IAN SVENONIUS Interview
Thursday, Dec. 9, 1999
Phone interview by Jay Babcock for Mean Magazine #7 (Feb-Mar 2000) article
http://www.jaybabcock.com/makeup.html

YOUR NEW RECORD ["Save Yourself"] IS FANTASTIC, AND I THINK IT'S ONE A LOT OF
PEOPLE DIDN'T THINK YOU WERE CAPABLE OF MAKING. SO WHAT HAPPENED?
Ian Svenonius: Well, thank you. I guess our philosophy toward recording changed a little
bit. Not our philosophy toward recording, but our approach. This group
always had an idea of instant documentation being central to its recording
process, as in making sound verite recordings of live concerts, or
improvisational studio forays. We were kind of dis-assembling the
producer-consumer paradigm, the kind of evil which infects the rock n roll
medium which to us is this barrier, this sacred barrier between the
consumer and the producer, these kind of roles that everybody embodies and
this kind of resentment that's kind of pouring out because of this
consumer-producer relationship. We feel like there's often resentment in
the audience and resentment on the stage. Anyway, this is why we always
approached recording the way that we did, in a really warts-and-all manner.
But with this record we just decided to approach it as a, to kind of...to
surrender to the fact that live performance and studios are much different
things, and that they kind of have different roles in people's lives. So,
we just spent more time and sort of embellished the songs more in the
studio.

I THINK IT'S NOT JUST THE PRODUCTION, BUT THE SONGWRITING SEEMS TO HAVE
GONE UP A NOTCH.
Yeah, you're right. Before this, another part of our recording process was
kind of this disinclination to structure our songs very much, because, as I
always say, we're really inspired by gospel music's form, and one thing
that's central to a lot of gospel music is its openendedness. So yeah, we
were definitely much more conscious about songwriting on this record.
Another thing is I think that live there's this kind of intensity that you
can get. There's a dynamic intensity in shrieking and chanting, which is
really lost on record. When people scream all over their record it
typically has very little power. That was another thing that we came to
terms with.

DID YOU HAVE SOME SORT OF EPIPHANY AS A BAND?
We're huge fans of music, all kinds of music. So I think we were always
very aware that our records were really weird and that they occupied a
special niche. But yeah, I think it was just a...I dunno if it was an
epiphany, I think it was just time. Time as a dialectic. Our early records,
our first few records were sort of a blueprint of the way we wanted to
revolutionize the concert theatre. They were sort of instructions on
behavior. And they worked! What they did was they helped us revitalize the
live form in our ghetto. Cuz for us, performances are really stiff and
there's kind of this really, you know, a bad atmosphere that pervades a lot
of performances. So for us those first two records were blueprints for
behaving in this way. Since then, every record has been another step
towards hopefully something--

TELL ME ABOUT THIS "BAD ATMOSPHERE" YOU THINK WAS SURROUNDING THE SCENE
THAT YOU CAME INTO. WHAT DO YOU MEAN?
This resentment-based fear...or just this resentment... This
consumer-producer paradigm: the people on the stage are sort of resented by
the people in the audience.

YOU FEEL THAT?
A little bit.

I MEAN, HOW WOULD THEY DEMONSTRATE THAT THEY RESENT YOU?
Well not me, necessarily, but just sort of...I dunno...What I mean is, I
think that...Rock n roll groups used to be almost deities, almost demigods.
People had no problem giving themselves over at the altar, as like
sacrifices, to Led Zeppelin or whatever. And then, of course, as with
anything, it sort of reached a breaking point, and ...actually, can you
hold on? [talks with someone in room] Sorry. Yeah, people could give
themselves over to the experience and to the event. And it reached a
breaking point, where the groups exploited the situation and there was a
mishandling of this adulation. What you had was this all-pervasive cynicism
which followed that regarding the role of the performer and kind of
this...sort of...I'm talking about in underground music, I guess...there's
this kind of disregard for a star system, as it were, and a kind of...this
sort of resentment that you have to this day regarding celebrities, where
they're as much targets as they are idols.

THAT'S WHY PEOPLE BUY TABLOIDS.
Right, exactly. And that's healthy to the extent that people need to feel
empowered, they needn't feel beaten down by the [capital?] of the people
who are the institutionalized creators. But at the same time, it can be
really BAD, for creation, for creativity, of for expression. For example,
it just feels to me right now like the situation where I'm in, people feel
unable to express themselves. People in underground music...Let me start
this whole interview again, I'm sorry. Somebody was sitting here and I was
very self-conscious and pretentious, but anyway. This is what I'm trying to
say, okay? In underground music, there seems to be this real inability for
people to express themselves in any kind of heroic or mythological way.
There's this idea that we're all normal joes, and that creating a persona
onstage or having schtick is somehow false and misleading and evil. But if
you look at great performers, whether they be Little Richard, James Brown,
Bob Dylan, whoever it is, they all have personas and they all have
shcticks. They all have ideals that they were propagating to an audience.
And that's been lost in 'underground' music. It's all this very
self-conscious, introverted music--which is that's why you have now this
enormously burgeoning underground of instrumental groups which are all kind
of very obsessive chords, new chordal structures, as opposed to EXPRESSION
or individual VOICES. I think a big part of this is this idea that if
you're middle-class, what you say or do politically and creatively is
invalid because it doesn't come from a uh, that only SUFFERING can sort of--

SUFFERING VALIDATES YOUR ART?
Yeah.

VICTIMHOOD.
Yeah, victim status validates your art, and that's why you have a lot of
posturing about people being poor and blah blah blah. So middle class,
bourgeois people in the underground, people who are CONSCIOUS, are very
self-conscious about expressing themselves. And I think that this is...this
is really a dangerous thing to say, because obviously all the people in
Hollywood are very privileged and obviously they're all expressing
themselves on television, and there's a lot of rich people like Elton John
who feel no self-consciousness about expressing themselves, BUT I guess I'm
talking about people like I assume you and I, who are really very poor but
are kind of really beaten down by this false class consciousness, that
we're middle-class and we're coming from a place of privilege and we have
no right to speak politically or theoretically. Do you know what I mean?

YEAH. I AGREE WITH WHAT YOU'RE SAYING. BUT ONE THING THAT MADE ME LOSE
INTEREST IN THE WHOLE INDIE-ROCK SCENE WAS THE SENSE THAT UNDERACHIEVEMENT
WAS ALWAYS PRIVILEGED, THAT EVERYTHING WAS AN ELITIST, CLOSED CLUB IN WHICH
ANY ATTEMPT TO MAKE A LARGER CONNECTION, TO MAKE AN RECORD LIKE THE ONE YOU
GUYS JUST MADE, WHICH IS WELL-WRITTEN AND WELL-PRODUCED, THAT WAS SOMEHOW
REGARDED AS A BOURGEOIS SELLOUT. AND NEVER GOING FOR IT! TO MAKE A SERIOUS
ATTEMPT TO PLAY TO SOMEONE OTHER THAN THE ALREADY CONVERTED. THAT'S WHAT WE
NEED. THAT'S MY OPINION.
Yeah yeah yeah. It's weird, I know. It's strange. I guess what I mean
is...ah, I don't know, I should have had some hot tea. [jokingly] I should
have gotten WASTED before! No. Um. I think if you listen to black radio
right now, it's so exciting. It's funny, it's immediately engaging, it has
personality, it's expressive, it's all the things that underground rock
music isn't. Most underground rock music has none of this humor, it has
none of this expression, and it typically is really unlistenable. To me,
R&B radio, ...Jay-Z is throwing down a glove to all of us, he's challenging
to us like, Can you make something that is this engaging? Because I feel
like, yes, Who's representing in rock music? It's a pretty dire landscape.
And that makes me really sad to say. I dunno. Yeah, that's interesting. So,
say something else.

[LAUGHS] I DON'T GO TO FUGAZI SHOWS ANYMORE, AND IT WAS BECAUSE I GOT TIRED
OF HEARING IAN HECTOR THE AUDIENCE ABOUT HOW TO DANCE OR WHETHER SOMEONE
WAS GETTING TRAMPLED OR IF A SHOE HAD JUST FLOWN ON STAGE. AND I SAID, YOU
KNOW ONE OF THE REASONS THAT SORT OF THING HAPPENS AT EVERY FUGAZI SHOW
I'VE EVER BEEN TO IS THAT IT COSTS SO LITTLE TO GET INTO THAT SHOW. THE
BARRIER IS SO LOW. ANYONE HAS FIVE BUCKS, ANY YAHOO WILL JUST SHOW UP. IT
RUINS IT FOR EVERYONE.
It's a sad thing, yeah, that like cheapness really does devalue things in
our society. And that's all-pervasive, like everybody is the same in the
sense that we value things that are more expensive. You're right. The Sex
Pistols had a rule that they wouldn't play a free show. And I think that's
really smart. Because as we all know, if you can audit a show for free, you
devalue it. You audit it cynically with a raised eyebrow. Whereas if a show
feels very exclusive, you at least pay attention to what's going on, you
analyze it with a much more...[trails off]

I'VE BEEN LISTENING TO A LOT OF WEIRD ECLECTIC STRAINS OF MUSIC
LATELY...KRAUTROCK, CURRENT HIP-HOP RADIO, FELA...ONE THING THAT TIES EM
ALL TOGETHER IS THAT THEY WERE ALL MADE BY MUSICIANS WHO WERE HEAVY
MARIJUANA USERS. I'M BRINGING THIS UP CUZ YOU'VE MADE DISPARAGING REMARKS
ABOUT DRUG USE...
Well I just think right now we're in a climate where HEAVY drug use is a
badge of authenticity and a rite of passage...it make you more adult and
it's very un-cool for me to make an anti-drug sort of statement. I'm
talking about death drugs, really. I don't care about pot, I don't care
about psychedelics. I think some drugs are really good for some people, and
I think it's all very prescriptive to the individual. I really don't care
about that. What I'm talking about is this very conspicuous consumption of
heavy drugs, which is like a huge authenticator in rock n roll and in t h e
dance scene everywhere right now. It's worse than ever. I think it's really
MACHO, ultimately, it's kind of like who can ingest how many
drugs...especially if you read the British newspapers, it's a point of
pride for all these guys to talk about what enormous quantities of drugs
they're ingesting. Everybody knows that ultimately wrecks creativity, you
know.

YOU HAVE THE SAME OBJECTIONS TO THAT STUFF THAT PRESIDENT CLINTON DID, WHEN
HE GOT MAD ABOUT THE HEROIN CHIC ADS.
Yeah, well, whatever.

I MEAN I'M WITH YOU ON THAT, BUT IT'S JUST IRONIC, ISN'T IT?
Yeah, I know. I think that it's never been a central trajectory of the Make
Up, to talk about drugs, neither here nor there, and in the NME...I made a
remark about heroin and they sorta made it our central...they didn't
clarify what kind of drug we were talking about... "in what context"
[laughs]

IN THE OLD NATION OF ULYSSES DAYS, YOU MADE A LOT OF STATEMENTS ABOUT HOW
YOU WERE ANTI-NOSTALGIA, BUT THIS MAKE UP RECORD IS DRENCHED IN OLD
MUSIC...YOU'RE DOING SONGS THAT SOUND LIKE LOVE, YOU'RE DOING HEY JOE--
The nostalgia thing... Our group and the group before were very of their
time. When Nation of Ulysses was a group, there was this kind of Baby
Boomer institutionalized nostalgia that was being visited on our
generation, that had really been denied a youth culture. The kids in t he
late '80s were NEVER given a kind of...um...Our music was never put on the
radio. WE always grew up in the shadow of a gyrating middle-aged hippie
culture. It was just really obnoxious. That lasted for a while. Nation of
Ulysses was talking about nostalgia in the sense that we'd always been
subject to this institutionalized idea that the '60s were the [only radical
time] when in fact there's been radicalism before the '60s and after the
'60s. Like every generation they kind of felt like they'd invented
everything, that they were these sort of holy beings whose...and also we
were responding to this kind of conceit and arrogance that--

THAT 'BEEN THERE DONE THAT' ATTITUDE THEY TAKE WHEN THEY SEE SOMEONE
YOUNGER REBELLING---
Exactly. When really, something like Hardcore, in the early phases was
revolutionary in form, and we've seen a lot of really exciting developments
in music that were never privy to the media explosion [exposure?] the
children of the '60s, because we weren't as big a market. Now, it's kind of
skipped a generation. The rave generation is catered to commercially
because I guess they have a really disposable income. But ultimately, Make
Up is obviously really influenced by old music. We love new music and we
love old music. It makes me think when the Rolling Stones were around in
the '60s, they were listening primarily to music from the '30s, you know?
People have always looked back and been inspired by forms form the past; in
fact it's almost necessary, unless you're just running with the pack and
subject to the technology that's being developed at the moment.

I THINK WHENEVER ROCK MUSIC EXHAUST ITSELF, IT LOOKS OUTWARD TO BLACK MUSIC
FOR REINVIGORATION. THERE'S YOU GUYS, BECK...
Yeah, well,... Psychedelia to me is really interesting in terms of being a
"white" expression, if there can be such a thing--

EXCEPT YOU'VE GOT JIMI HENDRIX--
Well I mean the British dandified psychedelia, the paul McCartney style of
Gilbert & Sullivan music hall, using the technological innovation of the
day...but also tried to make a music that was expressly white or expressly
English. And you see that in Paul McCartney and Ray Davies and all the
Geminis, really...but anyway...

WELL WHAT ABOUT LENNON?
John was a great singer and had a great voice but Paul was really the
creative--

AW COME ON.
No he really was, he was the musician in the Beatles. He was the guy who
was always pushing the boundary sonically.

REALLY.
Yeah.

YOU THINK THAT EVEN WITH REVOLUTION #9?
Revolution #9 is BULLSHIT.

WHAT ABOUT LENNON'S SONGS...
Well the vocal line is Lennon's, but I'm talking about production, I'm
talking about the music which surrounds it. See I have a little movement,
it's called RPM--Reconsider Paul McCartney. And it's all about how there's
all these delineations in rock n roll, and particular affiliations make you
more macho, like for example there's the Stones-Beatles dialectic. Then
there's the Paul-John one. I'm a huge champion of Paul. Number one, he's
the conceptual Beatle. He was the one who thought of all the movie ideas,
the Let It Be cinema verite idea, and the Magical Mystery Tour idea which
was based on the Merry Pranksters. You know, all that kind of arty stuff.
And he also did all the orchestration work, or he was a big part of that.
For example, Eleanor Rigby--that song only had a string quartet, that was
Paul. All these sonic innovations, it was always Paul. So even though he's
not as good a singer and he's a little more bathos, he's ultimately the
really important Beatle that raised them above their peers.

I TOTALLY DISAGREE WITH YOU, BUT IT'S YOUR INTERVIEW.
Yeah.

SO IS THERE ANY ONE IN YOUR MOVEMENT BESIDES YOU?
There's a couple of us...

I HAVEN'T SAT THERE AND READ THESE BEATLE HOUR-BY-HOUR BOOKS WHERE THEY
TALK ABOUT WHO BRINGS IN WHICH IDEA ON WHICH TRACK, AND MAYBE YOU HAVE, I
DON'T KNOW, BUT I WOULD BE VERY SURPRISED TO FIND IT WAS CONSISTENTLY ONE
OR THE OTHER BRINGING IN CONCEPTUAL SONIC IDEAS, I THOUGHT IT WAS A
COLLABORATION. I MEAN, STRAWBERRY FIELDS AND TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS, THAT'S
THE MOST PSYCHEDELIC STUFF THERE IS...AND IT'S NOT SO WHITE BRITISH, CUZ
SOME OF THE BEATLES' MOST PSYCHEDELIC MOMENTS INVOLVE GEORGE HARRISON
BRINGING IN THE SITAR.
Yeah. I guess we'd have to define what psychedelia is. That's one of the
trajectories of our record, to make a more psychedelic record.

AND LOVE (THE BAND) IS THE GREAT MIDPOINT THERE, CUZ IT'S WHITE GUYS AND
BLACK GUYS. WHAT ELSE ARE YOU LISTENING TO, SMOKEY ROBINSON?
I dunno. The idea of Hey Joe is it's just a song that's been covered the
most. All the covers that we try to do are the ones that are the most
obvious and the most overdone because we feel like those are the ones that
don't refer to your record collection they just sorta refer to... It's a
chance to exposit your own personality on an old skeleton. The whole idea
of the standard. But sonically we're always trying to do that MC5 thing. To
me, their sound, of them playing together is mind-melding, so the end of
Hey Joe is MC5-inspired. And then of course we were listening to a lot of
Dr. John, like Gris Gris, and maybe even Bob Dylan, Rain Day Woman.

THE BELLS SOUNDS LIKE IT COULD BE A DR JOHN THING... YOU KNOW SOMEONE ELSE
WHO'S INTO DR. JOHN AND GOSPEL, LIKE YOU GUYS, IS SPIRITUALIZED.
Well I'm a huge Spacemen 3 fan. I always liked how Spacemen 3 are really
unashamed about their influences, and how they pastiche... Their idea of
covering songs, like Blind Lemon Jefferson with new lyrics, that song
'1987'... That was really inspiring for me, and Nation of Ulysses as well.
That whole idea of just stealing really blatantly.

THAT'S WHAT THE BEST THIEVES ALWAYS DO. IT HAS TO BE BLATANT.
Also the way that they submerged the drums I think is really brilliant. I
think that's a big problem with music now: drums are so central to
everything. Cuz really like some of the greatest rhythm music barely has
any drums. Like speaking of Smokey Robinson, like that song "Mickey's
Monkey," that's all handclaps. Even guitars are very rhythmic, there's a
lot of rhythm going on without people having to be kind of subservient to a
drum track. Speaking of Dr. John, Gris Gris is a rhythmic record without
proper drumming.

LYRICS: CALL ME MOMMY: I DIDN'T UNDERSTAND THE LINE 'MINE CAME IN A PAPER
BAG.' WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
I dunno. The use of 'baby' is an obvious metaphor for creating something,
kind of empowering people to create things and that's central to the
conceit of underground music that everybody can create. That's why we use
the Frankenstein metaphor and the baby metaphor. The people out there have
to understand in a room with a group and an audience that it's a symbiotic
relationship, they both need each other. So the whole idea is what people
can create together, as opposed to the band and the audience being separate
things. We always talk about utilizing the audience as a fifth member...the
congregate is our fifth Beatle. We utilize them for chanting, la-la-la, and
that's an ideal situation. A concert should feel as orgiastic as possible,
kind of turn into nonsense language. I've always been averse to writing
down lyrics or even having lyrics in the past because I always felt like
things should be really fluid, but once again, this record is another step
from us being more of a theoretical' theatre to being a rock n roll group.

YOU'RE A REALLY GOOD LYRICIST, TOO. YOU SHOULD LET THAT OUT, YOU KNOW--
That's part of it, too. I love lyrics. I've always been averse to the
straight lyric idea. I guess a big part of it is, that songs that are
literary always turn me off. Because they feel so abstract. Like a song.
What is a song? We have to remember what the function of a concert and the
function of playing a song for people are. It's all become really
abstracted. But really, you get onstage, the stage is there for a reason,
we all understand what that reason is... We get on the stage and we play
music for people and we say things over the music... The music isn't just
music but rather it's supposed be engaging. The lyrics should be engaging.
And that's why over music lyrics are typically really repetitive, because
it should be something of this hypnosis, chanting idea. That's why I've
always been really adverse to getting too complex with the lyrics. Because
I feel, that's Poetry, or that's Books, and rock n roll lyrics should be
really essentially dumbed down, because it's not Literature. But once
again...these parameters...

YEAH, AND LIKE YOU SAID, SONGS DON'T SIMPLY EXIST IN ORDER TO BE PERFORMED
LIVE. OTHERWISE YOU WOULDN'T MAKE A RECORD, YOU'D JUST TOUR.
I know, and this is the thing--

PEOPLE LISTEN TO THE WORDS, IN THEIR HEADPHONES AND THE CAR--
This is the problem with theory. [laughter] Not to sound
super-conservative, but structures are there for a reason. I'm not saying
they shouldn't be dismantled, but they shouldn't necessarily be dismissed.
Like for example, we're a real showbiz band when we play. Onstage we're
very aware of our audience. We have no artistic pretensions in that sense.
We don't look at our feet, we're not introverted. We're performers and we
understand the role of the performer is to be expansive, to allow the
audience to respond. Because too much coolness is only inhibiting for other
people. We could be super-cool if we wanted to...[laughs] Ultimately the
band embodies kind of a clown role in the ritual. It's important for the
band to almost be the Fool, to entitle the audience to react.

THEORY THAT THE MONOCULTURE AND THE COUNTERCULTURE HAVE MERGED. WHAT DOES
THIS MEAN? DO YOU THINK THIS IS TURE, THAT THE SPECTACLE SWALLOWS AND MAKES
IMPOTENT EVERY REVOLUTIONARY ACTION? DO YOU BELIEVE THAT? AND NUMBER TWO,
IF YOU BELIEVE THAT, WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
I kind of believe it, in the sense that yeah, if he says the monoculture
and the counterculture have merged....but in fact the monoculture has
SWALLOWED the counterculture and all the old signifiers of rebellion have
become assimilated and disarmed. This is a '90s phenomena. And at the same
time, resistance has been shut down. Like when I was a kid in the '80s...
People characterize the '80s as a super-conservative period, but IN FACT
underground economy and underground networks were much stronger than they
are now, and also there were enormous overt protests towards South Africa.
Once Clinton was elected, everybody felt like all the problems are over.
People became incredibly complacent, and the whole idea of the underground
is [now] considered irrelevant. I see also this rise in pointless
hedonism--heavy ingestion of hard drugs--it's a really weird time to live
in. I do believe that everything gets swallowed up. But at the same time
you have to look at something like the gospel church, which does exist on
its own volition, its own star system, which is still a very political
entity in the black community, and it's done that by being resolute about
its...it is its thing. And the nature of the market is it needs new things.
And I think gospel music isn't plastic enough to be really exploited
because it's a folk form...

KIRK FRANKLIN?
Yeah you're right it's become totally exploited but still there is a
Pentacostal backbone, this really underground network of Pentacostal
churches...

BUT THOSE ARE ALWAYS THE MOST CONSERVATIVE CHURCHES--YOU HEAR LECTURES IN
THE MOST STRIDENT TERMS AGAINST HOMOSEXUALS. AND LET'S NOT FORGET, THIS IS
A RELIGION FOISTED ON BLACK PEOPLE THROUGH SLAVERY.
No, I know.

IT'S NOT LIKE THEY'RE PRACTICING TRADITIONAL AFRICAN RELIGIONS...
To me that's one of the inspiring things about Black Pentacostal churches
is the way that they transformed Christian.... Well the Black culture in a
America is sorta like the oldest culture aside from the American Indians...
African-Americans have been here longer than almost any white people, and
so of course they're a backbone culture that's really pervasive and really
central. They are kind of OUR American culture, but to me the way that they
assimilated the church or they kind of took the church....I think that
yeah, it's conservative on some terms but at the same time it is a really
political thing in the sense of, whatever, if you look at the civil rights
movement...

THAT'S TRUE. AND IN TERMS OF DISSOLVING THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN THE STAGE AND
THE AUDIENCE IN AMERICA, THAT'S WHERE YOU START. THEN AGAIN IT IS STILL A
CHURCH, A STRUCTURE. THERE'S PLENTY OF SPIRITUAL SYSTEMS THAT EXISTS
WITHOUT EVEN THE HIERARCHY OF THE CHURCH--
Yeah...that's true. These people weren't allowed to practice Yoruba, they
were forcibly converted to Christianity, but ultimately they just changed
it. Because the Black Pentacostal church doesn't really resemble the
Anglican church...

I DUNNO. I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE SAYING. BUT I'VE SEEN ON THE RELIGIOUS CHANNELS
LATELY A LOT OF BLACKS AND WHITES TOGETHER ON THE EVANGELICAL SHOWS. YOU
SEE GOSPEL ON WHAT I'D THOUGHT TO BE PEARLY-WHITE STATIONS...BUT YOU KNOW
WHAT I THINK IS MORE INTERESTING, IS VOODOO AND SANTERIA STUFF, CUZ THAT'S
WHERE YOU REALLY SEE EURO RELIGION GETTING SUBVERTED AND INCORPORATED, MORE
THAN YOU SEE IN BLACK PENTACOSTAL---
Yeah, well that's true because--

AND THAT IS A GROUP PARTICIPATION THING, BUT IT'S DONE IN HOMES INSTEAD OF
IN CHURCHES--
Yeah. And that's interesting too because those people are more pantheistic.
That's the problem with these modern theistic religions, they're not
accepting of other cultures, but things that are pantheistic typically
assimilate very easily. Which is really interesting cuz that's kind of what
Liberalism is. Ultimately Liberalism in Capitalism is this really insidious
form because it's saying it doesn't matter what you believe because Money
rules. That's what the conservatives, who are actually ideologists, for
better or for worse, they actually have an ideology. .But Liberals actually
have no ideology. Do you know what I mean?

HERE'S ANOTHER THEORY. ARE YOU GUYS STILL REALLY INTRIGUED BY YOUTH
CULTURE, TEENAGERS...?
No, not really. [laughs] Why, what was your question?

WELL SINCE WE'RE TALKING ABOUT ROCK N ROLL H ISTORY: TEENAGERS ARE THE ONES
WHO SPEND THE MONEY, COME TO THE SHOWS, SO ROCK IS BASED ON THE IDEA OF THE
YOUTH CULTURE. THE YOUTH CULTURE IS WHERE REBELLION IS ACTED OUT, BLAH
BLAH. MY LATEST THEORY IS THAT THIS CENTURY SAW THE BIRTH OF THE
TEENAGER--BEFORE THAT, WE HAD CHILDREN AND ADULTS, THEN THE IDEA OF THIS
BETWEEN-STATE WAS INVENTED AND SUPPORTED--AND NOW AT THE CLOSE OF THE
CENTURY WE'RE SEEING THE END OF THE TEENAGER, AS THEY'RE ENDING UP DOING
ALL THE THINGS THAT ADULTS DO. THINGS THEY WOULD DO OTHERWISE. CEL PHONES,
CREDIT CARDS, SUICIDE, MASS MURDER, SEX... WE'RE NOW SEEING THE END OF THE
TEENAGER, IT WAS A PHENOMENON THAT ONLY LASTED 40 YEARS IN FIRST WORLD
COUNTRIES BETWEEN THESE DATES. NOW WE'RE GOING BACK TO HAVING TWO
CATEGORIES: CHILDREN AND ADULTS. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? YOUTH CULTURE HAS
INVADED ADULT CULTURE AND ADULT CULTURE HAS INVADED YOUTH CULTURE.
Yeah and at the same time you have adults who refuse to grow up!

EXACTLY. THIS IS THE SOUTH PARK, HOWARD STERN--
They're playing Doom and they're skateboarding. Yeah you're DEFINITELY
right. I think that's maybe kind of good in a way. Cuz I always thought
that it was really bad the way adults--you know once people pass a
particular age that you're relegated to this mode of behavior, these sort
of clothes, that so much repression came from the resentment felt by adults
at having missed their teenhood or whatever. I think that's really
interesting. I think that that also coincides with, there used to very
rigid definitions of class. And I don't think that those exist anymore
either. But that doesn't mean that there's actually a giant middle class.
It means there's this enormous working poor who are all have access to the
symbols of middle classdom, like cars and televisions. But it doesn't mean
that they actually have any social mobility. In fact they're all living on
a thread.

I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, BUT I HAD NEW FAITH IN THE POWER OF SMALL
INSURRECTIONIST GROUPS WITH THE SUCCESS OF THE EUGENE ANARCHISTS AT THE
WTO. I THINK THEY WERE AT THE ROOT OF WHAT HAPPENED.
I agree. I was involved in tons of protests all through the late 80s about
Central America and the Gulf War and even into the '90s, and nothing ever
made the newspaper... Nothing would EVER make the newspaper. There'd be an
enormous mobilization of every labor union in the country and it wouldn't
even be mentioned because there is a press conspiracy to keep things quiet,
especially in Washington DC...

I THINK THE PROTESTS HAD BECOME TOO ORGANIZED, TOO INSTITUTIONALIZED.
Yeah, restricted to a certain ghetto in the Mall. Nobody could really even
see them.

YOU ASK FOR A PERMIT. YOU'RE INSTRUCTED HOW TO CONDUCT YOURSELF. HOW TO GET
ARRESTED. HOW NOT TO DO VANDALISM OR VIOLENCE AGAINST COPS. NOW, WHAT THOSE
ANARCHIST KIDS DID WAS VIOLATE EVERY SINGLE RULE OF THE INSTITUTIONALIZED
PROTEST.
Yeah! And they shut it down. And they got all this press.

THEY PROVOKED THE POLICE INTO OVER-REACTING, WHICH KEPT ON BALLOONING UNTIL
EVERYONE WAS WATCHING WHAT WAS HAPPENING. SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? THAT YOU
NEED TO COMMIT VIOLENCE AGAINST PROPERTY IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE SOMETHING?
I think that it's funny that that's what really stuck in the craw of
America, of the media.

"HOW CAN YOU ATTACK NIKETOWN????!"
It's like sacrilege. Unimaginable sacrilege. I think that's GREAT. We had
some riots here in Mt. Pleasant, where I live, and it was the Latino
community rebelled and there was a very pointed assassination of corporate
targets in the same manner. It caught the attention of the press here. I
dunno. I wish I had some insight beyond what you said, but no I don't. It's
funny, though, cuz 'anarchists' -- their arrogance... Like I'm not an
anarchist. I believe you need a state to regulate corporations and
industry. If anything, to me 'anarchy' is synonymous with laissez-faire
capitalism. All the fascists in Montana are anarchists. I think Anarchism
is a really wacko idea, but--

WELL LET'S TALK ABOUT THESE KIDS MORE AS BEING ANTI-CORPORATE ACTIVISTS--
Yeah, I think it's incredible. I think it's great.

THREE DOZEN KIDS--EVENT HOUGH THESE OLD HIPPIES WERE TRYING TO KEEP THEM
FROM DESTROYING THE F.A.O. SCHWARTZ SIGN--IT'S BECAUSE OF THEM ALL THIS
SHIT HAPPENED. I FOUND THAT EXTREMELY INSPIRING--
It inspired tons of people,.probably. It makes protest relevant. Because
the only point of protesting is to get reaction. And that's what they've
learned since Vietnam, is that if you don't actually give protests any
airtime then they just fade away, because [protesters] then feel it's
pointless. Look at the Gulf War. Look how many people marched against that.
And it was all for naught. It was completely abstract. It feels almost more
pathetic that you do it.
Yeah, so it's revitalized the whole forum of protest--maybe.

YEAH. DID YOU SEE 'FIGHT CLUB'?
No.

THIS IS A REAL EXAMPLE OF THE MONOCULTURE AND THE COUNTERCULTURE MERGING,
AND IT HAS TO DO WITH ANARCHIST SQUADS IN THE NORTHWEST, KIND OF. I THOUGHT
IT WAS A TERRIBLE FILM BUT CULTURALLY I FOUND IT EXTREMELY INTERESTING.
I heard that it was like mythopoetic... It's funny... The way news would
cover the Seattle protests was to sort of talk about the media as if they
weren't the media. As if they're not the most odious organ of fascist
thought control. The same way that something like 'Fight Club' or these
Hollywood movies can criticize consumerism...

THAT'S THE ABSURD PART, MAKING A $68 MILLION FILM ABOUT THE EVILS OF
CONSUMERISM--
It's unbelievable.

OR YOU CAN TAKE IT AS A HILARIOUS CONTRADICTION.
Yeah.

I GO BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN THINKING IT'S THE STOOPIDEST SHIT AND GOING,
HUH IT'S KIND OF SUBLIME.
[laughter]