tyre swans show

hmmm what's up with this image not posting properly...I'm computer-stupid so I cannae claim to know. so here's the crucial details: Tyre Swans, the Temperamental) Pocket (Newcastle) and Dan Rogan (Brisbane)

Saturday 10 January 2009. Cafe Chechocho (the chess cafe!), West End/Brisbane. All-ages, BYO, vegan snaxx included in the doorprice!

driving home

it's grey and rainy outside and I'm feeling melancholy today and Hot Water Music is in my head "driving home"

I know the sink and the rot got feeling
"is this happening to me"
and i know what it's like to want to end it all
driving home between the lines in the road
I swear that I've been through this
before when nothing makes much sense except for
doing yourself in razor blades are hard to hold
when we're hit in the heart with problems that

won't shift it's hard to admit that we're afraid
when we're hit in the head with unanswered questions
that repeat "how could i ever live after
this day"
we can take the hits and grow tougher
collect ourselves to live longer
and find there is no need to be afraid
because we all have more to offer when we struggle to cope with whatever it
takes to make the says we all have what it takes
to make it home

ex members of

I have been meaning to post about the happiest music-related news I've had in a long time. Blake (I don't think I have to bother with surnames, I think you *know* which Blake I'm talking about) and that zinester dreamboat Aaron Cometbus in *one new amazing band* called Thorns of Life.

Maybe it's the crazy tropical heatwave here in Brisbane, because I can't think straight let alone write something "sensical" (is that a word, probs not?) so I'm stealing from Jamie/Objection:

"Ladies and gentlemen,particularly those of you who like myself had your life enriched and heart broken by Jawbreaker, it's with no amount of excitement and glee that I give you these here videos of THORNS OF LIFE, the new Blake Schwarzenbach/Aaron Cometbus/Daniela Sea band.

Maybe it's the booze still in my system from last night, but excuse me while I weep tears of joy."

http://whosearetheobjections.blogspot.com/2008/11/this-just-insecond-coming-arrives.html

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I'm sure you've already watched the youtube houseshow videos, but if not, hit it up with the quickness

Fear Like Us interview

Here's an interview I did with Jamie from folk-punk acoustic band FEAR LIKE US. They are kinda from Newie and kinda from Melbourne, and I first saw them when they played in Brisbane while they were on tour with DEFIANCE, OHIO.

ONLY THE SAD SONGS: A friend and I were recently looking at an old-ish demo-tape marked "JAMIE HAY - ACOUSTIC" (that I found in my bedroom) and we were wondering about whether that was basically the starting point for Fear Like Us.

Was your solo-acoustic stuff an early incarnation of Fear Like Us, or was it a starting point for moving in that direction musically?

At any rate, Fear Like Us was originally a very small band with 2 members. What were the various line-up changes and developments that happened?

It's also hard to mention the Fear Like Us line-up without asking about logistics...so, how DOES it work having a long-distance band with members living in different cities?

JAMIE: What’s on that tape? I’m curious! Well, I had played some shows here and there as a “CONATION” set but this was only once or twice. I never had any intention of going “solo” but have always loved solo artists like BILLY BRAGG and ERIC BOGLE.

Fear Like Us started with just Kim and I around mid-2004, but didn’t take off til the end of that year. Babs joined Kim and I just after we finished our demo. Murray helped with drums on the demo but was never in the band, then maybe six months later Joel joined us on drums.

It’s funny to us because Kim and I initially wanted to keep it just “us” so it was easy to organize being two people. Our attitude shifted slowly into adding more members and even recently adding more instruments with the recording of the record!

To add to this half of us decide to move to Melbourne, so much for being easy to organise. Ha!

ONLY THE SAD SONGS: As a record label, I think POISON CITY RECORDS do a really good job of documenting a certain musical scene in Australia, a really good mix of melodic punk and pop-punk and folk-inspired punk...I guess a bit like an Australian "No Idea Records".

How did your association with Poison City come about?

JAMIE: I agree, Andy does a great job with the label and chooses wisely which bands to release. We ended up on PCR from the show we played with AGAINST ME! and A DEATH IN THE FAMILY in Sydney.

Andy said that PCR was going to get serious (at the time he was releasing records every now and then) and that he wanted to do a Fear Like Us record.

At the time we had been asked by a few labels but Andy felt like the right person to go with. One of Andy’s nicknames is “Done It”, because before you think about it, he’s done it! The label has got some of Australia’s best bands, LIKE…ALASKA are definitely my favorite.

ONLY THE SAD SONGS: Obviously you used to play in CONATION and now you also play in A DEATH IN THE FAMILY - both of which are basically "punk" bands. Do you find that being in Fear Like Us, playing music that is much less "abrasive", there are noticeable differences in terms of audiences?

JAMIE: I wouldn’t say that there has been a noticeable difference in the places but I have noticed that a lot of “kids” like the band, or I am just getting older! Over the last year we have played some “big” punk shows which have been awesome but all that has done for me is makes me realise that we suit small, intimate spaces.

Ultimately, I don’t care where we play as long as it’s with bands we love and respect. That’s what we have been lucky doing since we started.

ONLY THE SAD SONGS: I was reading an interview with Thurston Moore where he was talking about his search for sustainable ways of avoiding shitty soul-destroying jobs in order to concentrate on playing music, not just as a leisure-activity or weekend hobby, but as "what you do".

The model that he had found most inspiring was old jazz musicians, these total workhorses, who played their hearts out constantly and put out records almost every month!

Does it seem like the ultimate to play music without having to have a "daytime" job, or would it scare you to turn something you love so much into a job?

JAMIE: Honestly, I would love to play music for a living but definitely on my terms. I can’t see how it would become like a “regular job” at all.

I mean, if you get to earn a living doing something that you are incredibly passionate about then it couldn’t get any better.

The good thing about it is that you can be constantly creative and also if you get bored doing the same old stuff you can try something new.

I have never been entirely interested in traditional success but I have always dreamed of being able to survive off playing music.

ONLY THE SAD SONGS: Jamie, I know you lived in Newcastle for a long time, and now you live in Melbourne. I'm really interested in the differences between these cities in terms of musical communities.

Newcastle, perhaps a little bit like Brisbane where I live, is a small close-knit kinda place, and there can be a certain amount of isolation that goes along with that.

Melbourne is known as a city that you move TO and can immerse yourself in the huge independent music/art/etc scene.

A lot of people say Melbourne is such an amazing, inspiring, supportive place to be a musician, and are struck by how seriously people take their musical projects. Does this resonate with you at all?

I'm pretty interested in your thoughts on Newie vs Melbourne or maybe smaller "uncool" towns vs. bigger "supercool" cities, in terms of being in bands..

JAMIE: I think Newcastle has a really amazing scene and support for bands but there is definitely a lot of isolation there. There are a bunch of really important, great people there who keep it all together. I definitely still love Newcastle and will play there any chance I get.

The one benefit Newcastle and Brisbane have from being smaller is that shows are more mixed. It’s not always entirely a “hardcore” show etc.

Fear Like Us was lucky in that respect because we started playing shows with hardcore and punk bands etc.

In regards to Melbourne I did notice the vast difference in professionalism here and I don’t mean for that term to be taken negatively.

People are a lot more motivated for touring etc here and it is a huge motivation for me. It’s just like living with people who are always up for doing exciting stuff!

It is a drive that is shared by nearly every band be it punk, metal, crust or folk.

It’s one of the most inspirational aspects of the Melbourne music scene.


ONLY THE SAD SONGS: What are the future plans for FEAR LIKE US?

JAMIE: Well Kim and Babs are over in Europe at the moment and all of us won’t be in the same room until about March 2009!

We do have plans on doing a new record and going on tour as much as we can next year.

Thanks a mill to Jamie/Fear Like Us for the interview. And uh, like, PS. I suppose I should confess that all photos/images used in these interview were unceremoniously/shamelessly *yanked* from the Fear Like Us myspace page

www.myspace.com/fearlikeus

only the sad songs cut-and-paste zine lovelovelove

so I'm working on my zine "Only The Sad Songs"

it will have have interviews (with bands and vegan dreamboats), photos, crucial lists (inspired by Amor/Odio zine), "way-too-personal" (ha!) writing about everything that's been happening for me this year (remember, I did used to make a zine called "Personality Liberation Front" after all, gotta keep up the per-zine tradition), oh yeah and cut-and-paste layout taken care of by Letraset-a-rama!!!(I found a bunch for free!!!)

I'm hoping it's gonna be finished in a few months time, like December/January

If you want one, holla (and I'll hook you up when it's done)

A Death In the Family interview

Here's an interview I did with Jamie from A Death In the Family, first played on the 4ZZZ Punk Show in July.

you should note that I was a lil sleep-deprived and a LOT over-caffeinated when I did this interview, oh and of course I still get super nervous doing phone-interviews so you know how it goes...alright, okay disclaimer over, here it is: A Death In the Family podcast


oh yeah, throughout the interview you will hear snippets of 3 different ADITF songs in this order: Shackled, Let's Lose and My Pal (cover of the GOD song). such good songs, SUCH a good band...for more ADITF apreesh, go here: ADITF myspace

PS. If you listen to the GASLIGHT ANTHEM interview, it ends at a slightly random point after Brian declares his absolute love for Jamie from ADITF!! I like how this ADITF interview also ends at a slightly random point with Jamie declaring his love for The Gifthorse

The Gaslight Anthem

here's an interview I did with Brian from THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM, i first played it on the 4ZZZ Punk Show on Thursday 24 July. you can listen to it here:

TGA podcast

ps. i edited out the chit-chat at the end of the interview, so the version you'll hear on the podcast ends at a slightly random point after Brian declares his absolute love for Jamie from ADITF!!


also this is fairly hilarious:

THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM TO TOUR AS BACKING BAND FOR BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

NJ-based The Gaslight Anthem will be touring with fellow New Jersey musician and icon Bruce Springsteen. The band will be taking the place of Springsteen's long standing backing band the E-Street Band for a string of select dates along the east coast. The tour kicks off on January 5, 2009 at the famous Stone Pony in Asbury Park, NJ.

Though the planned shows will consist almost entirely of Springsteen's classic catalog, we've received word that the Boss himself has been working with Brian Fallon in an effort to incorporate a few of the Gaslight Anthem's tracks into the set, mainly those referring to the act of dancing, or females named Maria. We'll keep you updated on more specific details and dates as they become available.

This isn't the first time The Boss has worked with bands. Arcade Fire joined him on stage at a number of shows in 2007. Meanwhile, hip hop star Nelly has also expressed a desire to work with Springsteen.

The Gaslight Anthem is currently holed-up in a studio in Los Angeles, working on their SideOneDummy debut, and follow-up to this year's Sabot Productions EP, Señor and the Queen. Bruce Sprinsteen continues to tour in support of last year's LP, Magic.

(punknews.org april 1!!)

Margaret Thrasher

I was in Vancouver/Canada last year and the day I arrived was filled with crazy reunions, indian vegetarian all-you-can-eat restaurants, sleep deprivation aaaaand a house-show at the Library House by Trout Lake where I saw my dear friends Scum System Kill (from Sydney) and Margaret Thrasher. I'd heard a lot about Margaret Thrasher from reliable sources so was stoked on the coincedence of seeing them on my very first night in town. Good times.

So then my zine-pal Alex of Ratcharge Zine (from France) was staying with me here in Brisbane and mentioned he'd done an interview with Margaret Thrasher and wanted to spread the good word a little further. Here it is. Oh just re-reading it makes me more than a little nostalgic for criss-crossing the hemisphere and Vancouver and summer and friends and awesome shows! hells yeah.

Oh yeah, Alex also reliably informs me that Margaret Thrasher (not to be confused with the OTHER Margaret Thrasher from the UK) have two 7"s out on Clarence Thomas Records (get them at bistrodistro.com), and they've also just finished recording a new 12" that will be out very soon. They're heading out on a euro-tour in September/October 2008.

Alex Ratcharge: Hey Margaret Thrasher! First the basics, how and when did the band start, did you have any goals back then, and how did you find that stupid name?

Juls Margaret Thrasher: I wanted to be in kind of a yelly band with other girls. The name was thought of by a friend and former roommate Sylvie le Sylvie when we planned on starting a band in spring 2003 that never panned out. I kept it in the back of my head and especially wanted to use it when I started a band with Gabriela which I knew would eventually happen. I'm completely aware the band name is really stupid, but every band name is stupid, really. To make it stupider for myself, I have issues with how bands with women in them or female singers at least often have like "feminine" names. I've been in Ireland and the UK lately and everyone here thinks the name is deadly, so I feel a little more alright about it now.

Alex: How and when did you first discover punk-rock?

Juls: Green Day's Dookie came out when I was 11 and changed my life. I pretty much knew I'd be a punk from then on. When I discovered there were local bands that were punk and I could go see them for five bucks, I was blown away.

Alex: What are you doing beside the band? Any punk-related activities? Do you work and if so, why don't you quit?

Juls: In Vancouver, I until recently put on all-ages shows in the basement of my house, the Alf House, where I don't live anymore. I write a lot and put out a zine, although I haven't put one out in over a year. I work part-time doing bike deliveries for a small business and sometimes teach middle and high school kids how to make zines. I also work as a copy-editor and indexer, although I very, very rarely get paid for that.

I don't quit my jobs because I like them and they're really easy and somewhat fufilling. They're things I would sort of do for free (riding my bike? showing a kid how to put a zine together?). Plus, it's really hard to be on welfare there and not worth it because you're forced to attend resume-making classes 40 hours a week and one can make twice as much money working part-time at a more tolerable job.

Alex: Who writes the lyrics in the band? Do you have discussions about it? Do all the band members have to agree and like the lyrics for it to be integrated to a song, or is it only the singer's role?

Juls: I write the lyrics. Sometimes Brant (our hypeman) gives me advice.

Alex: What is the song "The Next Best Thing" about? I get the lyrics but not sure about the general meaning...

Juls: "The Next Best Thing" is about trying not to have periodic mental breakdowns over fucked up situations in your life or past that you feel powerless about. I wrote it when I was facing the possibility of seeing a childhood sexual assaulter who is closely related to me at a funeral that I didn't wanted to be bullied out of attending. The reality is that no matter how angry I am, I'll never be able to make that perpetrator feel how I did and I don't even neccessarily believe in that sort of revenge mentality, but ending the cycle of emotional control is probably a good first step.

Alex: Can you explain in details what you mean when you say (in the song "dead to me") "I know second-wave feminism had its faults / that binary view of partiarchy is racist and classist and weak"?

Juls: There are a lot of really valid criticisms about second-wave feminism, which is what came about in the 60s and created a political analysis of the power structure that occurs kind of domestically between men and women. An important criticism is that it developed a really singular view of feminism that ignored the experience of women outside of being white and middle-class. It was a really binary view of the world that was kind of all about how all men were oppressive to all women and really had no analysis of the ways in which white middle-class women could be oppressive to different races and classes.

That being said, I'm a white, middle-class women and the old motto "the personal is political" is really applies to me and I'm a firm believer in the idea that the fucked up power structure that keeps men above women is really affirmed within families, relationships, and individual relationships. It's very much within the people immediately around me that I feel really affected by patriarchy. However, I try to not to be really ideologically rigid about anything and I know that I need to be aware of the privilege I have and how that plays out within the dynamics I have with people of other races and classes.

Alex: The song "Hell No" is about refusing to support pro-life/anti-choice bands, is there lots of punk bands of this kind in Vancouver? Are they often confronted about it?

Juls: Christianity kind of trickles into a certain genre of hardcore in North America although not neccessarily in Vancouver.

Alex: It seems that most bands with feminist lyrics are women bands, or bands with female members... Why do you think is that? I remember this discussion I had with a friend of mine who thought that men couldn't be feminist, that they could only "support feminism", because she said that men couldn't understand what it's like to be a woman and therefore couldn't be true feminist. What's your opinion about that?

Juls: I don't think that feminism lyrics are solely sung by women bands. Two local examples I can think of off the top of my head are "Go Eat Shit" by Skidge's other band, Chuck Norris, which I think is about their friends making assumptions about girls based on the way they dress, and Manner Farm's pro-choice song. I think that any song challenging any pressure one feels based on their gender is feminist.

I think tongue-in-cheek Black Flag songs about acting in stereotypical "manly" ways are, in a way, feminist. I'm right now all about early 80s American Hardcore which was all about young kids from the suburbs (which is such a weird self-delusional and empty existence) being like "what the fuck is this? disneyland sucks."

I also think Disneyland blows but I'm also really frustrated by things that we've all been ingrained with and raised with that hinder my participation in expressing how I feel about Disneyland with other kids who feel the same way and how gender roles play out within the "Disneyland sucks" community.

Alex: I read that in Vancouver people who do zines can get paid by the state to do so, even people doing punk zines, is that true?? Does it apply to foreign people who come to live in Vancouver as well? Don't you think there's a contradiction in doing, let's say, an anarcho-punk zine that is financed by the state?

Juls: There's a definitely a contradiction in doing an anarcho-punk zine financed by the state, but it's in the same way that some anarcho-kids are financing their lives being on the dole. There's absolutely no restriction on what your personal zine is about. The program entails doing a bunch of other shit, though, like making a magazine within the employed group and learning computer design skills. It's basically a welfare-to-work program that was organized by some local radical-types.

But yeah, state-sponsored anything is kind of fucked up. And spending eight months with boss-enforced deadlines and minimum wage doing your zine is kind of a hinderance. A really big irony of the program is that I barely know anyone since completing the program who has put out a zine since, even if they were avid zine-makers prior to the program. An exception is Nathan Maxfield, who puts out the zine SHOES, so props to him and his endurance. You definately have to be a Canadian to do the program, unless you rig up a scam in which you use a Canadian's Social Insurance Card and have them cash your cheques for you.

Alex: What are the songs on your upcoming records about?

Juls: One song is about childhood sexual assault affecting my current relationships, one is about the recurring theme of creeps within the scene being kind of weeded out of communities who blame their alienation on our "snobbery", and the other is about the irony of using male aggression to deal with rape.

Alex: What are the top 5 records and zines/ books you've been listening / reading lately?

Juls: 1. book: The Malcolm X autobiography 2. book: James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time" 3. movie: "I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed" 4. My new powerviolence band in Dublin called "Totally Stoked" 5. independent Dublin hip-hop shows (funny accents, not-contrived, blatant localism)

Autistic Youth - Landmine Beach LP

from my dear friend Michl (of Taken by Surprise Records, Munich)

Autistic Youth - Landmine Beach LP is out now

Hailing from Portland, Oregon these 4 youngsters are influenced heavily by classic 80's bands like the WIPERS or ADOLESCENTS but also more recent outfits like THE OBSERVERS or THE EXPLODING HEARTS. On this LP they deliver 11 songs of anthemic and heartfelt punkrock that will make you dance dance dance! Comes in a silkscreened cover. In cooperation with the cool cat from SABOTAGE RECORDS

More infos at http://www.myspace.com/takenbysurpriserecords

Ordering info: After lots of delays and postal drama the repress of the AUTISTIC YOUTH - Landmine Beach LP is finally out! Below is the info. The wholesale price is 6.50 EURO. If you reside in the USA or Canada get in touch, we have a bunch of records in NYC so the postage will be much cheaper. If you ordered already i saved your copy, but please get in touch with me and send me the shipping addresses.

Thanks and good buy...michl

Le Tigre interview

Le Tigre (JD Samson and Kathleen Hanna) interviewed by Kylie, Lucy, Melamoo

Melamoo: I thought I’d ask about the Big Day Out first and how you’re finding it, I mean it’s a big gig compared to other stuff you might have done in America, bigger and different types of acts.

JD: Yeah we’ve done festivals before. We did a festival called Coachella last summer, that was really awesome. It was really huge, it was like 40,000 people or something like that. Bands like the Cure and Radiohead, The Pixies. It was really fun, cos we don’t often play festivals. We did play the Michigan Women’s Music Festival, which is like 8000 women, so that’s really fun to do because it’s only women and we camp out and we have a really good time there.

I’ve had a really good time at the Big Day Out. I was worried about it being outdoors and playing without our video. It was actually fun without the video. But at the second show, the crowd were responding really differently and we were wondering how much of it had to do with not having the video.

Melamoo: Did you catch other bands, like local acts, while you’ve been at the Big Day Out so far?

Kathleen: We saw The Spazzys

JD: Oh yeah they were good. Oh we watched Slipknot. (much laughter from everyone)

Melamoo: yeah their crazy mask things

JD: It’s hard cos you get there and you have to prepare for your set and then as soon as you’re done, you have to go eat and you kinda miss a bunch of bands

Kylie: The first question that I have…well, you know the revised edition of the Cunt book?

Kathleen: The Inga Muscio book?

Kylie: Yeah. Like, in the revised one, I like how she was writing about how the book originally focussed on a really explicit woman-centred feminist politics and then since then in a kinda post-September 11 world with increasingly more terrible things happening, she declared: "We’re all in it together now." To me, that seems to mean making strategic alliances and capitalising on the inter-connectedness of all of us who struggle for a better world.

And I kinda thought that the earliest Le Tigre records had a really explicit feminist queer identity politics, stuff like Hot Topic. And I thought "This Island" is less obvious in a way, like less self-referential to our, or perhaps your, community, if that makes sense. And I’m kinda curious as to whether this arose out of a similar context to "we’re all in it together now", trying to make something that speaks a little more generally to our allies outside of the immediate feminist and queer communities.

[although I do have to admit that I don’t have my own copy of This Island yet, so this analysis or observation is based on my initial few somewhat cursory scans of the lyric sheet of Lucy’s copy –k]

Kathleen: It’s a good question…

JD: It’s funny that you say that, because actually a lot of people think the opposite way, and I think more so just because we’re not naming names on "This Island", but we’re making it like an open-ended invitation for people to say the names of people that they’re talking about. And for us, "After Dark" was written as –well Kathleen wrote it- but (to Kathleen) you were writing it about a specific person, but also just like the idea of becoming friends with another feminist artist. It’s interesting with "This Island", because I guess we didn’t name names, but there is still so much blatant feminism and queer-positive stuff. Like I mean, "Vis" is something that we’ve never done before.

Kathleen: I mean, we’ve always considered anti-racism and anti-classism and you know, all the isms, a part of our feminist agenda. On our EP, which is the second thing we ever put out, we had a song about police brutality which was very much in our faces at the time and still is. At that time, there had been several killings in a row in New York, and it was really upsetting. So we have always felt like that, but I think this record does read more like that, I totally understand where you’re coming from. I think to us, we can’t tell how it reads, because it’s coming from this sort of like internal place…

Kylie: An integrated, synthesised kind of politics?

Kathleen: Yeah

JD: Like, "New Kicks" being anti-war and being anti-Bush is just as much blatantly feminist to us, and also any mention of the war or any of the stuff related to 9/11 and stuff like that that we’ve been dealing with for the past couple of years.

Kathleen: Yeah. And like "Hot Topic" came about at a time when, at least in our community in the States, Riot Grrrl was sort of on the decline and there was all this weird in-fighting going on, and it was really kind of depressing. Instead of being like "Oh I disagree with your point of view, let’s figure out a way that we can still work together. Or maybe we can’t work together, and you know what, that’s okay, just because we’re feminists doesn’t mean we have to agree on absolutely everything."

Instead of doing that, a lot of the small little music scenes that a lot of us entered-and-left-and-then-entered-and-left were collapsing in on themselves because people couldn’t agree to disagree on band politics. So it was really this negative kind of time and we wrote Hot Topic out of more of a personal thing, or even an identity-politics thing of like "We wanna celebrate all the joyous things"

Kylie: A kind of affirmation?

Kathleen: Yeah, instead of giving into the negativity and being like "Here are ALL of the things that are wrong", we were like "Here are ONE HUNDRED things that are right". And in that song there’s like all different kinds of writers and activists and artists, they’re not all women. And even with that, it was more about stuff we like, it wasn’t about saying it has to be a list of women who are in our scene or something. And yeah, I do understand what you mean about how "This Island" reads like that, to us it’s all just a kind of part of who we are, part of Le Tigre.

Kylie: Yeah, I mean most progressive feminist politics see the inter-connectedness of different types of oppression and it’s hardly like they treat feminism as a single-issue kind of politics. And yeah I guess with the anti-war and anti-oppression stuff you mentioned…well, I was reading that you have collaborated with people as varying in their left-wing or counter-cultural agendas as Gloria Steinem and Green Day…Is that part of building community and building alliances with people with slightly different agendas but still within a broad-left context? Or is it just fun to reach new audiences?

Kathleen: Well I just sung on Green Day’s record because they asked me to, and because I’m always interested in singing with different kinds of music and just different experiences as a singer. And I find that because I’m a feminist singer a lot of people won’t ask me to do things because they think I won’t do it.

Kylie: Yeah I can imagine.

Kathleen: Yeah so like, when I get asked, I just wanna do it! And also, in addition to being a feminist activist, I’m a singer and I care about singing. And Gloria, she was running for Kerry..

JD: Yeah she actually asked to be a part of our show and she came and gave a speech before we started our shows, that was probably the height of our collaboration with her. But you know, it was a surprise to our crowd too, and I think it was just a really good meeting of different minds.

Lucy: You mentioned "Vis" before, and I wanted to ask you a question about that. I’m asking you JD, because I mean, did you write the lyrics?

JD: Yeah

Lucy: It’s one of my favourite songs on the album. Because my interpretation of the song –before I actually read Diva magazine and read what you said about it, so you’ve ruined my question!- was that it was kinda about the dyke scene and the fact that, despite all its flaws, the stereotyping, like the line "hey, you’re not a dyke!" and stuff like that, like despite all that, it ends up celebratory kind of thing.
JD: Yep

Lucy: And I really love that bit. And it kind of resonates with my experiences of the queer scene, in that I know it’s flawed and I dis it all the time, like I moan on about how shit all the gay clubs here in Brisbane are. But I would be the first to jump to their defence if someone tried to take them away.

JD: For sure.

Lucy: Yeah I would be like "I love The Beat! It’s my favourite club!" So I was kinda wondering if that’s what you were kinda putting across, that it’s both negative and positive?

JD: Yeah definitely. The song is like, actually about going to a straight club and feeling really weird and like "I don’t really belong here", the idea of just being visible in that kind of setting feels like I’m being an activist just by existing in that space, you know? So that’s kinda why I wrote the song, because I ended up at this weird party by myself and I felt really uncomfortable at first, but then I felt really excited that I’d found another lesbian, butch lesbian, and we connected, and we had a few drinks you know. (laughs)

That’s kinda more like what I was thinking about when I wrote the song, but I definitely agree with you in terms of like, the flaws and the brilliant genius of our communities everywhere. Like in New York, we had Meow Mix, this bar I’d been going to since I was like 17 and everybody was dogging it all the time and I was like "No! It’s our home!" and it just got closed like 2 months ago and it’s a sports bar now. So it’s really depressing. But I’m like all for gay pride and power and all that stuff, I will never give that up, you know.

[this last bit makes me wish this was an audio-zine, so you could hear exactly how amazing it was when JD said it]

Lucy: I think it’s really important not to forget that we still need that kind of…like yeah it’s cool to talk about being post-gender but like we still need those spaces and those kinds of clubs to make ourselves feel GOOD in the world because it is such a fucking horrible world out there. Like, we need to feel like we belong sometimes, in some places.

Melamoo: The L Bar!

Kylie: I’m asking this question to you Kathleen, if I may. I was re-reading an old Punk Planet, the "Life after Bikini Kill" interview…

Kathleen: Oh yeah

Kylie: ..Where you were talking about image and aesthetics and how at one point you were like "it’s ok to wear lipstick and be a feminist", but in the interview you said "I take a little bit of that back now", that you thought it was more subversive to create your own definitions of beauty in a way. And I’m kind of curious as to where you’re currently at with that because Le Tigre seem to have some really fun stuff going on with image. And if we take our cue from Judith Butler, if we perform our gender…like, is the use of image and aesthetics in Le Tigre part of fucking with fashion and fucking with gender and trying to shake things up at a very visual level, at a very immediate level, and in a very fun way?

Kathleen: I think part of it is, sort of like what you guys were talking about with clubs, where all you have is the gay male clubs you go to. I feel like a lot of times in performance, we’ll be the one all-female band or the one queer band in the town. And to me, even more than dealing with gender in terms of like costume or makeup or hair, it’s more just about like putting on this big show and instead of being given this little tiny slot, giving back this full really huge thing.

Cos we don’t want to just be another band that’s staring at the floor and it looks like we’re just wearing our clothes that we were wearing on the street that day. Like, we want to give our scene and our community something that we really worked hard on in our apartments, and worked our asses off to make. We didn’t come all the way to Brisbane to stare at the ground, do you know what I mean, we came here to like put on as a big as a show as we can with what limited stuff we have.

Kylie: Yeah I guess it can rub off on the audience, this really fun, exciting kind of feeling that helps you to transcend...

Kathleen: Yeah, it’s more about that, and it’s more about a new aesthetic of music and what you can do with like mixing performance art with music. For me at least, I don’t even really think about the whole "Beauty Myth" kinda stuff anymore, it’s not like "I’m past that", it’s just like I’m pretty comfortable with the stuff that I want to do.

And I’m kinda like a professional entertainer at this point and I have the mask that I wear that makes me feel like I can actually be vulnerable. I like to wear a lot of makeup on stage because having that mask there prepares me to open my heart. I know that sounds really weird, but I’ve been doing it for a long time. It gets me ready to be Le Tigre, you know.

Kylie: I mean, we often talk about when we go out, it’s much more fun for us to put on like costumes and crazy clothes. It just takes you out immediate reality, it’s just a really easy way to transcend boring, mundane reality, and also to take on the persona you need to take on to negotiate the outside world..

JD: You guys should try dressing up all the same and then going out!

Kathleen: Like ALL DAY

JD: Yeah whoa it’s really fun.

Kathleen: Yeah we wear exactly matching costumes when we run errands and stuff and like everybody was freaks out. We did it today actually at the koala park.

Kylie: Aside from your image and costume stuff, what is the role of your performance and projection stuff.. like is that part of mixing performance with music, incorporating different visual elements and having something really fun and exciting that works on several very immediate levels?

JD: Yeah, I mean we wanna create a show that’s on a different level, or a bunch of different planes. And the audience can pick what they really wanna do, you know. We just want to give a lot of energy to the crowd, and we find that when we do, we get a lot in return, so we have matching outfits and videos projected behind us and we have choreographed dancing, you know. As much as you’re willing to put into it, that’s what you get back, and we wanna have a community moment where everybody is having a really good time.

Melamoo: I like what you said in an interview about how you’ve kind of moved out of the ghetto now and you’re kind of more anonymous in New York as well, and how that’s made you really focus on your music now as well, less of being the kinda spokesperson for riot grrrl, that kind of thing.

Kathleen: Yeah I think the 3 of us have for a long time been artists in our own right, do you know what I mean, and being in New York I think, it made me at least less like conscious of what everyone else thought of me, the community, wondering "Is this the right thing or is the wrong thing?", more conscious of other people. But we’re putting a lot of love and time and energy into everything we make, making what we really want to, instead of what we think everybody else wants. I mean, there IS a lot of conscious thought about our audience, because in a way we ARE our audience.

I think we, both JD & I, a lot of the time want to write lyrics for ourselves, at times in our lives when we didn’t have anybody. And when no-one in our scene was saying the things we wanted to say. In a way it’s selfish. Like people say you’re doing this out of altruism (for your community), and it’s not. It’s definitely really good feeling to be able to do that, it’s just like "Oh wow, I made it to this point where I have enough love and support around me that I can sort of reach out of the boat and pull someone else out of the water and that feels really satisfying.

Kylie: When you said that you write lyrics that relate to you guys, stuff that you really wanna say or hear, or stuff that you really wanna see, like is "Keep On Livin" and the Keep on Livin’ website part of that?

JD: Yeah

Kathleen: Yeah exactly.

Kylie: I mean, because you put something "out there" that is about your very personal individual experience, people tend to relate to it a lot.. Maybe because it's not trying to pretend to speak generally for everyone, but just to speak about yr specific experience that certain other people might be able to share w/you...I was reading this old interview with Kim Gordon in Rolling Stone and she was talking about how this teenage girl didn’t write in her diary, she basically wrote everything in a diary-style confessional way to Kim Gordon. Stuff about high-school and alienation and angst and crushes.. And I guess I was wondering if alienated young queer/tranz/feminist/punk kids, because of stuff like "Keep on Livin", write to you guys in that way?

JD: Yeah they totally do. That’s part of the reason why we put that on our website because we were getting flooded by letters asking questions.

Kylie: So "Keep on Livin" was your way of writing back to all of those people together, like a letter to the community?

JD: Yeah, at first we printed out that stuff and we started sending it to the people who had written to us, but then you know, it got crazy, so we just put it up on the website and now we’ve gotten like so many less letters asking those questions, and people DO go to our website and use it.

Kathleen: The song and the website was a big response to a lot of the letters we got. It was before we figured out the whole website thing! And we really WANTED to respond to a lot of things that people had written, but we had gotten so much mail…I’d gotten so much mail from the Bikini Kill times and I’d written back every single person for like ten years. And I just wanted to have a personal life, you know. And I decided, you know what, I just can’t answer my mail anymore, cos I’m so wrapped up in all these 13- and 14-year-old girls talking about cutting on themselves…I mean I could function, I got really good at functioning, but I had so much shit in my head and I really wanted to be able to separate myself from it.

Kylie: I guess I if you are putting so much energy into responding to mail, you simply don’t have as much energy for creativity..it makes sense to make art that will also express what you need to say to yr community..

Kathleen: Yeah, I mean, we started putting it into the songs and I think that’s really smart. And I mean, I think it’s funny that it took so long for us to do that, even if as a band we were saying, you know what, actually, we deserve to have a separation between our band and our personal life. We don’t need to wake up every morning and just answer letters and respond to stuff all the way until we go to bed. And after a couple of years, I was starting to be like "Hey, wait, we make art about this stuff. We don’t need to respond at the level of giving people rides to our show and writing to every single person."

Melamoo: Is there going to be another calendar?

JD: Yeah, actually, I was gonna make it soon but I can’t because I’m on tour, so I think it will be in the next year. It’s really hard to do the calendar on tour, because it takes a long time to prepare and you have to be done with it 3 months before you want to sell it.

Melamoo: And you’ve got another side project…are you currently working on that as well?

JD: Yeah, I’m in a side-project band. I don’t know if we’ll do a release, cos it’s just a really small side-project band. It’s called New English Rose

Kylie: Oh yeah, Melamoo was looking at an online messageboard, I forget which one, and she witnessed frenzied discussion about what any future possible covers could be, like after the Pointer Sisters one

Kathleen: Oh, oh, I actually started working on one at home!

Melamoo: Really? Yeah I love 80s covers

Kathleen: Like, it will probably be Yazz

Melamoo: The Only Way is Up, or…?

Kathleen: I don’t know that one!

Melamoo: (singing) the only way is up

Kylie: baby

Melamoo: for you and me now

Melamoo: It’s a really uplifting song that would totally work being politicised, like what you did with the Julie Ruin project using the song 'I wanna know what love is"

Kathleen: See, that wasn’t the big song in America. We had "Didn’t bring your Love Down" and "Situation" was her biggest hit [JD and Kathleen sing "Situation"]…You guys didn’t get that one?
Lucy: No! We have no fucking idea about that

JD: The album "Upstairs at Erics" is like the one that was big in the States

Kathleen: Yeah, it will probably be something by Yazz. We’re gonna have to do it in a totally different way, because there is no way that we can sing anywhere like her.

[this is basically the end...it was all very hyper-excitable and hard to transcribe after here]

The 15 Fame-Filled Minutes of the Fanzine Writer

[billy bragg interview part ii]

[the interview time is almost up]

Kylie: I have another question I want to ask you...

Billy Bragg: Go baby....

K: I think that songs like "Valentines Day is Over" take an approach to love that go beyond the simplistic Top 40 romantic lovesong formula...as a man, is it important for you to write about love and relationships and responsibility in a way that other men can relate to?

BB: Yes, I mean "Valentines Day is Over" is a very good example of that, because when I first wrote it some feminists came up to me at a festival and they said "Look, you've written a song from a female perspective, how do you know? How can you write this as a man? You don't know what it feels like to be the victim of male violence."

And I said "Yeah, you're completely right but you know, there are many great songs about this subject written by women, but I am trying to write a song about this for other men and say as a man, to other men "this is not acceptable." And the best way I feel I can say that is from a female perspective, to be brave enough to write and sing "as a female" so I can say to these men "Look, as another man, it's just not acceptable that this happens."

And so I also like "Valentines Day is Over" because it's both personal and political, it talks specificially about how brutality and the economy are related, how I understand that the pressure of trying to live in a capitalist society does put stress on relationships, that's not to make an excuse but...I think the best songs are not either personal or political but for me the best Billy Bragg songs are the ones in which...

K: the two are definitely not separate but are interrelated, in the way that our lives are not either simply personal or simply political...?

BB: The world is like that, the world is not only political or only personal, all of these things are interrelated. Sometimes I can write a highly political song like "There's Power in a Union" and another time I might write a purely personal song like - what did I play tonight? "The Fourteenth of February", something like that or "Saturday Boy".

But to me, the real good ones are where I can manifest the way the two fit together, which doesn't always kinda come off, but I do try, particularly with the ones with regard to violence to women. "Levi Stubbs Tears" tries to get into that position as well.

K: Actually at the end of the set when you held up your cup of tea to the audience...well, we were just talking on the way here about George Orwell's essay about how to make the perfect cup of tea...and it's interesting because he's kinda known for being so purely "political"...you know that essay?

B: Yeah, of course! I'm a huge Orwell fan. We were just in America last November doing a tour against media consolidation against Clear Channel. They own a lot of radio stations in America, like 2000 radio stations, and they have one playlist, so the Americans were concerned.
I was on a tour bus with Jill [Jill Sobule, who played the show tonight -k], Steve Earle, Tom Morello, Boots Riley from The Coup and Mike Mills from R.E.M and we were travelling on this tour bus and the most amazingly weird thing happened.

It turned out that Steve Earle, Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine and Mike Mills were all huge Lord of the Rings fans! So they got into this argument about Lord of the Rings and then Earle went out and bought the Two Towers 4 CDs on the bus, and it was just driving me fuckin' mad!

And they're saying to me that this is the greatest novel from the 20th century and I'm saying "Listen, guys have you ever heard of George Orwell???" Okay, the greatest novel of the 20th century is 1984, it says more about the 20th century than any bunch of fuckin' hairy-toed hobbit bastards running around.

So I am a huge fan of George Orwell. I'm very interested in Englishness because my last album England-Half English is trying to address that and of course Orwell is the kinda king of all that shit, if you know your Orwell. Maybe I should get a kinda George Orwell tshirt together with the explanation of how to make the perfect cup of tea on it, I wonder if I could get away with that, or maybe I should set it to music..?

P: Boots Riley would have known Orwell though...

BB: Yeah Boots and me...Boots wasn't interested in Lord of the Rings, we had another video of Parliament "Funkadelic" and that was put on instead of Lord of the Rings, if we could get on the bus first.

M: Okay another question we came up with on the way here: how the fuck does one dance to your music?!
K: How does one dance to Billy Bragg?!

BB: Well firstly, when I'm solo it's not dance music. When I play with a band it's more dance music and people do dance then. The toughest thing is the audience themselves are not prepared to dance, but they're much less prepared to see me dance! And when I have the band with me I sometimes dance and it really freaks them out because I can only dance one way -- and that is like somebody's dad because I am somebody's dad!

Before you have children your dancing is different and once you have children you spend five years dancing to make someone laugh. You dance with your kids making them laugh, so when you go back to dancing in a disco, there's nothing you can do man, you're fucked. That's the way I dance cause I'm someone's father, it's more like ska, I can do an awful lot of ska!

M: thanks for your time..

and then! the tape-recorder was turned off and we kept talking.. about zines and independent media. and BB said one more thing, which for the purposes of documenting, went a little something like this:

"George Orwell said if there's any hope, it lies in the proles, and if there's any hope for punk, it lies in the fanzines."

(and then we continued to loot the backstage buffet, like any good self-respecting punks would)

Billy Bragg Interview Part i

originally in cut-and-paste handwritten zine format, now on *the internet* omg..probs a bit harder to read all that text on a computer screen, so maybe make a cup of tea before you start reading and defo get comfortable first xx

Billy Bragg interview, backstage at Rohre, Stuttgart
interview: Kylie + Michl + Possum

Kylie: Can you tell us a little bit about the way or ways that you were politicised or became politically aware, and was punk a part of that for you?

Billy Bragg: YES

K: But then I saw you play and you mentioned the Miners Strike...

BB: Yeah well it was before the Miners because punk, punk where I lived was 1977, and the Miners was 1984, and what the Miners did, it took my politics that I already had and it made me express them in an ideological way...you know, more focused on ideology rather than just general politics. I didn't have any politics when I was growing up, my parents were not political. When I first had the opportunity to vote, I was 19 in 1979, and I didn't vote. And that was the year that Margaret Thatcher won, so I felt really stupid about not voting.

The very first political thing I ever did was 1978, I went to see The Clash, and they were going on the first big Rock Against Racism march, which was through London to a park in Hackney in East London. And I went on the march with the Anti-Nazi-League and Rock Against Racism. There were about 20,000 people on this march and I saw The Clash play in the park, but also on that day was a guy called Tom Robinson.

And Tom Robinson had a song that was called "Sing If You're Glad to be Gay" and when he played this song, the men standing where we were in the crowd began to kiss each other. And you know I grew up in a working class area, and I'd never seen or met any gay men who were out - well I mean I'd probably met gay men - but never gays who were out. I'd never seen gays before. And they had a big banner which said "Sing If You're Glad to be Gay" and my first feeling was "Why are these people at an anti-racism march? This has nothing to do with being gay, this is about black people."

But I realised quite quickly that the fascists hated anybody who was different in any way, and so I promised from that day to be as different as I could be, and to ask as many awkward questions as I could. So the lesson from that is not just that I'm politicised, but that music, although it cannot change the world, it can change your perspective of the world. Because I came away from that concert with a different perspective about politics. And so that was the first political experience for me, thank you to Joe Strummer for bringing me there and to Tom Robinson for showing me that song, and to those gay guys and to the whole moment to make me political - it still inspires me.

Possum: Can you think of, off the top of your head - like sometimes you see something and you just have such a clear image of it in your head, and it stays with you for the rest of your life...can you think of anything?

BB: Yeah, I mean that day in the park, seeing those gay men, stays with me. When Joe Strummer died, that's the first thing I thought, you know, Joe had been my great inspiration, in that sense he'd been the most political person in punk, he made The Clash political. So there are these moments for me... a moment where you see something in perhaps a clearer way and you find a way to articulate that in a way that people can understand. That's the real art, I think, of a songwriter.

If you're gonna write stuff that challenges people, ya gotta be able to articulate it in a way that engages their interest. If you just bang them over the head with it all the time, it's like a fanzine without pictures, you know, it's tough, ya gotta draw people into it. So you're always looking for ways to say things that are entertaining, ways to attack capitalism in a smarter way than just saying "capitalism is shit" is approaching it through Farenheit 451.

P: Like in the way you approach a larger audience, a festival audience, compared to a smaller audience, like in small pubs...?

BB: Well, a festival audience is different, you can't talk so much to a festival audience. Because in a festival, a lot of people are there just to see whoever's on, they're not really there to see you. But with an audience like this (at a small-ish rock venue -kylie) where you can talk very early on. After playing 3 or 4 songs, I was able to talk a little bit and people were listening, it's that kind of audience. So you find in your first few songs what the audience is like, some nights you can't talk and the audience are sometimes more enthusiastic than you. Like suddenly you realise "Fucking hell! It's Saturday night", everyone wants to have a beer and is up for singing the songs, and you just go for it and you just maybe at the end talk a bit.

K: Speaking of audiences, what do you hope happens in terms of audience participation at your shows? Like, if music cannot change the world, but it can change your perspective of the world, what would you like people to do with the information you give them at a show? What would you like to see happen at a show, or perhaps more importantly, what do you hope that people take away with them from a Billy Bragg show?

BB: Well, I hope that they take away that information about what's happening in Holland (he's talking about the Dutch government's approach to refugee issues -k) and that they find out something about that. I mean you can't follow the audience home and make sure that they do what you were talking about, it doesn't work like that, ya know. You have them for that hour or two hours, and you have the opportunity to put some ideas in their heads. First, to make them relax and make them smile, make them think about love songs. And then after you've done that, to just focus on the one thing you want them to take away with them, the Dutch thing, you know at the beginning of that rap, they laughed, at the end of that rap they weren't laughing.

I was talking about all that stuff about reunification and that's one of the most important things that has happened in our lifetimes, the result of very difficult situations that have been resolved positively. I think reunification is important because the East Germans managed to do it without having a Vaclav Havel or a Lech Walensa, they managed to somehow do-it-themselves. I think that's a very good encouraging thing...it's a shame it turned out the way it did, but there's something very encouraging in the way it happened. It was genuinely people putting pressure on the SED in Germany that actually made that change.

You know I've just been up to Berlin, and I've seen a lot of my old friends from those days and I still find it very positive that they managed to achieve that in Germany for all of Europe, you know, for all of us...that the Russian soldiers went home, the British soldiers went home, the French soldiers went home - and maybe one day the American soldiers will go home, probably not for awhile, but maybe they will.

I know I can't change the world from singing songs, but I can challenge the perceptions of people. You know, like tonight when I say to the people "I want you to aim your anger at the Dutch", everyone laughs, but I'm not joking, I'm serious about that. And I want them to go away and think about that. It would be easy for me to attack the Americans, everybody in the audience already has those negative feelings or else they wouldn't be here. I wanna push them further and bring 'em another perspective and talk about that shit that's going down on their continent which is important. When I'm in Australia, I wanna talk about Christmas Island and all that shit, you know.

So that's my job to challenge the perception of the audience, not just to be the person they think I am, and when they come to my gig, I don't wish them to just have their political view confirmed. I wish to challenge them as well. I do wish to entertain first, but I also wish to challenge people, which I hope is what you try to do with this, and what you try to do with your fanzine as well.

Michl: Coming to the business aspect of it all, how much influence do you as a person have on the whole "Billy Bragg" thing, in terms of prices of shows and choices of venues...obviously this was not your favourite place to play...

BB: No, I wouldn't say that, no...I do like these kinds of venues, I play a lot of venues like this..

K: stand-up deathmetal clubs...

BB: We haven't played in Stuttgart for probably 15 years and we really wanted to play. So if we have to put up with Nosferatu's fucking dressing room...! You know, I'm sure a lot of that audience doesn't come on deathmetal night, but you know, I like these kind of nights, I like these kind of audiences.

I was very fortunate to be on stage on Saturday night in Hamburg at the Grosse Freiheit, which was a fucking great night. And you know, I had to play a festival set there because the audience was so fucking rowdy, so up for it, they were singing louder than me. It was just brilliant and I came away with twice as much adrenaline as I put in. You just have to judge the audience, some nights you have to ramp it up, you have to close up the gaps. You don't have the long slow songs, you can't play a song like "The Wolf Covers its Tracks", it's a song people are not familiar with. Some nights you can't play those songs because people really want to sing "New England" and that's cool, I don't mind that.

So yeah...I do have some control, but in the end I've got to make a living doing this, so it's trying to balance that. Plus you don't want to be away from home a lot, or as much as I used to be. When I was younger I didn't give a shit because I didn't have a home life, you know, this was how I lived and it was great. And now I have a son and a wife and like everybody else I try to make a balance between my work and my home.

So you try and make sure you play the places where you know for sure you can pack them out, like Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg, but also you have a chance to play Stuttgart or Munich. And well fuck, we went to Munich last time, but when was the last time we went to Stuttgart? It might be 20 years, it might be that long, certainly 15 years, so you want to try occasionally to come on tour...

M: Back to that business aspect, you have a professional management that organises stuff for you, but are you yourself involved in the business side of "Billy Bragg"?

BB: No no no...I have no interest in all that shit and I have a manager, the same manager I've always had. Before he managed me, he managed Ian Drury and the Blockheads, the Clash and he managed Pink Floyd back in the 1960s and he's the last of the old style managers. He's not a rich man, but he's very political. Everybody else I've ever worked with, the bands are very political but the manager is always not very political and says "We shouldn't do this, this is bad for our career." But my manager is the opposite, he finds more interesting things for me to do and I think without my manager I wouldn't have been been able to do things like Red Wedge because he could understand why I would want to do that.

Instead of saying to me "Are you sure you want to do this?" he would take the idea and he would run with it, so my relationship with him has been like a collaborator. He's a very very important person to what "Billy Bragg" is, he's really helped me to be true to myself, to make it possible for me to be true in that sense, and because he managed The Clash as well for awhile, he understands where I'm coming from.

P: What is Red Wedge, what did you say about that...

BB: Red Wedge...in the 1980s, after the Miners Strike ended, those of us who'd been doing gigs together to support the miners and other issues like Nicaragua and anti-apartheid and Rock Against Racism, after the Miners Strike we sat around together and said "Well, what the fuck are we going to do now? You know we feel very strongly about this, we found each other, and we do have a power here, so what can we do?" So we decided that the best opportunity to get rid of Margaret Thatcher was the 1987 election and that the best vehicle to do this would be the Labour Party, the British Labour Party.

At the time the BLP were unilaterist anti-nuclear anti-racist, they were much more left-wing than they are now. So we went to the BLP and said "We would like to do some gigs with you, where we bring young people in and say to them 'Look, you know, you must participate in the election, you must think about this, here's the Labour Party, let's have a debate about whether or not they're a good idea." In the music press at the time, there were 3 big weekly music papers in England so we ended up doing a tour which was me, Style Council, Jimmy Sommerville and other bands came and joined in, Madness came, Lloyd Cole came, the Smiths (gratuitous use of bold font, ha!) came, Prefab Sprout came and we had an incredible tour, it was just brilliant. And the 1987 election happened, and Thatcher won again. And after that, it was very difficult to get people's energy up, but it was trying to make sense of that whole thing of making a difference with your music.

[the interview time is almost up]