TIMS INTERVIEW Why and how was Fucked Up formed? Father: Fucked Up was formed out of pure fluke. Mike had a dream that he wanted to create the most random band possible full of clashing personalities and it would be a joke band that would never record and play out until it imploded. Fucked up was what emerged out of the idea and after some personality shifts I came in on vocals and we recorded a demo a few days later. Almost everything on the demo as far as vocals go were made up on the spot. Gord asked if he could put out a record on Deranged and we went for it and after that the band became more serious. It still is totaly fucked that the band is together as there are a million different personality clashes involved. I've been in tons of bands with really good friends that only made it six or so months before breaking up and here Fucked Up is still at it after almost three years. Marbles: FU is sort of like the economy, in that it is always tripping over perpetual disaster in order to move forward. It is suprising how far we all took the joke, 3 years, 8 records or something...and like the economy, once you use up too many resources and destroy the fauna of your surrounding habitat, your civilization comes to an end. The 7" EP is the standard format for hardcore punk rock, but you've chosen so far to release, almost exclusively, only singles. Why singles? Father: For a couple of reasons. Today so many bands rush to put out all the songs they have and really on the records there are only one or two good songs. The fact that we could have put out a 7"ep or an lp with a couple of good songs and a ton of shit would have been a huge waste. I think we are almost at the point where we could put out an lp with a decent amount of good songs on it but it has taken a long time to get there for us. Marbles: I guess because we take our cue from a different sub-genre in punk. EPs only really became the norm when the early Dischord bands wanted to save money and create value by putting 8 songs per 7". Plus the songs were a lot faster and shorter. Up to that point, punk bands released singles and LPs, just like every other type of rock band. All the first wave british band built their labels (stiff, cheswik, ect) with singles followed by Lps. We figured 2 songs was pretty standard, so thats why we do it. Plus, singles are condusive to transmiting ideas. We could come up with concepts, write a lyric and do the layout accordingly, and stick on a bside. Does peoples fixation on the fact that Fucked Up never puts more than one song on a record (and sometimes only one), bother you at all? Marbles: Yeah, a lot. People treat it as if we're trying to be novel or different, but its pretty clear while looking at the 600 two song singles i have in my room, that 5 song and 8 song eps are the aberation, and 2 song singles are normal. Thats why we released Baiting the Public. We thought for a second that maybe we should capitulate and put some more songs on the record after Police, but then thought again and put on less songs. Plus, no disrespect to that band RNR but we caught a lot of shit for putting No Pasaran out, and then 5 months later the RNR single comes out, and people were like "amazing, this single is so cool and looks old". It was a good record though. Sounds Idea distro from Florida refuses to carry our records because they've only good two tunes. I read a review of Baiting in "Slug n Lettuce" that said the songs were great, but since there were only 2 of them, it was a waste of vinyl. Baiting is like 6 minutes long. These are the same people who trip over themselves to froth over how cool it is that a band is able to fit 10 songs into 4 minutes on a record. The Neaderthal side of the MITB split is like a centimeter and a half. Is that a waste of wax? Father: Not really, I know that we've put work into the song and it deserves to stand out. We have songs that we could have filled the record up with but that would be a waste of peoples time. Do you think the single format forces people to concentrate more on individual songs and/or conversely allow the band to concentrate more on the writing and production of individual songs? Marbles: Yeah exactly. Imagine if all the asides from the FU singles were all on the same record - things would get jumbled and confusion, and the individual songs would be lost in the mire. With singles, we were able to put the energy of writing an entire record into each song. So the songs all sound different, and are about distinct concepts. To hear 8 songs worth of music, you have to listen to the same song 8 times. However, it seems that putting singles out for the most part has only made people concentrate on how dumb they are. Father: I don't really know. I guess it does all of the above by default. We still record a eps worth of songs when we record but most of them wind up not being good enough so we just end canning them. It takes a long time to get in the studio because we hate practicing Marbles: Its not like we go into the studio for an hour and throw together two songs and leave Ð each time we go in we come out with about half an hour of music, we just aren't anxious to release every thing we do. What's the point of singing about events from nearly 100 years ago like the Spanish Civil War? M: Whats the point of singing about anything? Father: The lessons of that war are still relevent and the world order laid out during the era still exists today. Since you sing about the CNT Ð FAI, I have to ask, are you anarchists? Father: I think everyone in the band has totally different political views. Mike and Josh are most definitely down for the cause. While I have infinit respect for people down for the cause I really don't end up walking the walk. I have hardcore politics, as bullshit as it sounds. I wish I did more but I don't. Marbles: Yeah, i suppose so. I believe in a freedom based in traditional ways of life, like yeomanism, agrarian democracy, permaculture, nomadism, etc. Those things could be loosely construed as anarchist, because they aren't political, they are ways of living. Your political ideologies are meaningless unless they are informed by the vision of what you'd like life to look like. I would like life to be based on the land, structured around family compacts that create local communities. The things i believe in aren't political - i believe in bioregionalism, living machines, evolution, organic farming, Community Supported Agriculture, gardening, industrial ecology and shit like that. Anarchism is really an idea for the cities, and i'm not sure i believe in cities. Lately, with the potential decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana, gay marriage, Iraq, apparent animosity amongst Canadians for the Bush regime, et cetera there's been some things in the media here about how different it turns out Canada is from the U.S., or how Canada is growing more European, when everyone just assumed your country was a little brother state to our own. Has there been much of this on your side of the border? What do you think of this phenomenon? Father: I think the major reason this has occured is simply because the is the way western society is generalIy moving. The reason that this isn't happening in the states right now is simply because the U.S. has a history of institutionalized religion in government and clearly has turned the war on drugs into a massive industry. Canada doesn't have these burdens so it is easier for these changes to occure. I also think Europe gets a lot more credit then it should for being socially progressive. Europe is one of the few continents that a self-described fascist party can achieve a legit role in the government. I think Europe has a history of extremes be it left or right. Marbles: I think its meaningless. The differences are cosmetic - that we grant a handful more rights is meaningless compared to how the country survives in general. Canadian citizens are the largest per capital users of energy and create the most waste. Are you for the decimalization (or legalization) of drugs? Marbles: Yeah, and pedophilia. Father: Most definitely. I don't use them myself but any idiot should be able to see the benefits of decriminalization. What is OCAP? Marbles: www.ocap.ca. You sing a lot about dehumanization and alienation, what part do you think activism should, or can, play in reconnecting people and improving our lot? Marbles: Well i think any activist group who isn't doing that might be a scam. What else is there? I'm not an activist, but reconnecting myself to the things i need to be in tune with is a primary concern. The trouble with activists is that they are trying to fix a system that isn't broken. You know, the global economy, the state, whatever you want to call it - is working perfectly, and gets better at what it was made to do every day. The state doesn't enfranchise people in real communities, or reduce energy use or maximize free time, because that isn't what it is designed to do, and no amount of activism is going to make it that way. Activism shouldn't be about trying to mend perceived holes in the way the system works, but about expanding the holes, and trying to find more. A lot of activists are afraid of violence because its one of those holes thats open, and most upstanding responcible people have a real vested interest in keeping them closed. So to me improving my lot doesn't mean creating fair global trade, but in not needing global trade at all. It doesn't mean improving the minimum wage, but eliminating wages altogether. Father: I think activism on a personal level can take a lot of the power back for a person. By bringing insanity to the world around you it can restore a sense of order to your own world. I think group activism is a bit of a double edged sword. On one side it allows a person to feel that they are not alone on the other side however it can be very alienating for people on the outside looking in as it can become very clique. You did a whole 7" about police, what are your experiences with them? Marbles: Me and Camp got incarcerated, thats about it. When we snuck into a Leafs game 2 years ago and got caught we narrowly escaped being incarcerated again. You guys have added horns on one record, and I know an organ was considered, and your songs are beginning to get longer and move away from the just short n' fast, do you worry at all about alienating people as you move away from simple, straight forward hardcore? Marbles: We never played that style in the first place. There are fast songs on the Haymaker split sort of by accident. The demo has almost nothing to do with the band. The songs on the LP are going to be like 6 minutes long and after that they will be longer than 10 minutes. We just want to make cool music. Beat: I would hardly consider the horns in "The Public" to be anything more than a half assed tack-on. As well, horns and organs have always been a part of punk: look at the Dickies, the Saints, X-Ray Spex (who I don't even like that much), or the Big Boys. People fear it now cause everyone is worried about being fast and hard and 'no bullshit,' but you can still be fast and hard while actually taking the time to write a song. Someone might end up saying "oh man, this band used to be good," after hearing "the public," but it's no real loss to us....except Father, who will undergo extreme self loathing for having a saxaphone and trumpet in one of his songs. I have the faith and confidence that any future use of horns or organs will be done with the utmost discretion for the sanctity of our compositions. Father: I think as soon as you start doing that you risk becoming a rehash band. I hate it when people say shit like "You'll love this band they sound just like (fill in the blank)!" Cause for one thing they never do and secondlly that is so boring. I'm glad when people say they can't really describe what we sound like. The scariest part of post moderism is thinking that this is it and all we can do now is copy what went before. That isn't to say we're going to add techno parts and screamo bits, but there is away to respect the past with out apeing it. Do you find people react different to the different stages of your material? Marbles: People that i know just sort of say "cool, whatever". I don't really know how people react to the records. Often is mostly a bland approval across the board. Sometimes i wish we'd have never released Police...that record gets the most attention, but i think its our least interesting record. Although i think without Police no one would react in any way to the records that came after it. I know when we first discussed doing the "Litany" EP you made it clear you didn't want any limited versions, and I know you told Gord (Deranged) the same thing. Do you think the collector/manufactured rarities thing has gotten out of control? Does it overshadow the music? Marbles: It doesn't really matter to me, i can't make decisions about other bands, just about my own. To me, records don't become limited until long after they have gone out of press. "Limited" is a concept defined by the consumer, not by the producer. Making 100 special coloured records seems to me like artificial scarcity, and doesn't represent the records true collectable value. Thats why Victim in Pain, of which there are 10,000 is more limited than the Ruination 7", of which there are various versions of 100. Father: To a certain extent. I am a record nerd and collect to the nth degree. I think it's fun to hunt down the records but most of these records weren't actually rare. If there are 200 on one color, 800 with a certain cover, 100 test presses and 100 for a certain show that is stil 1200 records. I think that is lame. The key is making a record that is scarce enough that people have to look for it with out it becoming a novelty item. Tell me about the lyrics to "Colour Removal"? There are some people, myself included, that would argue that the humanization of the holocaust, and especially its perpetrators, is vital because if you represent it as something less than human then you take the whole thing out of the context of history, make it a monstrous fluke that people could've never happened before and could never happen or again... Father: It's not simply the humanization of the holocaust that song is about. It is more people exploiting the holocaust for their own gains. Be it a holocaust denier or Spielberg, no one should be able to co-opt a tragedy for their own agenda. That really is what that song is about. People twisting the facts to fit their own agenda. You wish you were bank robbers? Marbles: Nah, all they have in banks is money. I wish we were criminals though. Also to be able to stop time. Father: Like Dillinger maybe but not like Dana Plato. In the "Police" single the insert for the song, which also names some Toronto(?) officials, "Municipal Pricks" names and pictures a bunch of Toronto(?) government types as specific examples of the municipal pricks. Do you think it's these specific people's personalities that has made them bad or the nature of government/bureaucracy that inevitably corrupts the people who occupy these positions and turns them into pricks? Father: It's like the police, what would make someone want to have that much power? I would wake up every day with the feeling of having blood on my hands. I have a hard time acceting the notion of true evil. I think most people a least enter the political world for good reasons but wind up jaded and doing wrong. It's the nature of the job. You have to constantly make sure people love you so you wind up doing whatever it takes. Marbles: See, again i don't think corruption or "badness" have anything to do with it. The people on the insert all are paid to make rational decisions. They run the city of Toronto in the manner which they, and most people see fit. The insert was made 2 years ago and most of those people still have those same jobs. We think they are "bad" only because we have different biases and philosophies. I wouldn't Everyone in the band is pretty different from each other, do you think this is an asset or a hindrance to the band? Marbles: It's a hindrance. If we were all the same, we would all want to contribute, write lyrics, come to practice, and have time for the band. Us all being different and being separate in everything other than the band, just means that the band moves slower and gets less done. Its probably for the best though, since we don't have to see as much of each other this way. Father: Depends when you ask. I think at best it's like Gauze; meaning that there is nothing to get in the way of the music because it is the band that holds us together. Most of the time however it cause a lot of disagreement. Rumor has it that the band released a "secret" 7", is this true? If true, isn't this pretty retarded? Marbles: I keep hearing about the record from people, but there isn't one as far as i know. Not sure how or why people would think there is one. Do you prefer recording or playing live? Marbles: I hate playing live. Even though it takes hours and hours of hard work to make recordings come together, playing live is the only thing that makes being in a band seem like a job. After you've played songs so many fucking times, and heard them on record, playing them live just gets really tedious. We can pull of things in the studio that we can't live, because other than jonah, none of us are really that good at playing our instruments, so gigs just seem like prolonged messes. Father: Recording... live it is always a nightmare. I normally end up hurting myself, something always breaks, Marbles gets pissed off and we never think it sounds any good. Why does Fucked Up exist? Father: I hope it exists to cause some sort of reaction. It is also hopefully a way for people to find out that they aren't the only ones who think this world is fucked. For me personally it has been a wayh to deal with some terrible things I see everyday in the world around us. And most importantly to create music. Your records are filled with pseudonymns, phony credits, and other bad information, and your interviews have largely been pretty jocular, are you conciously trying to obscure the reality of what the band is or are you just unsure/insecure about what the band is and that confusing face is the result? Marbles: Its more like, the phoniness IS what the band is about. Often its hard to keep a straight face when trying to tackle serious issues in such a ridiculous arena like hardcore punk...i read a review of Police the other day where the reviewer said the record was "tackling a serious issue in an informative and funny way" - but thats not what i was trying to do at all. I've mentioned this before, but "Police" wasn't motivated by my hatred of cops, but my desire to rip-off the rude kids...Police is a total joke. It often seems like the reactions we get to our records are perscribed, people know they are expected to react a certain way to certain bands...because of the first 45, we were tagged as a "political" band, so it seems people evaluate everything else with that assumption in mind, in an almost bizarre way, to the extent that people are trying to alot us credit for things that aren't there. The phony liner notes are the same thing, just jokes. I looked at a lot of old 45s when I was designing the labels for Baiting, Dance, and Litany Ð things like Producer, Trademarks, Publishers, Arrangers, ect don't mean anything for this sort of record, but I didn't want the label to look blank so I made them all up. Its just another way to have people tune in, more details to align yourself with...people who know what Nanker and Phelge means, or who David Axelrod is will forge a greater attatchment to the records. A lot of the decisions we made were to try and confuse people or obfuscate things Ð it means that people can't be into the band in a casual way Ð when a band you are trying to get into doesn't release 10 song records, or stop between song live or publish real names on the records, it means you have to dig a bit deeper to get the information you want. You've referenced the Situationists in some songs, especially on the demo, and quoted Vaneigem in the Fucked Up issue of Breakout, what's their appeal to you? Marbles: People get caught up with them really easily because they were creative in presenting their ideas. Its more interesting and fun to deal with jokes, slogans, stunts and metaphors than speeches and books, and it's a more effective way of getting a firm grip on people. Its easy to latch onto the SI because they were were really vehement and antagonistic in that classic French way, but just happened to be talking about political economy. Could you explain the collage that's in "Litany"? Marbles: Its supposed to be a visual representation of the song. The images in the center symbolize repetition Ð the man doing work, mouse on a treadmill, a maze, an ouroborous, and a scarab, and Jesus on the cross. The images radiating ourward are the things that we reproduce Ð work, struggle, chaos, death. Sunrise and Sunset. The song "What Could Have Been" has been explained simply as "Please talk to people you want to meet," do you think there's something inherent in punk kids that makes this even more difficult than for the average person, the fact that most punks are fucked up nerds but conversely also a kind of snobs? A lot of people from hardcore's first wave have talked about how back then if ever you saw another person who was punk, you'd automatically go up and talk to them. Whether or not this kind of openness was actually the case, do you think this attitude would be a valuable one to have today, or is punk culture too much absorbed into mainstream culture to make any kind of assumption that someone who looks punk will be any kind of outsider? Marbles: Yeah, usually when I see people who look like punks in public, I treat them with more distrust than I do normal looking people. Anyhow, that song was just about trying to get girls. Tell me about the lyrics to "PM Rocker." Marbles: The lyrics are about posers. That song has since changed names. Tell me about the lyrics to "G.O.P.". Father: The lyrics are about the republican party in the us. I really don't understand the whole republicans are the same as democrats logic. I think the they are both right of center parties but to lable them the same is a mistake. I think on social issues like gay rights, pro-choice, basic enviromental legislation and trade, the democrats are light years different. I can't sleep at night thinking about Bush being in power. I am in no way a fan of democrats but I do sleep better when they are in power. Since its inception there have been two basic streams of punk the "just in it for the music," squishy middle of the road politics, of so called new wave, cleaned up hardcore, pop punk and a dozen other incarnations and the dirty, more violent (aesthetically and otherwise) counterculture stream which was radically political, either explicitly or innately...do you think these two streams can coexist? Father: I don't even really consider a lot of what is called punk these days punk. I think that there is something dangerous inherant in punk music that these pop-punk bands lack. I even think New Wave and Power Pop had a far more punk feel than the warped tour punk these days. I'll take 100 Nerves over Good Charlotte. Marbles: Well they have been coexisting for a few decades. Its like apples and oranges though, rather than two row wampum. If you want to delineate the two streams, the one that's "just in it for the music" is punk rock, and the counterculture stuff is more lifestyle politics with a punk soundtrack. Bands like the SEX PISTOLS and the DAMNED weren't part of any counterculture, just like bands like CRUDOS and BORN AGAINST weren't part of punk rock. Where do you think Fucked Up fits into the scene, and where do you think you as individuals fit into the world? Marbles: We don't really have a scene I don't think. I fit right into the chair in my room, also my bed. What do you think is going to happen on your tour? Father: God only knows. I do plan on buying a ton of records and drinking gallons of pepsi. And if Jonah tries to snake me on any records I'll cut that pizza man ear to ear. Marbles: We are going to fight a lot and break up as soon as we get home. Are the Leafs serious contenders for the Cup this year? Marbles: This week they lost to the Penguins. Father: Sports suck. What are your five favourite lps/songs?
Father:
Marbles:
|