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Against me! Interview
| 18-12-2007 08:54 | 0 reaction(s) | add reaction | add news |
 "It didn't matter the record that we put out right now," Against Me singer/guitarist Tom Gabel grumbles. "We could have put out any type of record and people already decided if they were going to hate it or if they were going to listen to it open-mindedly. Really, for both types of people, it didn't matter."
Against Me's naysayers -- and they poured out of the woodwork the past few months -- will probably poo-poo Gabel's assessment of the music-buying environment as a pessimistic retaliation against the legion of shit-talkers, haters and the self-appointed credibility Gestapo. The thing is, he's dead right: Since late 2005, when Gabel and his boys (guitarist James Bowman, bassist Andrew Seward and drummer Warren Oakes) announced they were leaving the shelter of the punk underground for a contract with Sire Records, Against Me's been a lightening rod for the slings and arrows of outrageous punk-rock fortunes. Not since Bad Religion bailed on Epitaph for Atlantic back in '93 had the punk underground been so up in arms and split about major-label politics.
But after seeing that dead horse flogged for a year and a half -- and even by uber-mainstream publications such as Blender and Spin that have no place weighing in on punk-rock credibility whatsoever -- Gabel's ready to let the punk police sound off on their scensterish message boards, write angry little letters with tired sell-out accusations to their favorite zine and blog until their hearts' content about the pitfalls of the majors. Let them scoff: Against Me's latest album, New Wave, delivers the goods. Continuing the trajectory of its previous albums that took the band from a folk-punk outfit to rootsy rock'n'roll rebels, New Wave is the band's most sophisticated and polished effort. Teaming with producer Butch Vig (Nirvana, Sonic Youth), the Gainesville, Fla. outfit tightens the screws and comes forward with a sleek, lean and hungry update on its punk sound. Although New Wave isn't as ragged as any of its predecessors as it flirts with an outright rock presence with layered arrangements and gleaming post-production work, Against Me's center holds true: Gabel's just as outspoken as ever, taking on everything from the music industry and leeching fans ("Up the Cuts") and crass American cultural imperialism ("Americans Abroad") to relationship breakdowns ("Borne on the FM Waves of the Heart") and, in what's possibly the band's best song yet, cycles of drug abuse ("Thrash Unreal"). The rest of the band keeps up, dropping guitars that swing the between spiky, modern punk of "The Ocean" to the anthemic powerhouse of "White People for Peace," as Oakes and Seward seem to make it their personal vendetta to prove Against Me's rhythm section won't be tamed by major-label A&R.
Of course, Against Me's had plenty of time to deal with irritated fans gleefully going off the deep end as Gabel takes the band to the next level. Formed in 1997 as a one-man acoustic venture, Gabel cut his teeth playing small-time gigs, from crappy bars and clubs to basements and Laundromats. His folk-punk sound drew comparisons to Billy Bragg, a swelling following in North Central Florida and, eventually, a deal with hometown punk label No Idea Records. An offshoot acoustic EP would arrive from Sabot Productions before Fat Wreck Chords recognized the band's potential and called them up to a top-shelf punk label. Cue the chorus of boos, hisses and cries of "sellout." Against Me survived it. Not just survived, but rose to the occasion, delivering a couple studio albums that saw the band slowly shifting from its acoustic-punk sound to plugged-in roots-punk for 2005's Searching for a Former Clarity -- again, cue the chorus of boos, hisses and cries of "sellout." By December 2005, word of Against Me bubbled up to the mainstream, buoyed by the band's much-justified reputation as a can't-miss live act (a fact that Fat's live album, 2006's Against Me! Americans Abroad! Live in London! only cemented) as much as its studio output. Once again weathering that now-familiar chorus of boos, Against Me threw its hat into the major-label ring.
"That happens with every single record we've ever made," Gabel laughs. "Every single record! We were on the way back from practice last night and jokingly said we can't wait to put out the next record so that the people who don't like this record will like it."
As Against Me sees it, the (mostly useless) debate over whether or not it should have inked with a major isn't the real issue, but merely a symptom of a greater problem that's eating away at the punk underground. In a world that views corporations as the antichrist and thinks success always comes at the cost of bilking fans out of their hard-earned dollar, the punk underground's distrust for major-label records is probably to be expected. Getting to the bottom of punk's distrust of financial success is a complicated matter -- it's probably the combined pull of a culture distrusting corporations, a bit of self-sabotaging fear of success, the widely held belief that comfort kills a songwriter's muse and the knee-jerk reactions of teenagers with little to zero understanding of the financial responsibilities of real life. No matter what's causing punks to turn up their nose at the mere mention of money, it's an issue that's ballooned to proportions that threaten to make the punk world collapse under the weight of its own holier-than-thou views on financial realities.
"This has always been one of my opinions, one of the biggest faults in punk rock is punk has such a weird mentality when it comes to the financial aspects of things and talking about money," Gabel says. "Even right now, with everything that's happening, saying that there's problems in the music industry -- and I hate that term, I hate saying 'industry' -- saying there are problems with the music industry or music in general, that applies to punk rock, too. Right now, Punk Planet shut down. That was a major punk-rock institution. If you look at all the 'zines over the past couple years died out. I remember '94 or '95, how many zines did you have out there? I remember Profane Existence has become something that comes out every six months or something like that, and it's more geared toward certain people who read that and listen to that type of music. It's definitely not what it used to be Heart Attack is gone. Punk Planet is gone. Maximumrocknroll, because of its change in distributors, its reach to people has drastically gone away. You just have a real problem. What's going to happen? What's the future of punk rock? All these things are a result of what's happening in the mainstream and in the music world. It's not just music. It's technology. Technology is changing so vastly and punk rockers are refusing to acknowledge that and it's refusing to catch up with the times or create an alternative to the times.
"I'm talking about simple stuff like acknowledging inflation," Gabel continues. "Like, when it comes to show pricing, you have to acknowledge the fact that gas prices have gone up significantly in the past five years and the idea of a five-dollar show is kind of unrealistic with the gas prices and cost to fuel a van. The same goes for stuff like the price of a 7-inch. You're looking at things that have refused to progress with the times."
There's nary a music scene so built to embrace file-sharing and other digital pirating technologies as the punk world. With its almost religious, fanatical aversion to seeing money trade hands, the notion of getting the latest batch of new releases off the pirate networks fits perfectly with punk's anti-establishment cliches, not to mention people's basal, greedy glee at getting something for nothing. It's such an issue that the punk community's vilified the RIAA as it defends its members' copyrights.
Before we go any further, let's get one thing straight: Music is a luxury, not an inalienable right as your file-swapping peers tend to claim. And, as a luxury, it's something you should pay for. Until we've worked out how to provide more important needs for free -- health care, food, shelter and other basic cost-of-living expenses -- we shouldn't even be worrying ourselves over something that's essentially as frivolous as how to make freely distributed music work for consumers and its creators.
But the genie's out of the bottle on file sharing, and, realistically, there's no erasing that technology from the world. Until that utopian pipe dream of a self-sustaining music industry centered on freely distributed product comes about, the next best thing we can do, Gabel says, is educate ourselves about the financial repercussions, both immediate and long-term, of the greedy and selfish mindset of modern music downloaders. Oddly, it's a mindset that's almost inseparable from the modern, totally wired punk scene of the information age.
"Punk rock's refusing to realistically look at what's happening with file trading and stuff like that," he says. "With file trading and MP3s and everything, I think people are so naive and off-base about what's going to eventually happen as a result of it. It's kind of frightening to me.
"A good example of that would be a song on the new record, 'Up the Cuts,' in talking about that. I'm talking about what's happening to punk rock and music in general. With file-sharing, people have turned it into this argument over 'should file-sharing be illegal' or 'isn't it fucked up that certain people get prosecuted for downloading,' when putting the focus on the topic in that way is so off-base to what the issue really is. It's frustrating to me. In my opinion, and maybe this is a prediction that's off-base, but if things continue to go the way they're going, you're going to have record labels -- and every record label's interest is to make money off the music -- you're going to have record labels go 'Look, we can't make money of CDs anymore,' and they're going to convert to a solely digital format, and then you have DRM which they'll slap on every single track. The only way you'll be able to buy music is through these big online websites, through iTunes and stuff like that. You'll be buying music that comes with DRM that you cannot trade with anybody. You don't have a CD or a physical product you can buy, then how can you pirate it or put it online to share with anybody else? We'll be living in a world where CDs don't exist anymore and the only way you can buy music is online and you can't share it. You'll be paying money for the right to listen to music as opposed to owning music. It's mind-blowing to me, and totally frightening.
"I think that punk rock 2007 is, unfortunately, greatly behind the times and is refusing to adapt. It scares me in a lot of ways. I think it's sad. With anything, you either adapt and survive or you refuse to adapt and die."
Against Me addresses some of the pitfalls of the music biz in songs like "Up the Cuts" and "Stop," but Gabel's lyrical eye looks far beyond his career track on New Wave,as he reflects on everything from matters of the heart and personal issues to world politics in the age of the terror state. And although that's nothing new from a punk band, the manner in which Gabel handles his subjects is: Instead of slinging worn-out slogans and trite us-against-them calls-to-arms in a vain attempt to influence listeners' political agendas, he sets out to raise questions. Don't come to Against Me looking for easy answers or fill-in-the-blank political sloganeering. New Wave is awash in reflection rather than peddling easy, vapid solutions.
"A lot of lyrics on this record, I was trying to ask questions that I didn't feel like anybody would engage me in any kind of conversation about or give me their opinion on the subject matter," Gabel says. "It's more like 'Sonically, I don't like this record as much as the first few,' instead of 'I disagree with what you're saying here, here and here,' which I would love. That's what I always thought that things were supposed to be about, in art or music or punk, having a debate on ideologies or politics or opinions."
If sparking debate and introspection is political music's main goal, Against Me's a rarity in the punk underground -- an outfit more concerned with the debate than the actual answers to come from it. Although there's enough hints at the band's political leanings scattered throughout its back catalog -- Gabel and his crew are anti-war, anti-consumerist and weary of corporations dictating public policies -- you can't pick up any of the band's albums and come away with a readymade worldview.
That's troubling to many fans who were weaned on the didactic, proscriptive politics of generations of punk bands. From Conflict and The Dead Kennedys to Anti-Flag and Propagandhi, punks are accustomed to swallowing agendas set by their bands. That's made it extra difficult for socially aware bands like Against Me to capture people's attention beyond the soapbox-shouting politics of its contemporaries.
"I feel like a lot of bands that are punk bands that are politically natured bands, definitely do put on a front that they're offering some sort of a solution that's some kind of vague revolution," Gabel complains. "There's no actual answer about what that really means. I think a lot of that, for me, is what's turned me off to that style of music, political punk rock and using buzz words like that. They don't really mean anything anymore. It's something I get so frustrated with when it comes to interviews and descriptions of our band, they'll go 'Oh, you're a political punk band.' Or they'll refer to us as 'political,' without really defining what 'political' means. It's just a really vague thing. You could consider our record a political record, but at the same time, you could consider Toby Keith's Shock and Awe a political record. Both statements are true. Saying something is political doesn't mean anything. It doesn't say what the politics are, whether or not they're good or bad or what.
"I think a lot of that has to do with the use of certain buzzwords. If you were to put out a record that has the title of a song 'Such and Such Revolution,' people will automatically assume it's a political song. If they're looking for that kind of punk, then they're going to like it and they're going to buy it and put no more thought into it. If you put out a song that doesn't say any of those buzz words, or isn't on a topic that most people wouldn't consider political, then they're going to write it off. I think a good example of that might be songs about drug abuse. I know that on our last album, Searching for a Former Clarity, we had a song called 'How Low.' It's a song about drug use. In Gainesville, in particular, there's a lot of drug use, that's with alcohol, narcotics and stuff like that. In my opinion, writing a song about drug use is a political song. There's a lot of politics to drug use, what happens to families and people from drugs, where are drugs coming from, to communities and the relationships you have with people in your communities. I think that's a very political subject. Other people who would see that song would be 'Oh, that's just a song about getting fucked up.'"
Against Me is ready to raise the bar on political-punk discussion and charge listeners to think for themselves. Yeah, that's a pie-in-the-sky hope, but someone needs to be idealistic. New Wave is ready to raise a lot of issues -- if only the world will ever be able to get over the faux-controversy of a major-label release. It's up to you, punkers: What's more important, who pays a band's studio bills or what it has to talk about once it gets there?
source: Matt Schild, Aversion.com |
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