The F.O.D. zine page!
Front page
Thrashspey
Decline Records
F.O.D. Zine
Mondo Bizarro!
Some, er, humour
Anti-capitalism and freedom
Sign this guestbook
Links
13/2/02. OK, got DaN's answers back...already!...so the interview is posted below! Yes!
12/2/02. No reply from Parade of Enemies as of yet, and my PC at home decided to delete the most updated and nearly finished F.O.D. 2. Aaaararrrggghhhhh!
However, my dad has got a new PC (for free - but I'm used to hand-me-downs) and it's slightly more technological than this piece of fucking shit - this PC that I'm typing on was made in 1991! Plus I've sent the questions away to Dan McKee of the Academy Morticians at last - looking forward to the replies as he seems like a very very intelligent punker indeed. (Punker! I hate that word!) Speaking of words I hate (tenous link or what!?), one of them is 'patronising'.
And that's just what an TV programme was, on at 10.30 last night on BBC1 Scotland. Titled 'Glasgow's Goth Kids' it was a mockery of some music I have liked for 3 years or more (I was a grunger/nu-metaller before I discovered DIY punk rock in 2001 - although I'm not too hip on crap-metal nowadays!!! I liked it in 2000, and I thought I'd be listening to Korn and Nirvana three years on ... oh wait, I am! The point is, although I accepted Kerrang-metal culture in 2000, then rejected it for something autonomous and forward-thinking, metal and grunge softened me; tendered me, for the depression and ill feeling I feel today. And anyway, before you all start accusing me of being a teenybopping fashion-follower - I prefer the Circle Jerks, Ill Repute etc for angsty teenage songs of alienation to Shitknot and Pap Roach!).
Anyway, the fucking emo romantic that I am, I was just watching it to see the hot goth girls ("oh, that reminds me of the time in July 2001..." - those who know, know) and what shite bands followers of popular culture follow foolishly (Answer: Murderdolls, Papa Roach and Muse); but I realised (laugh if you want...) that I am, in some ways, more gothic than the trendy moshers! Come on, depressed moanings? Black backgrounds? Hating neds and thinking that popular culture is shit? Kathyrn, 14, from Glasgow couldn't be more gothic if she tried!
Thankfully punk rock didn't get humiliated too much - except a Murderdoll wearing an AFI T-shirt (SELL-FUCKING-OUTS they may be, but I'm beginning to love the Misfits-copying faction's earlier stuff! And Garfield do a mean cover of 'Days of The Phoenix'!) - but Laura was as sick as a parrot yesterday. She's annoyed that 5 years of listening to Metallica can now be equalled by some trend-follower listening to them for 5 seconds! Anyway ... I digress ... oh, I'm done!
29/12/02. Erm, it's still not finished. Wes (Parade of Enemies drummer) will send a reply soon and I'm about to e-mail Dan from the Academy Morticians soon.
If you send a quid and an SAE now, you'll be among the first to see F.O.D. Go on! Go on go on go on father!My new friend David from Inverness melodic punk band Garfield has offered to do an interview for F.O.D. 3: with Kung Fu Records band Audio Karate. Saves me the work! So if you want to interview a band for me for F.O.D. 3, email me with your ideas!
11/12/02. FUCKIN' AYE! Two pages away from completion! I'm just filling it up with more self-indulgent depressed crap, and maybe a column. I've got the interview below typed up and ready and I'm just away to email Parade of Enemies and Academy Morticians honchos. So send a quid and an SAE in early-January 2003-time to get 18 or 19 pages of paper smelling of Bry and saturated in third-rate cheap and nasty ink! Send to the address on the Decline Records page please! I've got nothing else to advertise F.O.D. with, but wit and my determination to keep it DIY and keep it spikey! (I am aware I'm stealing a phrase there!) OK, sorted!
------------------------------------------------------
Academy Morticians are actually a pretty new band to me - I read about them in the hallowed pages of Suspect Device in either 2001 or 2002 I think, and got the Consumerism Is An STD 7" last September. I thought since it was on Crackle, it would be punk-pop and nothing more, though obviously I was aware of the political message, that's why I got the thing! I was taken aback a bit, and not since the days when I listened to Chokeword, Active Minds, the Clash and Crass non-stop did I feel a need to be an active anti-capitalist, or anarcho. I was going to write to them, intending an interview for F.O.D. 2, but then I saw that they were in Fracture, so I ignored it for a while. Then DaN, singer and bassist, left a message on my guestbook and asked why I claimed to interview AM, on this very page, when I hadn't! So I thought up some insanely-worded questions and DaN answered promptly. Thanks to DaN and AM!
Bry: What is the current line-up of the band? How long has it been together? How many records have you got out? Is everything OK between you and
Simon now, so there'll be no more hiatuses?
Dan: Things between me and Simon are fine nowadays, in fact we’re meeting up at the anti-war march in London this weekend and he’s staying with me in Cardiff the next week to see my improvisational comedy group perform. We basically had a lot of unresolved issues from our growing up together that have now been resolved after a brief but brutal band break-up and so now we’re back, bigger and better than before.
The band has been together (save for the aforementioned break-up for a year) since 1995 with a variety of line-ups that centred around Simon and me and nowadays we have our best, or “classic” line-up of myself on bass and vocals as per usual, Simon on guitar and vocals also as per usual, and on guitar, Tom Wise, and drums, Steve White.
We first released a self-released ep called “The Forbidden Curriculum” of a very limited run of 70 back at school in about ’96 or something, but such luminaries to own one include Jello Biafra and Stephen King! Then we recorded a full length album called “Shallow Permanence” in about ’98-’99 that was released by Smokin’ Troll. Next we had the 7” on Crackle!, “Consumerism is an STD” in 2000, the joke there was supposed to be that it’s a Socially Transmitted Disease, but few people bothered to read that gem of wit inside the actual inlay so no one got it!
Then we went on to record the album What Happened? which has just come out now in 2003 on Iron Man and my own label, Who Killed Culture? Records. We started recording it in late 2000 but this CD was the most cursed release ever, from sky-high recording bills to evil record labels screwing us around and lying to us repeatedly, it took fucking two and a half years to finally get it out there (hence the title!). To set the scene of how cursed the release of this record was, you should know that the 2000 Bush “election” happened at the same time we were first finishing the recording and I am convinced that the two tragedies are related in some clusterfucked karmic way!
OK, not really, but now it is finally out, I’m really fucking proud of it for lasting the ride and still sounding as kick-ass as it did when we started on it!
Bry: Obviously you're an intelligent punk-pop (I know, it's a shit
description,
but you don't sound like Discharge or anything...so it's the best one I
can
come up with at this moment in time!) band - do you see that there is a
distinct lack of political or sensible punk-pop bands?
Dan: Yes, I really do. We have got a lot of heat in punk rock circles for not conforming to expectations and playing poppier punk rock with melodies and four part harmonies, yet singing about serious issues. I really respect Crackle! Records for taking a chance on us back in 2000 with our ep because often pop-punk fans find us too political or some such bullshit, even though they like our music.
Saying that, it’s not that I think all bands should be serious and political etc, and I love bubblegum pop-punk about girls/boys and beer as much as the next man (and I don’t even drink!). I have a side project with Paul Raggity called The Whining Maggots and we do Screeching Weasel/Ramonesy pop-punk about love, life etc…no politics at all really and it’s a lot of fun.
What I hate is stupid closed-mindedness so that you have to sing about a certain thing if you sing a certain kind of music. I want more political pop-punk bands and more bubblegum crust bands!
We just write the music we like and sing the songs we want to sing about. Simon and I are deeply involved in political thought (I’m doing a fucking degree in politics and philosophy!) so that’s what we sing about…but we love good, tuneful music too, so we write what we write!
It’s not like we’re even always political! “Never” on the EP wasn’t political, nor was “Rebekah” or “Detta To Beth” on Shallow Permanence? Just like how my other band, Bullet of Diplomacy (which is Academy Morticians without Simon) has a love song called “Intangible Entities Don’t Leave Explanations” on our demo. We just write what comes to us, and when you’re socially aware in the world today a lot of that is going to be political unless you have your head in the sand, but we’re not going to limit ourselves to people’s small circles of expectation and their preconceptions of what a band who sound like we do should sing about!
Bry: I changed this issue's theme, from a drugs theme to one regarding
the war
with Iraq, for obvious reasons; what are your views on both of these?
[I know
the answer to the Iraq one already but what the hell!]
Dan: The war in Iraq is just so fucking wrong it is untrue. The entire War against terror is illogical, hypocritical and basically ill-fitted to the proclaimed objectives of stopping terrorism and seeking peace.
You can’t stop terror by terrorizing the world, which is exactly what America is doing. September 11th was tragic and awful yes, but it didn’t necessitate war in Afghanistan. If anything it should have made the US stop and think about why anyone in the world would be that angry at them to do such a thing and reassess their global role. Of course that depends on the sincerity of the administration and the concept of them actually being shocked by the 9/11 tragedy which I have my doubts about. I think that Bush knew all along that something was planned and like vultures the US and UK governments have capitalised on this tragedy to start a new cold war, this time against terror instead of communism, but essentially it’s a catch-all excuse for any wars they wish to start anywhere in the world, and I think Iraq is a good example of this.
Saddam is suddenly an immediate threat to our very existence, even though he has shown no record of external aggression in the past twelve years. We want him to stop making weapons of mass destruction even though we have no evidence that he is and even though we won’t allow UN weapons inspectors the proper time needed to do a thorough investigation to prevent him. We say we want peace while talking only of war, we claim we have links to Saddam and al-Qaidea even though the alleged links link him to them since before they even existed!
And it still hasn’t been conclusively proven that al-Qaidea were responsible for September 11th in the first place, there’s just the classic trick of repeating the lie enough times that it seems like the truth.
Back in the day, the US had a proposed plan called Operation Northwoods where they were going to attack their own cities and blame Cuba so as to rally up the people into a war against them. Whose to say that Bush didn’t take a shine to that old scheme and ensure that the “right” enemy was blamed for 9/11?
We don’t, and the historical record doesn’t give us any reason to trust the official explanations any more than the conspiracy theories.
All I know is, war in Iraq will kill more than it will help, and will only replace Saddam with a dictator more friendly to the West. This is not about peace, it is about Western imperialist interests in the region, pure and simple.
As for drugs, I don’t do them and never have. I don’t object to those that do, I just think it’s a bit of an escape from the awfulness of contemporary life and I’d rather work at improving life itself for more long term happiness that escaping into a quick-fix, but that’s just me. I do think however that it is useful to those who make this life so unbearable that many of us just shirk off into our little artificial highs instead of trying to do anything about it, but I can also appreciate that for some it’s a question of survival because real life can be so crushing.
Maybe I’m just a masochist?
Bry: Which bands that have you shared a stage with, did you like?
(Grammar
isn't my strong point!) Which other up-and-coming or otherwise bands do
you
rate?
Dan: Well I love Citizen Fish, so when we got to play with them a few years back I was stoked. Shame the fuckers didn’t see our set cuz they were eating their tea, but I’ll forgive them and to Dick’s credit he always remembers my name!
My favourite band we ever played with was quite tragic. These guys from Rugby, My Darling Nihilist were fucking awesome but they suffered the same problem that we have of not being easily pigeon-holeable and sadly they broke up. They were so good and we played with them a lot, but at the end of the day they imploded, it sucked because they were awesome! Brezhnev were awesome too, and the Showbusiness Giants who are two thirds of No Means No.
Also, Simon and I did a tour of Italy as Raggity Anne back in ’99 and we played with some cool bands like Stinking Polecats and the Peawees.
I rate any up and coming bands who do their own thing and are out there to do music they care about and feel passionately about, not the sad fuckers who just want to get their mugs on MTV2.
Bry: OK, that's some of the standard questions out of the way.
Now, you're the first anti-capitalist-and-proud band to be interviewed
for
F.O.D., so if you could briefly explain to all the numpties reading
this why
there is a need for protest against globalisation; why businessmen
running
our lives is a bad thing; why consumerism is indeed a STD etc etc etc
it
would save me the bother of doing it.
Dan: Well, a full answer is a bit of a tall order for a fanzine question (unless you want to release this issue as a 3-400 page book!)(I'm toying with that idea! - Bry), but basically it is about freedom from oppression, fear, and exploitation. The fight against capitalism is the real war against terror because it is capitalist exploitation and oppression that leads to the conditions that create terrorists.
It’s about people taking back their own lives, being allowed to discover who they are and fulfil themselves as human beings instead of being deadened into that awful sub-species of humanity known as “the worker” where you are defined by a job that you hate but have to do just to be able to be allowed to keep yourself alive. It’s about fully realising our potential instead of being used as cogs in a machine. It’s also about seeing the causal connections between our lives here in the rich West and the poverty of developing countries and doing something to stop this attitude of profits before people.
The basic fact is that we are the many and they’re just the privileged few and the few who rule over us can only do so with our consent … so if we refuse our consent and move instead to dissent then we can take back our lives.
Bry: To what extent is Americanisation fucking up the world? Is the
current US
Government hellbent on eliminating all other cultures, especially
Arabic and
Islam cultures?
PS: Not that it matters a shit, but you started a
Fracture
column of yours 'Maybe it's because I'm an American citizen...', you go
to
college in Cardiff, Wales, the AM postal address is in Coventry,
England, and
McKee is a Scottish / Northern Irish name (I know because my Modern
Studies
(politics, ideologies etc) teacher is called Mr McKee as well!) I hope
you
don't get offended but it's confusing me! 'I stand not by my country
but by
the people of the whole fucking world' - Propagandhi, I suppose, so it
doesn't matter and I don't care!
Dan: Yes, I am American, but I’m also British. Basically, my mom is from New York and my dad’s from Bury in Lancashire from an Irish family, so I have a dual citizenship and an Irish name. They live in the Midlands, which is where I used to live, but now I am at university in Cardiff. But yeah, I have two passports and am as American as apple pie whilst at the same time being as British as … something British. (I dunno - pies? The Queen? - Bry)
Personally I hate countries and borders so yeah, it is pretty irrelevant to me, besides the fact that I have to feel guilty on behalf of two governments for their slaughtering of innocents across the world and shamefully calling it “collateral damage”. Being a dual citizen just means I have two flags to burn!
Hope that clears it up?
As for Americanization destroying the world, it’s not Americanization, it’s capitalism and globalisation…it’s businesses raping and pillaging the planet for profit. It just so happens a lot of those businesses come from the US, but it’s not Americanism that makes them so greedy and immoral, it’s capitalism.
Bry: I feel pure horror when I look at the narrow-minded and empty-minded idiots that make up my generation sometimes, well, most of
the time, and sometimes I think that they deserve their industrial waste and their rip-off
capitalism. But
then I remember that we're all supposed to be equal.
So: is there any hope at all for this backward earth? Can an ideology-
or
power-change make the difference between life and death? Will another
switch
back to Tory power contribute to the impending nuclear apocalypse? Do
you
know what I'm saying, cos it's absolute crap? Seriously - except
sensible
people going to protests, getting beaten up by police and doing it all
again
a year later - do you think the earth can change? Or am I doomed to
being
depressed and shall I just sleep until I die?
Dan: Totally. Everyone, deep down, wants the same thing and that thing is happiness and comfort. We are just manipulated into interpreting that happiness in the wrong way, and we believe that we really need that second car and fifteenth television. People are left unaware of the causality of their actions and our interconnectedness with everyone else on the planet. People don’t realise how their purchases in this country affects strangers on the other side of the world. We are also not given alternatives and are given bogus scapegoats for our problems such as asylum seekers. It’s not asylum seekers taking our money, it’s capitalism. It’s companies who we give corporate welfare too, it’s companies who won’t be taxed and hold the government to ransom, it’s companies who sell arms to countries across the world that are used to persecute people and turn them into asylum seekers in the first place! But it’s easier to blame the poor refugee than it is to blame a massive corporation, so we waste our anger on scapegoats.
But saying that, the awakening is growing as both the recent anti-capitalist and anti-war movements have shown and people all across the world are taking to the streets in larger and larger numbers to oppose the capitalist takeover of their lives and fight for some power back.
It will take a while, and it won’t be easy, but I think there is a lot of hope out there, underneath the headlines, unreported but going on every day. We just have to fight through the depression they make us feel by pretending it is business as usual and see the cracks in the veil for what they are.
Bry: Anything else you want to say?
Dan: Fuck T.W.A.T (The War Against Terrorism) and if you’re interested in us listen to our music! The album What Happened? is out now on Iron Man/Who Killed Culture? Records. Also out on Who Killed Culture? is another related band, Bullet of Diplomacy, which is all of us from Academy Morticians except Simon. Our debut EP, “We Are The Rascal Multitude” should be released by now. I run the label because no one has the balls to put out our stuff(Decline Records would!!! - Bry). The AM album is £7.50 and the B.O.D EP is £5, all prices are post-paid. Send orders (cheques payable to Dan McKee) care of 86 Kelsey Lane, Balsall Common, Coventry, CV7 7GT, UK. If you want to get in touch, my e-mail is whokilledculture@yahoo.co.uk and the band website is http://www.geocities.com/whokilledculture/1.html
Cheers for the interview, Bry!
-------------------------------------------------------
Useless ID are a punk-pop band from Israel. I interviewed them for F.O.D, and I've put the interview up on here. There'll be more stuff on this page later!
Bry: Firstly, have to ask, what is fallafel!?! What does it taste like? Do you eat lots of it? You once said "eat fallafel or die!" so I suppose I should die!
Ishay: The falafel thing started as the only thing this band would talk about... falafel is actualy just a Middle Eastern food that's pretty cheap and
vegeterian,which is good for us as we're all vegeterians in useless id...it looks a bit like meatballs, but its just chick peas shit or somthing and we eat it inside a pitta bread and it's really good.
No one should die according to what they eat or havent ate. People should die if they dont like the last Dillinger 4 record.
Bry: So who's in UID? (name; age; instrument!)
Ishay: Ido is the drummer, he smokes a lot of weed and he's 23, Yotam plays bass and sings and he's 23 as
well, only he smokes much less weed and likes 80's movies to death. Me and Guy both play guitar and sing a little bit here and there...we both like to talk about punk, and punk related things. We're kinda fucked up. I'm 24 and guy is 28.
Bry: Favourite law-breaking activity (!)
Ishay: That must be a toss between playing naked or just spending a lot of our time being naked, and having pothead roadies that keep trying to get some, thinking about it, this answer was too hippie...I'll have to think of other things for the next time we get asked this. I hate them fucking hippies.
Bry: I quote: "It seems this day will turn out like last years. When I'm drowning in the city hall drinking beer" What the fuck were you doing at the city hall? Do you like drinking then? What's your favourite brand of drink?
Ishay: Thats a good question and a good story too...
the City Hall is a nightclub here in Haifa where almost all of us worked in at some point, and whenever we had hard times (like, twice a week at any given period of time, hehe) we'd all go there and drink a lot...i mean tons. And since we always had of of "our" guys working the bar,it would be all for free. I used to drink a lot, but recently I kinda stopped...all the other guys drink too from time to time, but none of us drink A LOT anymore... I like anything from Jagermeister to just whisky,and any sort of dark beers, vodka, rum ... man, this could take forever, heehee.
Bry: What bands inspired you to form a band? What are you listening to at the moment?
Ishay: Anyone who played music that I liked at a younger age kinda made me want to play music too...I guess it was mostly punk bands that made me realise that anyone can go out and do it and tour and just do anything you dreamed of, and for that I guess anyone in Useless ID can thank bands like Bad Religion, Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, Conflict, the Ramones and all these punk bands you hear when you're younger.
We still listen to all these bands and i guess we also love a lot of the newer punk bands and a lot of indie rock and power pop punk bands too, so thats maybe why all our new stuff is really raw and dirty in a punky way but the melodies and the songs are really catchy and poppy.
Bry: Is there much of a scene in Israel? Who are the best bands there (I like Dir Yassin - less melodic than you guys though)? Many labels or zines?
Ishay: The Israeli scene was pretty much dead for a few years but now things are getting back to normal here and there are lots of cool bands,and a new
generation of street punk-oi and hardcore bands that is really cool and refreshing to see.
Cool Israeli bands to check out are Chaos Rabak, Man Alive, Ha Pussy Shel Lucy, 1 Missed Call, Reeds, Smash For $, Lehavoth and more.
There's no labels or zines really here...its a small scene and its mostly shows that happen here...most bands don't get to put out records.
Bry: You've toured Europe and the US many times so you must have some funny stories about being on tour?!?
Please tell!
Ishay: Well, we actually toured europe 5 times and the US 6 times already,and considering we go to japan for the second time in January,there's so much stupid shit i could tell you, that its gonna be easier to recall a rare normal and SANE moment this dummy band has been
through.
Bry: Most, or all, of your lyrics are about trouble with females - I suppose you always have problems with girls. Do any of you actually have girlfriends at the moment?
Ishay: Yea, everyone in our band has been thru hell at one point or another and it would usually be over a girl (or just over not getting the girl),and
even though guy is getting married pretty soon (mazal tov rasta!!!) to his
lovely girlfried liat, the rest of us are still out there, getting our
hearts broken every other day.
Our new record actually has less songs about that matter, though, even though it's still there in many songs.
Bry: You don't live in such a bad area but you must hear about things that go on in your country, so can you see any hope for peace? In the Zonked! interview you said "their stupid books won't really allow peace" so are you not religious? I suppose punks see through
nationalism and racism etc - I do - so in the end do you think that it really matters where people live?
Ishay: For me it totally doesnt matter where my fellow men was born or where he
lives...none of us are religious at any level and we never cared about being Jewish or whatever. Israel is a harder place to live in then most
places,but Haifa IS actualy pretty nice and there's not too much of the bad shit going on here, so i'm never too worried about anything here.
I don't see a lot of hope for peace,and as far as i'm concerned, I know it will still be crazy here untill the day I die,but I cant say I think or
worry about it too much any more anyway.
Bry: That's all I have for questions - anything else you want to say?
Ishay: Not too much...I want to tell everyone that we have a new record coming
out in the winter on Kung Fu Records and its gonna be called "No Vacation From The World"...its the best record we could possibly make and we're
super proud of it. Its a record for everyone and i hope that all of you will get to give it a chance.
We'll try to come on tour over there real soon, and if anyone wishes to write to us,you can drop me a line at ishay_666@yahoo.com
Check out some new useless id songs at www.mp3.com/uselessid and thanks
for reading.
Ishay and Useless ID!
Email: BRYLEECH@AOL.COM