Ian Svenonius Interview
by Cathi Unsworth
BIZARRE magazine July 1999
http://www.southern.com/southern/band/MAKUP/Int_bizarre.html

Explain the power of the pulpit to us, Ian.

I grew up a block away from a Baptist chuch, and I've always been impressed by the hypnotic repetition, the rapture that the audience goes into, the catharsis, the Vaudevllian aspects. That's why we took to the sermon form in gospel music, because not only is it cathartic music, but also at once exhilarating and topical.

And preaching goes with sartorial elegance...

We have to keep it interesting for us and for the audience. One of the earmarks of capitalism is creating new ideas for consumption, and artists are encouraged to do the same. We are not posturing gangsters, but revolutionaries. When we dress up it's not a gesture to the old days, it's just tactics for self-empowerment now.

What does rock-n-roll mean to you in 1999?

Rock-n-roll destroyed theatre and art, it destroyed a million things. But now, as a power, it's pretty much a corpse. We're really dumbfounded by people trying to milk it - it's all they know. Money is what defines musical categories; all that changes is the technology that music is made with. Rock-n-roll is an economic term, it's a machine for making money.

How do you take it to the bridge?

Live, I have broken my leg onstage, also my arm and smashed my head open several times. Now my violence is projected towards my enemies.

Do you still get high on your own supply of adrenalin, rather than indulging in any rock cliche snorting and spiking?

The smallest children in the U.S. are being diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and prescribed Ritalin by the pharmaceutical Big Brother. Everyone else takes Prozac. The pharmaceutical juggernaut, in the spirit of capitalist psychology, ignores context and society in its diagnosis, and pretends that depression etc, stems entirely from brainb chemistry. With the masses opiated in this manner, a revolutionary must abstain, from perhaps the most psychedelic experience of all.