Let the Drummer Speak... and Speak.... By Steven Newall for New Zealand magazine Rip It Up

Sitting in the Powerstation as a soundcheck stopping the doors opening drew to a close RIU waited to talk to Vinnie and Roger from Less Than Jake before their show with Suicidal Tendencies. While Vinnie, the drummer and, oddly enough, songwriter, for the band described himself as "a gun with, like, a gentle trigger, ready to go off at any time", Roger, member of LTJ's horn section was just waiting for something to smoke. And Vinnie and I had plenty of cigarettes. Once American wit had been proven through a sheep joke, the interview would be ready to begin:
RIU:I caught your video for 'All My Best Friends Are Metalheads' on the telly the other night, and, I have to ask, any friends, any metal in particular?
Vinnie: That songs in reference to everyone in Less Than Jake, cuz when you look at the people on the stage, you wouldn't expect most of us to actually like metal, I mean, aside from actually like playing punk rock you wouldn't expect any kind of metal influence but there is, I mean Rog and Chris especially.
Roger: We're actually into metal, it's a lot less obvious than it seems.
RIU: That goes a long way to explaining Megadeath being on the flip side to the 7" 'Downstairs"
V: You are correct on that one, that's amazing, I'm really stoked about how that came about, you listen to the band - Peace Sells...amazing record - and then years later you find yourself wrapped up with something that has to do with that band, that's amazing.
RIU: I notice your latest record is stickered with a nice low cover price....
R: Well, we try.
RIU: Is it something you make an effort of doing with the record company, keeping the price of the records down?
V: Yes, very much so, It's kind of a weird challenge too, they always want to change something on you...we just try because we realize how much money some of these people make off this crap.
R: Which is a hell of a lot more than we do.
RIU: you still manage to do that within a major label structure.
V: That's one thing that in the states we're infamous for, is low door prices and low merch prices and underage shows and things like that. One thing that's funny is when we first signed to Capitol one kid came up to us and said you've just sold out the punk scene. We were like, how can we have sold out the punk scene? You look at some Indies, they don't even have that, so how can you be not sure of signing something like that as long as you keep the ethics intact and the spirit alive? If a band wants to make money, it'll go at any cost to get money, period. Period! No matter what label its on, if a band decides they want to have a bunch of money, they could be on Fat Records, or Epitaph, they could be on EMI, Capitol, Sony, or whatever, they go about that route, high prices, high merchandise, they go about it different ways. A lot of people take kids for stupid fools, the rule out there is to push crap down their throat. Anything you put a million dollars into will sell a crapload of records, it'll only sell for one record though. But if your in it for the long haul, we're in it for the long haul, you can't do things like that cuz people will see right through it. Like, Less Than Jake are messed, what the heck are they doing?