor: Did you ever play it as a kid?
Cole: I never did. When I was younger I never had Beyblades. My mom probably thought I would get hurt or something.
Trevor: What’s your favorite place to go in Lawrence?
Cole: I went to Lady Bird Diner on Mass with my family. That place is so good. White schoolhouse for shows, that place is epic. I’d say I like Love Garden for goods and services, I like records.
Trevor: Thank you for talking with me Cole!
Cole: You’re welcome!
