Hearingthevoice.com

By: Miguel Guinness.

Chicken: For me is not who for me is a what! You know is about all those self destructive behaviours that I had before I started the band you know all those feelings which are already dead to me, so that´s what it means.

Nathan: For me is just what we live, things that happen day by day for example when we created African elephants we weren’t touring, we were just going to work and it was miserable going to work and thinking about nothing else, I don´t say that our lyrics are miserable but we were just thinking about stuff the whole time, we are from San Francisco and you know there are so many things which are inspiring like different people, the way the streets are, the smell, the Mexican food haha.

Chicken: As Nathan said our music comes from different things and it´s punk rock and what we think punk rock is cool, is because always changes you can go in different directions just look at some of our favourite bands FUGAZI, THE CLASH do you know what I mean? Like all these bands perform totally different things but for us is great to take some of this band some other things of that band and to write about our experiences and keeping it fresh for example I love our CD called CUBAN BALLERINA, I love LITTLE BROTHER but we already made those records and I wont like to do something like that again, that’s why we should look forward, we rather progress, because that’s what keeps me going, new experiences in life.

Chicken: I´m not sure Fat does have money to give to the bands anymore, I don’t think they are surviving pretty well which actually is pretty sad, there are just 2 or 3 people working there and the label is taking a different function as a company and I mean I don’t think that’s bad but as you mentioned the music industry crisis started before the global crisis like around 5 or 10 years it´s just going downhill and Fat didn’t anticipate that, I think they never thought that things could change that much, and now they don’t have so many resources as they had in the past and for example Side one dummy mmmh well labels work in a different way side one dummy they are more interested in the mtv world and the idea of the mainstream press they are pretty interested in that and they spend a lot of money on their bands so it´s interesting for us to be in a label, because you see and realize how much coverage a band gets, how many CDs they sell and you know the relation between how much money a band has depending with its exposure, is not always the best band getting on the press, are the bands who are in a label the ones which get more money.

Chicken: Honestly, we never thought about that we just do what we do and when people want to make questions about us we are always excited to talk about it, but we do it because is a part that it´s inside of us, is part of us, if I don’t play music I just feel crazy, empty, useless, I don’t like it. I think.

Nathan: Music is something that you love and you don’t do it if it was a job, if you don’t like it you just don’t do it, we make it because is part of us as I said it´s not a job, we are not relying on this to pay a rent or things like that, we feel very fortunate to be able to do this.

Chicken: I feel really lucky, I mean, I have the chance to travel to another continent, countries with my best friends and play our music that’s amazing, we never sat down in a basement thinking “How can we make that people notice us” we still believe that people will like our songs and somebody will hear it.

Nathan: Yeah somebody will hear us and we have fun on stage, what really will stay are the good songs, even my favourite bands they can change their style or whatever but the good songs they stay forever.

Chicken: Well besides the obvious which is the language, it is always interesting when a kid comes and talks about the band and sometimes you don’t understand case of the language barrier and makes it really hard sometimes.

Nathan: But I think kids here are more open minded with bands they never saw before.

Chicken: Now we had the chance to tour with STRIKE ANYWHERE you know is a really fast band and the people had been nice with us anyway, you know people know them already but example in the U.S. the shows are a bit different for example the hardcore kids go only to hardcore shows, the punk rock kids only to punk rock, NOFX kids go only to NOFX shows haha and so on.

Chicken: well that’s a hard one, but I think the insurgence in Mexico has to be respected and something that I noticed is that they are really equals I mean women and men, they have women in high ranks and not just men as usual and I liked Sub comandante Marcos philosophy and he said once “When I wear my mask people listen, if I wouldn’t have my mask people would just ignore me” He is a smart guy, is a really well spoken guy.

Chicken: Well we try to have our CDs made of 100% recycled material, we talk with the label about that, (Nathan: we ride bicycles haha) Yeah we ride bicycles because we are broke haha, so we ride bikes and take buses it´s pretty easy for us to do that.

Chicken: Because I have a huge ceramic elephants collection at home, some others made out of marble and well that’s the main reason but yeah I have a lot.