BOMB THE MUSIC INDUSTRY!
Interview with Jeff Rosenstock
By Xan Mandell
Jeff Rosenstock’s lyrics may not portray him as a hero, but if you take a deeper look at the manic rants he spews ever so gracefully, you may find a camouflaged genius violently scribbling new age proverbs for the ones looking for enlightenment. His albums come frequently, leaving his fans to get swallowed by the overtly dramatic lyrics time and time again. But I don’t think you’ll find anyone who will complain about that, due to the fact that BOMB THE MUSIC INDUSTRY! is cut from a different cloth than most punk bands. Rather than stemming from a message, or a stance, BOMB THE MUSIC INDUSTRY! was born out of boredom. BOMB is about having fun, doing what you think is awesome, and trying to make sure everyone around you is having just as awesome of a time. In that is where you find the genius. Whether having fun means writing upbeat songs about alcoholism, or Randy Newman- like songs about living in a shitty apartment, as long as things can have a humorous edge to them, they’ll be alright. Jeff was nice enough to open his apartment up for the interview; we talked in a room off his kitchen that served as his recording studio, Quote Unquote’s headquarters, and his newest full- length, Vacation, storage unit. Like always, Jeff spoke jovially and continually held a smile. It was obvious that the completion of his newest full length Vacation was working wonders on his serotonin receptors.
What inspired you to do iPod shows?
Well early on in BOMB THE MUSIC INDUSTRY, the evolution went that I was just recording shit in my room, recording these weird songs, and putting them on the internet. People starting listening to them, and me and my buddies were like “We don’t have anything to do” it was me and John [DeDomenici, guitars], Laura Stevenson, Mike [Costa, drums], and our buddy James who does a lot of tour managing for a lot of the Rhymesayer artists, MINUS THE BEAR and stuff. We were all just sitting around New York without anything to do, and I was like “Well we could play shows with this thing and see what happens…” So we did our first show, which we were never supposed to do. That went well and then we were friends with WE VS. THE SHARK from Athens, Georgia. They were just this really fucking awesome math rock band. We played a couple of shows with them up here and I was like, “We should do a tour together, I’ll cover one of your songs, you cover one of ours and we’ll put out a 7″ for the tour.” I did that: I covered their thing. They were like “Alright, we won’t do that, but we’ll play a tour with you.” So we planned this tour, but we didn’t really have a band, we just had a bunch of people who didn’t have anything to do, and were all kind of working. So it was me, I was playing an acoustic guitar through an electric guitar amplifier, John was playing fuzz bass through a guitar amplifier, and Laura was playing this enormous Yamaha motif keyboard, and Christine, who I don’t think was playing, maybe some bells at shows. We went on tour with a computer playing all the sequenced stuff because nobody else could do the tour, and we decided we were going to have a computer to play all the sequences. That covered most of the bass and drums anyway which is the stuff you would really miss. We had a computer playing that through a guitar amp as well. It was this big cabinet I had spray painted a robot on, which disappeared, and I don’t know how something that fucking big disappears. We did that, and we typed in stage banter into the computer, and we didn’t talk in between songs, we just had the computer talking between songs (laughs), then we’ll play three fast spazzy weird songs, then also some ska songs. All these hip math rock kids were like “I don’t fucking get this at all.” That was kinda how that started. After that the band kind of became more solidified and we did a tour which it went really well. Then I booked another tour, but some people were like “I can’t tour.” The whole point of this band is if you can’t tour, you don’t have to tour. So, I was like “Alright, fair enough, but now I don’t know what I’m going to do, because I was planning on doing this tour with Rick Johnson Rock and Roll Machine.” So I called Rick Johnson, and he was like “Just program that shit, I’ll play bass, it’ll be awesome.” I did, and that tour went so well it was ridiculous. That’s where we picked up Matt Kurz who does the MATT KURZ ONE, that’s where I got the idea to start Quote Unquote records with Matt. As time went on, I moved to Georgia to start a real band. Then all the New York dudes ending up coming down to Georgia a bunch to do tours. Eventually it kind of formed into an actual band, which is, I don’t know, I like everybody in the band, but I do miss the everybody coming-and-going aspect.
So now the band is concrete?
Pretty much, I don’t think we’re going to go on tour without all five of us, unless somebody quits the band. Before, people would quit BOMB THE MUSIC INDUSTRY, and I’d be like “You can’t fucking quit BOMB THE MUSIC INDUSTRY. I mean, ok, you’re not going to play shows with us anymore that’s fine. If you want to play shows with us again, that’s fine too, you can’t really quit.” Sure enough whenever two or three dudes would quit, someone old would show up and be like “Hey, can I play saxophone?” and I’d be like “Of course, you’re still in the band.” But, I feel like this five, I wouldn’t tour without them.
Is that revolving door policy still open?
Yeah, I mean, it’s tough because we just have so many songs that it’s hard. We have a handful of people like Laura Stevenson, Neil Callahan, Sean McCabe, Chris Candy, Rick Johnson and Matt Kurz who have done long tours with us, and knew a lot of songs, but none of them know anything off Vacation, or even Adults!!! (Smart!!! Shithammered!!! And Excited By Nothing!!!). Neil knows like one or two songs off of it. I think it would be tough because we’d really have to limit our set list. So, its still out there, I mean, we’re playing Michigan, I’m sure Rick Johnson will play bass on a bunch of songs. When we play shows with Laura she still sings on a bunch of stuff. It’s the kind of thing that is always out there, it’ll just probably just sound kind of not as good, because we won’t know it (laughs). No, thats not true, there are no hard feelings against anybody who isn’t in BOMB THE MUSIC INDUSTRY anymore.
Who wrote Vacation? Was it just you or did other people in the band contribute as well.
Vacation, all of them are pretty much just me. There was one on Vacation, “Savers,” that was supposed to be a KUDROW song, and it started out with Mike writing lyrics, sending it to me, and I had the song and I’d be like “OK, this works for this.” As KUDROW was kind of getting slow, the vibe seemed to meet what was going on with Vacation. I ended up changing 99% of the words and just making it a BOMB song. So the song “Savers” was written a little by Mike. With everything else I usually come in with such meticulous kind of “This is this, and this goes with this” just because there are like 30 things going on and that just makes sense. That’s not to say we didn’t come up with shit in the studio. John came up with a lot of his bass parts a bunch of his songs, and me and Matt would write stuff together that it all fit in well.
Was Vacation recorded here (we were conducting the interview in the room Jeff uses for recording, quote unquote headquarters, etc…), or in an actual studio?
Tom our guitar players recording space is a recording studio I guess? It isn’t a fancy recording studio, but he does have a control room, and he does have a room to put drums in, he has a lot of mics and stuff like that. We did all the bass and drums there, and ended up doing a lot of the guitars there, just because I was recording guitar here and conscious of neighbors and stuff like that. I was getting some weird feedback, and I liked recording with other people there just to have them be like “yeah that’s good, no that isn’t good.” Keyboard, all the vocals, all the horns, all the strings, all the bells and whistles were done here. When they were done here, you’re sitting on a couch right now, but that couch wasn’t here, this arcade machine wasn’t here, all these boxes weren’t here. In January, because I live in Brooklyn, I had bed bugs from somebody who was subletting this room and we had to throw out the couch, we had to throw out all this stuff, and I waited until the record was recorded because 1. I didn’t have money and 2. Because this room had a lot of natural reverb, which was really, really cool for recording vocals and gang vocals.
So did you record the vocals for Everybody That You Love here?
Yeah
It’s different than the demo you put out with Paper + Plastick right?
Yeah, it’s a completely different version. We were thinking of putting that version on there, but everything was recorded differently enough that it would’ve jumped out.
It definitely worked better
Thanks, yeah, the song didn’t really change all that much, but it still would’ve felt weird to not re-record it. We just took out the snare in the beginning and act like it’s a totally different song.
It’s a lot wetter, you know, reverb-y…
It’s weird because a lot of the mixing for this record I did with my buddy Joel down in Georgia, who mixed and recorded Get Warmer. we recorded that 7” (“Everybody That You Love” single) right before we left for tour and I gave it to Rick Johnson, and was like “Hey man I’ll give you…” actually, I don’t even think I gave him 100 bucks, I think I just gave him the band name Lenin/McCarthy in exchange for mixing that 7″. He sent it back and I said “Alright, make that snare a little less poppy” he sent then sent that back and was like “OK, that sounds great.” So I don’t know, I don’t know if he used that much reverb. In general Vacation has a lot more reverb on it than the last bunch, which I can’t really tell sometimes because the demos were insane reverb-wise. I kind of went a little bit overboard with the Phil Spector thing on the demos, I think it sounds better without that much fucking reverb, some of it was completely inaudible.
With “Savers,” it’s very Pinkerton-esque, I don’t know if you were trying to go for that, but Vacation is very straightforward in comparison to a lot of Bomb records, while also taking from a lot different of influences… I could hear some Beach Boys in there, some 50′s stuff, what made you go with that?
Well it’s weird because Pet Sounds has been my favorite record for 15 years, and I never really thought I could pull of anything like that really. The thing that I really took from it was that everything was ornately arraigned and really meticulously done as far as 80 parts on top of each other. I really like the melodies from it, and on this record I was like “Fuck it, let me try and do something else,” because I didn’t want to make another… There’s a point where if I read reviews that are like “Oh yeah, spazzy BOMB THE MUSIC INDUSTRY” or call it “Spazzcore,” I go “OK, I want to make a record that is not spazzy, I don’t want to be that band anymore.” There was a review I read of Adults, and the first line was “Alright, so I think Jeff Rosenstock is depressed.” and I thought “Alright, fair enough, I’m going to try and make a record that at least sounds a little bit out of my comfort zone.” I could do a song that was miserable at the drop of a hat. I wanted to do something a bit more challenging for me. I don’t know if its straightforward, but things where the songs stand enough on their own without having this weird crazy thing going on throughout all of it. The influences like the WEEZER thing, the BEACH BOYS thing, definitely THE RENTALS. Those are just albums I’ve loved for years. I think learning those WEEZER albums when I did those WEEZER shows back there, and realizing, or what I was told was they made this thick sound by only using the lower three strings of this guitar, and never going above the 5th fret. They’re just inverted chords to make this “Dush Duhhhsh” sound. When I was learning that record I was *-+like “Aw fuck man, why I don’t we always do this, this is fucking awesome.” So “Savers” specifically, was just one guitar with a bunch of fuzz pedals just slugging away and a moog turned down really low, and a fuzz bass, with simple root notes.
You were bringing up how Vacation is way happier than most other albums, but lyrically its still very classic BOMB. Can you just dig a little bit more into why?
Unfortunately I always kind of end up being a miserable prick half the time. It’s weird, I did this interview with Ghetto Blaster the other day, and they were like “Alright, this is a super positive record! What made you write songs about the beach?!?” and I was like “Ummm, I mean, I didn’t… Half of this record is about death…” and then it turned into this really weird conversation about people dying, so at the risk of this becoming this conversation, I didn’t just want to write songs about “Oh man, I can’t get a job, I can’t do this, I can’t do that.” I wanted to make a record that wasn’t all that all the time. So a lot of the stuff that just ended coming up were just weird situations I got myself into. Like the first day of spring, of not this year, this past year. It was the first nice day in New York, that one day you’re like “Fuck yeah!” So it was this awesome day out and I was like “Alright man, I just got back from a solo tour, I have all this money, I’m gonna go get my bike fixed, I’m gonna go for a bike ride,” but a truck ran a red light, and I had to dive off my bike and I was just covered in bloo. I came back home and was like (fake cries) “Christine, I don’t know what happened.” I had to put a bunch of rubbing alcohol on there, and it was super super painful, it was right before we played Harvest of Hope fest. Then there’s a song on there like me and my buddy drinking beer in Greenpoint on the docks, and us accidently witnessing a drug deal, and these dudes coming back and fucking with us. We thought these guys were just going to kill us. They were like “What’d you see huh? Why you guys pissin in the ocean? What the fuck you think this is?” I think the difference with this record is I tried to look at situations like that, and I’m trying to do this in my life too, and instead of being like “Oh man, that’d sucked and was terrible” just be like “man, that’s really funny and insane that that just happened and I didn’t die and got away with that.” I think that’s kind of the vibe of the record lyrically is like “Alright all this bad shit happens, but you know, I’m still here, and I’m super happy about everything good that’s happened.” I’ve been super lucky, and I don’t want to sit around and pretend like I haven’t, at least over the past 5-6 years, been super lucky with the way things have worked.
So most of your lyrics are actual things that have happened?
For the most part… I’m not terribly good at writing fiction. I can’t really write a WEAKERTHANS-y song. I feel weird doing it. (Jeff grabs a Vacation CD). I don’t think there’s one on here. I’m starting to try and do that.
(I notice there is a barcode on the CD case)
Are these going to be in stores?
What these…
These records…
I don’t know, I hope so. We’re trying to get them in stores. We have a distributor. It’s a matter of what they can do. We worked with a distributor with Get Warmer, but they shut down right before Scrambles came out. So we didn’t have one for Scrambles. We’re trying to get them in stores
Aren’t you with Asian Man for that?
For Scrambles yeah, this is our own thing. This is on Really Records, our own label. Ernest Jenning Recording Company is my buddy Pete whose day job is doing licensing for bands and that shit. He’s put out a bunch of records, and recently he put out a RENTALS EP, all this cool stuff, he’s just a really good friend, he lives in Brooklyn, he knows a lot. We’re split releasing this and basically he’s holding my hand being like “Alright, this is how you do a mailing, this is how you do this.” So I know what I’m doing.
What is the difference between Really Records and Quote Unquote?
Really Records is actually pressing, Quote Unquote is just and online thing forever. It’s never going to have records out
What does it mean for a band to be on Quote Unquote?
What do you mean exactly?
Do they get signed?
Every band on Quote Unquote, we’re all friends with each other, it’s just a matter of them being like “Hey you should put this out” or I’ll be like “Why don’t I do your thing on Quote Unquote.” They can put out records with whoever they want, as long as they’re ok with it being free. That’s just kind of how it works.
So it’s not just, and I’m not trying to put it down, but it’s not a record label.
Well I guess it’s not a record label where we press records, but I think it’s a record label because it has the good things about a record label, which is that we have a community with us. Everybody gets paid, gets statements, and knows how much they’ve made, which is a good thing. There are bands on my label that have been on other, bigger labels, and they’re like “Jeff you’re the only one who’s ever paid us.” Which is funny because everything is free. I guess it doesn’t seem as much like a record label anymore that Bandcamp has made it a really accessible for everybody. So, I donno, it just kind of is what it is.
Yeah, it’s just like a fun project.
Yeah, I’ll always consider it a record label. It certainly become a lot easier for bands to do something like that. I think what makes Quote Unquote special is, hopefully, the same way I used to look up what was coming out on Discord, or Asian Man or Epitaph when I was a kid, people are hopefully checking out what’s coming out on Quote Unquote and being like “Alright, I don’t even have to pay for this, I’ll check this out.”
So you have, or did have a strict no merch policy, what happened to that?
Well, the strict no merch policy ended when somebody said “Hey, I’ll put out a record of yours,” and we were like “Whattt vinyl really?” and I was like “OK we’ll have records” and then I talked to Mike Park about putting something out on Asian Man, and he wanted to do CD’s too. So I’m like “Alright, I’m not going to not put something out on my favorite record label because I have a grudge against CD’s.” So we did that, and then enough people were bothering us on tour about not having shirts that we realized we should probably just have shirts, because we seemed to be pissing off more people by not having them, than we are making excited that we don’t have them. We still spray paint shirts, we still have everything for free. I didn’t expect it to get to the point we have to press shirts or make records or press CD’s. So I’m always going to be a little bummed out in the back in mind, because I started this as “Wouldn’t it be cool if a band existed for this amount of time, and never had any piece of merchandise and all you knew about them was just they were this thing that happened.” But we were really lucky that people actually wanted to support our band. So we started doing all that stuff and I think we have a good middle ground in that if you want a shirt or you want the record, you don’t have to pay for it. You can bring a blank shirt and it can get spray painted, and you can just get the record online. Another weird thing about the shirts, the thing that really made us start doing it was people were selling BOMB THE MUSIC INDUSTRY! shirts online that they had made at home, and that just kind of seemed like if somebody’s going to be selling them, we should be selling them.
Have you seen the merch take off?
Yeah, I mean, the best part about the merch is people are like “Oh cool you have shirts” and it was fine because we came home with rent money last tour. Having merch really makes a lot of sense for us now. Two years ago, not so sure, we’ve been lucky enough to have gotten more popular where we have a 100, 200, 300 people at our shows, which allows us to have merch and make money off of it. If you are where we were a little while ago, I don’t think you’re going to make money off of shirts, you’re always just stuck in the amount of money you make off this batch of shirts goes mainly towards the next batch of shirts. We have really good buddies at Night Owls Printing who gave us a really fucking good deal and make it so we can actually pay our rent two times a year.
How did you get in touch with Asian Man to put out CD’s?
My friend Chris who plays in a band CHOTTO GHETTO, is friends with Mike Park, and they’ve been friends for a while. I met Mike Park once or twice, my old band went to the Asian Man records BBQ and was trying to play, and I went and met Mike and he was like “You guys can’t play, but come down have some free food, it’d be nice to meet you.” A year later, he did a solo tour that my friend Chris was on, and I met him then and we hung out a little bit. We didn’t really know each other. When we were doing Get Warmer, I knew we were going to spend money on the record, which was only $300, but still a big deal for us. And I thought if we were going to spend money on a record, maybe we should press records and try to make the money back from spending that big $300 recording the record. I put together my list of dream labels which were No Idea, who I don’t think like our music, Discord records that doesn’t put anything out that isn’t from DC, and Asian Man. So I spoke to Chris and was like “Hey, do you think Mike would be interested in putting out a record?” He said he didn’t know, but would ask him. A couple of days later I got a phone call from Mike, and that was that. It was a super exciting experience. Things were crazy at the time. I was in Georgia and my parents had flown down, I hadn’t seen them in a while, so I was like “Oh cool, I get to see my parents, and I’m getting signed to Asian Man, and my brother just had a kid. All that happened in the same day. My parents came down, my brother had a kid, and Mike said he wanted to put out the record. It was the best day ever.
I’m surprised there’s not a bomb song about it.
I guess it’s just too uplifting (laughs).
So what is your musical background? Before ARROGANT SONS OF BITCHES, before BOMB. Did you go to music school, or is this all natural talent?
Thanks for calling it talent. When I was a little kid, there was either a guitar at my house or my parents bought me a small guitar I’m not sure. I’m talking like four or five years old, and I saw La Bamba, not the movie, the LOS LOBOS version of La Bamba, so I picked up the guitar and was like “Hey, it goes like this.” I didn’t play the chords, but I was playing the notes for it and my parents were like “oh this kid knows how to play music. We should make his childhood crazy by sending him to all these piano lessons and stuff.” So I took piano lessons for a really long time, but I hated it. Then I bought a RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS bass guitar and drum book. My brother was really good at guitar, so I realized I had to learn how to play bass. So I learned all these sweet RED HOT CHILI PEPPER songs, then I took bass lessons, then moved over to guitar lessons. We’re talking age 6-14 years. I was just a total fucking brat about it, and was just like “I don’t wanna do this. I wanna go play with my friends” just like any kid is with a musical instrument. The whole time I used to write songs as a kid. I had this really really awesome tape recorder where it was super loud. and I guess it wasn’t a good tape recorder, because like I said, it recorded everything super loud, which is probably bad. I would play guitar and then record vocals on top of these songs. There are probably dozens of tapes in my parents house of when I was 12 years old writing these “fuck you” songs. I guess that’s how I got into song writing. Then I tried to start a hardcore band, and that didn’t work out, then I tried to start a metal band and that didn’t work out. So I kind of ended up starting a ska punk band, and that kind of worked.
What was your pull to metal?
Uh, I don’t know, I was kind of a wimpy kid, but I just really liked metal. I bet it’s because this kid, Issac Burker, who used to play guitar with me and my brother. He was really really into metal, and I was trying to impress him. I also had a babysitter who used to bring tapes of SLAUGHTER and WHITE LION. I think VIXEN was one of those too. I listened to these tapes and I watched Headbangers Ball, and Riki Rachtman would be like “These guys aren’t metal, these guys are metal,” then he put on PANTERA. So I thought “Alright, this is metal!” and I’d bring it to Issac and he’d be like “That’s not metal, this is metal” and would give me like a DEICIDE or a DEATH CD. So I thought “alright, this is metal, awesome!” so I was this fifth-sixth grade kid who listened BIOHAZARD, DEICIDE, DEATH, and CANNIBAL CORPSE. Then I heard at the same time, the kid who lived around the block from me, we were really good friends, but he was way cooler than me. In all these situations I was the uncool kid (laughs). This kid’s brother was in college and he had all these cool records like FISHBONE and VIOLENT FEMMES, a MR. BUNGLE record. I remember thinking as a kid that the FISHBONE record was awful, which is funny because now it’s one of my favorite records. I heard the VIOLENT FEMMES record and thought “This is funny,” then heard that MR. BUNGLE record and thought “This is like metal, but it’s with a saxophone which is what I play in school, and they’re cursing a lot, and the guy from FAITH NO MORE is in it. This is awesome!” That’s kinda how I got into ska punk, I heard that MR. BUNGLE record, and I’d never heard anything like it, and I didn’t hear anything like it for years, and then somebody played me MIGHTY MIGHTY BOSSTONE’S Question The Answers and it was just a lot of hardcore screaming which I was still super into, and horns on top of it, and then every now and then it’d break into those ska parts where I went “I don’t know what the fuck this is, but I like the rest of the record.” Then slowly but surely I liked the whole record, and then I started getting into stuff like that. All the while I’d been listening to THE OFFSPRING, GREEN DAY, NOFX and bands like that. So when I branched off from that I found bands like MILLENCOLIN doing ska punk things, and bands like MIGHTY MIGHTY BOSSTONES who I thought were these metal bands doing these ska things I thought “Oh, I should follow that.”
When did you think you were really into ska?
I think all through high school, and that’s just because the Long Island ska scene was so fucking fantastic to grow up in. There was a show everyday of the weekend. Friday, Saturday, Sunday there was a show. All your friends would be at the show, and then some weird kids, some cool kids, it was just everybody who liked music went to these shows, because all of their friends from high school were playing these shows. This was around the time when LESS THAN JAKE released Losing Streak and Hello Rockview, and MM 330 were putting out a bunch of great records, also SKANKING PICKLES and SNUFF were doing things. I think around then is when I was really head first into it, and to be honest I still really like it, I just don’t think there’s too much about new ska punk bands that have been appealing to me. I think it’s just that there just aren’t really many new ska punk bands. There’s CHEWING ON TINFOIL, from Ireland, whose record I put out. I don’t know any other band that’s doing that Pop Punk/Ska Asian Man Records kind of thing, or at least doing it well.
What about WE ARE THE UNION?
Well WE ARE THE UNION just sound like LIFETIME with horns, which is fine, but they’re not a ska band at all. I mean to me Ska is that upbeat rhythm on the guitar. I don’t think there is anything in common with THE CHINKEES and WE ARE THE UNION. Not to discount WE ARE THE UNION, I just don’t think they’re a ska band, and if you asked them, I don’t think they’d consider themselves a ska band either.
Keeping on the ska topic, Adults was very ska oriented, but Vacation doesn’t have much (if any) at all. What happened there?
There are two things, and this is going to sound so fucking pretentious to say, but a lot of the ska on Adults was because that record was a lot about childhood in a way, the examples you see as a kid, and being an adult looking back on those examples, seeing how fucked up they were, and being like “Well fuck man, I’m totally fucked, because my life is based in all these fucked up relationships that I’ve seen, and all these bad things I’ve been privy to.” I thought it would make sense to have a record that was about that, also have the kind of music that was around, shaping my life when those things were things I was seeing. It’s weird to have perspective on shit like that, and as much of a bummer record Adults is because of that, having made that record made me be like “ok, so that’s that, maybe I wont become that, and that’s fine.” So that was where the songwriting started with that. It was basically, usually where I would want to have a ska part on other records, I’d think “Ehhh maybe that shouldn’t be there,” but with Adults it was just like, “Alright lets fucking do this, let’s have a ska part there.” Then me and Matt Keegan, our trombone player, were listening to a lot of SLOGERKIN, the record Shed Some Skin specifically. We were just drinking beers, listening to Shed Some Skin over and over again before recording horn parts, and all the basic rhythm tracks for that record. That record, was straight up, well we played a show on January 20th, and I said “Hey guys, I have this record, I want to do something with it. Am I just going to record this by myself? Or do you guys all want in?” They all wanted in, so I said “Alright, I want it out by, like, February 8th.” They were all into it. So around that time me and Matt were listening to a lot of Shed Some Skin, and we were just like “We should go balls out on this, and just really try and capture 1998 for us on this record.” So that’s why that was there. I guess with Vacation, I just haven’t been writing ska songs, and rather than just waiting for that to come along, I felt like this was a good point to just be like “Ok, there are some people who don’t like us because we have ska songs, and there are some people who do like us because we have ska songs, and that’s fucking stupid, people should like us because they like our band, not because every five minutes we play upstrokes. So let’s just get that out of the way, and see what the reaction is.” I didn’t want to just put ska stuff on there because we’re thought of as a ska punk band. I just want to be the band that we are. So I guess that was that, we were like just “Ok, lets just fucking do it and see what happens. Hopefully people will still like us.” If people start liking us because we don’t have ska on our record, that’s fucking stupid, because it still baffles me, with every other genre, if you have 30 seconds of an indie rock part on a record, no one’s going to be like “fuck that indie rock band.” I just honestly wasn’t writing ska songs, and I didn’t want to force it.
What do you think Vacation is going to mean for BOMB?
I don’t know; I have no idea what it is going to mean for BOMB. We would like to have more people hear our records. I think that’s just it. I feel like Adults, Adults especially, but even with Scrambles, we just had to put it out to the kids who knew who we were. We’re hoping to get this (Vacation) out to people who don’t know who we are. I think it’s a good record, but then again, I think all our records are good records for the first three months, then I think they’re terrible records.
Now that there are going to be vinyl, merch, a solid line up, does this feel like the next step for BOMB?
I think so, but I don’t think its because we have all this stuff, because we did have all this stuff before, it was just at Mike Parks house. I think this is hopefully a step for not only doing it ourselves, and figuring it out to do it ourselves, and figure out how to get more people to hear us on our own without having to sign to a label that we don’t necessarily want to be on just because they have better outlets for things like that. Hopefully we’re going to be able to get in touch with those outlets ourselves, and hopefully we’re going to be able to use that to put out our friends records, and put out other records that we think are really good, and put out our friends bands that we think are awesome that deserve better than just being on a punk label. A lot of these punk labels are awesome, but their audience, I don’t mean to talk shit, but a lot of the times people who buy something on a pop punk record label wants something that is pop punk, they’re not going to want the BOMB THE MUSIC INDUSTRY with two choral interludes and a six minute acoustic weird song, they want their pop punk records, and that is totally fine, but I feel like there are a bunch of our friends that have been putting out records that aren’t really indie rock records and they aren’t really pop punk records or ska records, they’re just good records. I want to try and put out those records, and hopefully we’re going to figure out the means to make people aware of them.
So you don’t think BOMB will ever be on a real record label…
As of now, no. If this doesn’t completely crumble and fuck up, than I would like this to be what I do. I’d like this to be a Merge Records, or Asian Man or something like that. It seems like it would be a pretty good set up if what I did for my living was helping people hear good music. That’d be awesome.
What would make Bomb go to a record label?
Lots and lots and lots of money. If somebody said “Hey, we’ll give you $100,000 to put out a record with us,” it’d be hard to say no to that. We need money. Getting $100,000 would be really nice. I don’t actually know what it would take to get us to go to a major label. We would have to set something up where they aren’t suing people for downloading our records, we aren’t part of the RIAA, who I fucking hate, and they’d have to give us a shit ton of money. We aren’t doing this for money, but it would be really naive to say if somebody offered us a million dollars… I mean what would you do if someone offered you a million dollars?
I mean, of course…
I don’t know, I don’t know, I’ve never been in that kind of situation, it would be a lie if I said I’d be like “nah man, fuck all that shit.” Thankfully, the way we run our band, it doesn’t seem that we ever will be there. It seems like people are scared off enough by us that those offers don’t come up, which gives us the really cool opportunity to be like “Alright, fuck it, we’ll do it ourselves.”
What do you see yourself and BOMB doing in 10 years?
I don’t know. I see myself still making music, only because there have been so many times with BOMB that I’ve been like “I can’t do this anymore, I need to find a job, I’m having a really hard time making ends meet.” It’s not fun to be in a band if being in a band means that I can’t pay my rent, I can’t do that. I’ve tried it, I’ve been like “Alright, I’m going to try and find a job.” And every time I’ve done that, I’ve been like “Ok, I’m still writing these songs and I’m still putting them out. I guess uh, alright, I guess BOMB THE MUSIC INDUSTRY is still a thing.” So I don’t know if it’ll be BOMB THE MUSIC INDUSTRY per say, but I’m always going to be writing songs, and I like sharing them with people. So I think I’ll always be writing music.
Do you think you’ll still be writing punk music?
I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t think in 10 years I’ll still be making punk music, although I don’t know, I mean I think it’ll still be punk music. But I thought that BREEDERS record Title TK was a super punk record, but it was really really quiet. I think that I’ll think its punk music, and I think the things that I’ve learned by being part of punk rock, for being part of this world, that’ll affect my life forever, and that will affect it outside of music forever. Even when I have jobs, I try to bring a lot of energy in that job, whether it’s being in the office, and being a person in the office who is an OK person to be around. When I was washing dishes in Georgia, when the cooks would come around I’d be like “What’s up mother fucker! Lets do this!” I think I got that from seeing punk bands, and having that kind of stuff bring me out of dark times. I think that spirit will always make the kind of person who is always trying to bring other people out of dark times. So I don’t know, I don’t think it’ll be three chord punk rock, but I think every single thing that I do for the rest of my life is going to be shaped by the affect that punk rock has had on me.
So you think it’s more a mentality then?
Yes, absolutely, I think punk rock is more of a mentality than playing three chord. Just go through THE CLASHES catalogue. They played every kind of music over the span of 5 records. Nobody’s going to come and tell you the clash isn’t a punk band.
You once said you try not to make bomb a politically preachy band, but how can you not do that with all the bullshit going on?
I don’t like politically preachy bands, and I’m not particularly good at making concise thoughts in those terms. I have friends, my buddy David from THE MAX LEVINE ENSAMBLE, he’s fucking awesome at that. Mm, me, not really so much. I honestly think that trying to be a decent person, and be a nice person, while the entire world is trying to turn you into a shitty person, or at least our entire country being like “Fuck homosexuals, fuck rape victims who want to get abortions, fuck everybody, go shopping on the internet, get your fucking money, get the fuck out…” I think treating people well, being generous, just being a nice person, and trying to share that with the world, I think that is a political statement. I think that not letting all the bullshit turn you into a cynical asshole is a political statement. I think that’s how we try and approach it. We’re never going to tell somebody that they are wrong for feeling a certain way. Especially with BOMB THE MUSIC INDUSTRY, if you count all the people, besides the core five band members, who are in Bomb who come and go, all those 12-14 people have really r different viewpoints on everything… Well not totally different viewpoints, but we look at things differently, and it would be really shitty of me to go out there and say “Don’t eat meat asshole, you’re an asshole for eating meat” because I’ve been a vegetarian for 13 years, because Tom doesn’t eat meat, and Tom plays guitar in my band. How would he feel about that shit? That doesn’t represent him. How would anybody who goes to our shows who get bombarded with bullshit trying to tell them how to think, how would they feel if they were like “Oh great, another person is telling me that Republicans are bad. I don’t care, democrats are bad people too, everybody’s pretty much bad, I don’t want to hear this shit anymore, I just want to be able to enjoy life.” I think that the main thing that’s being thrown down politically is that all this shit is just being put in our way to stop us from enjoying life, to stop gay people from enjoying life, and to stop women from enjoying life, all this sexist, homophobic, racist bullshit is just there to get us to be miserable, and I think by trying to be positive, and trying to listen to what everybody else says, and have healthy discussions when it is appropriate to have them, and just throw down and have a couple of beers when it’s appropriate to do that, I think that’s a political statement. To just not let that shit get you down, and to share your opinion in an open way, where it’s an open discussion, where it’s not you’re telling someone what to think. There are songs on this record that I do feel are political, but I don’t think, or I don’t know if anyone would interpret them as that, and I don’t think anyone should interpret it as that if they don’t want to.
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