Warp 11 Interview

Although recovering from a long Tranya binge on Rigel IV, I managed to squeeze some answers out of Captain Karl (bass, vocals) of the rogue Starfleet Corps of Rockers infantry division, Warp 11. The band was hungover, so apparently only Karl had the power of speech. John Merlino (drums) gave up an answer under torture, however.

(For more on the band, check out TruePunk’s band profile of Warp 11 and album review of “I Don’t Want To Go To Heaven As Long As They Have Vulcans In Hell”)

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BIJHAN: Warp 11 is a nationally recognized name, and your music has been heard all over the world. So when does the whole country get to see the live experience? Or will we forever need to make pilgrimages to Sacramento to see your performances?

CAPTAIN KARL: We’ve talked about doing an Alpha Quadrant tour for some time now. I guess it just comes down to getting the timing right. We’re all pretty busy in our non-band related lives. Brian raises and sells pedigree tribbles, many of which have repeatedly won Best of Show. Kiki is busy teaching Klingon martial arts self-defense classes to exotic green Orion women. John is an alcoholic. I’m busy working on an actual holodeck which admittedly at this time is an old shed, a RealDoll I got on e-bay and some Pirates of the Caribbean costumes someone left at my last Halloween party. But hey… you gotta start somewhere.

BIJHAN: What was it like to have “Everything I Do I Do With William Shatner” played in front of the man as part of a tribute to his career?

CAPTAIN KARL: It was like having a quantum torpedo fired directly into the pleasure center of my brain. Now all I need to do is have kinky borg sex with Jeri Ryan (Using lots of my home homemade borg love attachments of course.) and I can die a happy man.

BIJHAN: Your promotional material usually depicts you wearing the 1960s Starfleet uniforms. Was the Original Series your favorite series?
CAPTAIN KARL: Most definitely. Though I do feel a certain bald affinity with Captain Picard, I have to go with the original series. Besides Shatner’s bald too; he just hides it under a toupee. The original series was all about kicking ass and taking names and getting laid. They didn’t need a holodeck to make interesting episodes. All they needed was Kirk, Spock, Bones and an alien girl in a bikini.

BIJHAN: You sometimes dress up in costumes other than Starfleet uniforms, though, such as the Borg or Cheron. What have been your favorite costumes to perform in?

CAPTAIN KARL: Our costumes are irrelevant. Only Kiki’s costumes matter. See the website photo section if you don’t believe me.

BIJHAN: What’s the creative process like for Warp 11? Does one member of the band come to the others with a fully-written song, or does it emerge from jamming, or what?

CAPTAIN KARL: Everybody writes and everyone has their own process when they do it. My writing style consists of loading up my DVD player with about 40 random Trek episodes and opening a bottle of Jim Beam. Then I sit in naked in my living room with a pencil and a pad of paper and press play. I don’t really remember much of what happens after that but the next morning I usually have about 6 or 7 songs written. (Strangely they never appear to be in my handwriting.)

BIJHAN: Fans have been eager to accept John “Number One” Merlino as a crew member. But it marked the departure of beloved Chief Medical Officer Jeff Hewitt. Jeff still has writing credits on your latest album “I Don’t Want To Go To Heaven As Long As They Have Vulcans In Hell”, though. So what’s the story? Why did Jeff leave and how did you find John?

CAPTAIN KARL: We wrote some of the songs before Jeff left and we always give credit where credit is due. As for why he left, I can assure you it was on good terms. Jeff dislocated a groin muscle whilst practicing for a Full-Contact Klingon Origami match. I always told him those things would be the end of him but he was obsessed. What can you do? After that he had a lot of issues playing the drums and graciously bowed out of the band. It was a sad day for all of us. Not really sure where we found John. I think he answered an ad or something. Or maybe he’s someone’s cousin. I don’t really remember.

BIJHAN: (To John Merlino specifically) What was it like to join a band that had already developed a dedicated following?

JOHN “NUMBER ONE” MERLINO: Warp 11 fans are the best. They buy us drinks whenever we ask and they treat me like the rock star that I always knew I was. What more could I ask for? Other than to stop bringing up that damned Jeff guy – FOR EXAMPLE!

BIJHAN: Some fans want to see you in the next J.J. Abrams Star Trek film. I must say I would be excited. Have you been approached? Even if you weren’t, what kind of roles would you want to play?

CAPTAIN KARL: Are you kidding? I’d give Jeff’s other groin muscle to be in the next film. If anyone reading this knows J.J. tell him were interested. As to what we’d play, two words — ”Red Shirts.”

BIJHAN: In your promotional video for “I Don’t Want To Go To Heaven As Long As They Have Vulcans In Hell” we can see what appear to be Enterprise badges circa 2266 tattooed on Captain Karl Miller’s chest along with his Vulcan companion. Who is the man in the Spock mask? And are those tattoos real?

CAPTAIN KARL: Yup. The tattoos are real. I always said that when this band made me my first million I would get the Starfleet logo tattooed on my chest and I am not one to break my word. As for the man in the Spock mask… It’s actually Leonard Nimoy! He owed me a favor. Don’t ask for the details.

BIJHAN: What’s next for Warp 11?

CAPTAIN KARL: Probably more songs about Star Trek, I imagine.

BIJHAN: Thank you very much for your time and answers! Live long and rock hard!

CAPTAIN KARL: Lick long and proper!

Interview with Propagandhi

As they gear up for the busiest touring period in their long career, Canadian protest-punk veterans Propagandhi break the drought with Supporting Caste, their first album in four years. Truepunk speaks with drummer Jordy Samolesky about playing Italian squats and standing up for the little people.

Interview with PROPAGANDHI – February 2009 By Steve Tauschke

Formed in 1986 by Samolesky and guitarist Chris Hannah, Propagandhi’s penchant for taking extended breaks has kept them off the live scene but has ironically given the band a longevity few acts dream of.

“We actually had a few periods where we’d take as much as two years off, either we’d stop touring to start writing a new album or something like that,” says Samolesky from Winnepeg of the band’s two decade tenure. “So we haven’t played ourselves out to the point where we’re completely sick of our material.

“More recently we added a new guitar player Beav (David ‘Space Beaver’ Guillas) to the band and kind of spent a good couple of seasons working him into the new stuff and writing new material. So we haven’t been too active on the road really.”

All that is about to change as Propagandhi, now a quartet, embark on a very busy 2009 to promote their newly released fifth album Supporting Caste, issued by their own imprint G7 Welcoming Committee, after four albums on Californian indie punk label Fat.

“I wouldn’t say it’s straight ahead in terms of our early stuff like our How To Clean… album, it’s definitely not like that,” offers Samolesky. “But I wouldn’t say it’s prog-rock or metal or anything like that. I think we have a lot of elements of our earlier stuff but it’s layered a little more effectively now.”

Recorded at the increasingly popular The Blasting Room studios in Colorado with engineer Jason Livermore and drummer-cum-producer Bill Stevenson, formerly of Black Flag, Descendents and ALL, the album addresses themes close to the band members’ socially aware hearts.

“I guess one take on it could be - and it’s certainly open to interpretation - it’s kind of like we’re all this supporting caste for the powers that be who are the top of the caste in the caste system,” says Samolesky of the record’s title. “But it’s more of a global thing, it’s not really based on the Indian caste system.

“I think we have to realise what our different roles are in this sort of supporting caste system whether you’re at the bottom and you’re the most marginalized and powerless or completely exploited to death or if you’re in a relatively more privileged caste where you have the ability to do something to change things …

“We’re all written into this ongoing story and the history’s always written by the victors, the people at the top of the heap. But it’s all based on a false sense of reality.”

Supporting Caste may also be regarded as a continuum of the band’s long-held championing of grassroots, non-profit and community-minded initiatives that have seen them perform at atypical rock venues over the years for a variety of causes.

“We’re all more inspired by the independent side of music and if there are counter-cultural elements then I think we’re into some of those,” says Samolesky. “I think just being able to see different examples of independent and anti-authoritarian culture around the world has been really interesting. One thing comes to mind is playing in some of the squat scenes in Italy and until a number of years ago, in Germany as well, that was really inspiring.

“Some of the places we played were absolutely incredible and examples of forms of participatory democracy with people living an independent lifestyle in a really successful and interesting way. We’ve played factories and an armoury I believe it was from the 17th century.”

Interview with Fat Mike of NOFX

Fat Mike, the old punk who won’t lie down, tells Truepunk about success-hungry kids, the Scarface of Ecuador and NOFX’s new old-school album Coaster.

NOFX – May 2009 By Steve Tauschke

Hi Mike, are you guys still only touring about three or months a year these days?
“Yeah although it just so happens I went to Japan last week and I have to go to Europe tomorrow so I’m only home for seven days. But we rarely do that but there’s a couple of really big festivals we had to take so ..”

Japan - do you enjoy it there?
“It’s probably my favourite place in the whole world to go but not for normal reasons, my festish-y weird reasons. They’ve got some really weird creepy bars there that I love going to. There’s a place called Osaka Jail I like to frequent, your basic bar with a dominatrix and you get a good tie-up and some needles through your tits, that kind of thing.”

I imagine your new DVD Backstage Passport chronicles such footage from your travels.
”Yeah, there’s some footage from Osaka Jail in the DVD actually. It’s hard when you’re in places liken Singapore or Indonesia finding some creepy places because the countries is so creepy already that you really don’t want to find the underbelly. But we did, we went to our share of cool places. Once in Ecuador, which is a pretty poor country, we played a show at a country club and we asked ‘who’s the richest kid in town - let’s have a party at his house!’ So we had an after-party at his house and that was awesome. He was like the Scarface of Ecuador.”

You mentioned last time we spoke how CD piracy pretty much generated your tours of various third world countries given your albums aren’t officially available in these places.
”Right, it’s all word of mouth and kids giving it to each other somehow. But when we used to tour Europe in the 80s we didn’t have distribution there either and kids still knew who we were and knew our songs. Back then it was cassettes tapes from person to person and now it’s a lot easier.”

Having flogged yourself across US and Europe so many times, it must be fun to play to new audiences?
”It sounds stupid but it was really exciting and fun for us because it had been really long time since we got off an plane and were thrown into a culture that you’re like ‘what the fuck is going on here?’. We got off the plane in the Philippines and it was weird.”

You’ve sold six million albums without mainstream promotion and yet you advise young bands against pursuing the whole DIY thing these days. Why?
“I just don’t think kids these days have the stomach for it. The first six years we were touring no-one liked us and there was no hope of ever getting bigger. But it’s fine for us because we’re alcoholics and we really like being on the road. But kids today they want to make it, they don’t want to play in garages for six years like us with no hope. They want to get in a band and within two years they want to be big and if it doesn’t work out for them then they’ll start a new band. They’re worried about their career rather than having good times. You see them gang up on one band member for being too drunk one night. I’m like ‘are you fucking serious - this is rock n’ roll and it’s about fun and excess. Fuck moderation!’.”

Is that a generation Y instant gratification attitude?
“Absolutely! Instant gratification! So if you’re in band and get a major label opportunity then go for it because those labels will be going under within a year or two anyway. I mean with the record industry, our depression started four years ago.”

People are still buying records though.
“It’s not like it’s totally dried up. I don’t think people can just live off songs, a single here and a single there. People still for a long time will want an album. Bands put 12 or 15 songs on one album for a reason, because the songs belong together. It’s a point in your life that you can remember, an album you were listening to, whereas you don’t really remember just a song you were listening to.”

So how do you look back on your 90s albums such as Punk In Drublic?
”I think White Trash Two Heebs and A Bean is really our first listenable record, that I can listen to. And Punk In Drublic is our biggest but at the time it wasn’t a big deal at all, it wasn’t like that album came out and we got huge. It happened slowly and we’ve held onto it. And I’m just really stoked and flattered and couldn’t be happier that the attendance of NOFX shows hasn’t gone down at all.”

Not bad for a band that recently celebrated its 25th anniversary!
“Yeah it’s pretty crazy. We did I think make a really good move in the mid-90s when a lot of our friends were making videos and signing to majors but we thought ‘you know what – I’d rather have a long career. Let’s just go with what we do and play clubs and not fuck with success’.”

There’s nothing flashy about new album Coaster .. it has that consistency we’ve come to expect.
“I think we’ve made a record that I would have enjoyed when I was 14 more than any other record because it does kind of have an old school sound. NOFX started from hardcore and we got more melodic whereas with this record it’s more of a throwback to ‘81/82 LA punk rock. It’s slower and kind of more manic and the sound is a lot cleaner.”

Producer Bill Stevenson must have helped there?
“You can’t go wrong with Bill and Jason because they’ll give you the sound that they want and they know how to get it. You’re not going to get bad-sounding record with them. And Bill, he listens to old punk every day, he’s obsessed with it and if he’s not listening to it he’s talking about some old Black Flag story. He made us listen to this Suburban Lawns song every single day and we watched the video called I’m A Janitor and I can actually hear some of the influence of that song on our record.”

www.nofxofficialwebsite.com

www.myspace.com/nofx

Interview Donots

Interview by Carlo (carlo@truepunk.com) with Ingo.

Hello there Ingo! How are you doing and how are the Donots guys doing in 2008?

Hi there, Carlo! Thanks for asking, we’re doing pretty good! Actually we’re the happiest people in the world at present since our headlining club tours in Europe and Japan were amazing and we’re more than proud about our new album “Coma Chameleon” which we have released through our own label Solitary Man Records. Things couldn’t be better… apart from the fact that we don’t get to sleep a lot recently…

Your new album “Coma Chameleon” has just come out. How do you feel about it and how do you consider it in the Donots history? Like, your best one, your more experimental one?

I guess everybody says their new album is the best achievement ever so I’ll have to go with that answer as well. But it is seriously the most important album of our career because all the changes that we have made, the re-invention of the Donots Sound and the decision to release it on our own. The album sort of marks a second spring for our band and paves the way for another 15 years of Donots, I’d say. We managed to surprise ourselves again and playing the new stuff live feels even better than playing the old stuff. We experimented a lot but I’d say the album is still very focused. Probably our most focused material ever.

The new songs – to me – sound a lot darker than your previous works. I remember on “Pocket Rock” I felt a lot of pop vibrations, on “Amplify The Good Times” a lot of pop sensibility, on “Got The Noise” a lot of rock anthems. Your evolution does not seem to stop. What’s up with “Coma Chameleon” ?

I agree with you. The new stuff sounds a bit more melancholic or perhaps more stripped down and rough. I think it’s most important for a band to evolve and re-invent themselves all the time. Stagnation was never our thing and the new album sort of sounds a lot more different than the old stuff. It’s still Donots but with a much more mature edge to it. We won’t be losing our pop roots, though. The pop melodies are still there but we have wrapped ‘em up in a different packaging…

You recorded the new album in two different studios, at the Tonstudio 45 and at the Principal Studios, where you recorded “Got The Noise”. How was the recording experience? Did you go to the studio with the songs done and ready to be recorded or did you spend some time to write new material in the studio?

The approach was completely different this time around. We went into the studio after throwing away some 50 demo songs we had recorded. We only used them as our daily inspiration and that was that. We have basically written every song on the album in the studio on the very day we have recorded them. Thus we maintained a lot of freshness and drive in the songs. In the morning we didn’t know what we would have taped in the evening which was a very exciting yet risky experience. But: Mission accomplished, band happy!

It’s the first time you have not worked with Fabio Trentini for you album: how did you decide to change producer and on a side note, is H-Blockx still around?

When we parted ways with Gun Records (our old label which is a division of BMG/Sony) we felt it was time for a complete change. We could have easily recorded “just another” Donots Album and Fabio was up to doing it but we agreed on looking for somebody else in order to re-invent our style a bit and get a different view on our music. Thus we hired Kurt Ebelhäuser and Vincent Sorg for the job. Kurt is the guitarist for German alternative rock icons “Blackmail”. He’s a good friend of our band but he always hated our albums. He thinks we’re a great band but he was very critical of the recorded songs. It was sort of seductive for us to get somebody involved who thinks our trademarks need another perspective. Together with Kurt we took a step back from our usual writing process and the things that Fabio had told us. This was the perfect moment to get Kurt for the job and reinvent the Donots. Vincent on the other hand is an old friend of the band who we wanted to get involved again. He recorded our 2nd DIY record “Tonight’s Karaoke-Contest Winners” in the middle of the 90s so we wanted him with us in order to sort of re-live the careless feeling of the early days of our band. Fabio is still one of our best friends and he was completely supportive of the idea to get another production team this time around. He doesn’t play in the H-Blockx anymore, though. Actually he will move back to lovely Italy this month and do some more production there. Oh, and just for the record: The H-Blockx are still around indeed.

For your new work, you left the major label that released most of your previous albums in Germany, Supersonic/Bmg and released the new material on your very own record label Solitary Man Records. What’s up with the do-it-yourself ethics versus the major label industry?

Basically speaking we were just discontent with the way that Gun Records represented us in the last couple of years. We weren’t on the same page anymore and I guess we never were completely. Thus we had our lawyer get us out of the deal which cost us some 2 years of legal issues that needed to be sorted out. When we were free people again in 2006 it felt really good to not be signed to a label at all and take on the new record all by ourselves. We got lots of offers from small to big labels but in the course of time it became more and more evident that at least for “Coma Chameleon” the best thing would be to release the record on our own label Solitary Man Records. We wanted complete control this time around, hired external people (good friends and family) for various jobs and took a chance on releasing the album DIY again, just like we did in the old days. I’m not dooming major companies here. It’s just that they’re having their common structures which make them less flexible when working bands. They make the same mistakes over and over again and are not really open to new approaches and platforms. With Solitary Man Records we’re capable of putting our own ideas into action straight away. We know how we want our band to be represented and since the label foundation in Japan 2005 we know a lot more about release structures. One can say we have made really good experiences with my label Solitary Man Records over there by releasing bands such as Dropkick Murphys, Beatsteaks, Boy Sets Fire, Toy Dolls, Dover and more…

Lately a lot of major bands started going d-i-y or at least releasing stuff by themselves with the help of the internet, as Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails and also Coldplay and The Offspring, who made their new single available for free. Is this the future of the music world? That the bands produce and release their stuff by themselves and the big labels are cut out?

I guess in the long run the music industry needs to open up to new ways of promoting the bands. At present everybody’s just desperate what with the illegal download rates and the ever shrinking market. The Radiohead model might not be the smartest move for smaller bands but it’s true – what the industry needs right now is movement. I’m sure that a lot of bigger bands will follow and separate themselves from those obsolete structures. It’s only just the beginning and I’m happy to see somebody makes a first move. If the bigger companies don’t follow and find new approaches of marketing then they’ll be facing problems. We felt that for a long time when being signed to Gun Records so we are truly glad we have made the indie decision and are now our own bosses and completely open to a brand new perspective on marketing.

I saw you did an amazing promotional job via your website, myspace and youtube: you did contests, added free streaming of your album, videos, podcasts and more. Was this a hard work and did you get some help from friends?

Thank you, Carlo! You have no idea how much we work at present. We are busy 24/7 but that’s something which we really enjoy doing since we do it for our own benefit and for the benefit of our fans. We have a couple of friends who help us out and do a great job on the internet and promo front but in the end it’s all us deciding and making up our minds. That’s exactly what I was talking about earlier – we are willing to try new structures even if that means working overtime and not knowing what might work and what not. It’s trial and error these days but we’re getting massive positive response on our work. I think it’s really important to offer the fans of our band something special. In the end it’s them who have supported us all along and we’re very grateful for that. And isn’t that the very point where to start your promotion?

I remember you guys put your song “Time’s Up” on the American compilation “Rock Against Bush Vol.2”. Did it help you in any way to reach new fans in the US? Did you get some love mails from some kids over there? Because I see on such sites as Last.fm you’re very played by non German people too.

We got a lot of feedback on the Rock Against Bush contribution which made us really happy. People all over the world seem to agree when it comes to the Bush adminstration and all the mistakes they have made. Actually I think it’s so weird that Bush got re-elected anyway since it feels like there’s not a single person on the planet who likes him. We got a lot of attention for “Time’s Up” from outside of our usual touring territories which is a nice side effect. But in this case that wasn’t our primary goal. We felt the need to contribute to the compilation because of the political background.

Speaking of your new songs, I see you used a lot of non conventional instruments as banjo, accordion and a brass section. How did you decide to experiment this and was it difficult to arrange those instruments for your rock anthems?

What we wanted this time around was to focus a lot more on the songs themselves and not the overall feel of the album. There was no such thing as a sound guideline for the album so we decided from song to song what we needed when it came to choosing the instruments. It was very interesting to experiment and get people involved who were capable of playing accordion, pedal steel guitar, banjo and the like. I think the additional instruments add a lot to the freshness and diversity of our new material. People seem to be really surprised to hear all the tiny experiments going on in the songs. And I personally think it was about time we got new instruments involved in the studio process. I can’t wait to start working on the next album already…

Some fans consider “Stop The Clocks” the best song you ever wrote: do you agree with that? If not, which is your favourite Donots song to play live?

It’s really crazy. We never got that much feedback for a single song in our career before. “Stop The Clocks” seems to be the essence of our band although it’s very different from the old stuff. People from various scenes and musical backgrounds can all agree on the song and we’re getting massive radio airplay for the song already. Even MTV seems to be completely blown away. I love performing the song since it’s a lot more laid back and singer/songwriter based than our previous stuff. Funny enough it was the hardest and fastest demo we have recorded in the last couple of years. My favourite Donots track at the moment is “Somewhere Someday”, though. Gotta love the country touch to it, y’all…

You released your record in Japan even before than in Germany and I saw you already toured Japan with a lot of sold out shows. This is not your first time in Japan but did your fans react to the new songs? Are your more popular in Japan than in Germany ?

I’d say you could compare our status in Japan and over here. The difference is that Japanese kids are paying much more attention to the bands they like and really go out and buy the records straight away (even if that means buying crazily expensive imports). That’s why we released the album in Japan officially first. We were really curious how the kids would like the new stuff and a lot of Japanese Fans think that we are sort of a brand new band by now but they’re liking the album a lot obviously. Actually the reactions for tracks like “Pick Up The Pieces”, “Stop The Clocks” and “New Hope For The Dead” are really overwhelming…

I am aware of at least three b-sides for your album: “Second Best”, “City Lights” and “Your Life Without You”. Are you ever going to release some cd-singles for the singles “Break My Stride” and “Stop The Clocks” with these b-sides as you did for your previous albums?

We might be putting out an EP to “Stop The Clocks” later this year. I guess we have recorded some 6 more tracks that haven’t found their way onto the album so please keep your eyes open for a possible release with those tracks. We haven’t decided when and how to do it but I really like those songs just as much so I’m dying to get them released somehow.

The video for your second single “Stop The Clocks” was just released, I saw it and it’s very nice with those puppy dogs. I have not understood the whole meaning anyway, so, is there one behind it? I think it’s your first video where you don’t see the band playing, except you and Guido.

Thanks! There’s no such thing as a real meaning to the video. We wanted something different this time around. Not the typical band performance video and a different look as well. So the video director Magnus from Sweden who already did “Break My Stride” came up with the crazy idea of having us be prison escapees carrying puppy dogs through the woods being chased by police dogs. Yup, it’s only Guido and me and a bunch of hired actors this time around. It was freezing cold when we shot the video in Stockholm but a big deal of fun. I’m crazy in love with dogs so this has been my favourite video shoot ever…

I saw you are touring a lot in the Countries where you released “Coma Chameleon”: Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Will you release the album in the rest of Europe and will you tour in other places too? What are your future plans?

We have already made the album available digitally for the rest of the world but we are working on physical releases in other territories as well. And we will most definitely go out for a lot more of international touring later this year. Please hang in there, folks – the Donots are on the way! Oh, and just so you know: We are already very keen on going back into the studio and start working on the next record in the not so distant future. Next year we will celebrate our 15th band anniversary and that would be a great date for a new record. We shall see what happens…

Thanks so much for answering my questions. Good luck and keep on rocking!

Thank you so much for the interview, Carlo! You rule, mate. And everybody reading the interview – thank you for your attention and interest! We hope to see you on one of the upcoming shows and please do check out “Coma Chameleon”. You can get an impression and all the latest news on www.donots.com, www.solitarymanrecords.com and www.myspace.com/donots … See you soon!

Bane

Roya Butler sat down with Aaron Bedard upstairs at The Knitting Factory in New York City to get personal about their most recent album, “The Note,” and experiences on the road.

Tell us about your newest release.
Well the album actually came out a couple of years ago. It’s called “The Note.” We worked with the same producer that we’ve worked with through all of our recordings and we’re just really-really happy with it. It came out on Equal Vision Records. We toured on it pretty extensively in 2005 and 2006, and now it’s time to start thinking about doing a new one.

Tell us about the fakie tour you’re doin right now.
Yeah it’s just so small that it’s hard to call it a tour. But we’re doing five shows around New England and a couple here in New York starting tonight at the knitting factory. We’ll go to Albany. We’ll play our hometown of Worcester, MA on Saturday and on Sunday we’ll play some new place called Avril. And all of our shows are with bands that we’re really good friends with, so we’re just excited to be around all of our buddies this weekend. Next weekend, we’ll fly to California and do eight shows up the west coast where we haven’t been in over a year. So we’re really excited to get back out there, because obviously the scenes are really hoppin’ up there in Cali and we have a lot of fans. The shows are always good. Then after that we go to Japan.

Tell us about the festivals you’re playing in Japan.
We were invited to play a couple of festivals – one in Osaka and one in Tokyo. So they are kind of paying for us to fly from California to Japan and back. We’re only going to do two shows, so we’re not going to be there for very long. Usually when we go to Japan we do two weeks of shows, but it’s just going to be real short – in and out, bing-bam.

Why haven’t you done a lot of touring this year?
Our Drummer just had a baby this year, so it’s been harder for him to get away. That’s pretty much why we haven’t been doing a lot of touring; this is the first time that he’s been out on the road with us since the kid came, so this is really exciting for him. But he was like, “It’s gotta be two weeks. We gotta do the whole thing in two weeks.” So, two weeks between Cali and Japan and then he’ll be home. I’m actually going to stay in Japan with a friend for four or five extra days and just chill…buy sneakers and stuff.

Yea, I heard they have a lot of cool sneaker shops out there.
Aaron Bedard: They do. They have a lot of cool sneaker shops, and a lot of stuff you can’t find here. They have a lot more exclusive stuff that you won’t find here. There are a lot of trendy little boutiques and a lot of weird underground sneaker shops that just have really old shit. They’re really into hipster U.S. style, in Japan. They have really nice jeans. They have really nice sneakers. They’re just on the next level when it comes to fashion.

Do they implement hip-hop in their fashion, as we do in the US?
Yeah, some of it’s real hip-hop, for sure. They’re just real obsessed with anything that’s American and street.

I’m assuming you got your name from Batman comix.
Aaron Bedard: Yeah, that’s one of the things that inspired the name, for sure, was the dude that broke Batman’s back. I really like comic books. So yeah, that’s how the name came up. The line up now’s different than the line-up that we had in the beginning. But there are four of us that have been in the whole time, and drummers have come and gone as we’ve gone along. But once he left Converge, things just got real serious for us then, and we’ve done a lot of records since then and have done a lot of touring. We’ve been really lucky to just go all over the place and just play music that we really love. We’re really lucky.

What do you think is the difference between the Hardcore scene and the Metal scene?
Aaron Bedard: I guess the main difference that I can see is that Hardcore always seems to be – I don’t know the metal scene very well so I can’t speak for them – the difference for me is that Hardcore always seems to be about just more realistic view points. The songs are of a more personal nature and try to confront issues a little more. Metal just seems to expand. You can sing about anything. You can sing about dragons and warriors, or you can sing about fast cars and fucking chicks. It’s just way more grandiose. And also to play Metal you have to somewhat talented, and to play Hardcore you don’t have to be really that talented of a musician. You just have to learn three chords on a guitar and beat the fuck out of your drums and be a punk band. It’s kind of one the things I’ve always really loved about Hardcore. It’s really created just by kids who are angry and confused and displaced and just want to scream about it. Whereas Metal, is a little more epic with guitar leads and fancy drum solos.

What do you see as the differences between the Hardcore scene in America vs. in Europe and also Japan?
Aaron Bedard: Well in Japan the kids are just so sweet, and they just love the image and music so much. There’s no attitude. They’re just giddy that you’re there. They’re so fucking happy that American dudes came to play there this music that they love. So that’s just the most positive, heart-warming vibe imaginable. In Europe it’s just so wide, and there are just so many types of scenes. The one that stands out the most is Germany, and German kids are just really blunt and confrontational. If something on your t-shirt offends them or they’re not happy with the style that you band is going in they will just straight up tell you in this very point blank way. Like, “I think that your stuff sucks.” Or, “What is wrong with your government?” And they’re just a little more, I guess confrontational would be the word, or they’re just more up front and forward about things.

How does that compare to the attitude of your fans in Japan?
Aaron Bedard: A Japanese kid would never in a million years want to say anything to make you feel uncomfortable or say anything to make you feel anything but just happy that you’re there.

What do you think makes up the differences in attitudes?
Aaron Bedard: German kids are just maybe a little bit more spoiled; they just have more bands coming through, and if they think that you’re full of shit, they’ll just tell you. It’s something to respect on some level, but is just a little awkward.

What’s it like in the UK?
Aaron Bedard: I would say in the U.K. its becoming way more Americanized. There’s a lot of tough-guy bullshit, and a lot of gangs starting out, and this crew mentality that I think is really detrimental to the Hardcore scene. It seems to be taking over more and more in the United Kingdom. You hear about a lot of fights at shows, and a bunch of stupid bullshit like that. They’re a little bit behind the times, it seems.

So I guess America sets the benchmark for the Hardcore scene across the globe?
Aaron Bedard: We kind of set the standard here in America for dancing and stage-diving, and all the best bands tend to come from here. But they’re catching up. They’ve got some good bands out there. There’s a band called Rise and Fall from Holland who are really-really fucking good. There’s a band from Japan called the FC5 who are really great, and who are really good friends with us. So there’s definitely some good international stuff going on.

Interview by Roya Butler.

NOFX

On the eve of the mid-90s neo-punk expolosion, NOFX’s Pied Piper-like leader Fat Mike, already a ten year veteran of the San Francisco Bay Area scene, offered his own prerequisite on attaining punkdom’s esteemed high office.

INTERVIEW WITH NOFX By Steve Tauschke

“There can’t be any rock stars in the band,” he cautioned me during a break on a Punk In Drublic tour in Europe back in 1994. “Punk rockers are shit, they’re not very good musicians typically and it doesn’t take much to play guitar – or to yell. It’s like, fuckin’ easy! Anyone can learn bass guitar in about half an hour. Actually I taught my 78-year-old grandmother how to play a song on bass.”While Mike’s beloved grandma has since passed on - “she’d probably be pretty good by now if she hadn’t died ten years ago!” - NOFX are still dishing out albums that, in a Mad comic kind of way, depict the lighter side of punk rock and its trappings.

The quartet’s new album Wolves In Wolves’ Clothing tackles everything from drinking songs to the more serious matter of America’s flawed foreign policy, as illustrated in the ship-headed-for-the-iceberg analogy of USA-Holes.

“Yeah, it’s funny how many kids say ‘why are you singing about the Titanic?’,” laughs Mike. “God, fuckin’ stupid kids! It’s a pretty easy metaphor for America and there’s no escaping this either. I just think this country is on its way down, maybe we won’t be wiped off the face of the earth but we’re just going to turn into a country like South Africa where urban places are super dangerous, the economy sucks and everything will slowly turn into chaos. “Cities such as Detroit are fucked, you just don’t want to go there. Or Pittsburgh, which used to have 3 million people and now it has 300,000. There’s just empty house upon empty house and if you live in a city with no work, it’s just turned into a crime-ridden city and so people leave. Cities like Phoenix won’t last either because people are not supposed to live in that kind of heat. I think people will flood towards the west coast in the future. I read a report that said the cities that will survive are coastal towns that have decent temperatures.”

Notably, Fat Mike, born Mike Burkett, was instrumental in releasing on his own Fat Wreck Chords label the War On Errorism album in 2003 followed by two instalments of Rock Against Bush, leftist politico-punk compilations that in the build up to local elections re-jigged the ‘wake up America’ template of the Reagan-era Dead Kennedys two decades earlier. Back then, Mike was a teenage misfit with punk rock aspirations. He spawned NOFX in 1983.

“If you wanted to put out a record in 1984 or ‘85 there were maybe only 5 or 6 labels in the US; SST, Discord, Mystic and a few others,” he says of the group’s long-held DIY ethos. “You had to put out your own stuff if you wanted a record out and that’s what most bands that we knew did, they just put out their records and then later more labels popped up. I always thought going to a major would be the wrong career move for us. Now we’re even more DIY than before because we put out own records – we’re not even on Epitaph – and we book our own tours and pretty much do everything ourselves. “It works for us but I don’t give that advice to bands now, because it’s too hard. They say ‘oh, I want to do everything myself’ but you can’t anymore. You try booking your own tour and the clubs are not going to book you. The only reason we can do it is because we have a history. You might get popular on myspace but you’re not going to know what to do with that. You need to get an experienced booking agent and some kind of experienced record label if you want a career out of touring the world and surviving on playing music. It’s pretty hard to do yourself if you’re just starting now.”

Ask Mike for his thoughts on the myspace phenomenon and his tone turns to indifference.

“There’s kind of some good and bad things about it,” he shrugs. “For me, the whole downloading of music is bad for my record label but it’s kind of good for new bands. I’m not really one to bitch about it because that’s just how it goes. I used to tape records for my friends when I was a kid but there’s just so many bands to choose from now, it’s just really hard to find new bands – they’re so much mediocrity out there.”

“Anyone with a Pro Tools rig and a computer can get a CD out to thousands of people. It used to be that if you were good somebody would sign you and pay for you to go into the studio and then distribute your record. Now anyone can do it and maybe that’s good or maybe that’s bad, I’m kind on the fence either way. All I know is there’s more fuckin’ mediocre bands now than I’ve ever seen before. When Epitaph signed their first bands from ‘89 they were pretty good bands; NOFX, Pennywise, Rancid, the Offspring and Bad Religion; they all made an impact in the punk world.”

Despite citing Against Me, Arctic Monkeys and the “new Chemical Romance record” as recent musical highlights, Mike does concede his enthusiasm has waned considerably over the years.

“I think I’ve got 10% of the enthusiasm I used to have,” says the 39-year-old father-of-one. “One thing though, when I find a band I really like, it does make me really happy. There’s this band called The Spits, I don’t know if you’ve head them, I heard one of their records and it totally gave me faith in music again. Once in a while you see that but mostly it’s just fuckin’ depressing.”

Currently plotting a world tour of locations as yet untouched by NOFX, Mike says 2007’s road trip adventures will be documented, bloopers included, on a DVD package hopefully later this year .

“The third world crowds are the hungriest and it’s where all the craziest shit happens. They don’t have a lot of experience staging shows and so you never know what’s going to happen. We’ve already got permission to play Beijing and Taiwan and we’re going to Russia and Israel and South Africa and hopefully all over South East Asia. And we’re playing Tasmania, we’ve never been there before!”