Hold on!!!!

I’m currently doing a blog at http://radiogstring.today.com – so this one is on hold for now … maybe forever. Who knows?

[album] Against Me! – New Wave (CD 2007)

I remember seeing Against Me! with less than 100 people in the back of the HobGoblin pub in Brighton, for free. The sound was beyond atrocious (it normally is) and the people I went with didn’t get it and fucked off to another pub, but I didn’t care; I was down the front screaming myself hoarse to ‘Reinventing Axl Rose’, ‘Baby, I’m An Anarchist!’ and other songs off their first few releases, along with a large handful of other sweaty people.

Against Me! – Don’t Loose Touch

I then saw them, a few years later, with a full crowd at the well-missed Freebutt (again in Brighton): everybody screaming themselves hoarse this time; falling over each other; and generally going mad with enthusiasm and passion. This was it: this was what DIY music was about. Singing like there was nowhere else in the world we’d rather be, and there wasn’t. There really wasn’t. Everything you heard in Reinventing Axl Rose was true. It was less about the songs, – undoubtedly brilliant anthems – and more about the heart the band played with and the passion which the lyrics conjured up.

A few years, two good albums, a DVD on Fat Wreck, some coloured vinyl and a new record deal with Sire/Warner Brothers later, the doubt had more than set in: its arse is well indented in the comfy chair. The result?

Against Me! aren’t a punk band anymore. They may have started that way but they’re more Franz Ferdinand than Billy Bragg now. New Wave is an excursion in American pop rock and it’s a fine one; it’s good even. Songs like the self-reflective driving ‘Up The Cuts’; the tale of destruction that is ‘Thrash Unreal’; the most straightforward AM!-sounding lead single ‘White People for Peace’ and cynical cheesy chanting disco of ‘Stop!’ are great. It’s not the revolution they sounded like just a year or two ago: it’s older, it’s more cynical, it’s not as innocent.

I’ve also got nothing against bands growing and changing. I love it: I think the lack of bands growing is generally a problem within any aspect of a music scene – a sound is established and it stays that way for 20+ years whilst life moves on without them. It’s boring: a movement has no worth if it doesn’t change, evolve to tackle the times (take note Fundamentalists). AM!, then, have grown and changed with the times: with record contracts; production values and stages heights. But with that increasing of budget, something has gone. There is no urgency or heart felt anthems, no off-kilter or ground breaking moments. There are still good songs here and therefore AM! still has a worth as a rock band.

The lyricism of Tom Gabel seems to have gone from revolution-screaming, poetic Billy Bragg-ish moments with politics and honesty to a mocking, self-examination of what the band and the music industry mean. The result of the change in lyrical content (a result of success, I suspect) have turned the lyrics from reflecting an every-person to only reflecting the band, making the band seem ever isolated.

It all makes me think of what CIV sang in Gorilla Biscuits’ ‘New Direction: “Hats off to bands that change. Good luck, go your own way. Why play for us if your heart’s not in it?” No hard feelings to Against Me!, they’re just not ours anymore.

[interview] The Dillinger Escape Plan

That ace site Rockmidgets.com has put up an interview I did with The Dillinger Escape Plan in February. Check it out here:

http://www.rockmidgets.com/features.php?page=3&id=1320

ch-ch-ch-check it out.

http://www.ireworks.net/

[interview] Andrew Culture (Beat Motel Fanzine)

Back in the mid 18^th Century, during the Enlightenment, many men (and some women) of education where not of just one profession or another; they were not either lawyers or architects: they were jacks of all trades.

 

 

Andrew Culture and his Cats

 

Thomas Jefferson, the third president of an independent America, was also a horticulturist, statesman, architect, archaeologist, palaeontologist, author, inventor and also the found of the University of Virginia. Similarly, his friend Benjamin Franklin was an author, political theorist, politician, printer, scientist, inventor, civic activist, and diplomat. Such men are known as polymaths.

 

Andrew Culture is such a man, although perhaps not as grand a scale as two of Americans most significant founding fathers. He’s a publisher, publicist, concert promoter, record company owner, director of a merchendise company, shop keeper, importer, author, editor, man who plays in a band (he sympathises with NOFX’s Fat Mike not feeling up to the term ‘musician’), a web designer, developer and manager, and most recently, a winner of an awards (much to his surprise) for his zine Beat Motel; “a collection of mumblings from the bewildered.”

 

He still sounds surprised by such a compliment. “I got an e-mail from this guy Billy Riot from Northern Ireland, saying congratulations on getting ‘zine of the year’ in Big Cheese. And I replied, ‘Congratulations for what getting what in what?’ about one in the morning (I have no idea why I was still up). So, I ran to get Big Cheese in a box of zines next to the crapper and I was number one, which I’m pretty bewildered about and I don’t quite understand why.” “Bewildered” seems to be a comment he applies to much of life.

 

It’s not a real significant thing, he feels, although recognition from peers for a semi-regular publication that sells out its 400 copies is nice. He won’t be putting himself on the cover of the next Beat Motel, however, because “people may think that I’m taking it seriously, which I’m not.” He’s aware of the confrontation between fanzines and magazines and is suspicious of the zine awards held by major publisher EMAP, describing it as “quite a machiovelian, creepy kind of thing.  It’s a slight incongruety with the reason you write zines.”

 

He has no want or desire to become a more serious music journalist, put off by his oberservation over the years as a music fan, a band member and a writer, “the reason you do a zine is, for one, the complete lack of editiorial control. But also to rally against the control that large magazines fall under, allegedy cowtailing to advertisers and large labels, who help fund the magazine. Getting the EMAP award would be like one of ETA winning an award from the Spanish King and Queen.”

 

Such a Do-It-Yourself, fuck-the-mainstream attitude is part of the reason why much of the zine scene is closely linked to the underground music of punk rock. It also suffers what the punk scene suffers from in being cliquey, and elitist. “I try to avoid is the whole cliqueness of the zine scene. If people who collect walnuts only talk to people who collect walnuts, eventually it dies because it can’t carry on like that. I try really hard not to have in-jokes. I try to write so that anybody picking up Beat Motel for the first time gets it, rather than having to research six or seven issues of in jokes. But, to a certain extent, the zine scene has to be quite self congratulatory, but it has to do. It gets a lot of security from that, it’s one of thing that maintains it through time.”

 

Which brings us to the next Beat Motel issue. Even if you have an anarchistic approach to content, you still need quality control. “It used to be just what comes in. I put out a couple of issues that has no much crap in them, but I never had an editorial policy. It just had no substance, so from the next issue I’m trying to have a slight editorial content. The reason it’s happening in the next issue is I got sent, by a local business, the most defensive right-wing things I’ve ever scene. “England for the English” type bullshit. It made me cross, so I asked my contributors give me your impression of patriotism and nationalism. I’m interested to see how it works. I’m going to try and weed out. You should never put out something that you shouldn’t read yourself, it just offends the public.”

 

Having recently started a publishing company, Culture argues that, unlike many forms of mainstream publications, zines aren’t dying “on their arse. I started one when everyone was saying that webzines were taking over, and I haven’t had any trouble at all. If you look at Microcosm (US independent publishers) and Corndog Publishing, which I’ve just started, I sell zines. It’s not millions of them, but that’s not the point. I make profit and I can’t keep some in stock.”

 

He obviously takes pride in his many self-made task, but finds a drive to write undeniable. When he went on a business trip to Dubai last year, he decided to document it but had trouble getting on past the carpark in the first five thousands words. His has been a name in the UK underground for many years now, every so often bumping into people he forgot he had written for: “I was at Reading [Festival] with Chris from Last Hour, talking about zines, and she said that I wrote something for 12 O’Five years ago. It’s quite cool that you can bump into people in the middle of a muddy field and they go ‘oh, you wrote for me!’”

 

http://www.beatmotel.co.uk/

http://zeeb.co.uk/

[album review] No Use For A Name – The Feel Good Album of the Year (CD 2008)

On the same day I received this CD -18 March – the G2 (The Guardian’s daily magazine), printed an article by ex-pat American Caroline Sullivan, who now lives in London. In it, Sullivan generalises greatly and describes British music as “irresponsible, innovative, quirky, piss-taking, unique, brilliant.” She also says that “in the US, it’s always been a point of pride for even local bands to excel at playing their instruments. Professionalism was the goal and everything else – cynicism, irreverence, a coherent fashion sense – was an afterthought”.

 

I’m not making any of this up, you can read it here – http://music.guardian.co.uk/pop/story/0,,2266224,00.html

 

No Use For A Name – I Want To Be Wrong

 

While I don’t completely agree with her, she does have a point: the post-punk UK gave us the Slits, The Specials and Joy Division, when the US gave us hardcore. In other words, the US stopped punk being an attitude and made it into a sound. Of course, there are tons of bands to contradict the above statement but fuck it – this is my review, we’re doing it my way.

 

For arguments sake: when No Use For A Name got together twenty years ago to play speedy, melodic American skate punk, Snuff were getting together to … fuck, that doesn’t work. I got it: Terrorvision, the chart-topping pop-metallers, got together and pushed a quirky, irreverent, irresponsible, piss-taking, unique, brilliant and occasionally innovative sound around the same time as those generic bastards in NUFAN. And while Terrorvision signed to EMI, grew, changed, decided to write more than one song, had a few hit singles, hit hard times and now occasionally regroup for beer money; NUFAN found glory in the US pop scene and did what all US punk bands seem to do when they hit that level – grow stale on their laurels. Beer money has more integrity.

 

Yes, it’s all here – fast paced, melodic skate punk with vocals harmonising and floating sweetly over the music ala early Fat Wreck. This album will make the cynical of you ask the question – should everybody just give up buying US punk bands albums after the band releases their fourth album? Yes, probably. Unless, y’know, people call them indie and they’re actually punk.

 

Even if the band are rehashing the same tune for another 14 tracks (after eight albums of the same bloody thing, too. Twice that of the estimated relevance-span), the album kicks off well with the charging and attention-grabbing ‘Biggest Lie’ and ‘I Want To Be Wrong’. By the end of the horrible intro drum sounds of ‘Yours to Destroy” start, the thoughts of “a ninth album with no change?! HOW!?” are already running around manically in your brain, forcing their way to the fore and shouting loudly. You know what you get with NUFAN, through the sweet acoustic number of ‘Sleeping Between Tracks’ and the ever present relentless beats of drummer Rory Koff on almost every track.

 

I’ve decided that I’m going to rehash this review for every single US punk band, because if they can repeat themselves, I can damned well repeat myself just as much. One day the US punk scene will get some artistic integrity and cynicism. Punk never seemed to me to be about “three chords and the truth”, it was only ever “fuck you.” Go on, ask Sting. He knows.

 

http://www.punknews.co.uk/review.php?view=view&id=4988&filter=1

 

http://www.myspace.com/nouseforaname

[album review] Flogging Molly – Float (CD 2008)

One thing that Flogging Molly have over a large majority of Irish folk punk bands – and I’m sure this has been said many times before – is that lead man Dave King is actually Irish. Can you say that Dropkick Muphy’s? Can you say that The Tossers? Even Shane McGowan (the Pogues leading alcoholic) has a more tenuous link to Irishdom. And so with that in mind, it is easier to listen to Flogging Molly without annoyance at the cod-ness that may come with other such bands.

 

Flogging Molly – Float (live) 

 

 

It also helps that King has surrounded himself by very talented musicians and can write quite a good tune. And with the four years since the last studio album (2004’s the rather good ‘Within A Mile Of Home’), they’ve picked up a host of celebrity fans, name checked by thee horror author Stephen King, and actors such as Ewan McGregor, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and other imaginary people.

 

So what does Float bring to the Flogging Molly table, apart from celebrity fans and some more Irish folk punk? Innovative, interesting, intelligent ideas to take the sound further and forward? Perhaps some more metallic moments that harks back to King’s original band (The Fastways, with Eddie from Motorhead)?

 

Well … no, not really. It was recorded in Ireland though, adding more legitimacy to their cause. Back in 2002, with Drunken Lullabies, the band hit quite an unstoppable formula for writing good songs and they haven’t really bothered to stop. The curse went through Drunken Lullabies, into Within a Mile of Home and has gone all the way into Float: a million and a half album sales later.

 

There is a struggle with most bands that last more than three albums who are not of a progressive nature is that they fail to grow, change and keep relevant (artistically if not commercially). Certainly Float is an album of consistently well written, well played, well structured songs: it’s easy to picture a crowd roused by the ‘Requiem For A Dream’, ‘Paddy’s Lament’, ‘You Won’t Make A Fool Out Of Me’, ‘Us Of Lesser Gods’ and pretty much the rest of the album. But we got that on Drunken Lullabies, why bother making the same album for the forth time? Even the Dropkick Murphy’s have grown: from a cod-Irish, but pretty good, hardcore oi band to a cliché-ridden embarrassment.

 

This is a good, fine, fun album. King has a way with hooks and songs that are, in no uncertain terms, rabble rousing. These eleven tracks are a safe excursion into territory the band never leaves: they are a tight and skilled band who are playing well within their comfort zone. And that is the disappointment: the lack of surprises; the lack of challenge; the lack of progress. If folk music was never meant to change, Bob Dylan would’ve never picked up the electric guitar and The Pogues would play sober. I accuse Flogging Molly of sitting on their laurels and letting themselves down by making consistently good yet predictable album.

http://www.punknews.co.uk/review.php?view=view&id=4986&filter=1
http://www.punknews.org/review/7096

 

http://www.floggingmolly.com/

[gig review] Darkest Hour @ The Barfly, Brighton (24/01/08)

Bursting forth from the speakers comes the ethereal death metal destruction of Darkest Hour as they laid waste to all ear drums that stand before them. This and other such clichés will be deployed to describe just how jaw-dropping Darkest Hour are this evening at the Barfly in Brighton.

 

Darkest Hour – The Sadist Nation

 

Straddling the stage, they open with “Doomsayer,” the first song from their sixth offering, Deliver Us. The use of a sombre, clean, picked guitar intro destroyed by a display of uber-heaviness — vocals-a-roaring, guitars-a-shredding and double kicks-a-pounding — is well worn, but not without a reason: it is effective.

 

And so they start, and so they continue. Most of the songs are taken from Deliver Us: “Demon(s),” “Sanctuary,” “An Ethereal Drain,” all make proud apperances. All blisteringly played and, with help from the sharp and clear sound, they managed to fill up every space of the mind. The diminutive crowd receives them appreciatively, getting whipped into a frenzy that eventually bursts into two halves. The no-man’s-land is taken up by a group of testosterone-filled youths doing a bizarre hybrid of folk and hardcore dancing.

 

Being on Victory Records, the crowd seems a strange mix. The following of the label means they attract kids who would perhaps not normally go to a death metal gig and make the audience slightly more diverse than long-haired, angry young men (there are still short-haired, angry young men here, granted). But their record company may also be a hindrance, for metallers seem to fob them off as being in a ‘hardcore vein,’ and therefore ‘less’, which is sad. Fools!

 

A key factor that helps sets the band apart from most has to be the astonishing ability of drummer Ryan Parrish. His feet never seemed to stop; only varying between different types of driving beats. His fluency with the drums, the snare scatter shots and fills, drives everything and keeps everything going, adding so much to the ethereal feel. Sometimes muddied by the album sound, there are no such problems for the drums tonight, as Parrish is on form and as brutal as anything.

 

Guitarists Kris Norris and Mike Schleibaum trade riffs effortlessly, delivering their brand of melodic death metal and occasionally throwing in the odd solo and an excellent party trick: synchronised sweep-picking. Add to this Paul Burnette’s bass playing, giving everything a pronounced groove, full of slides and held notes (it’s very nice to be able to hear a metal bassist, too).

 

John Henry, the vocalist, befriends the crowd and turns it into a fun gig. Looking at ease and not really caring at the small number of people there, he plays to and enjoys the audience: cooing them forward, encouraging dancing, headbanging and stage invasions. His efforts are rewarded with circle pits for set highlights, “With a Thousand Words to Say But One” and “The Sadist Nation.”

 

It may be a small crowd, the set may consist of songs mainly from Deliver Us, and there may have been some macho bullshit going around, but the sound was clear, the band is on form and Henry charms the crowd. What more could you want? There is only word to describe them: awesome.

 

http://www.punknews.co.uk/review.php?view=view&id=4982

http://www.punknews.org/review/7029

 

http://www.darkesthour.cc/

[interview] The Lawrence Arms (13/04/06)

On the the 13th April 2006, I talked to Brendan, vocalist/bassist with Chicargo’s The Lawrence Arms at the Mean Fiddler in London, their 796th gig.

The Lawrence Arms – The Devil’s Taking Names

Me: So, have you toured for this album in America yet?

 

Brendan (B): Yeah, we just did a couple with NOFX and a couple of weeks headlining. It’s been really fun, I’m really siked to play these new songs on stage. It’s where that at their best.

 

Me: Do you prefer playing your own shows or support shows?

 

B: There’s great things about both, really. And, I mean, I love playing our own headlining shows when we’re in a town where the kids really like us, because there’s nothing like the vibe of knowing that everybody from the front to the back is having a good time. And that’s sort of like the thing at our shows. We like to interact with the crowd, everybody to sing together and all that stuff. We can pull that off when a lot of people know the songs and we can’t pull it off so much when a lot of people don’t know the songs! That being said, it’s awesome to just go out there and just play half an hour of the songs we thing are the strongest live songs and just go out there and blow through the whole thing and just be like “ooph, that was … that was fun.”

 

Me: So you change your set according to what venue you’re playing?

 

B: Yeah, more or less. You know, we … This is the thing; we have a lot of fucking songs. A lot of songs; too many. We can’t possibly play everything everybody wants to hear, so we have kind of got to the point where we pick the songs that we think are essential that we play for these short sets. And those don’t really vary that much, because out of 5 albums there’s 10 songs that if we don’t play there’s defiantly going to be someone pissed off. Those are the songs we play.

With the longer sets we really vary them. Like, when we headline, they’re different all the time.

 

Me: The songs on the new album seem to be pretty different from what I heard before.

 

B: Yeah, we try to do something pretty different with every record and, I think, that the thing is that the record before this one is the one, when people get over this one being the new album, people will look at our entire catalogue of work and will see “The Greatest Story Every Told” is really the strange record in our entire catalogue. This new record is sort of a return to form. This record is still different to everything else, but it’s kind of off a record that was so left field and to swing in completely the other direction people are like “wow, you guys really changed it up”. It’s like, “I dunno, we’ve always kinda been about trading things off.” That being said, we put a lot of time into what we wanted this record to sound like, what we wanted it to be about and we sort of changed it up according to what we were interested in conveying.

 

Me: ‘The Devil’s Taking Names’ contains the lyrics “I never tried that but I know I don’t like it”. Were the lyrics written in response to Meat Loafs “I’ll do anything for love, but I don’t do that”?!

 

B: Ha! Urrrm … You think it’s about anal sex on both counts? (laughs)

 

Me: Well … it can be interpreted as that!

 

B: Well, no. I mean, I really hate to ascribe intentionality to my songs because people should take what they want out of them, and that is what is important. And what I mean when I write is important to me but I hate to colour what people think of songs by saying what I think it’s about because my interpretation is no better than anybody elses. In fact, it’s often worse, but having said that I defiantly think that that Meat Loaf song is … I can’t image it’s about butt sex though …!

What “The Devil’s Taking Names” is about is, to me, is about the sort of stubbornness of humanity and especially men in general, as they get older and it manifests itself in a lot of ways. Like in conversations where people are like “That fucking sucks” and have no idea of what they’re talking about. Just because of the context of our band a lot of people automatically assume it’s about drugs. It is referring to drugs, but that’s no specifically what it’s about. What it is about is the way groups of men sit around and stubbornly debate things they know nothing about, and ultimately that leads to a very unsatisfying, boring existence. And that’s why … so much more than you ever possibly want to know (laughs) … that’s why the middle section which is very different sound, clean and everything. What the lyrics in that section means is “Hey, you know what? All this stupid talking about everything is getting me nowhere.” You can either live your life and get out of it, or you can sit about and talk about things you know nothing about. Either way, we’re all going to end up dead. The last part of the song, “Dry your eyes, everybody else go back inside, laugh and crying are almost the same. Dahdahdah!” That’s just the ultimate expression of that cynicism where people who actually brave enough to display actual emotion are only doing it for some sort of attention. But, so now that I’ve totally ruined the song for you; that’s only what it’s about to me.

 

Me: I was just joking about what I read into it.!

 

B: Yeah, I know that. I do appreciate the opportunity to talk about the lyrics because it’s something that Chris and I both [take pride in]. I think it’s the strong suit of our band. I read a review of our band the other day and it was like, “The CD’s great, the only thing is the lyrics are terrible.” And I’m like, “There’s only one thing I know for sure that we do it well, and that’s write lyrics!

 

Me: You’ve had quite a few albums out rated with constantly high regard, how do you have any sort of quality control? I mean, you get a lot of bands that the first few releases are fantastic and later on you’re hard pushed to get 1 good song.

 

B: I would say, our records; I think every one is better than the last. With the exception of the split CDs we did with the Chinkees and Shady View Terrace, some older stuff we did, I think that that’s some of the best stuff we did. That’s a while ago, that was before our first release on Fat. The thing about our band is that our first two records are essentially demos. We recorded the first record before we ever played a show and ran out of money so we couldn’t mix it. It was completely live, all the way through. We finished the first song, started recording the 2nd song. And then because I was friends with somebody who ran a record label with national distribution, it came out. By the time we played our first show, the 2nd record was already written. So then we recorded that one and put it out, it was only after that we really became a band. That’s when we really became a band. Not touring, but playing shows and going on road trips. Those two records are, essentially we released, a 25 song demo in 2 parts. I’m not trying to take anything away from those records. I know there are people out there who, a few … and it is very few … who those are great records to. That’s cool, but if I could go back and do it again we would not have released those records. It just created too much music for us to be able to function as a band and really sustain what the Lawrence Arms really is. We’ve been around for 7 years. That’s enough time to have 2 split releases and 3 full lengths. It’s not enough time to 2 split releases and 5 full lengths. It’s too much.

 

Me: It’s impressive keeping score for all those shows.

 

B: It’s 796 at this point. It started because out of town, by the time we played our first show in Chicago, I took it as the first show. Y’know, “Hey, this is the first show so if we fuck up, don’t hold it against us too much”. And by the time we had done a run it was our 4th show and I thought it was kind of funny. All of a sudden it’s our 13th show and people sort of caught on to it and we never really stopped doing it and once it got to be like real significant numbers, “damn, this our 75 show and we’ve announced it ever show??!”. Then it was like, “we couldn’t stop now”. What’s really cool about it is the kids who are really dedicated Lawrence Arms fans, which is a strange thing. A lot of Lawrence Arms fans, our fan base is very small but extremely, extremely dedicated. And our really dedicated fans can tell me the number of every show they’ve been to, and when people go “Dude, I saw show 372, 392, 406 and 13.” I’m like “wow! That’s so rad”. We had a tour manager a while ago, he decided he was going to make punch cards to give to people at the shows and something would eventually be won. But, it turned out to be too much trouble!

 

Me: How has it changed from being on a label like Asian Man to something like Fat Wreck?

 

B: The thing is Asian Man is great. And it makes you appreciate the fact that all you really need is 1 person to believe in you that pays for your recording and you can anything you want. You can tour, you can put out records and become successful or you could not. The potential is there with such a barebones structure and being on Asian Man really helps you realise.

 

Me: He works out of his mums garage, doesn’t he?

 

B: Yeah, he has the opportunity to do more but he just chooses not to. He doesn’t really want to be caught up with all that stuff. He’s like “you know what? I’ve sold a lot of records pretty much doing nothing, I’ve made some money more or less doing nothing. You know, doing what I love. Keeping it a hobby”.

 

Me: I guess you guys live off the touring now? Is it easy or quite hard?

 

B: Well, I’m not a fucking coal miner! Being a coal miner is hard, being in a rock band and touring is easy. I would have to be such a fucking unbelievable prick to say that this is a hard thing to do. I’m not whipping my arse with 100 dollar bills or anything…

 

Me: That’s when the rap album comes out.

 

B: (laughs). Sure, but this is great, you know? There is a reason why you do it for so long. When we started this band and we started going on tour, we were all homeless. We just lived in the van and just made sure we had shows every day. That way we had dinner, a place to go the next day, and a stage where we could call to people for a place to sleep. We did that for almost two years. And it’s fucking fun, and it was gruelling? Yes, it was gruelling but was it hard? No way, it’s not hard. I feel for the coal miners, man. That’s hard.

 

Me: Where you a coal miner??!

 

B: Was I? Fuck no, man! (laughs).

 

Me: Then what’s with the coal miner reference?!

 

B: In the US, recently a mine collapsed and I read this book about P.O.W.’s in the Chinese/Japanese war, mantruain conflict … whatever it’s called. Sort of the pre-cursor to World War 2, and how the P.O.W.’s were forced to work in mines. And it’s so scary, if you fuck up and your foreman didn’t like you, he’d take you to the edge of the mine and he’d just push you over the cliff. And then you land on a big pile of POW’s who are also dead for pissing him off. And then, in Illinois recently, this doctor went down to this mine and these miners have been doing work in really unfair conditions and they found out they all had black-lung disease. Whatever regulations are supposed to be in place, they’re not in place at all. So, just recently the plight of the coal miner has been weighing heavily on me. They lived a fucked up life and what do they do it for? Those guys don’t go down there to come up to their fucking mansions. Those guys should be getting millions of dollars a year! Instead it’s like, “Here’s a book of coupons for McDonalds, see you again at 5am”.

People that bitch about being in rock bands, like “Oh it’s so hard. We’ve been around for ever. We don’t have any fans. And I don’t believe fucking Chemical Sunday are huge, back in the day we were doing this and they …” Fuck you, man! You’re playing rock’n’roll music! Whether or not the kids showed up, there’s a guy who got up this morning and drove to work and opened the door and his friend drove here, too, and turned on the fucking P.A. so you can do your stupid songs that you wrote in your basement. That’s more than most people can say for their hobbies, you know?

 

Me: Someone said something about you guys not going on the Warped Tour?

 

B: Fuck the Warped Tour, man. Actually, I’m glad you bring this up because it’s very serious business to me. That’s what the last song on the record is about, the hidden track. Here’s the thing; it used to be, not that long ago, in the summer time all the bands would want to go on tour. So, all the big bands would gather up the other bands (like the Lawrence Arms and Verses the World and so on. Not virtually unknown but not touring in busses.) and go on tour. So, there’s 30 of these bands taking out 2 or 3 bands a piece and going around the DIY circuit. Clubs had shows every night, kids had something to do all the time in the summer. Smaller bands got to play infront of bigger audiances. And now, all those fucking bands are on the Warped Tour so there’s just a stupid fucking show that happens 1 day. The kids have 1 day out in the summer to do something fun, opposed to 30. It’s not even about the stupid corporate sponsors, man. Or the fucking army recruiting booths. That’s fucking reprehensible, but that’s not what bowls me out the most! What bowls me out the most is the small circuit scene in America is going out of business because of the fucking warped tour. All these bands that used to play the clubs are now playing the fucking show. Bands would have to go on tour AGAINST the Warped Tour, which blows. Or ON the Warped Tour, which blows even more! You think it’s bad trying to play a town when the Warped Tour played 3 days ago? Try playing your fucking set when Rancid is playing 100 yards away at the exact same time! And the whole time, people are like “uh, this punk rock taken it’s ultimate level.” It’s like, NO! This is destroying the D.I.Y. scene. When I was a fucking kid, I went to shows every fucking weekend and see all these fucking people and there was a sense of a community. Now, the clubs don’t have any shows any more so they’re shut down. Nobody says anything about this in the US, they only say 1 or 2 things; “Well, it’s the only thing to do in the summer”, it’s like, “Fuck you, you’re big enough to tour on your own.” Or, “You only have to play half an hour”. Don’t tell me you want to work 1/3rd as hard to get the same amount of money and that’s a fucking valid excuse for selling out the people who made you who you are. The Warped Tour is fucked, it’s bullshit. And there’s a fucking army recruiting booth at the Warped Tour! If that’s not fucking punk rock, I don’t know what is. Because they’re nothing cooler than signing dumb young kids up to die somewhere. So, yeah. Fuck the Warped Tour. Fuck it completely, it sucks.

 

Me: Good rant! Are you going to come back later this year and do a proper UK/European tour?

 

B: I’d love to. It’s been too long since we’ve been in the UK.

 

Me: You’re only doing two dates here this time …?

 

B: I know, it doesn’t really count as being in the UK. The UK has always been so good to us and we love coming here but whatever reason it’s just not been possible. We’ve had some bad experiences with a lot of things trying to get over here. We’ve had problems on almost every level. Nothing that serious, but enough glitches that it constantly gets fucked. So, when we try we’re come back we’re going fucking do it right.

 

Me: Was it easy to get into Europe?

 

B: Yeah, no problem. When we were coming through customs, I was standing, talking to the guy and I have a work permit that’s a real shitty photocopy and he goes “Do you have another copy?”, “No, that’s the only copy, you can read all the numbers”, “Yeah, it’s fine. You can read all the numbers!”. The guy next to me is black, and the security guy was looking at him and then at the passport and keeps comparing them and giving the dude such a fucking hard time. I mean, I live in a pretty insular world where a lot of people think similarly and it’s kind of weird to find that xenophobia and racism are such rampant, rampant things. Especially with boarder patrol guards. You don’t become a boarder patrol guy because you’re a sweet, cool dude who likes people. No, they’re more “I want to maintain a status quo, I want to keep these fucks out of my country.” Fuck the boarder patrol, too. Fuck the Warped Tour and the Boarder Patrol.

 

Versus the World Guitarist (VTWG): Especially the Canadian Boarder Patrol.

 

B: Oh my god! They’re the worst.

 

VTWG: I’m surprised you didn’t get the “Canadian hand shake”.

 

B: Yeah, we’re supposed to be the big assholes! In fairness, Canada is an amazing country. The laws are right on and they’re so much more together than we are.

 

Me: what do you think of the other bands?

 

B: I’ve never heard Versus the World, I’ve never heard them at all. No Use For A Name are a fucking great band. We toured with them in Japan and I honestly didn’t know anything about them except for the shit I heard on the first Fat compilation. Honestly, the old Fat roster was never really my bag. It was never like I didn’t like it, it was just I gravitated more towards the gritty stuff like Fifteen. These are bands that I know no one even knows who they are in the UK ‘cos I’m constantly going “Fifteen, that was the main band when I was growing up.”

 

Chris (Lawrence Arms guitarist): and Gripple! (sp?)

 

B: And Gripple! And this was the shit. People sang like “burghburghblurgh” (raspy vocals) or “RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUHH!” …when you transcribe that, I’d really like to know how it comes out as. (laughs)

 

VTWG: How do you spell “RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUHH!”?!

 

B: So, when we met these guys in Japan it was like “okay, we know these guys are on Fat Wreck Chords, they must be cool dudes ‘cos on everybody on Fat is pretty cool. And other the that …” and then played and I was like “these guys are a fucking great band!”

 

Me: What’s happened to Fat Wreck with all the great bands signing recently?

 

B: Fat Wreck Chords made a decided change, and we were like the initial band of that change. There’s as much as a Fat Wreck sound now as there was in the early 90s, people just haven’t changed it the definition yet. In another 5 years, bands that are like raspy vocals, mid-tempo guitar driven rock – people are going to describe that as the Fat Wreck sound.

 

Me: Thank you very much! A lot to type, but it’s been great! Any last words?

 

B: Yeah. We’re gonna try and come back and do something cool for you guys. You’ve always been good to us and we’ve just been slacking. No more! Lawrence Arms UK! 06/07!

 

http://www.punknews.co.uk/article.php?filter=interview&view=view&id=130

 

http://www.thelawrencearms.net/

 

 

Music Mew[sic] Moosick Meowsak …

Nothing to see here … just an online portfolio, I suppose. ‘Tis the modern thing for writers (waddaloado’cock).

www.punknews.co.uk
www.pissedresistance.co.uk

That is all.