Video: "Yalla Yalla" by Joe Strummer & the Mescalaros

Radio silence for a few weeks, I know. Things have been busy, but without much of note to report. Even games have been scarce lately, though there are plans for both boardgames and a Call of Cthulhu session this week, so hopefully that will be changing.

In the meantime, a little music. I've been listening to a lot of old records that I haven't heard in quite a while: Lifetime, Crucifix, the Subhumans, and the first Mescaleros record, from which the following video is taken. If there's anyone in this world that I've never met, yet admired and been inspired by, it's Joe Strummer. I'm sorry as hell to have passed on the chance to see him play on his last couple of tours. At the time, I'd assumed that there would've been something kind of sad about seeing him years after the end of the Clash, but in hindsight it seems like he really came through all that with his spirit intact... "Well so long liberty/ let's forget you didn't show/ not in my time/ but in our sons' and daughters' time..."

Fright Town

Met Franco, Lindsay, and Tawny at the Rose Quarter last night to go to Fright Town, where a coworker of mine was working makeup and acting in one of the haunted houses. It's been a long time since I've been to a haunted house, but I remembered that my last visit involved walking through, stony-faced, for some reason trying to prove that I wasn't scared. Fuck that shit - if I'm going to a haunted house, I want to jump and shout and have a good time. And I wasn't disappointed. My idea of terror is generally more H.P. Lovecraft than Friday the 13th, but when someone lunged out of a hidden door with a chainsaw, I jumped. Not to mention that there were a couple of unexpected, unsettling moments when the actors would start calling out "Where's Harry...?" or "Come back, Harry..."

Neal Stephenson: September 16th, 2008

Neal Stephenson was at the Bagdad a couple of weeks ago to promote Anathem, and I met Michael and a friend of his there. It was a good time, though perhaps a little shorter than I'd anticipated. Stephenson read a few short passages from the book, answered questions for about half an hour, and then it was time to queue up for autographs. Having someone's signature on something they've made is a phenomenon I've never really understood, so I'm glad that a little entertainment was offered to those who weren't standing in line: a brief performance by a few gentlemen who helped record the music inspired by Anathem.

Anyway, the Q&A was the meat of the appearance for me, and I wasn't disappointed. Some of the questions left a little to be desired, but Stephenson himself was friendly and interesting. I tried to convince Cara to read The Diamond Age recently, but she didn't care much for its frequently digressive tone. On the other hand, I've really enjoyed that Stephenson's work has always been free to pursue whatever tangents seemed appropriate, and that same breadth of interest was apparent in person.

Incidentally, while answering one question, Stephenson briefly mentioned a lengthier lecture he'd given on the future of SF, which is readily available here.

Signs of Life: Autumn Equinox, 2008

The first day of autumn, as well as the birthday of Bilbo and Frodo. Earlier incarnations of this project were marked by prolonged periods of inactivity, which were often broken only by the changing seasons. I'm pleased to know that - thus far, at least - this latest attempt has been plagued by such an affliction to a much lesser degree. I still haven't been able to spend the time on posting that I would like to, but have attempted to make brief appearances with relative frequency. A few posts have been incubating over the last few weeks: another session report, a few thoughts on a Neal Stephenson appearance I recently attended, and vague plans for a post on adventure playgrounds. Hopefully they'll all soon see the light of day.

Session Report 1.9.08: Diplomacy

Patrick, Michael, Mikey, Franco, Tom and I spent the lion's share of our Labor Day playing Michael's copy of Diplomacy. It's only in the last couple of years that I've become really enthusiastic about board games, and so there are quite a few classic games, Diplomacy included, that I've never had a chance to play. Having finished a game, I can easily say that it's an excellent design, and I enjoyed playing it a great deal - though not without a few caveats.

Within the first two or three turns, the game's appeal had become clear. I realize that this is a kind of strange comparison, but the tone of the game almost reminded me of something like Werewolf or Mafia, in that a very light rule set provides the framework for some very rich social interaction. Naturally, that means that the quality of one's game depends even more than usual on the other players. Luckily, we all seemed to be enjoying ourselves a great deal, and more than willing to throw ourselves into the game.

Well, most of us seemed to be enjoying ourselves. Patrick was put into a pretty tough position early on, and eliminated from the game about halfway through. That might not have been much of a problem in a shorter game, but this meant that he spent hours sitting out while the rest of us finished playing. Of course, Diplomacy is from a time when player elimination was par for the course, and Michael later said that usually more than one player will be eliminated, so that at least no one would be killing time alone. Still, even the possibility that a player could be shut out for so long is pretty big shortcoming for me these days.

Mechanically, of course, Diplomacy is the progenitor of a lot of what we enjoyed about A Game of Thrones - particularly in its emphasis on negotiation and its secret and simultaneous issuing of orders. I don't know if it was the lack of other rules, or the formal negotiation phase, or perhaps the significantly longer playtime, but I felt like Diplomacy was a lot more conducive than AGoT in creating those meta-interactions. Our game lasted about six hours, which is a lot longer than I can generally play a single game and about an hour longer than I would've liked, but there's definitely something to be said for seeing one's plans slowly unfold over such a long period.

Overall, I thought Diplomacy was great. It more than deserves its classic status. At the same time, the anachronisms of its design and the fact that it's such a time investment mean that I can't really see playing it all that often. When I do have a chance to play, though, I don't doubt that I'll enjoy it immensely.

Ten-Year Letter

My ten-year high school reunion was a few weeks ago. I didn't attend, but I have to admit to a little morbid fascination with it. Most of my close friends from back then are actually still my close friends, and I'm in touch with a few other people that I knew, but there are others I think about from time to time... I suppose this is all just another symptom of my preoccupation with the past, and with how we connect with others. I frequently find myself wondering what's become of friends whose lives are no longer in the same place as mine.

On the last day of my senior year, my English teacher had each person in my class write a letter, a letter that would be sent to us in ten years, a chance to talk about where we were coming from and to speculate as to where we would be. A few months ago, I remembered that my letter was coming, but couldn't remember at all what I'd written. It was with a mixture of curiosity and dread that I received it a few days ago.

Surprisingly enough, there's nothing in it that I can really bring myself to be embarrassed about. In some ways, perhaps I've changed quite a bit in the last ten years, but the same things are still important to me. The letter is brief, but the things I was concerned with then are still with me. They're things that I don't think I'll ever entirely feel at peace with. This is how it ends:

"My name is Harry. I'm pretty lazy, but I've got big dreams. I like sad songs and walking in the rain and talking late. I get big dumb crushes and enjoy them for what they are, most of the time. I don't live enough. When I say I love my friends, I mean it. I would rather hug someone than shake their hand. Sometimes I feel incredibly lonely, but everyone does. The thing that frightens me the most is the idea that life means nothing. I want my time to count for something."

4th July 2008: "Forget what assassins have done..."

One of my favorite songs as of late has been "Allende's Song" by Don Lange. I don't know if Lange himself ever recorded it -- the version we have at home is from Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger's Cold Snap. In the video below, you can see it performed by a gentleman named Tony Gibbons earlier this year. "It's a long way from the heartland to Santiago Bay, where the good doctor lies with blood in his eyes and the bullets read U.S. of A." Happy birthday, America.

Archive: Video of Bread & Circuits at the Goleta Fest, 1998

What to say? This band has been, and remains, the source of a great deal of inspiration for me. While I feel as though 'sincere' is a term that somehow has lost much of its power, in this case it's one that I think applies best. Bread & Circuits were thoughtful and human in a way that set them apart, and I consider myself fortunate to have seen them a handful of times -- including this show. In fact, I can occasionally catch a glimpse of my eighteen-year-old self in the far left corner of this video. Lindsay and I drove down for the festival -- or, more accurately, Lindsay drove while I slept in the passenger seat. We were quite excited by the idea of seeing twenty bands over three days, though now that prospect sounds more daunting than exhilarating. It was also my first time in Goleta, a place that each subsequent visit has increased my dislike for. I've met many wonderful folks who've lived there over the years, but as a college town in southern California, I could never really imagine a happy life there. Anyway, despite the grueling heat, sleeping in the car, and long, long shows, it was a wonderful experience. While much of the music has long since been forgotten, I was also able to see a few bands that I continue to carry with me -- Seein' Red, Former Members of Alfonsin, Suicide Nation, Born & Razed. And many times over the next few years, I would make new friends and later learn that they had also been there, and that shared experience may have proven to be the most valuable
thing I took from that weekend.

Archive: Interview with Brian Zero of Siren (Part Two)

Obviously, this took much longer to post than I'd originally intended. Finding the time and the inclination to finish transcribing this was harder than I'd thought it would be, but here it is. For those haven't seen the first part of this interview, it was conducted in the summer of 1997, outside Icky's Teahouse in Eugene, OR.

Photo by Joanna.

With the trickle-down effect you mentioned – do you feel that at all justifies bands signing to larger labels?

I don’t feel it justifies it -- in any way, shape, or form -- at all, like if you’re talking about signing to a major label. I wouldn’t feel it justifies it, but I think that… it doesn’t justify from their perspective, but it justifies it from the perspective of the people who care. That’s the only people. So we could sit on the sidelines and go, ‘Well, yeah, it’s screwed up, man. These people used the community thing to get themselves a better position.’ But let’s face it: in the long run, maybe this is going to benefit us. As a stratego thing. Because you know damn well that punk rock, as a music form, is just another pair of jeans to people. But the ideals, in the real scene, that can spread through it, and can do something through it – that’s the key. I mean… these bands that are… on a personal level, for them, it’s hard for me to justify it. It depends a lot, of course, on the bands. See, back in the Eighties, especially, you’d have these bar-rock bands whose only dream in life was to be on a major label. They did not have the punk scene behind them. They had to go from bar to bar, and kill themselves in these places, and not have a place to stay, and not have people to talk to. Not have zines to give them, not have any of that kind of thing. And for those people, you can kind of give some credence to them. No matter how shitty their music is, or their ideals, you can say to yourself, ‘You know what? They have no community anyways. They’re just trying to make money. From the start, that’s all they’ve been about. But the thing with the punk thing is that it’s a community. We have a communal sense to this scene. Especially in the Eighties, we had… it was the kind of thing where a band could go and play a show, and afterwards go stay at someone’s house they didn’t know. Talk to people, make friends. Be treated differently than these bar rock bands. And that’s the thing that’s really being sold out, is the community, because it’s too easy for people. It’s too easy to be, like, ‘Well, I’m gonna be in a punk rock band, because it’s easier than being in just a fucking rock n’ roll band, and not making it. But if we play punk rock music, then we can go out there and use that scene, and get ourselves signed to a major label eventually.’ And I think that’s the attitude that is very pervasive right now. People are just… it’s easier for them use what is there to further their interests. For me, irregardless of what trickle-down effect that’s going to have on the scene as a whole, I find it pretty slimy. I find it a little bit parasitical. I mean, in the long run, most of the people who deal with major labels get screwed anyways, and I guess in that case, that’s probably going to get them in the end. For every Green Day, there’s a hundred Jawbreakers that don’t make it. And they’re not going to make it, I can guarantee it. Green Day, everybody knew they were going to make it, because it was a new thing. One of the guys in Green Day gave me this spiel once after they signed – he got in a big argument with me, it was the drummer. He gave me this big spiel about how they would never use punk rock, they would move beyond that. Of course, it was three months later, they’re on Rolling Stone’s cover, and they all have different-colored hair, and it’s like, ‘pop-punk bonanza!’ or something, and every other sentence in the magazine is like ‘pop-punk’ this, ‘pop-punk’ that. And it’s just, like, of course they had to sell it as pop punk, because they can’t sell it as being just another form of rock n’ roll. It has to have a gimmick attached to it. It’s almost… it’s ludicrous to think that. And in that case, you knew Green Day was going to get big, simply because it was a new gimmick. And Rancid got big for a while because it was a new gimmick, but new gimmicks don’t last that long. I mean, the punk thing might be on MTV for a while to come, it’s certainly true. But as you know, this society, right now especially, it’s going through cultures left and right, and they’re not lasting very long. As far as I know, the straightedge thing is moving into MTV-land right now, and I’ll tell you, that’s not going to last either. They’ve got ways to smash that one in a second. All they have to do is find the straightedge elements in that scene that are more right-wing, that are more ‘support the cops,’ and twist it into something that the people who might even believe in it weren’t even prepared for. They’re dealing with Sony, and they’re dealing with Time Warner. When I hear people say that these institutions are blind to this rebellion creeping up on them – ridiculous. These are institutions that know money. They know things on a large scale. They don’t know things on a small scale, but they know what they’re putting on the television. They certainly do that. They wouldn’t put Rage Against the Machine on TV if they thought it was threat to them. It’s just the way things go.

One of the things that I found disheartening, even tonight, is… a lot of people who come to shows, even small, DIY shows like this, seem to just in it for the music, as kind of an entertainment value. You got it tonight with the kid going, you know, ‘shut up and play,’ and I wonder if you have any perspective on that, any kind of solution you see to that?

Challenging it. I think it’s important to challenge it. I think that when people tell you to shut up and play, you don’t play. You have to engage them in conversation. I think that can be done. If you don’t do it effectively, you’re going to fuck yourself, you’re going to screw yourself over. That’s why you have to be careful, because again, you’re employing stratego. Again, it’s like being in a classroom. If you’re on stage, and you start stuttering, people will laugh you out of there. It’s terrible in the punk scene that it’s like that. But if you’re a teacher in a classroom and you can’t hold your own, they’ll eat you alive. But you can do something. You can do something that plays with their mind, and makes them think. I’m not trying to say you have to brainwash people, I’m saying that you can use that tool, and you can make people think. You can say, “Shut up and play? Is that what you say to somebody when you’re engaging them in a sexual act? Do you say, ‘I don’t want to talk to you’? Is it just screwing someone, or are you actually making love with them?” You know, for me, I believe that when you make love with somebody, or whatever, that you have to know their personality, and the only way you can do that is through communication. I know that sort of shifted into a sexual tone, but… and for what’s worth, I’m just repeating something that I heard Ian MacKaye say once on stage. He said something along those lines, it was a while ago… and I thought that was a constructive use of the tool when he did that. He said, well, you know, ‘Do you say that when you’re having sex with somebody? Do you say shut up and…’ Because it’s important, I think, for people to actually engage in communication. The idea of a tribe or community or whatever relies upon, it thrives upon communication with each other, not just people standing up there and performing like trained… I don’t know, trained circus performers. [laughs] I was going to say circus animals, but… god, I feel sorry for those animals. [laughs] I think it’s just what you do with the tool that makes an impact. It’s how you use that tool. If somebody’s harassing you, if somebody’s calling you ‘queer,’ or they’re being homophobic, or they’re being racist, even, there are ways that you can play with that -- without even invoking violence, if you’re successful – that will destroy, not the person, but the words they’re saying. And that’s the important thing. It’s like playing with the psychology of the clothing you wear, you know? The same type of thing. There’s so many things you can do on that level.

I’ve taken up enough of your time, the next band’s already started…

No, it’s okay, this is great. This is actually the best time for me to talk, is after we’re done, because I’ve get that adrenaline thing, you know?

I’m glad to see you addressing issues between songs. A lot of bands don’t.

Yeah. And especially political ones.

Yeah. Even… I know there are a number of political bands that either have songs and don’t address issues between them, or they write songs that deal with important issues, but in a somewhat clichéd manner.

Honestly, I have a problem with it. I have a real drive towards, especially with politics, I think if you’re going to be a political person, then you have to really think about the issue and understand where the majority of people are coming from. If you’re just playing music with political words to it, then it’s just like waving another flag. That’s all it is. I see that so much with people. Some of these bands that are progressive, or whatever, straightedge, even – they just get up there and they say the same bloody words. The same words, same slogans, same statements… it becomes like the rehashed motto that some high school principal would use to evoke the football team to victory. We don’t need that. What we really need is something that helps us see ourselves. And I see that sometimes with bands. It’s sad, but a lot of it’s from bands that aren’t, like, political political. That aren’t like in-your-face, hardcore-political-stance, whatever. Sometimes you see it from bands that are just, like, ‘we care about the world, but we care also about people really thinking about themselves.’ I think it’d be nicer to see more people who are involved with the political end of the music trying to get rid of the negativity, and aiming toward positive thoughts. I know it might sound dippy to some, but positive energy is what is going to move mountains. Not the feeling that everything is hopeless. When we start thinking everything is hopeless, it becomes hopeless, but if you really have a positive drive, it will show and shine in what you’re trying to do, and make people happy about it. It’s like the idea of the world going down in a flaming wreckage of carnage, or whatever, and it’s happening, and somehow you’re able to crack a smile, and say, ‘well, I tried. I tried the best I could do.’ It’s that idea that’s important to think about, because there’s always something in the world that will make you smile if you think hard enough. Sometimes we let the negative things overburden us, and then we can’t accomplish anything.

Archive: Interview with Brian Zero of Siren (Part One)

Siren was part of a scene in Santa Rosa that provided a lot of inspiration to me when I was first being introduced to the punk community. Along with a few other bands and zines, they provided a glimpse of what -- at least from afar -- seemed to be a circle of friends striving to build something together. No doubt the reality was more complicated, but it was nonetheless heartwarming to see.

Brian Zero, their singer, was also someone I found pretty inspiring when I was younger, and whose perspective resonated strongly with my own hopes for what kind of community punk rock could provide. He wrote an article for the 'Major Labels' issue of MRR, the first issue I ever read, and later wrote a regular column for a few years. This interview was conducted just after Siren had finished playing at Icky's Teahouse in Eugene, in the summer of 1997. Originally it had been intended for a print zine, but like so many other plans, that never came to fruition. Years after the fact, some of this is a little embarassing to look at, but I still value it as a document of a certain time and place. When looking over it, please keep in mind that Brian had a lot to say, and that no attempt has been made to edit it for either content or readability. I'll try to post the second, slightly shorter half of this conversation within the next week or so.

The first thing I wanted to ask you about was just some basic background things, like how and when you first became involved in the punk community.
Oh, okay… way back in 1984. I became involved in the punk rock community about the same time I became involved in political awareness, actually. To tell you the truth, it’s an interesting question, because for me life certainly led up in that direction anyway, so I can almost say I was always a person who cared about things, even when I was seven years old. It just kind of was a natural progression. It was in 1984, though, that I first started going to shows, and also that I first started becoming active in terms of doing political stuff, whatever you want to call it, trying to make a better world.

So what attracted you to the punk community?
Uh… probably not so much an attraction to the punk community as a feeling of alienation from the non-community that was being presented by standard society. No sense of belonging except for belief in things that were obviously nonsensical. Punk rock was a place that I sought not so much for the music, but that I sought for people that felt really disenfranchised with the status quo. And apart from all the problems that the scene had, and it sure had a lot of them back then – god, it’s got tons now – this was scene that I could find people that I really related to, people who just felt totally outside of everything.

You mentioned political activism. What did you mean by that?
Political activism means, for example, feeling a concern… I think political activism actually stems from becoming aware more and more [of] what’s going on in the world. Around the 1984 time period I started finding out more about what was happening, in terms of things like the way animals are treated, in terms of the nuclear arms race… it just sort of escalates to a point where you feel the responsibility to try to do something, otherwise you will be carrying around a lot of guilt for doing nothing. At an early age, I saw that was the choice that I had, because once you open up that door to knowledge, you can’t close it. Unless you’re just going to destroy yourself with something, unless you just say, ‘okay, I can’t deal with this, I have to get rid of my pain by being a junkie of some kind or another.’ Which means you can be a junkie to everything from drugs to television to Nintendo.

Do you see a connection between the two – punk and activism?
I see a connection in that some of the people… see, unfortunately, I can also say that there are a lot of people who get involved in punk and political activism that are doing for the reason that it gives them something to believe in, and not because they’ve searched themselves. I would say that there’s a connection between feeling alienated in this world, and then trying to seek out why you feel that way, and then trying to do something about it. You know, when you find out that it’s not necessarily you, that it’s actually a society. It’s not just your problem, it’s the whole shebang. In that way, I would say yeah, there’s a connection between punk rock and activism. On a superficial level, obviously there’s something there, because the scene has a long history of bands and whatnot that were doing things on a political level. You know, the anarchy signs on clothing evolved into actual anarchism. What was first a shock value thing had actually turned into a political threat and a political message. Whether everybody who was involved on the political end believed in it or not is another thing entirely. Especially in the 1980s, politics were a very strong part of the punk scene. Maybe now it’s diminished. It’s huge now, the scene… but ninety-five percent of it is, you know, you wonder where it’s coming from. Maybe five percent is kind of on the sense of community, and out of that, maybe there’s a core out there that’s really got an idea of it being a real community type of thing.

Another thing I wanted to ask you about was… you have a relatively high profile in the community – you write a column for MRR, you sing for Siren. I want to know if you think that places an unfair emphasis on your views, as opposed to say [Siren guitarist] Adam’s, or anyone else’s.
Very intelligent question. I can tell you right now that the answer is yes, it does, and I don’t think that anybody who is a columnist for Maximumrocknroll, or anything with a high profile in that community, could intelligently say no. You can’t say no to a question like that unless you’re A)lying or B)[unintelligible] …power pyramid. And whether people in the scene want to admit it or not, there’s definitely that power pyramid there. People have been bred to see a stage, and to see a person on the stage as being somehow wonderfully more powerful than they are. Jello Biafra’s a perfect example. We are a scene full of icons. Even if they’re preaching anarchism or preaching progressiveness, there’s definitely a division there between people. Now the question arises, though, as to what you can do with that. Some people will say ‘Why not just completely destroy the stage entirely? Why not just rip the stage down?’ It’s a wonderful, good idea, but holistically, looking at the society, the stage also encompasses money. It also encompasses private property. It encompasses the cars that we drive. And after a certain point, you have to logically say to yourself, ‘What can I do that’s going to be progressive and not going to drive myself mad?’ So for me, I recognize that there is a division there, there definitely is, and what I can try to do to make that better is to use the tool for a better purpose. That’s what I see when I look at other bands, and I look at what people are doing, I ask myself ‘What are they using this tool for? What are they trying to do with it?’ Sadly, it looks like most of the time, nothing is really being done that anything constructive at all. And I know that I don’t always do it myself, I’m sure that I’m guilty of that, but I would like to think that at the very least I’m trying to balance it out. It’s like being a teacher. Perfect example: I also work in a classroom. And this is the way I look at the punk scene, too – it’s like life is a learning experience, teachers, students, whatever, we all are that. We’re both the teacher and the student. Unfortunately, in this system, when you go into a public school classroom, the way it’s set up is… no matter what anybody wants to say, I mean, I know there are examples of things that are alternative schools and whatnot, but for the most part, in the public school system, like, a high school for example is run like a fascist state. It’s very much power pyramid-oriented, you have all these irrational control devices like pep rallies, like school colors, the principal is a manifest of power, and teachers have more power than the students do. Me as a teacher, I certainly do. My profile is exceedingly high where I work. I’m the ‘cool guy’ sub, you know? I’m the substitute teacher that is just like… it’s like a positive thing. And I guess that’s what I’m trying to strive for, is rather than a negative, maybe in that system I can try to be a positive. It would be nice if I could totally say ‘fuck the system’ and run away, but every time I’ve seen people try to do that, it just never works. The system is all-encompassing. We’ve got to come up with a way of working… of changing things, trying to do things without driving ourselves wacko. Even collectives, even communes, I think a lot of these things are doomed to failure because of the fact that the system will not let it get away. It will never let you get away. It won’t let you go do your commune thing. The system has bred itself into people. The only thing that you can do is to try to be both a teacher and a student. Again, though, in the classroom you have more power than the students do, and you have to try to do something that’s effective in that scenario. For example, if you’re a resistance fighter and the Nazis have power, what you have to do is you have to be logical. If the Nazis are at power in Nazi Germany, the best thing is not to go out with a sign that says ‘Fuck Nazis,’ because somebody will scoop you up off the street and get rid of you. The best thing to do is actually to try to find... if you’re going to sacrifice yourself, then do it in the way that’s going to make the most impact, that’s going to make the most effect. And that’s not to diminish activism. I’m trying to say that you have to be intelligent with it. You have be constructive, and creative, and think strategically. Otherwise, you’re just going to end up wasted. That’s what happens to people. The resistance fighters in France were not out there on the streets yelling anti-Nazi things, they were in secret places, hiding people and never showing themselves. They were a secret organization. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be deceptive to be progressive, it just means that you have to be aware of what’s going on, and aware of the fact that if you’re not careful with what you do, then you’re going to end up messed up.

With your teaching position… I was wondering how you try to incorporate your ideals into that.
Well, the best thing I can say, and this might sound trite, is I try to make the students… the best thing that I can do, because I’m just a substitute teacher, is to put myself as a piece of an idea of community. That I’m somebody that can be talked to. I mean, I can’t always do that for everyone. But I’ve had chances where, or times where students have come up to me, and they’ve confided in me, and talked to me. And that’s understandable, because, let’s face it, the idea of family and community has been utterly obliterated. We’ve got computers, we’ve got televisions, we’ve got cars. We don’t have any sense of ‘who is this person who lives next door to me?’ I don’t know this person at all, and I’m going to be afraid of them. And you see sometimes in the classroom, with these students, these kids, they’re longing for a sense of something. Even sometimes, just by being there for people, you can make a difference. I have to be honest – in the classroom, a lot, I have to play cop. There’s a reason for that. You have to play cop because if I were not a disciplinarian to a certain extent, those people who were bred into a system of control would simply step over you. I’ve worked with emotionally disturbed kids, and it’s so fucked up, it’s so screwed up, but they don’t look positively upon feminine roles. They don’t look positively upon people who can hold them and cry with them. A lot of the time, they look at these male, macho figures as being, you know, father coming down to the dinner table to set order straight. With that kind of psychology set, especially in a class where you have thirty students… I’m moving from emotionally disturbed to students again, and I’m not saying all students are emotionally disturbed in any way, shape, or form, but that kind of idea is really prevalent anyway in the system at large. When you have thirty students in a classroom that have some semblance of that -- a lot of them do – you have to be kind of careful. I would not have lasted a week within the school system if I were not a little bit willing to compromise on the issue of control. I would have had students walking out of classes, standing outside of classrooms smoking cigarettes. And this is a typical, middle-class high school, you know, a high school in a middle-class area. The students would have done this, they would have done things like that, and the administration would have seen it, and they would’ve said, ‘get this wacko out of here.’ Gone. Hasta la vista. And that would’ve been the end of that one. So that’s why you have to be very careful with those things. And sometimes you get a chance to talk with them, you know… like, after school, especially, when I’m out of the school grounds, and I see a student walking around, and they talk to me about my beliefs: totally different thing. I can sit down and say, ‘well, you know, I don’t feel this way. I don’t really care for all of the computers that you guys have in your schools. I don’t really dig on that.’ But also, in my position, I’m able to talk to so many students with different backgrounds. I’m able to talk to students who are sixteen-, fifteen-years old, who’ve come from extremely right-wing backgrounds, who are slightly short of joining up with the Klan. Perhaps, just by being there for them, when they understand some point in my opinions, it’ll have a positive influence on them. I mean, for a job in this society, I certainly can’t complain. I’d rather be doing this than be a manager at K-Mart. Certainly.

I’m going to change the subject. I’m not sure if you want to get into this, but I heard that there was some sort of dispute between Siren and Lookout Records.
Okay, I can talk about that. We were basically… I don’t know if it’s really much of a dispute. They offered us a chance to do a full-length record about two years ago, and we did not want that. We did not want any material of ours to go through Caroline. Especially given that I’d written an article for Maximum about Caroline being a subsidiary of EMI. It’s important to stress EMI, because a lot of people who work with Caroline will say, ‘it’s owned by Virgin,’ but Virgin is owned by EMI, so Carline is owned by EMI. We did not feel that, given the fact that I wrote this article, or even given the fact that it’s with EMI, and EMI used to make components for cruise missiles… we did not feel comfortable with our material going through an EMI distributor, because it’s contradictory to what we’re about, it’s contradictory to the fact that we should be an independent scene and not affiliated with some behemoth of a huge corporation. No matter how nice the people at Caroline are – whatever, I don’t care about that. They might be the most wonderful people in the world. Anyway… we were offered the chance to do something with Lookout, we said ‘no Caroline,’ they said, ‘no deal.’ That’s the end of statement. It’s unfortunate that that’s the case, especially considering that other, shadier labels I feel have made that exception for bands. And if them, why not another?

So… one of you runs Mustardfield, right?
No, that was Kevin, and Kevin is no longer with us.

Then I was wondering how the record came to come out on Day After.
Well, that’s a story in and of itself. We, the guitarist and myself, went to… we had a very, very hard year. The Lookout deal, all that stuff was kind of the culmination of things that were really quite messed up for us. Then something happened with our old drummer, and … he had a problem with drugs. He was doing drugs on the side, and I was living with him at the time, and everything in his life fell apart. He quit the band, and I think the guitarist and myself were really going through a lot. We scraped some money together, and got cheap airfare to Europe, and took off. While we were over there, we ended up hooking up with this guy in the Czech Republic, and he’s a cool human being. We respected his ideals, we respected him, and thought, shit, he loved the tape, and we just went with that. It’s crazy, because at the time we had no band. We just had to come back and get things rolling again.

I did want to know… you seem a little cynical about the punk community lately…
I am a bit.

Is there anything that you’ve been finding really inspiring?
Um… in the punk community or outside of that community?

Anywhere.
Give me a chance to think about that for a second here. That’s a hard one, because I am a little bit cynical on the subject, because it’s hard sometimes to find the positive… you might want to stop it for a second while I think on this one. [tape stops] Actually, the positives for me are spin-offs of the negatives. It’s kind of like the whole dialectic thing, because I was really disenfranchised, especially in the punk scene, with seeing all this superficial interest in the music alone from major labels and from… whatever. For a very long time, I was like, ‘this is such crap,’ I was pissed off at it, and… but after a while, you start realizing that, to a certain degree, it can be a positive thing. Because let’s face it: the first punk-ish thing that I went to was a Billy Idol concert, and I went to that concert, and I said to myself, ‘it’s got to be more than this shit.’ You know that for every NOFX show with fifteen thousand kids at it, with merchandise being priced out of the reaches of the poor or whatever, there’s got to be a couple people in that audience who’ve never been even touched by punk rock, who are going to see that and say, ‘well, the music sounded rebellious, but it’s not really. But there’s got to be more to it than this.’ And perhaps those people will find something. That seems like that’s the case, because it seems like a people move from one thing to the next. We’re kind of getting a… I hate to use the term, but I guess it’s… we’re getting a trickle-down, to a certain degree, of people. They go to those shows, and then they come to find something better. And there seems to be more of them. It’s also… it seems to me that there’s a lot of people out there in circles that are outside punk rock, too, that are really hungry for a community, and I’ve seen this from a lot of different tangents. A lot of the kids in the schools, I mean, that’s something to find positive. I think it’d be wonderful to see more people who are progressive being in the classrooms, because they can make a lot of impact there. Because there are kids, like, fucking out there, who are just, like… I don’t know what it is, but up until the point when people are like… there’s a certain age or something when people just get so cynical, and they just burn out, but a lot of the kids in the school system are just… they’re ready. They’re like, ‘Where do we go? Where are we going to go?’ And maybe the fact that that question is even being asked by people is a positive thing. Because back in the Eighties, when I was in high school, everybody was… god, they had an agenda. It’s certainly wasn’t one that I liked. But it seems like now that agenda has crumbled for a lot of people. It’s like this technology is advancing so quickly, and all these things are happening, and people have no control over it, so that you even get people from the right-wing perspective who have been bred with these beliefs in this, whatever, apple pie thing. They’re lost, too. They’re like, ‘where do we go?’ Maybe that question, in and of itself, will lead to something. That’s a very positive thing. That’s the best thing I can think of, that people are asking that. Because once people start asking anything, man, they only can find knowledge And once that knowledge is found, then, at the very least, we can all share the responsibility of making this a better world. Otherwise, it’s only up to a few of us, and I’ll tell you, that weight’s too much to carry.

Rebirth: Summer 2008

This project has now passed through several permutations since its inception -- hopefully this will be the last. Much of what has been posted here thus far will be removed over the next few days, though a few items of archival value will be preserved. From now on, I hope to focus with a bit more regularity on the things that best hold my attention these days: speculative and fantastic literature, other worlds, punk and folk music, games, and all-too-rare moments when those interests intersect.