Hearingthevoice.com

By: Miguel Guinness.

How was the first STRIKE ANYWHERE show?

Thomas: We didn’t have a name yet, so actually we called ourselves change is a sound and after the show we thought that wasn’t a good name for a band, so then we named a record after this, because the name was more for a record and not a band. The show was fine it was back in Virginia our hometown, it was in an Irish pub called Mc Cormack´s and it was upstairs we got to open for the band of some friends called Embaredo, who were my former band mates, it was my first band which we named inquisition and we play around 25 minutes all the songs we had and it was really fun and people were responding well, so we played in bars and clubs just for friends but after 10 years everything is totally different but back in the day we were 2 hardcore kids who thought they were playing in a punk band and we had 3 other punk rock kids who thought that they were playing in a hardcore band all in the same band haha and now probably you can say the same but after being touring together, releasing 5 albums and tour the whole world is kind of you blurred and put all your influences together.

Thomas: Actually the exploitation of women in the sex industry no matter if it´s legal or illegal is a serious issue and you want to think that a legal sex positive environment that would give the women to have unions and health care check ups and there´s no curtain, no pimps but if you see most of these women are from really poor countries like eastern Europe, Africa and you want to know how they got to this position, to this place to sell their bodies and back in the US there is a lot of sex positive radical feminists like women running strip clubs for example they can unionize if they want of course they have the same problems as a union in the US in the sex industry like any industry. I think we live in a world which had oppressed women since thousand of years ago even with ideas that women do sex work and make good money out of her bodies. The question of women having a good place to do sex is important because the sex industry is always going to be there anyway is kind of like drugs whatever we legalize it or not, but legal there won´t exist criminal cartels destroying whole villages like in Mexico for example or transnational mafias that do what they want and influence governments, so back to the topic the women need a place to be protected for example in Holland where is legal but the question is why this can´t be possible everywhere there is this freedom of expression there´s a freedom of choice which is very important for us as well, but obviously we don’t agree with conservative-religious groups like Christians or the Taliban.

Thomas: That’s crazy there are so many doctors in the main stream press who said like about 1 month ago in the UK and in the US  that vegetarianism or veganism are totally healthy and actually better for you and even better for the health of the children and the mother. You know scientific studies have being made and proven that the B12 and the iron and the protein specially for women consuming a lot of milk based products is a really alien concept that is related to bone health and for example if you consume a lot of dairy you block it blocks the absorption of calcium that goes to your bones because you have so many animal proteins in your body. So a meet eating diet is what causes acid process and not a lack of calcium but that’s just one example. So a vegan diet is the corner store of a good health and avoid cancers, like before the animal products leave your body they already rotted inside of you. It has being proved that you can survive without meat and fish. Humans associate the fact of eat meat as a manhood behavior which is just childish, it´s like immature, so when you feel powerless you don’t want anyone to tell you what to eat and don’t eat you feel like someone is being condescending to you and well people vegan and animal activists they come from a privileged background so you say to working class people that eating meat is bad they won´t agree because for them to eat meat is a sign of power of manhood, so this manhood feeling is what the meat industry profits from to give to the people the feeling of look at me I´m a man and I eat meat but what they don’t know is that they will just get cancer and die, and they don’t tell you is that you won´t be there with your family anymore because at 50 you will die of a stroke, My relatives come from a working class eastern background like Scottish, Irish, Virginian people and so many of my relatives had strokes and heart diseases and they didn’t have to but they just didn’t have the right information or the right education. If you don’t know the meat industry owns also some of the most important pharmaceutical laboratories it´s a circle industry so there´s a lot of propaganda out there.

Thomas: Honestly to be on tour we have very less media contact, like today we got online and we read the bbc news like for a second and then the connection failed. But well you know my opinion about the protesters in Copenhagen is the same opinion like any of us would have concerning that topic, I just ask myself what can be wrong with the issue of protesting in the street, I really admire that they risk themselves and their comforts.

Thomas: (laughs) I know, I know that shit is loooong and I have to tell you that we redone this section in October because, before October it was just like there were no breaks in the paragraph, because the web designer cut and pasted the text right away, but now if you check it it’s posted as it was supposed to by with paragraphs and spaces so is readable, please people try again but at least 10 people I think read the whole thing.

Thomas: Is called IRON FRONT, I think this CD has a good crunch I heard this from friends of mine, We are not quite sure what exactly good crunch means but we like it, we like how it sounds, we have Mark Miller playing guitar with us, this is the first record he is being on, he replaced our former guitar player Matt, when Matt quit touring we found Mark, we are still on touch with Matt he is a good friend of the band still, but well I think the record has the fastest songs we´ve ever recorded or written and also the heaviest songs and at the same time maybe the poppiest songs, is more than everything is the way we recorded this CD, we write songs like in the sound check and when we are on tour and kind of keep all the ideas, I think that there´s (CD)more the poetry of state control,  about the environment of south Los Angeles in a couple of the songs, and there´s a lot more of the personal idea coming from the stories of crossing the border (Mex-US), we stayed with a family in the border with Ciudad Juarez (Mexico) and El Paso, Texas they are native Americans like Apache and Mexicans and they were telling us about the condition of life along the border and so the song the crossing, so we stayed with this family because we were on tour with THAT´S ME and it snowed in Texas so all of our shows in Texas were cancelled so we just stayed with them in El Paso, it was freezing cold and they cooked like all this Mexican traditional food and Native American food but in vegan versions of it and we had such a good time with this family in a poor area of El Paso, that’s why we are on tour because in a way you live other person´s life for a while and that’s why this is the way we see the world. But for example with change is a sound we didn’t toured so much maybe just 1 weekend in D.C. a couple of shows with SICK OF IT ALL in New York city in 2000, so all of our songs were about Richmond, Virginia and with DEAD FM we went to Australia, Japan and now with IRON FRONT is like Moscow, Brazil, Europe, Colombia, Taipei, New Zealand and we are going to more and more places and well in the U.S. too and across Canada in those tiny towns in the north, the punk scene there is like they are playing in a basement, in a platform of a ramp.

Thomas: We all have to work, when we are not on tour, in our case we are gone for 1 month then we have to come back and look for a new job and for people is really hard to have a job leave and then get it back, and you will never be able like to make money that sustain your life. So you live with no health care and sometimes not even having a place to live when you come back from tour so it´s really difficult, like we don’t make so much money like official, but that’s the way we operate too and the choices we made, because we believe in independent punk and is not just what we believe is more like a mission is something like irrational and to be honest we don’t know how long we can keep it like this, because we are getting older and we need to figure out what to do with ourselves . Like last year in our tour in the U.S. Mark had neumonia he doesn’t have any insurance so we took him to a doctor that I knew and he gave him medicine under the table in the States you know and he was really fucking sick, but we didn’t cancel any show and this happens a lot like so we are getting older and the chances to survive this kind of life is like to think about it, but to be in places like this (Arena) is awesome like people cooking for you, having a place to sleep and this in the US doesn’t happen not even in the UK or Ireland, where is just like load in, play the show, fight the bouncers and leave, is shitty and that’s the way it is in most of the places in the US and is a struggle and we love it because we believe in punk of course so it´s difficult for us and even now people downloading music so we don’t get any money for CD sales and we understand is not easy to afford everything you like, so that’s why we are here on tour most of the time because the day that STRIKE ANYWHERE quit touring is going to be like where are they? So then maybe some of us would go back to school, be teachers, or social workers, motorcycle mechanics or open a restaurant like Warren from AGAINST ME he opened a Mexican restaurants in Florida and he is no longer the drummer of AGAINST ME, Is good food I heard! (laughs) and even AGAINST ME that have more fans than us and they are bigger than us and they couldn’t afford a future, you know there is not a global punk union of musicians where you could put money on this bag and then they give you a pension and health care, that’s the way that we all would keep doing and have more bands, we are lucky enough that we already survived 10 years.

Thomas: Ooooh god!! I obviously don’t like it, we have some good friends who play this music, some of them are very kind of course generous people. The idea of preaching a way of life to be scared about the afterlife and not just doing good, because when we die we will be just dust, carbon, folded back in to the planet, with no consciousness, no personality, that’s it!!, in a way is an attachment to our species which is unhealthy is like a god who looks like you and me, come on! there´s like a million kinds of life in this planet, how would the supreme being that made the universe look like a primate?  

That’s the main reason like Christianity, all the Abrahamic religions are dangerous. But also modern Christianity most than the Islam, lot of Judaism is free from lot of real spiritual senses which I think is kind of good suphie islam has it, cavalistic Judaism has it and some kind of new age Christianity have a touch of that too, this groups are politically progressive involved and they have more than this eastern influence, no way that they are, also I think there is something beautiful to a specific kind of Catholicism for example Mexican Catholicism, Irish Catholicism there is a piece of what was pagan still inside and the worship of virgin Marie and having all this visions, so I think that’s really interesting. But I think all these religions are helping to destroy each other, to destroy this planet and the part of punk and hardcore well it´s not only necessary metalcore, I don’t know to much about they can do whatever they want, before the metalcore were singing about demons so why not to do it about god is the same fantasy. I think is really important to challenge the dominant culture like Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and that kind of views is kind of Capitalism destroy people in this planet and it has been encouraged by Christianity, so I think it would be the other way around because early Christians were Communists they were giving all their money to the community even Jesus himself was against the money changes in the church and now church is just a business, they oppress women and we stand against all that shit till the day we die.