Editor’s note: The Oklahoma Daily will feature one Oklahoma band each day leading up to Norman Music Festival. Today’s featured artist is the recently formed Gang Starr Museum.

What do you get when you add together the blues-rock chaos of El Paso Hot Button and the drummer of the well-versed indie group Student Film?

Well, the noisy punk-pop group Gang Starr Museum, of course.

Alright, maybe the math doesn’t add up, but it doesn’t need to anyway, especially according to Mickey Reece, singer and guitarist for the band.

“No,” Reece said when asked if there was a greater purpose to the band than just having fun, “and we like it that way.”

Gang Starr Museum basically rose from the ashes of El Paso Hot Button — even taking over the same booking agent and MySpace page — early this year.

Reece had long been friends with Student Film drummer Eric Nauni, sharing many concert bills over the course of their careers. When Reece began to raise doubts of continuing to play solo under the moniker El Paso Hot Button, the idea of playing together soon became a real possibility.

“I always knew that when I decided to start a [full] band that [Nuani] would play drums,” Reece said. “We sort of started talking about the band like it was real before we ever even practiced, then we booked a show and it was like ‘well, we better start practicing’.”

It came together quickly for the longtime friends.

“At that first practice, we had three songs down,” Reece said.

All that was left was the band name, although Reece had been pondering over this for a while.

The band’s booking agent works at a tourist attraction called The Gangster Museum in Hot Springs, Ark. Reece said he thought it would make cool name for a band, though he would eventually spin the name to Gang Starr Museum — based on the jazz-rap pioneers Gang Starr whose founding member, Guru, passed away Wednesday — as “kind of a joke.”

After protests from booking agents and venue personnel about the name being “false advertising,” Reece and Nuani decided to keep the name anyway.

And sure enough, it has not gotten in the way of the group booking several gigs quickly, including upcoming shows with Nobunny, Bob Log 111 and Quintron And Miss Pussycat — bands who seem share similar noise-rock inclinations.

But Gang Starr Museum has less in common with them than you may think, Reece said.

“All we’re doing is playing cheesy pop-punk songs and singing with a lot of reverb and delay, said Reece. “It’s hilarious. You can call it noise rock, garage rock, indie rock but if you took away the reverb and delay we would just be a pop- punk band. We’re just having fun really, nothing more than that. This is just the music we’re making right now. Next year we’ll probably be playing Dub.”

But it is certainly good at what it’s doing now. Most of the songs clock in at under two minutes, though Reece said for every five fast ones they are writing one slow one now.

And those songs take well to the stage — at least that is what Gang Starr Museum’s first show showed.

In a rapidly paced 20 minute set, the band jammed in two handfuls of song, one of which was a cheeky cover of The Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb.”

Most interesting, though, was seeing Reece get to stand up as he played, something he wasn’t quite accustom to.

“I’m still getting used to it,” Reece said. “I’ve just been standing there and singing. I don’t feel the need to force myself to jump around a bunch because it’s 2010, and I’m 27 years old.”

But having Nuani by his side is a comfort to Reece.

“He makes me look like I know what I’m doing,” Reece said.

It’s not too often that a band’s second gig is at a major music festival, but Gang Starr Museum gets just that opportunity Saturday.

Not too shabby for a band just out to have a little fun.

Gang Starr Museum at Norman Music Festival

When: 4:10 p.m. Saturday

Where: Guestroom Records Stage, 125 E. Main St.

About the band

Who: Mickey Reece and Eric Nuani

Formed: 2010

For Fans Of: No Age, Deerhunter

Other Upcoming Shows:

May 25 at The Conservatory with Nobunny

June 12 at Opolis with Feel Spectres

July 9 at Opolis with Quintron and Miss Pussycat