MISSION OF BURMA // Interview

(June 2013)

By all accounts Boston’s Mission of Burma should have had their day. Indeed Roger Miller, Peter Prescott and Clint Conley are all in their late fifties or early sixties.

In the early 1980s their first couple of records laid the groundwork for the majority of post punk that followed in their wake. After the release of the ‘Signals, Calls and Marches’ EP (1981) and ‘Vs’ album (1982), Miller’s on-going problem with tinnitus prematurely halted the band in 1983 who were by all accounts on the brink of a breakthrough of sorts, be it in an underground and independent way.

Some two decades later the band reformed, not for financial gain but simply because they could. There was unfinished musical business to attend to, and after the release of their comeback album ‘ONoffON’, released on Matador records in 2004, the band once again found themselves with a fan base that wanted to not only be challenged but wanted to be challenged in the loudest way possible.

I spoke to Roger Miller about Mission Of Burma’s latest record, last year’s ‘Unsound’. It has been greeted with universal acclaim by the press and the fans that have heard it. Now the record has been out a while we wondered what it felt like now that the band has finally been accepted?

RM: Well, we didn’t know what would happen. It was one of those records where we said damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! We said we would do it the way we want, and make it a little bit more crazy and out of control than the last one. We were just happy that people liked it so much. We have no idea how people are going to respond, so we are just happy and grateful if you want to know the truth, and with Fire Records behind us we are now touring over in Europe. We were never successful before, so now we can go over and play and get paid and people like it.

LIR: Since the dissolution of the band in the 1980s, it wasn’t an easy journey for you guys to get everything back together, but now that you have you have found yourself in a great position with the band. There is massive interest out there.

RM: Yeah, people know us. We are now established as being some kind of important thing. I am not saying that we agree or necessarily disagree with that, but that is how we are perceived so people pay attention to us, not all the time or anything but enough that we can play.

On the last Mission Of Burma tour we did in December most people knew who we were. We did play in places like Zurich. Now most people in Zurich had not heard of us, so we thought this is going to be the show that bombs. Everything had gone really well and now finally we were going have a bomb, but no… They really, really liked it, and I was selling merch afterwards and this girl came up to me and said, “Where have you guys been all my life?” And she had never heard of us before; how the fuck did that happen? We are just so happy that things like that are happening.

LIR: ‘Unsound’ to my ears is abrasive and caustic sounding, and full of exciting twists and turns. It’s eclectic and yet somehow feels like a single piece of work, a cohesive whole. Do you feel it’s your most complete record?

RM: I think we have made three really good records: ‘Vs’, ‘The Obliterati’ and ‘Unsound’. They are the ones that I really like, but I think ‘Unsound’ to me rivals ‘Vs’ in the amount of variety. I remember when ‘Vs’ came out that some reviewers said that, “It sounds like they are shopping for a style. The first one is like this and the next song is like that”. The thing is we were not looking for an identity. We are just diverse, and I think a lot of that is apparent also on ‘Unsound’.

We have three writers and that helps, but even from the same writer and this is just from my side of the mountain you have got ‘Fell Into The Water’ [‘FellàH20’] which is just a murky but streamlined groove, and then you’ve got ‘ADD In Unison’ which has got psychedelic left turns constantly happening. I think throughout the record there is so much diversity and I personally like diversity. Some people may like something that just has a groove and they can sit through it and it stays the same, but that’s not how my brain works.

LIR: The songs on the new record do not at any time seem forced.

RM: I feel that we were more excited about doing this one than our last album, ‘The Sound The Speed The Light’. We were just out of control. We were having a blast and maybe sometimes we made it to the end of the song by the skin of our teeth, but you can feel that excitement and enthusiasm in it. Everything on there is very honest. Someone may say that we are doing too much of this or too much of that and that’s fine. If we are for you, well, we are not doing it on purpose to provoke you. We are doing it because it’s what we like to do.

LIR: What about the final song, ‘Opener’? The “Forget what you know” mantra at the end of the song could mean just about anything, but I like to think you mean that the audience can forget what they know about Mission Of Burma, and the next release could jettison you into some unknown territory. Sound about right or am I way off base?

RM: Well(Laughs)… There is a couple of reasons that it is last on the record.

Primarily because it’s called ‘Opener’. That’s just our bad attitude, but by saying “Forget what you know” that came about from when we did ‘The Sound The Speed The Light’ and we all agreed that we were not at the top of our game.

So when we started to make this one I brought in a song and Pete [Prescott, drums -Ed] brought in a song, and they were kind of similar to what we had done before. Then Pete said, “If we are going to do a new record, we have to do something different,” so I threw away my song and he threw away his song. The next one I brought in was ‘FellàH20’ and then ‘This is Hi-Fi’ which is pretty different, and then the whole band did that to some degree,It wasn’t hyper radical, but we tried to get out of our comfort zone and to me that’s where the phrase “Forget what you know” comes from.

We had already done that, so we tried to be innocent again and throw ourselves off a cliff. You never know where you’re going to land. If you are going to try and make sure that you land on a soft pillow, then why the fuck are you making rock music?

LIR: And what about writing new material? How do you follow up a record like ‘Unsound’?

RM: Well, I have written two songs so far, and they continue to push the boundaries according to the guys in the band and the people that have seen us play them which is good. Pete has started to bring in one too. Usually we don’t think about making the next record. We just start to bring in songs. and when there is six or seven then we go, “Oh-oh, I think it’s time to make another record.”

At this first phase where we are at right now I tend to write the most as anybody who looks through our writing credits sees, not that those songs are the most important or anything but I’m just always writing. At the moment there are no plans to write another record. I believe that we have another really good record in us yet though.

LIR: Does Bob Weston ever bring fully formed ideas to the table for the band to work on, or does it always work in the reverse where he is presented the song ideas and adds his parts from there?

RM: So far he hasn’t, you know. He plays in Shellac and he’s got plenty of a life of his own, so, no, he hasn’t brought stuff in. But when we have a song he will add some parts and they will always be things that we wouldn’t necessarily expect, so he alters the material but he doesn’t bring in the core songs, but in the future maybe he will. I don’t know.

LIR: He’s been in the band now longer than your original song manipulator Martin Swope ever was. Do you still see him as the new guy?

RM: No (Laughs). Besides he was in the Volcano Suns with Peter years ago and he produced Clint Colney’s band Consonant and he played trumpet on my avant-garde chamber ensembles in the early 90s, so we have all known him for years and so, yeah, he is not the new guy.

LIR: Have you kept in touch with Martin at all?

RM: He’s not very communicative. He lives in Hawaii with his family, and he kind of dropped out of the music scene, I think the last time I emailed with him was five or six years ago. I’d be happy to talk to him again, but you know he has his own life and I totally respect that. So I have no idea if he has heard the new record. But if he asked for it I would send it to him. Maybe he’ll see this interview and say, “Wow, Roger said he’ll send me a record”.

LIR: There is a lot of footage online from both eras of the band playing live, and it would appear that with the most recent shows you guys are more fired up onstage than you ever were. What drives you?

RM: Who knows? It flies in the face of logic completely. Why when we are in our late fifties and me at 61 does this band push itself so hard? We just played in New York. and my brother Ben who played saxophone in Destroy All Monsters with Ron Asheton, well, he sat in with us, and a friend of ours that watched us, she described it as “Burma has gone completely feral.” It’s as if we are a bunch of wild and dangerous animals on stage (Laughs). Why is that? I don’t know, but it feels really, really good. It’s one of the most satisfying things that I can do with my life is to play a Mission Of Burma show. It’s so cathartic.

LIR: Well, I think you wouldn’t do it otherwise.

RM: Yeah, right.

LIR: It’s that cathartic release that gets most people into punk rock and hardcore in the first place. Was it the same for you?

RM: Well, I can only speak for myself as the other members will all have something different to say on the subject, but I had a band in 1969 and 1970 which is in fact now reforming called Sproton Layer. We were a very psychedelic band and described as Syd Barrett fronting Cream. It’s with my two brothers, and we are playing gigs this summer and we haven’t played a show for 43 years but…

In 1969 I started my first band. I wrote all the songs with some help from my brothers too, but it was there that I really found my voice and a couple of the songs sound a little like Mission Of Burma actually. Then during 1970 and 1971 rock music had gotten so conservative that by 1973 I had given up on rock. I had no interest in it anymore.

I went to music school, and then when I came back to Michigan after that as if from out of nowhere the first Devo single showed up and Pere Ubu too. Patti Smith’s first record came out and I was like, “What the hell is this?” Then when the Ramones showed up all of a sudden you could do stuff again. It felt like the world allowed for creativity in rock music, and even though by then I was a very skilled musician having been a composition major at music school I loved the Ramones. The Ramones were gods. That’s my opinion, but in some certain respects that should not have happened. They could barely play their instruments, but I found that so much more refreshing than just about anything else.

Because of that I was allowed to become interested in rock music again, and complete what I hadn’t completed at the end of the psychedelic era which is form a band that can actually do something, and that became Mission Of Burma and post-punk and bands like Wire and Television. That was just incredible. ‘No New York’ for instance was just amazing.

LIR: If you can remember as far back as 1981, there was that track ‘Outlaw’ on your ‘Signals, Calls and Marches’ EP that I loved so much. Can you tell us a bit about it?

RM: I have a really good memory for this stuff.

Even though ‘Outlaw’ sounds like Gang of Four, for us Gang of Four did not exist at that point in time. It was very much influenced by that ‘No New York’ stuff like the Contortions, but it was also me going back and rediscovering my interest in Sproton Layer with the disjointed and incorrect chord progressions, but it was that twisted funk from that ‘No New York’ stuff that was the inspiration for the groove. That guitar solo to me, however, sounds like Sproton Layer. There is that psychedelic compression and harmonic intervals, and those lyrics are very, very dreamlike.

LIR: Yeah, if you take those lyrics out of the context of the song and read them on paper they are pretty trippy.

RM: Yeah, super trippy. As we progressed my lyrics got less trippy. I think I wrote that one before we even got Peter in the band. Me and Clinton had just stared to write stuff and we didn’t really have a band yet, but we thought it was good and thought, “Let’s do this”.

LIR: With ‘Vs’, the track ‘Secrets’ really nails down what the band’s core sound is for me? How did that come together?

RM: That was the third or fourth song I wrote for the band, I was very interested in Steve Reich at the time, and he was into gamelan so there was no need for harmonic change. With gamelan music, it is not the harmony. It’s other patterns and things that make the music more interesting. So that is basically a one chord rock song, but it was an ambiguous chord. So that was the idea behind it, I was thinking how can I make something so simple as one chord into complex music and interesting to the ears, and that’s why there is a drum solo instead of a guitar solo. Then I put in all these little variations, so there is kind of a chorus and kind of a bridge, but basically it’s all one chord.

Putting the vocals at the end also appealed to me, and those vocals were totally derived from when Clint used to work as a bartender at a pub called Jacks in the Cambridge, Boston area, and I would sit there drinking for free which was a pretty good deal (Laughs) and watching these people standing around and looking at each other but not knowing what to say to each other, so they were just fidgeting. That’s what that whole song was about – The whole thing of not really communicating, but there is some tension there.

LIR: What about ‘New Nails’? It’s so weird but it really stands out for me., It’s my favourite Mission Of Burma song.

RM: The riff itself (sings the riff) was from a description from my brother Darren. He came up with the phrase ‘hand chords’, where you just put your hands on the guitar and try and figure out what’s there. Instead of saying, “Now I am going to play an A chord,” you just place your hand down. So I picked up a guitar and my hand was in that exact position, and I just played it to see what it sounded like, and it sounded really cool, and that’s the main riff.

It’s basically just a tirade against organised religion, and in this case Christianity and how perverse it has become. I am very much against organised religion, even though there is a lot of things about Christianity that I believe are good. I would say there are a lot of things that are good about all religions, but once they become organised you lose the spirit completely, and when you lose the spirit of the spirit then you’re totally fucked.

At the end there is like this jaunty little ditty where you have Jesus walking round the desert saying, “Please don’t make an idol of me,” and we have Martin doing those loops and it sounds almost demonic. To me that is one of Martin’s greatest tape loop manipulations. Also I played cornet on that one, and Clint always refers to it as Roman trumpets because it’s all set in this Christian environment. It’s like a call to the gladiators or some shit.

LIR: When Clint brought in ‘That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate’, what ran through your mind? Did you know straight away that that song would be on the record?

RM: There was no record to plan for. We didn’t have a record deal at all at that point. We were just making music. The first thing you do is make music and by the time Mission of Burma recorded ‘Vs’ we had 2 or 3 albums worth of material, so it was just a case of whatever songs came out good made it.

I will say that the first ever song Clint wrote in his life was ‘Peking Spring’. He’d never written a song and then he brought it in fully formed, and I’m not a guy without an ego or anything, and I thought, “They’re my songs and it’s my band,” and I had this long tradition of song writing, and then suddenly Clint shows up out of nowhere like Zeus pulling Athena from his eye. This fucking song, honestly, it was devastating for me.

It became a huge radio hit and I thought I was going to be the big hit writer, but very quickly I got over that, and I realised that Clint doing that sort of thing and me doing this sort of thing, and then when Pete starting writing later, that is what makes the band so interesting. Without Clint’s epic rock songs and my avant-garde doodlings and Pete’s rantings, it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting. It’s how they interact, and we perform with each other that makes this band.

I will say though that when Clint brought in ‘That’s When I Reach for My Revolver’ Pete and I stopped and said, “That’s a hit”. This was before we had even gone through the song once. We knew that that was our biggest hit right there.

LIR: On a commercial level do you think that any of your other songs deserved equal or higher status than that one?

RM: No not really, it depends on what way you look at it, but ‘Academy Fight Song’ and ‘Reach for My Revolver’ are the two biggest. There is a reason that they’re big. They each have a real hooky chorus and they are easy to sing along to. Clint has a stronger pop sensibility than Pete or I. ‘…Certain Fate’ is good too, but it’s just not quite as gigantic.

LIR: Where you surprised at how well Mission Of Burma was represented in the book ‘Our Band Could Be Your Life’?

RM: It’s quite possible that it was one of those moments where I broke down into tears if you want to know the truth. Of all the bands that are in that, book we are the least known. I mean, we are nobody. The Minutemen put out a lot of records and they toured a lot. We didn’t hardly do anything. We put out one record and an EP, and then we disappeared. I mean Black Flag, Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers and the Replacements, these groups were all big. We sold less records than any other band in that book, and we considered all these people to be our peers. We never, however, expected anyone else to think of them as our peers, so literally when I read that I cried. There was a release that somebody had finally put us where I always thought we belonged, but dared not think that I should be there.

If you have seen the documentary that’s out there, then you already know this, but what was really weird was that when that book came out we reformed about half a year later and we didn’t intend to. Somebody asked us to play some shows. We were so stunned to be in a place that we thought we actually should be and never expected to be that to us it was unbelievable that after all these years somebody else actually thought that too. People started paying more attention, and somebody said you should play this show, this benefit and I said, “No, we are not going to.” Instead we did something else, and now here we are still playing. It’s really weird how things work out.

LIR: Along with the book, the advent of the internet and downloading, both legal and illegal would have brought your music to an entire new audience. How does that make you feel?

RM: Personally, I would rather there was no illegal downloading. When we released ‘The Obliterati’ compared to ‘ONoffON’ two years earlier, it sold half as many records, but it was the equivalent of selling just as many because sales are down everywhere. It makes it more difficult for the artist to survive, but I’m not going to wail against it because it’s what people do. It’s the new norm. It’s unfortunate for Mission Of Burma because if we made more royalties we would be able to record a new record sooner. Soon enough it will settle out. and I think there will be a new paradigm in its place.

LIR: Getting the band back together and being such a noisy act, you must have had concerns about your on-going problems with tinnitus.

RM: In all honesty. we thought we were only going to play two shows, one show in New York and one show in Boston, and that was going to be it. Then it turned into three shows in Boston and two shows in New York, all sold out. Shellac wanted us to go to England to play ATP and we had never played in England, so we thought, “We’ll just do that,” which of course turned into “And then we’ll do that and that.” We don’t play so much though that it is a massive concern for me. Back in the day Burma rehearsed two or three times a week and played twelve shows a month. It’s a very different world that I am living in now with Burma. We rehearse much less and play fewer shows.

Still, it is a concern and we have a Plexiglas thing round the drum kit, and I don’t use any monitors, and my amp is at the side of me instead of blasting in my ears. I don’t use those headphones anymore, but I have these really, really strong walls of rubber that I put into my ears. They go in really well, and they don’t come out when I am running around and yelling and screaming and shit.

LIR: If ever there was an iconic silhouette in punk rock, then it would be you playing live holding your guitar with those huge ear mufflers on.

RM: That’s a good one (Laughs). The reason I don’t wear them anymore is because they finally figured out a material that feels a bit like silly putty, and when you put it in your ear it doesn’t work its way out. Plus also it sure would be nice to see a picture of me playing a guitar without those things on, and now I can afford to do it.

LIR: What about the artwork on your albums? The recent ones have seemed a little thrown together whereas ‘Vs’ for instance is a beautiful piece of artwork that wouldn’t look out of place on a wall.

RM: A time when we were really involved with it would have been with ‘Vs’ and ‘Signals, Calls and Marches’. We had an artist called Holly Anderson who helped write lyrics to some of Clint’s songs. Well, we were working with her, and we spent a lot of time on those covers. Those are pretty iconic.

The ones since then…

LIR: Until ‘Unsound’, they have been a little bland.

RM: I thought so, yes. ‘The Obliterati’ cover for instance is just a picture I took on an aeroplane of clouds; it’s completely bland and kind of smooth, completely contrary to what the music is. We just couldn’t decide, and we rehearse so rarely we just think, “Yeah, that’s good enough.” But in the case of ‘Unsound’ John Foster, a graphic designer who works at Fire Records, he said, “Well, I’ll do it.” So it was the first time that it was out of our hands, and I believe that is partly as to why it came out better. He was sending us stuff and it went back and forth a lot, so we steered him. I think, however, that is one of the best record covers that we have had since we reformed.

LIR: Finally, back in 2008 Peter said in an interview that due to the ferocity in the way that Mission of Burma plays live that he gave the band a two year life span from that date. What happened?

RM: Well I jump around all over the place. We did a Volcano Suns song in our set last week, and after we listened to the original Pete goes, “Wow man, that’s really fast”. He can’t really play as fast as he used to. It used to be just sheer madness. But I actually think that’s good for Mission Of Burma because some of those early recordings of us playing sets in, say, 1981 have us playing the songs so fast when some of those songs are so complex that it was no wonder that people didn’t know what the fuck we were doing, and now we are forced to play them a little slower it’s just that little bit easier to hear what those songs are about.

But some of the shows this year have been the best we have ever had. It was 2008 that he said that, and now it is 2013 and we are still rocking. Perhaps our age is working to our advantage.

LIR: Thank you.

This iderview was conducted by myself and original appeared in pennyblackmusic magazine. click the link and sit back and read.

GORILLA BISCUITS // Start Today (Revelation Records)

So to celebrate Revelation Records 25^th Anniversary Gorilla Biscuits got back together as the majority of bands do these days and trod the boards once again. The photos from the show look incredible and I would imagine it was one to file under “wish I could have been there”. How could it not have been immense? Singer CIV was wearing a vintage Elton John T-shirt after all.

Before the band split the first time around my only knowledge of them was from a threat I received from a guy who wanted to beat me up at school. I was still a metalhead and he had begun to drift into the hardcore scene. The threat was along the lines of “I had better watch my step or him and his Agnostic Front and Gorilla Biscuit skinhead buddies would kick the shit out of me”. I remember it was because I was drinking in Religious Education class or something just as ridiculous. Although I am not sure what is more pathetic though, me drinking at school or being a skinhead thug… Still, I digress…

I imagine this was the reason that I never warmed to the band, I always preferred Dead Kennedys, Black Flag and Minor Threat and still do to this day. Infact it was only a couple of years ago that I got my hands on Start Today and even now in comparison to my favourite hardcore punk albums the thing just doesn’t stand up. That’s not to say that the record is a weak lemon in anyway, it just doesn’t live up to the legendary hype that surrounds the band.

Every song but one speeds along, full throttle into the next, breaking occasionally for some lame gang vocals which can be pretty off putting but it’s hardly meat head New York yobcore. If anything after several listens the record seems somewhat light compared to what came before and after it within the scene. When they are at their best like on Things We Say the group remind me a little of Dealing With It era DRI which is no bad thing and the melody takes the song to a higher level than say First Failure which impresses me only because the verses have some really tight pacey chugs going on thanks to Walter Schreifels manic guitars. If you want to hear influential then check out the break down to Time Flies, it seems so weak to include such a clichéd break today but back in 1989 it was fresh. It’s not GB’s fault that a thousand pretenders copied their shit to death over the next twenty years.

The Buzzcocks cover, Sitting Around At Home is the stand out for me. Unlike the title track which seems a little half baked, it’s full of hooks, melody and attitude, its mid tempo to lightning speed pace is a very welcome addition to the album breaking up the rather oppressive feel of the thrash that makes up the majority of the LP.

After the band’s split, CIV went on to front um, CIV who had a semi-hit with the excellent Can’t Wait One Minute More single and Schreifels formed Quicksand who are regarded today as just as legendary as Gorilla Biscuits. Maybe that’s why I have still to listen to them, If GB are regarded as legendary then I want the standards raised. Maybe if those skinheads had knocked some sense into me I may have seen the light. I do like Start Today, but I expected myself to love it due to the bands status as scene leaders and nobody wants to leave a record as a disappointed listener. I’ll try it again in a few years.

THE CHARIOT & CHRISTIANS IN HARDCORE

Christian bands in hardcore are ridiculous, right?. It’s an absolute sham to be alleged free thinkers and then adopt the idea of Christianity no matter how loosely you adopt the words in the bible. The hardcore bands that do this in my eyes are imposters. They are as hardcore as The Lighthouse Family or Phil Collins or whatever. Metal, Rock, Pop, Hip-Hop, fair enough, do what you want but hardcore and punk Christians, well it’s just silly. Spirituality is another and far more complex matter but you can never win an argument with someone who believes in god or believes that Jesus was the ultimate walking on water, back from the dead, zombie rock star so I don’t bother any more. I am a tolerant chap. All organised religions are poo-ey phooey and if you are educated to any level and not American then it’s a no brainer.

Saying this, the best band I have seen in recent years is The Chariot and their lead singer is a mental Christian fellow called Josh Scogin and they have now decided to split up. I didn’t listen to Norma Jean no matter how good my friends would tell me they were because they were Christians and then last year I went to Hevy Fest and watched The Chariot. I absolutely loved them, they were utterly incredible. Only after the fact did I learn that the lead singer was that nutty Christian fella from Norma Jean. You can see me in the front row in the red Municipal Waste shirt as Josh uses us as a body board.

It made me re address a few things. As I said I am a tolerant fellow and it didn’t anger me that organised religion had infiltrated my hardcore listening pleasure. It angered me that I used to get so bothered about it. Hardcore is a way of life only when it’s a way of life, it’s not my way of life any longer, i got jaded just like everybody does yet to be honest I still prefer the idea of Christian hardcore to hardline straight edge thugs in hardcore. The scene has been so split for decades now that new bands and new ideas have spun the original ideas that spawnd the hardcore scene off their axis. A free thinking creative mind, well, It’s a great thing that creates some great music.

Now Joshua is an American so Christianity has bound to have been bashed into his brain from an early age but why get all precious about it. I couldn’t hear his lyrics when he was screaming them in my face. The band was utterly explosive and he is one of the best frontmen I have ever seen. His faith hasn’t changed that. Reading his lyrics they are not preachy and at times they are utterly ambiguous. What’s more he has done something I could never do. He fronted one of the best live bands that have ever walked the earth. I will miss The Chariot a great deal.

 

Ceremony // Zoo (Matador)

In recent years one of the most exciting hardcore bands to emerge from the United States has been San Francisco’s Ceremony. The ‘Violence Violence’ album was a real eye opener back in 2006. Here was a straight edge band that wasn’t a piece of crap, full of macho posturing and chuggy metal breakdowns. The sound was rooted in early punk and the attitude felt snotty and confident. By the time ‘Rohnert Park’ was released four years later, the group had proved themselves to be a potential breakthrough act. Their popularity even secured them a deal with Matador. For long-time fans of the band, ‘Zoo’ was always going to be at the very least an interesting recording. and at the very most the moment their little group broke into the mainstream.

For some ‘Zoo’ will be a huge leap forward. For others it tells the tale of a leap so huge the band left the playing field altogether. In reality once the dust has settled fans will find the new ‘Ceremony’ album is both and also neither of these things simultaneously. The group have simply sidestepped the hardcore crunch of old and replaced it with a more chaotic, buzzy and dare I say it; indie guitar sound. The message, the feel, the anger, despair and hope is all still there. In fact lead track ‘Hysteria’ has an intro that almost fools the listener into thinking that the thick hardcore punch will kick in any second; it lulls you into a false sense of business as usual security.

Typical hardcore fans could well adopt the beat down position only to be ear bashed with a sound sonically closer to PIL and 2nd wave UK punk crossed with the noisier elements of the UK’s current hipster Shoreditch scene. In fact ‘Repeating The Circle’ could have well been a cut left of the most recent ‘Male Bonding’ record. It really is a daring path for a band of this style and size to take.

Sometimes the songs such as ‘World Blue’, ‘Ordinary People’ and ‘Community Service’ are lyrically homing in on observations of the modern day consumer society. It’s pretty straightforward stuff and, whilst vocalist Ross Farrar isn’t exactly re-inventing the wheel with his prose, the Ramones musical style that gallops it’s way through these songs does suit them well. Yet it’s when the big hooks and chorus come out on ‘Hotel’ and ‘Nosebleed’ that you think this musical side step really works. Everything comes together, and you would never believe it was the same band that penned ‘My Hands are Made of Spite’ back on the ‘Violence Violence’ long player. It is as if this was the plan all along.

Whether the public takes to ‘Zoo’ is anyone’s guess. I for one can’t stop listening to it; it’s an electric thing, full of life and buzzing with energy. Surely any band that can have this effect on the listener is doing the right thing. As for what comes next? The only wrong move would be to stand still. Ceremony aren’t ones to rest on their laurels. They leap.

I originally reviewed this for PENNYBLACKMUSIC

FUCKED UP // David Comes To Life (Matador)

So let’s just put this out there shall we, ‘Queen Of Hearts’ is one of the great punk rock singles of all time with a fantastic video to boot. It contains at least three dramatic hooks that singer Pink Eyes manages to pull off with that gruff, gravel-chewing voice of his as if he were the late, great Kurt Cobain, and then overdrive kicks in as the female vocal lifts the song above the clouds and into another genre all together. This is something new and exciting for the band and me as a fan. The group’s potential greatness has begun to blossom with this record that’s for sure. And what’s more surprising is that ‘Queen Of Hearts’ wasn’t even the band’s first single from it. That was the slightly inferior but still ridiculously triumphant ‘A Little Death’ which contains the simplest and most uplifting solo I’ve heard in a song all year.

I’m sure that most that care will be aware that ‘David… ‘is a concept album that tells the story of the life of said chap who lived through Thatcherite Britain in the 80’s. It’s not easy to take too much from this story listening to the album even when you begin at the first track and stick with it through to the last, and I don’t want to delve too deep into the concept because I’m still at the early stage of falling in love with this LP and I don’t want to spoil the new discoveries I get from each new listen. It really is one of those rare gems that you come across once in a blue moon.

The one thing that annoys me most about Fucked Up though is that they sound so much like Virginia’s Avail that during many points during the album I can close my eyes and I can see Avail playing the songs, tearing them apart on stage and enjoying them just as much. It’s ridiculously uncanny but Fucked Up are far more than just plagiarists. Where Avail would run out of ideas after 2 minutes of versus, choruses and middle eights, Fucked off have the vision to make the whole song a chorus or play songs with no repeating parts at all. Avail were black and white to Fucked Up’s full HD colour.

Whereas in the past I never really could digest Fucked Up on their long players (even the universally acclaimed ‘The Chemistry oOf Common Life’ dipped and dragged for me) here ‘David Comes To Life’ has in effect turned the band in what they never really wanted to be when they started out; a full on rock band that can function with the best of them. The spirit of punk may fizz through every riff and cackle with every roar but when you come down to basics they are just a band, not the second coming as many mainstream publications would have you believe. Well not quite anyway, but damned close. It’s a crying shame that according to Pink Eyes this will be the final album he releases with the band. It took time sure but it would seem with this album the band have finally mastered the art of the full length LP. It’s one you can listen to again and again.

I originally wrote this review for PENNYBLACKMUSIC

D.R.I. // Dirty Rotten LP (Dirty Rotten)

My first foray into political music wasn’t Discharge or Crass (both of whom I never really clung to) or even The Dead Kennedy’s who I later loved. No, three years before I was even aware of these bands it was Kerrang of all the possible magazines that advised me to check out a band called D.R.I. whose Four Of A Kind album had recently been released and was gaining the band much positive press. So with my first ever full weeks wage packet I bought from Our Price in Canterbury the only D.R.I. release I could find. The artwork was awesome, a skeleton in army threads carrying a rifle bursting through a locked door. What more could a metal head want. On the same day I also bought Suicidal Tendencies first record with the classic Institutionalised song on it but over all that record could not touch this. D.R.I. were so far removed from what I usually listened to that on first listen I wasn’t really attracted by the 30 second punk blasts contained within. I later learned that this LP I had bought contained the bands first album plus the Violent Pacification EP as well but let’s not split hairs. The original, now well out of press record was originally released in 1983 so it belongs here.

Being a metal head the first thing you realise about this is that in no way is it metal or rock based. This is was my first lesson in hardcore music and even though I had nothing to compare it to it left a huge impact on me and laid the foundations for my Black Flag obsession a few years later and eventually my total immersion into hardcore punk during the early 00′s.

DRI had the reputation of being the fastest band on the face of the Earth. After one spin it’s hard not to see why. Sad To Be is one of the longer songs (coming in at just over two minutes in length) and it starts at a blistering pace. Then before you know it the band slows to what most thrash bands would consider a decent pace and lull you into a false sense of melody before the band ease themselves back into the blast beat fuelled thrash out. The songs are so fast and short that it is easy on the first couple of listens of the record to wonder just what the hell had happened.

A lot of the politics of course was juvenile anti-Regan, anti-parent ranting which is usually the norm for these sorts of records but it’s hard to ignore a songs like War Crimes, Commuter Man and especially Capitalists Suck with it’s venomous into of ‘You Buy buy buy all day long’ introduction. Singer Kurt Brecht definitely means it. The message is clear. These snotty oiks would not settle for what middle America was offering them at any price.

The track that pulled me into the Dirty Rotten Imbeciles stinky web of poisoned speed riffage was the stop/start genius of No Sense. I would try to keep up with the lyrics on the inner sheet but just had no chance (trying this with Napalm Death’s From Enslavement To Obliteration album a year later was plain ridiculous). Yet after those first few listens the melodies came through, hammer ons and lyrical ticks become the huge chorus hooks that other guitar bands would normally deliver. Busted, Money Stinks and the awesomely fast Reganomics all become sing-along anthems the like for which bozo rockers Keiser Chiefs would rip off their grandma’s arm for and all in the space of a forty second onslaught. DRI burst onto the scene in 1982 and by ’83 had achieved this. A hardcore masterpiece.

AT THE DRIVE-IN // Acrobatic Tenement (Transgressive Records)

The thing I love about At the Drive-In is that when they play live they are such a mess. They are the embodiment of 21st Century punk rock and yet most of their music came out at the tail end of the century before it. Cedric Bixlar-Zavala (vocals) and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (guitar) were always about the spirit and energy of the music when playing live rather than capturing the technical proficiency of the music itself.

Whilst I appreciate their breakthrough album ‘Relationship of Command’ (2000, also re-released along with ‘Acrobatic Tenement’) I never fell in love with it. The music is great of course but it’s played so stiff and bright and clinically accurate that the very essence of the band seemed to have had dissipated since the record they released before it. So the mini-album ‘Vaya’ (1999) documents the moment where the band got it just right to my ears. The songs are just as well written but the production is looser, ramshackle in places. It is a brilliant record that had no chance of ever selling a million copies, but it doesn’t give a shit about that. It is the sound of a band that has ridden the wave to its very heights moments before the waters break and they come crashing down.

Which brings us to ‘Acrobatic Tenement’(1996), the group’s debut album; it was recorded for $600 and boy does it sound like it. At the time of recording the band hadn’t really played much outside of Texas and the song writing sure doesn’t appear to reflect a group of lads that would later dominate the underground music scene some 4 years later. It is rough but not too fuzzy to dissipate the hook fuelled choruses of ‘Initiation’ and ‘Blue Tag’, the former being a footnote in the second wave of emo which fortunately gained the band kudos from Sunny Day Real Estate and early Mineral fans.

I never heard this record the first time around and now that I have nothing has been added to the At the Drive-In canon of note, saying that it doesn’t take anything away from their legacy either. As an occasional fan I was hoping for something more, some insight maybe to the perfection of ‘Vaya’, but alas, songs such as ‘Ticklish’, ‘Star Slight’ and ‘Paid Vacation Time’ don’t live up to the rest of the band’s discography. Now the group is on the reunion train at least we may get to see them live again, and that is a place where the band are truly masters of their craft. Until then I’ll stick with ‘Vaya’.

GAY FOR JOHNNY DEPP // What Doesn’t Kill You Eventually Kills You (Shinebox)

Once you have heard New York’s Gay For Johnny Depp you find they appeal to the teenager in you. That part of you that wanted to like the Bloodhound Gang but found them too comedy and too weak musically can be filled to the brim with wacky songtitles (try ‘Nine Inch Males’ and ‘No,I’m Married to Jesus. Now Keep Your Fucking Hands Off of Him’ on for size), obtuse rhythms and full pelt power thrash.

Whilst this record is still pretty vile, the band has toned down some of the anger which was commonplace on their previous albums and EPs. They only really bring on the pure filth ridden rage during ‘Pink Flag’, but the real disappointment for me lies in the fact that the group seem to have cut down on the vocal hooks as well. The opening track here just doesn’t compare to the likes of ‘Cumpassion’ which opened up their astonishing debut album ‘The Politics Of Cruelty’.

Still the likes of ‘Sucksess’ and ‘She Has the Hottest Limp’ are equal if not better than anything else in the Gay For Johnny Depp canon so it’s clear the band are not going through the motions just yet. I just hope that with the band’s next release they don’t include another lame duck like they have on this one with the god awful cover of Slade’s ‘Cum On Feel te Noize’, predictably re titled ‘Cum On Feel the Boize’. If ever a band worked in short sharp spurts of molten hardcore riffs, then it’s this one. There is nothing to gain in them tagging this pitiful cover version on the end of the record. It winds me up so damn much. I hate it…. But then again wasn’t that always the point with Gay For Johnny Depp.

BABIES THREE // Interview

(from TUSC ‘Zine 2011)

Tusc: I’m Here with three members of Babies Three; Jim, Paul and Daniel

Daniel: I’d like to mention we are sitting outside in the freezing cold in Margate’s sea front.

T: So, can you tell us a brief history of the band before we get into the reforming thing…

Paul: We started in the late 90’s as a copyist punk pop type of band, threw members out then Jim, Alex and Daniel joined and we started to get good. When our drummer Russell joined we decided to take it in a more emo-ish of direction, we were still copying what we were listening to at the time

T: This was the late 90’s was it?

P: Yeah 1999 is when we got our sound together and when I say emo I’m talking Mineral or Sunny Day Real Estate that we were taking inspiration from. The thing that turned me onto it was an early Boy Set’s Fire album, a short while after that we started to discover our own sound thanks to Jim’s talent and later after our first European tour a genius thing started to happen in that we started to write songs as a band that we happened to think were original and we really enjoyed playing them without copying any one too much. And then we split up. Me and Jim had a falling out and there was a problem with musical directon, but pretty much it was over a girl.

T: It was a very emo way to split up.

Daniel: We did carry on for a little while with Ross.

T: Yeah, let’s name drop Ross who is currently playing guitar in Man Hands.

P: We carried on for a bit but it was never really the same, no offence to Ross whose talent is amazing and is a very good looking man. We battled on for a year or so after Jim had was gone but it just wasn’t right. And then we splintered into many different bands. That’s the early history. Done.

T: You have had a few attempts at getting the band back together though right?

Jim: We give it a go once a year.

P: Three attempts in the last Four years I think. Yeah, me and Jim have healed from what we fell out over. Various things stopped it coming together be it musical direction or we couldn’t get it together for practices. The usual band nonsense.

T: Now you’re older do you have work commitments and other family commitments.

P: It’s only really an issue with Russell. Originally when we got back together it was with Alex, who was in the original ’99 line up but he’s got children and he couldn’t fully commit and Russell is in the same situation. In the long term he’s said that its cool if we wanna take things more seriously we should get someone else. At the moment though there is no need to as we are still working on new stuff.

T: And of course now you have a new member.

J: The new member is called Chainy Rabbit, that’s not his real name by the way.

D: Has he said what his real name is?

J: It’s something silly like Eugene. I can’t remember…. Jermaine, that’s it. He’s a guy who makes some pretty interesting music. He’s a real musical thinker, not the most technical player but he is someone who thinks about music in a real interesting way and listens to lots of weird minimalist stuff. I was playing in a band called Mumdead with him before this. So yeah Chainy is our new bass player and he’s replacing a guy called Steve Jedrick who in my opinion was in the definitive line up of Babies Three around 2001. It’s a shame not to have Steve here with us now but he’s one that is even more complicated to talk about.

T: Have you written any new songs with Chainy?

D: Yes, two. But one of them is so long it may as well be three songs. I was excited and posted about it on facebook but then someone deleted it.

P: It was an accident.

D: I just feel like I am being censored all the time, I have so much that I want to say and I am just not being allowed to get it out there. Jim never lets me bring my songs into practice.

J: it’s because they are too good and I am jealous.

P: With the two new songs the long one (Polytheist Mind) starts off all Jesus Lizard like and then goes into unknown territory for us, very slow, very doom, a bit weird. It’s sludge almost, although so far people that have heart it so far have been like. ”Meh….. It’s a bit long”.

Paul’s wife in the background: People meaning me!

Everyone: (laughs)

P: The other song (Brethren Of The Free Spirit) is quite up-tempo, a bit like where we left off last time. I don’t like it when bands get back together and just play old songs. I can’t stand that.

J: Unless you’re Kiss

D: Or Iron Maiden.

P: Kiss and Maiden never split up.

T: But people from that time like me are expecting you to be like a Babies Three cover band.

P: We may play three or four old songs.

T: if you didn’t play old songs then I’m not going to watch you, ever.

P: With time some stuff that we loved back then sounds cheesy and horrible to me now.

D: We tried to play Eleven in practice and it just plodded and had no feel.

T: Some things are of their time and belong to that era.

J: It’s like listening to dated stand-up comedy, you can’t get the joke because it’s not of this time.

D: Good analogy.

T: What are the vocals going to be like in this new Babies Three?

P: Well, come first practice I had decided that I was never going to scream anymore and as of now I think it’s best if I never sing anymore. So it’s all pretty screamy. Whenever I try and sing I get Henry Rollins stuck in my mind and just end up yelling and shouting anyway.

T: So just before we wrap things up here because it’s getting really, really cold, Jim, tell us a bit about your solo project?

J: It’s not a solo project. To call it a solo project is like when Paul Stanley from Kiss and the others went off and did solo projects.

P: Good times.

J: I just make music and I am pragmatic about it. One thing doesn’t supersede another. It’s called Rough Comforts and it is just me. I play everything and record everything.

D: Pretty much like Babies Three then.

T: It’s not heavy, it’s like folk music right?

J: It is completely different music; I wouldn’t call it folk music. If you say folk music to me I think of traditional folk music which has its own conventions that I don’t apply to my music but the instrumentation is folk. It uses guitar. The way I sing is maybe influenced by people like Robert Wyatt and Kate Bush. I sing in my real accent, it’s not Americanised. I don’t want music to sound conceited but at the same time you do have to have a stylistic approach and that was the hardest thing for me to realise, took me three years to figure it out.

T: Finally Daniel, unlike the other guys you didn’t join any other bands after the split. Why was that?

D: I would play guitar from time to time at home but it always just made me miss Babies Three.

T: They were like your lover? Was it like you were so in love with Babies Three that after that nothing compared?

D: Well, I played for a bit in (Margate locals) Slingshot Around The Moon but it never felt as awesome. It needed Russell on the drums. I missed that. He was such a powerhouse and would lift everything up because he was so fucking….. bangy. Um… I did an interview once before in a skate park in Bristol but I didn’t talk much because I broke my ribs and um… my rib was broken.

Eveyone: (laughs)

Below filmed on a phone I think is the footage from BABIES THREE’s first show back together.

All BABIES THREE music available here for FREE!

GODS & QUEENS // Interview

(May 2010)

Jamie Getz is something of a rarity in the hardcore scene. All the bravado and mucho posturing that the beat down scene can muster with thier empty ’hardcore for life’ sloganeering can not hold a torch to this man who has spent his entire teen and adult years in love and hate with the cause. Having played in the phenomenal Lickgoldensky and Versoma he now takes the lead in GODS & QUEENS and although he had just returned from a mammoth European Tour he managed to find some time to answer these quickfire questions.

 

 

– How’s this European tour been for you this time around? I caught you in Margate. What were the highlights and what were your impressions of Margate, even if they were somewhat brief?  

this tour has been an exercise in patience, and not attempting to murder someone, a true test of being lied to, and attempting to remain calm about it.  also, a really good way to hemorage every penny i made over the past year.  i was real excited about that.  band wise we got along great, most of the shows were decent, a few awful ones but thats bound to happen on any tour.  highlights were london for sure at the crobar and lubjiabna slovenia was great.  we also did an acoustic show in berlin, we have never attempted that ever but it turned out to be really fucking cool.

margate seemed to us to be like new jersey here in the states. asbury park to be exact.  a dead summer beach town, that at one point probably was a real destination spot, where people came for awesome summer vacations, but now is reduced to a few stragglers on the boardwalk,and some cruddy beach patrons who throw garbage everywhere and dont care about the town.  seems like it once was great, and now flounders in the winter months.  most beach towns i assume are like that.  BUT we had an awesome time at the show.  very very good to be exact.  margate was rad, and we all want to come back for sure.  we had a good time.

 

– As a hardcore band your sound is pretty unique, i can hear elements of the British shoegaze music in some of your recordings for instance. Where do you think you fit into the scene?

 fit in? ha i dont think we do.  depends.  our band sounds like washington d.c. circa 1995.  not the most popular form of music to be playing these days.  there are always gonna be people who like it and understand it but there will ALWAYS be more that cant stand it and dont want to hear it…unless their friend tells them first.  but i also understand exactly what we sound like and exactly who we are.  all in all our ethics keep us a punk band, and probably always will.  weather or not people accept that or us, thatäs not up to me.

 

– You’ve been knee deep in hardcore for many, many years. What makes you stick with DIY, I like many others get so frustrated with flaky promoters and labels etc etc… Yet it seems no matter what gets thrown at you you stick with it?

 this tour really has me questioning why i still to this on this level, and how we do things.  i am also very stubborn, which leads me to tend to want to prove people wrong.  like this tour our “booking agent” claimed he couldnt fill shows in…amazingly i just emailed people and seemed to fill in a lot of the dates.  so i will say i stick with it on this level out of spite.  thats the best answer i can give you.  also, man, i dont give a fuck.  thats the other thing.  i play in a punk band.  end of story you know?

 

– Why are Gods & Queens recordings all titled ‘Untitled’?

 because that shit isnt important to me.  i dont wanna come up with some clever song title, or some stupid one either.  i know what songs we are playing, i dont need to have them worded or anything.  although it makes putting a set list together interesting.  “play the one that goes like this…dun dun dun dun duuuuuunnnnn.  no no not that one the other one that goes like that.”  ugh.

 

– How has Robotic Empire been with you and how have they compared with labels that you have been on in the past?

 first and foremost andy and i are friends.  thats the biggest thing.  other than that another friend putting out a record for their friends band.  pretty cut adn dry i wish there was more gossip or something jucy to tell but alas…pretty boring answer isnt it?  ha.

 

– I always ask this question to anyone i interview. If you had to chose one. What is your favourite record of the 1980′s?

this is easy for me, circle jerks “group sex”.

You can read more about Gods & Geens by clicking on this link to the bands MYSPACE or even their WORDPRESS site. Finally here is a link to the pics I took the day they played my home town. PHOTOS.