Weird War interview
An old cat, Ian Svenonius, comes back to roar over his deserved territory.
http://www.artrocker.com/articles/interviews/interview13.shtml

There is a tiger's skin that lies on the floor of the Oval Office. Hunted and shot by President Eisenhower on Safari in the fifties. The tiger lies at the heels of the men that make the decisions for the free world.

Day by day expensive shoes walk over the tiger and speak to the President elect about internal and external affairs, perhaps mentioning gossip about Whitehouse staff that titillates and excites. The tiger is privy to this information and eavesdrops on what chosen enemies of those that talk and sit in these chairs of power would die for just to hear a snippet of. A conversation that might serve them well.

How does the tiger feel? Is it privileged?

Think. No longer can it hide in the long grass and await the pleasure of the chase and the satisfaction of the kill. Denied what is its acknowledged skill as it has been made a relic.

Weird War should not be lost in this way and hung on the wall for posterity.

Do not make a decorative idol of Ian Svenonius. Whilst building a memorial to what an amazing band he was a part of, The Make-Up, you are ensuring the indecent burial of Weird War. Skinning and laying it down to be preserved and not the wild living thing that it is.

Ian has just finished his coffee and slides it on to the table in front of him. For the past couple of days he's been practicing with the new version of Weird War, which features new drummer Sebastian Thomson (Trans Am) along with already present scene creamers guitarist/master musician Alex Minoff and bassist/vocalist Michelle Mae, on material from the new album: Illuminated By The Light.

"This record we've done is a lot more produced than what we've done before," he walks through to the other room to retrieve a book, still talking. "We wanted the super slick recording and we wanted the record to sound like Pentagon. That kind of layered and rich sound that soothes."

The casual swingers affair mould of the new album has been put down on tape with such a seductive quality it's the equivalent of noticing you're suddenly drunk in a bedroom you don't recognise. The songs were recorded at the Key Club and Ian sees this environment as relaxed and laid back. Although the imperative of his conversation is to talk about what props up and perpetuates him being in a band. Ian is fascinated about what allows him to be part of a rock 'n' roll behemoth.

"You got to remember man that rock 'n' roll acts as a replacement for what used to bind the less fortunate together," he says on his return.

His assertions are that rock music was produced by those with a controlling interest in society to provide the blue-collar workers with an enjoyable anaesthetic to take over from the displacement of faith. This is a convincing argument and one that comes over stronger in conversation than written down and paraphrased.

Ian's language is full of 1930's left wing rhetoric. Deeply concerned with the superstructure and how through intervention individuals can identify how those in power surreptitiously determine what we do, he uses cultural revolutionary proclamations to try and create a high-level of self-awareness, especially about where he grazes most: the stage.

"I know a lot of what I'm saying is not in the songs, but I feel that a show is not just a straightforward performance. It holds so much more than that. Gigs don't just exist for the sake of entertainment. Playing live can inform and instruct as well. People have paid for their leisure time and what's been allocated to them has to be dealt with and not just offered as a waste of time."

Ian certainly seems committed and motivated and at no point loses his way. After all his didactic statements he never once breaks his relaxed and assured cultural banter. He moves easily from one section of the interview to another and doesn't become heated when he feels he has something to say. We slip comfortably between how hardcore in D.C. helped form him as a teenager and then onto what he's been reading recently.

"Dracula has such content in it," he motions towards the book that he has now put down in front of him.

"I know that there is the sexual sub-text and the connotations of biting, drinking and feasting on someone else that covers the force of intercourse, but what's grabbed me is the racial politics of the novel.

"There are conversations between characters about Dracula and how in some way his lineage has been diluted by inferior blood strains. This ties in with the imperial superiority inherent throughout the British Empire at the time and stands out so much for me it's difficult to see how it has been overlooked."

He talks more of how the question of ethnicity in Dracula has informed his revulsion for events in the former Yugoslavia and wonders if this 19th Century mentality in some way informed the barbarity of the 1990s.

This is quite some digression. Ian in some way prides himself that the louche performer, who once wanted to have a time machine so he could walk past girls one hundred times a day, is in close quarters a political aesthete who ponders his role heavily.

"I know you're talking to me here," again in an act of self-consideration, " as a minor…" He tails off before saying rock star. Interesting that he would not label himself despite theorising about the medium he works in.

"I've probably fallen off the map a lot this afternoon and I should get back to talking about what Weird War are going to be doing soon."

Ian moves the copy of Dracula away and puts aside what he has just been animated about. He plays with his deep black mop-top and fingers the lapel of his boating club blue blazer, with gold crest and motto. He looks the dandy. A Beau Brummel who has conviction as well as vanity and dress sense.

"I like the idea that the record sounds completely polished," he has now returned to talk about Illuminated By The Light. "The presentation is ostentatious but with a great rhythm. There is no pretension as that would be misleading. I like the idea that this could be an album that people feel seduced by."

Earlier the suggestion had been that the whole of Illuminated By Light has moved away from the Funkadelic workouts of last album, If You Can't Beat 'Em, Bite 'Em, towards ultra-smooth tendencies. Songs such as Why Do Girls Like Guys Like That? That overhears a chat in a club where Ian sings the woman's frustration to himself and he coos back disinterest; while a keyboard burns a Roxy Music imprint into the proceedings. Or the eponymous title-track that resides in a world of chat up lines which are clichéd, but somehow continue to entice. Suddenly the School of Frankfurt has been dropped for easy lounge cheap moves in a neon late night bar.

"I have to drop my main concerns sometimes. I don't think most people would find all that I say of great interest. The songs on the new album are meant for something else than delivering a lecture."

He chuckles when he says this and Ian is more than competent to know that the haute couture underground hipster persona he has maintained, which was solidified by his late nineties solo album, David Candy, does seem at querulous at times with the numerous statements made in honour of the International Pop Underground.

When it is almost time to finish and for a short time Ian thinks about Dean Reed, the American who was the Eastern Bloc's only state sponsored and ideologically sound rock star, there are moments when you might wish for him to break out into one of his gospel yeh-yehs or strut across the room pouting as he goes. Instead he shows interest in the way Dean was the sole proponent of rock 'n' roll for a secluded part of the world for twenty years.

It is possible to wonder if Ian was given an equivalent role he would not have to worry about being haunted by his achievements; he could continue being honoured for sustaining what people need with mod-garage excitement. Not repeating an old character more was being extended the opportunity of seeming new and exciting without competition.

"Dean has such a peculiar story," Ian leans up. "To be without question for the Eastern Bloc the only individual who is the epitome of rock music must offer validity for what he did. Where in the Sixties rock music became curbed by conglomerates who paid huge advances to support supposedly heretical and revolutionary groups, thereby co-opting them into acquiescence, Dean must not have been inhibited by such sponsorship. He must have been utterly charmed."

An enviable position and one Ian can never have. He still remains one of rock music's undeniably big influences and, aside from Ted Leo, revitalised the well-dressed band tied to a Freakbeat sound, which was Xeroxed out of context by The Mooney Suzuki as soon as it left the reserve dwelt in by those who knew the background, the lingo and the hardcore edge which developed The Creation like mod-rush.

Yet where he should be recognised, canonised and perpetually celebrated he is in danger of being written of as a footnote. As part of making music Ian cannot be laid to rest and memorialised. He is active.

Ian completes his second coffee and concludes with his most verifiable statement. He mentions: "We continue to be part of the music industry, just because some group is on some minor-league label, its still business. There is money changing hands and product being made." In two sentences he sounds resigned and positively thrilled.