Canadian band Bishops Green recently released their new EP ‘Black Skies’ and toured Europe, with dates in Italy as well. Impressed by their live show in Bologna with Plizzken and Zeman, we decided to interview the Canadian street punk band. Their unmistakable style and energy have been delighting the ears of skins and punks since 2011, and to say they are devastating is an understatement. Let’s start the interview, we are full of curiosity!

Radio Punk: Hi guys and welcome to our webzine. For those who don’t know you, tell us a bit about yourselves. When did you form and in what historical context and how did you meet each other? What other bands or projects did you play in before Bishops Green?

Bishops Green – Greg: Since Evan and I had played together previously in The Lancasters I decided in 2011 to ask him if he wanted to start something up and Bishops Green began. Bands I have been involved with over the years were The Glorystompers, The Subway Thugs, The Lancasters, and Alternate Action. Evan was also in The Authorities. 

Radio Punk: What is the skinhead and punk scene like in Vancouver? And how is it in the rest of Canada? What is it like to be a skinhead and punk in your neck of the woods? Are there gathering places, places where you have gigs, do you hang out somewhere in the city or are you a bit isolated?

Bishops Green: The scene is small but very tight and everyone knows each other. Canada is very spread out as it’s a big place, it takes 4 – 5 days to drive across. That being said, touring across Canada is not for the faint of heart, lol. When there is a show, everyone comes out and it’s a good time. 

Radio Punk: Sticking with the city scene, how is the interaction between different subcultures? Are you united among punks, skinheads, hardcore kids, and metalheads or does everyone mind their own business and organize concerts divided by different sub-genres?

Bishops Green: Because of the smaller scene here, everyone gets along and for the most part are friends. It’s a pretty united scene and the subcultures get along. 

Radio Punk: You recently released ‘Black Skies’, a 7-track work released on vinyl by Pirates Press. Your style is unique and highly original, you can be recognized from the first note. What do you think this new work has added to your discography? Do you feel you have expressed something that you didn’t say in your previous works?

Bishops Green – Greg: when COVID hit, it set a certain mood for writing songs. I found myself going into the rehearsal space and spending hours at a time writing songs. The mood was dark and that set the tone both musically and lyrically. I felt the music captured the sign of the times. 

Radio Punk: Your themes often deal with social issues and criticism of the system. What struggles and topics do you particularly care about? 

Bishops Green: For instance one line in the song “Last Minute Warning” is ‘take a look at your system, tell me what you see’ The system is full of holes and uncertainty which makes one on edge and uncomfortable. ‘Too many faces, what about them now’: it’s like we’re just a number and at the drop of a hat you’re replaced. 

Radio Punk: Remaining on the social and political theme, in Italy skins and punks tend to have an anti-fascist, anti-racist and anti-capitalist connotation and care a lot about the DIY aspect. How important are these aspects to you? In Vancouver and Canada in general, how do you experience the ‘street’? Are there problems with Nazis or the police for example?

Bishops Green: DIY is very important in our subculture, it unites and keeps the scene going through connections and labels etc. Having an anti-racist, anti-fascist stance not only in our subculture, but in daily life. There is no room/tolerance in the scene for it. Years ago we used to have problems, but rarely do we have to deal with this issue. The police here for the most part leave us alone besides the odd shutting down of DIY venues. They do make me nervous though. It was very different growing up in Edmonton, Alberta–totally different experience with the police, VERY difficult. 

Radio Punk: To create such a unique sound I imagine you listen to a lot of different music. What are your favorite bands/artists and what do you generally listen to at home, in the car, or on your headphones?

Bishops Green – Greg: I listen to a lot of different genres from UK82, 77 style, early 80’s New Wave, Hardcore, it’s very hard to pinpoint specific bands/artists. But for the most part I get a lot of influence from early 80’s streetpunk/Oi! UK82 and add a bit of my own taste with some melody. 

Radio Punk: Tell us a bit about yourselves, do you have any other bands or projects at the moment? Would you like to form more? Do you work other jobs or make a living from music? What hobbies and passions do you have besides punk?

Bishops Green – Greg: Speaking for myself, I also play in Alternate Action – we were in Europe in 2019. I enjoy writing songs and coming up with melodies that have that ‘feel’.  Yes, we all work – but have flexibility with our jobs. We have to work, but hopefully will be touring more and more in the future! Life is short. I’m also into Vespa and Lambretta scooters, I also fix up motorcycles for a hobby. Keeps me out of trouble! lol 

Radio Punk: Having played in so many different places and countries, which are your favorites? What differences have you noticed between the Canadian scene and those in other countries?  

Bishops Green – Greg:  It’s really hard to pinpoint one specific place as there are good scenes and great people all over. I enjoy meeting everyone and making new friends. I find that the scenes in different countries share similar ideals and beliefs despite the difference in languages and life experiences. Meeting people who share your subculture and are passionate about the same music/bands scales the language barrier! 

Radio Punk: What do you think about streaming platforms like Spotify? Do you think they can be useful in bringing new generations closer to our subculture?

Bishops Green – Greg: Spotify is good and bad. For instance, we would have never reached the audiences we have without it, in so many countries around the globe – its amazing the reach it’s given bands. Obviously it would be nice to get a kick back for our music. 

Radio Punk: We thank you very much, we would like to continue to fill you with questions, but maybe next time you come back to Italy we will do it over several beers! We close with a classic question for Punk Radio readers. Tell us about the best and most grotesque moments you experienced on tour!

Bishops Green: Hahahaha, I could write a novel… lol. We took our friend Igor on our first tour over to Europe in 2014 and we were playing ‘Oi! This is Tegelen’. We’re walking up the stairs and he was ahead of me and released the big bean bags that hang on curtains attached to a rope overhead and let it swing directly into my crotch! I flew up in the air (super heavy, like a wrecking ball) and landed on my wrists! Luckily nothing broke but my pride, hahahaha!

Credit photo: Kuckuck Artworks

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L'articolo Interview with Bishops Green proviene da Radio Punk.

Chain Cult come from Greece, precisely Athens, they make devastating post-punk and have 4 works under their belt, all released via La Vida Es Un Mus, except for the 2018 demo tape which was self-produced. Recently they also came to Italy and coming back to me for a self-presentation on Up Zine, I listened again to their discography on loop and decided to contact them to ask them some questions. Let’s see what Chain Cult have to say in this interview!

Radio Punk: Hi guys and welcome to our ‘zine! Tell us a bit about yourselves. How and in what context did you form? What other bands did you play with in the past and if so what kind of music did you play?

Chain Cult: Thanks a lot for hosting us! Well, we’re three punks from Athens, Greece. We have been involved in the local DIY scene for many years, and it is where we actually met each other and became good friends. We were always into post-punk and new-wave and at some point we just wanted to do something different and make our own band playing this style. We have played in many bands –and still play in some acts- from hardcore punk to crust, rock ‘n’ roll, post-punk, punk rock etc. Lifewreck, Dirty Wombs, Feral Kids, Rampage!, Conspiracy Of Denial, Αρχή Του Τέλους are just a couple of these bands.

Radio Punk: Besides playing music, what projects or collectives are you or have you been involved in the past?

Chain Cult: We had been part of several DIY music collectives and squats in the years like Villa Amalias’ concerts collective back in the days, Prokat35 squat in Patras city, several self-organized practice rooms and studios in our city, and of course a couple of political collectives and endeavors in the past. Dino also had a fanzine. Some of us still help with concerts in our town and are part of Distort Reality collective which organizes a couple of big DIY shows in Athens, one to two times per year.

Radio Punk: From your lyrics and from some of the articles I have read about you guys (like in DIY Up magazine), your social and political stance is evident. How much does the political aspect and Do It Yourself matter to you both as individuals and as a band?

Chain Cult: As individuals, it is obvious that you must be a political being, right? Otherwise, you are a passenger in life. As a band, we’re not a political collective let’s clarify this, but we think that political stance and music kind of make a whole. I mean you get to speak to so many people through your music. You cannot separate some of your thoughts about what’s happening in your surroinding from the music, or hide them from it. DIY is a culture that shaped us as personalities, it is the most sincere and humane form of expressing yourself through art, organizing your life in our society and interacting with other people around you.

Radio Punk: Your sound is dark, very dark and post-punk but at the same time your sound can appeal to just about anyone who listens to punk. How would you describe your sound to someone who has never listened to you? What should we expect in the next record, will you always stay close to the mood of the first releases?

Chain Cult: To someone who has never listened to punk we’d say something like The Cure or Joy Division (laughs). To others, we’d just say post-punk! We have many ideas about our next releases, some new elements or maybe a new approach both songwriting-wise and production-wise, but we’ll see! Of course we want our sound to evolve and be fresh always!

Radio Punk: You come from Greece, a land where bands we love were formed! I don’t think we’ve ever interviewed any Greek bands, which is a shame because there are so many interesting bands. Would you like to tell us a little bit about the scene in your area? Both the city you live in and in general if there are any scenes in other cities in Greece.

Chain Cult: Proportionally to its size, Greece has had an insane amount of underground bands through the years, and unfortunately, only a few of them got to be known abroad. You can find tons of hidden gems from extremely obscure bands if you dig deep. The love for metal and extreme music by the Greeks is evident and we always had plenty of black metal, thrash, hardcore, crust bands playing around. Greece also has a long history in the dark-wave / post-punk / new-wave scene, starting from the ‘80s and still keeping going in our days. There are a lot of post-punk bands nowadays, and you can listen to that kind of music everyday in the bars and the parties of Athens. The punk scene has always been political here and deeply connected with the local anarchist and radical left movement, it used to be spread all over the country but unfortunately it’s been concentrated in the capital lately.

Radio Punk: Was there a golden age of punk in Greece? How do you see the current situation, both punk and political (in the sense of squats/anti-capitalist galaxy) in your part of the world? Is there a scene in the world that you particularly admire?

Chain Cult: There were amazing bands and records in the ‘80s and the early ‘90s, and we used to think of those periods as golden ages, but to be honest it was probably tough to be a punk in Greece back in those days. The scene was very small, Greek society was so conservative after the dictatorship years and these people were indeed outcasts in their cities. There were not the means to practice with your band or record your music easily, neither many places to perform live. Geographically, the country was –and still is- a remote place for the rest of north and central Europe and it was almost impossible to make your music “travel” abroad. It was kind of “heroic” to run a band in the way we know it today, you know do lives, release records, tour etc. That is why those bands are still appreciated by everyone. An excellent era, that we were lucky enough to live and actually be a part of it was the early ‘10s, the years between 2010 and 2015. Many amazing bands popped up, with great records, well produced and well performed live. There was an amazing network of groups, collectives and squats that had been very active shaping an amazing community all over the country with strong friendships included. Under these circumstances we met too. Nowadays, the situation is not so good. The same people are still active in the scene but they are very tired because they’re old with many other obligations in parallel. There is lack of new blood, active with initiatives, that could take risks and do something great and radical, and the general repression of the last years made us lost many squats and places where we could host our events. Generally, the local anarchist movement is not in the best shape and this affects the local punk scene as well. Meanwhile, hip hop reigns among the youth and it seems that it has a stronger and more relevant message for the younger people than punk rock. Very briefly in a political perspective, there is a lot of poverty, extremely low salaries and very high rents, one of the most corrupted, neoliberal and uneducated governments in power, even more corrupted media supporting this government, everything is getting sold to foreign capital, and half of the population still lives under fear, neediness and ignorance leading to xenophobic, sexist, and generally conservative views.

Radio Punk: Would you like to make a living as punk rockers? What do you think of those who choose/manage to live off punk or diy?

Chain Cult: Oh Lord! Full-time job is one of the worst things in the world. We hate our jobs already, and we hate working five days per week, eight hours per day, even if we do so. I don’t really know, I couldn’t imagine what we do being infused with everyday concerns and worries around surviving in this society. And of course, except if you are as huge as The Rolling Stones, Iron Maiden or Social Distortion, it is more likely that you’ll be working very hard, be on the road every day, write as much music as you can in a short time span, and barely manage to make a living. At the same time you’ll probably lose some quality time with locals and friends in the places you visit, even in your own hometown, so I don’t know. And not any band can make it this way, right? You need to be a really big, good and hard working music group in order to achieve this. We’ve grown up and we cannot judge those who live off their music. I think we’ll try to keep it free and pure as long as we are able to tolerate the general depression of our ordinary lives and jobs… 

Radio Punk: Speaking of music, you guys self-produced your first demo and then joined La Vida Es Un Mus. How was it to collaborate with this incredible label, as it is one of the most professional in the post-punk, hardcore and anarcho-punk field?

Chain Cult: We have an amazing collaboration so far. We didn’t know Paco before, we just sent him our music shortly after we made it public, he liked it and so it began! La Vida Es Un Mus does an incredible distribution worldwide, you can find our records all over the world, literally. Meanwhile, it delivers great music, with great attention to any kind of detail like packaging, production, everything. Each one of our records has been repressed three times so far, so we guess that the whole thing has been successful up until now.

Radio Punk: After last year’s incredible “We Are Not Alone EP”, what does the future hold for Chain Cult? Will you be playing all over the world? When will a full-length be released? We’re looking forward to it here!

Chain Cult: A lot of shows! We missed playing a lot, and we want to focus on touring in the next months and the new season. Then there is the second full-length album in our minds and we look forward to the whole process of writing and producing it. Oh! And there will be a great compilation with Greek post-punk, synth and new-wave bands in 2022, featuring a new song by us, a surprise one!

Radio Punk: We’d like to close with a big thank you for your incredible passion and availability and ask you to tell us about the worst thing that happened on tour (without naming names), the craziest stuff that happened on tour and your favorite moments! Thanks again, see you next time!

Chain Cult: Thanks a lot for this interview, it was a great one! Feel free to ask us anything any time. Fortunately, we cannot recall any really bad and serious experience from our tours. Of course we had vans and cars breaking down all the time but it never cost us any show, luckily. Probably, the worst page in our band’s history is the two cancelled tours we had completely booked, one for USA in 2020 and one for Russia in 2022, related to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine respectively, two global events that changed the world and cost so many people’s lives. Of course our band is secondary in this case and life continues. What we love the most is meeting up with people of extremely high quality in all of our tours. Persons that are great souls, amazing personalities, interesting individuals. These people make us continue what we do. Crazy moments is whenever everyone is singing our songs far away from home and when promoters ask us to play for a second time (laughs) even if we are completely fucked up and high. This happened twice!

Credit photo: George Argyropoulos Photography

Support us:

We are a DIY project and you can support us, if you like, in the following ways:
– you can take a look at our catalog and order records, CDs, books, pins, and more;
– you can join our open call with a previously unpublished article.

L'articolo Interview with Chain Cult proviene da Radio Punk.

Francesco, owner of the DIY label xMalammòrex and vocalist for the fastcore band xInquisitionx and the crust punk band The Butcher Project (you can find both projects on Facebook and Bandcamp) will try to explain what are the dynamics that regulate political, social, and musical relationships in the city, Marseille, where he has been living in for 10 years.

So, Marseille, a door to the Mediterranean and a proper container for all ethnicities, cultures, religions, musical influences, tastes, colours, differences, and social contrasts that make this city a straight-up unique case in Europe. Marseille is Naples, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Athens, Abidjian, Tunis, Oran, Istanbul, Buenos Aires and L.A. mixed up with olive oil and turmeric. Here, everything feels so damn close but also pretty far at the same time and space. In the same district, the city center one, which is the one true emblem of the city, paraded everywhere, we all live squeezed, crushed, and teetering by the old dock, (the Mediterranean sea, Mare Nostrum) surrounded by humidity, sun, and mistral wind, that moves around the ever-present trash in the streets and makes some of the old buildings collapse, “inexplicably”.

I’ve been making this my home for about 10 years at this point and honestly, I really feel like a Marseillaise, (way more than I feel like I’m from Turin) because I love this city so much, maybe even because of its flaws. 10 years ago, here, there was a place called “Enthropy”, managed by two guys called Dave and Lionhell, the historic core of the band Filthy Charity, a band that went through styles and eras, touring all over Europe to the sound of riffs, blast beats, and punk attitude.

The Enthropy wasn’t just a venue where extreme bands all over the world would take turns on stage, but instead, a full-fledged social lab where everyone could meet up and exchange ideas, concepts, books, food, and alcohol. Everything for me started in that beautiful place. When it sadly shut its doors, other realities started to take its place, I’m thinking about “Machine à coudre”, an underground concert hall built inside an old textile factory, also situated in the city center near the dock (Noailles district), that doesn’t exist anymore.

The Machine à coudre venue crumbled alongside other buildings during the strong storms that took place in autumn 2018. This is just an example of how the housing market is handled in Marseille. In the working-class neighborhoods, buildings are left to rot and crumble, whilst the wannabe-WASP higher class districts houses are always shiny and new… weirdly enough, the rent costs the same… who knows why.

Nowadays, the main epicenters for music in Marseille, in part thanks to the terrible lack of occupied places even though abandoned homes are still thankfully pretty resilient, are the Molotov, a full-blown concert hall that houses a great number of events, from dance nights (like cumbia, reggae or trip-hop) to well-known bands from all around the world, like Los Fastidios, Iron Reagan, Nashville Pussy, Dirty Fences, Alborosie… just to name a few. It also has a great structure with local bands known to the wider public (Wake The Dead, Happy Fist, Nebraska, Dirty Wheels, Cheat x Death) as opening acts.

In Marseille, commonly nicknamed Massilia, Planète Mars (translating to planet mars, alluding to the remoteness, the unique traits, customs and traditions hosted within it), some shops selling vinyl and other stuff are still resisting, kind of like they were Asterix’ villages still battling with Amazon and other e-commerce giants. I’m thinking about Sabre Tooth, of the good old Stryker (a living, breathing underground local legend), a huge seasoned Motorhead fan, and about the Lollipop, which, in addition to selling vintage rarities, often put on unique showcases both because of the bands it housed, and the atmosphere filled with sound and enthusiasm.

Another one-of-a-kind place is the Cat’s Commodities, which is a books and records store that holds a lot of events, cocktails, and is home to a tattoo shop. The Cat Commodities is managed by Tchoupi and his Punk-Garage band The Dirteez. Good stuff.
Another bar that offers live music is the Intermediare, which is straight-up just a small hole, but with a cozy and easy-going atmosphere, in the summer the shows are especially nice due to the place being a sort of corridor leading to the town square. I swear it’s really unique and enjoyable. 

We’ve come to my favourite place, the Salle Guele, an associative bar, led by people who know what they’re doing, and they do it for free and voluntarily. An example above all is Audrey, a fantastic girl I adore and can never thank enough for all the good she’s bringing to this place. Two floors, the bar sells beer and drinks from all over the world, “illegal” drinks, and homemade ambience. The concert hall is in the basement, sweating and losing your ability to hear are part of the deal. It’s always a hell of a time, someone must either be too high on himself or too lobotomized by the internet not to enjoy a place like this. You can always equip for miracles.

I want to spend a few words to those who are very much the upholders of the varied realities in Marseille, to give praise and merit to those that help this city resist gentrification and the over-exhausting modernism. Here’s therefore a list of names with which to identify people who make up bands, distros, labels, and groups. A well-earned moment of silence for the bands that led the way, because it’s thanks to them if Marseille became such an enjoyable stop for bands on tour. I want to shout out: None Shall Be Saved, Odissey, Hate in Front, Horned, Apes Brigade, A Different Day, Our Roots, 13Fight, Hobo Erectus. Word on the street is that, between 99 and 2009, Marseille was a sort of Mini Los Angeles in terms of music.

On the following days, the ones when I settled into this place, I didn’t have a chance to catch these bands live and I’m pretty sorry about it, but time is a straight line that keeps on looking forward. So, with that spirit, I want to say hi and thank Fab and Hazem that keep the aforementioned Molotov up and running. Olivier Crapoulet, owner of Crapoulet Records, the guy that brings in town bands such as Reproach, Anticorpos, or Gerks, Antidogmatiks, or the great Crippled Fox.

Giz from Bus Stop Press, an anarchic label that distributes tapes, as well as bass player for the ever-so-important Yarostan, post-punk at its finest. Bruno from Counteract Records, Monastr (DoomCrust)’s guitar player and radio speaker for Discorde, a radio podcast filled to the brim with extreme music from which you can always extract some diamonds, co-hosted by Brice, the voice of Grusterror, a sublime black-grindcore trio that also features Lionhell (Filthy Charity founder and former owner of the Enthropy) on drums and Juan on guitar, a genius always capable of bringing his sounds live even in places where by all means it shouldn’t be possible. 

Another really important band is Sobers, a historic punk rock local band that always played a lot of shows, and features Tom (who runs the Old Tree Studio where I always record with my bands) and Polo. Adrien’s Canine, fantastic emo-punk band highly regarded through all the continent. Alex and Pokem’s Rats don’t Sink (Punk Rock) and their really fun mates in Odd Beast. Geiatrie from the wonderful Cookie, a genius, and fresh noise band. The really young Cheap Entertainment, bleeding new blood onto the local punk scene. Skapagnie Creole and their carnival-sounding ska-punk. The mighty Woest, a black/industrial metal band, really heavy sounding with Guibz on vocals and Dave taking care of guitars (the other half of the late great Enthropy and Filthy Charity). Hundred Eyes, devastating and dark emo punk.

As you can see there are a lot of bands gravitating around this little planet and there’s a lot of people who, to put it bluntly, bust their asses to keep it alive and well. Another huge shout out to Lara Pain, who brought her macabre art straight from Florence. We’re all waiting for better days to start living again, because, even if it sounds rhetorical, for me and all those who gravitate around planet mars, this is life.

Article by Francesco Ciko xMALAMMÒREx
Cover photo: Carreer Suicide at La Salle Gueule 2017
Credit photo: Crapoulet Records

Translation by Teo

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L'articolo A tour in the Punk and DIY Marseille proviene da Radio Punk.

In Via Serlio, 6 in Bologna, precisely in the Bolognina district, there are several people who have been on rent strike since the beginning of April, the strike is due to the difficult economic conditions that the tenants have been facing with the coronavirus emergency. All the apartments in the building are managed by the same owner, a real estate company based in Rome. In the following interview we can get some aspects of the story from these people.

Radio Punk: Hello! First of all, tell us a bit about who you are, what work you did before Covid-19, give us a general presentations of yourselves.

Tenants: We are the tenants of Via Serlio 6, a building on rent strike.
The thing we have in common is that we belong to a precarious generation (25-40 years old), in fact, we do the most disparate jobs: among us there are teachers, workers, call center workers, social workers and social health workers, young lawyers, gardeners, students, documentary filmmakers, musicians and entertainment workers. All freelancers or with fixed-term contracts for which, by now, there is no longer any type of guarantee or work protection. For these reasons during the lockdown period we decided to suspend the payment of the rent and go on strike, creating a collective called RentStrike Bolognina.

RP: In order to contextualize, tell us about the neighborhood you live in for those who are not from Bologna and how your relationship with the neighborhood is. Since the beginning of this strike, has the relationship with them changed? And if so, how? Have there been episodes of solidarity or has it got worse?

T: The neighborhood where we live, the Bolognina, was once one of the most popular areas of Bologna. Here there are many public housing and this has made it one of the most mixed neighborhoods in the city. Today it still has a predominantly working-class composition, it is inhabited by many migrants and young workers. So the solidarity received from the neighbors has always been very strong, plus it is one of the neighborhoods with the highest eviction rates, so it is very sensitive to issues related to the right to live.
Since 2004, however, following the renovation projects provided in the new Master Plan, approved by the Cofferati council, the district has been facing a gentrification process. Moreover, its geographical location has allowed many of the properties to be used for short-term rent, airbnb and other forms of building speculation (for instance the opening of the Student hotel, a luxury hostel that will be built inside the former Telecom building in Via Fioravanti – once a building occupied by homeless families, of the Bologna housing movement, then cleared in 2016), so, in recent years, the price of rent in the neighborhood has almost doubled.

RP: When and how was the decision to go on strike taken? Did you try other ways before reaching this initiative or did you immediately realize that it was the only chance to fight?

T: When we found ourselves stuck at home without work, without money and without any kind of real income support, we started doing the first condominium assemblies, and, since stopping paying rent is the fastest way to recover indirect income, we decided to contact the owner to propose a rent suspension for the duration of the emergency. We sent a letter, from the law firm where one of the tenants works, and started dealing with the real estate company’s mediator. (until today with no luck)

RP: So far, how is the situation? Have you received any answers and if so, which ones? What are your next moves? 

T: After the reopening of work activities, so since June, we have gone from the strike phase to the self-reduction phase. Many of us have started working again, even if not at full speed, so we decided to move from suspension to self-reduction of rent. In a nutshell, we tried to take advantage of one of the lease support measures promoted by the Municipality of Bologna, which provides incentives for homeowners who decide to upgrade the rent from free market to agreed rent, lowering the rent by 20%. Unfortunately, in our case, the owners has never shown themselves available for dialogue and have always demanded the sums not paid on the rent, so much so that they sent us a letter of formal notice.

RP: Tell us a bit about the Rentstrike platform and why you decided to “join” this one and not others. Do you have any relationships with other platforms that are active on the topic of rent and the right to live? 

T: It is often said that it doesn’t take courage to do something you have to do, in our case none of us was willing to sacrifice that little that we had to feed the income of a real estate company that owns 15 million euros of assets, many of us have previous experience in the world of housing occupations and the struggle for the right to live, so almost immediately we recognized ourselves in one of the slogan launched by the international campaign RentStrike “no job and no money no rent”.
The issue of rents and the right to housing is not new in our country as in other cities and is very much felt in countries like the USA where there is practically no welfare and therefore not even adequate housing support. The international campaign was launched in Los Angeles by some groups who, like us, have self-organized themselves to demand what should be rightfully ours: A HOUSE. So it was very easy to try to create a self-organized community inside our building to support the international rent strike campaign. 

RP: Have you managed to involve other people in difficulty in your area or in other cities in some kind of dispute? 

T: Almost immediately we tried to use the social media to spread the rent strike campaign, and some of us have provided their expertise to support all those people who, like us, could no longer pay the rent, many have written to us and many have been followed in negotiations with homeowners. So we discovered that small properties were more sensitive to the housing emergency situations generated by the health emergency, while large owners like ours treat people like numbers and always have profit as the sole purpose of their actions, showing total disinterest in the dramatic economic situations that the pandemic has generated and continues to produce.

RP: You have been interviewed and you have been featured in various media. What impact has this media exposure had? Did it benefit your situation?

T: Probably the only benefit it produced is to spread the campaign of the strike to more people, it probably also helped to stimulate the choices of municipal administrators who, thanks to the various protests, started to talk about the problem of rents related to the extraordinary emergency situation.
In our case, however, the media exposure has produced the opposite effect: the owner has immediately shown a total closure to the negotiations, totally headless of the image damage produced by the media exposure of the affair, in which the existence of two opposing parties has clearly manifested itself: those like us, the ordinary people who are struggling to get to the end of the month, and the multi-millionaires who are only and exclusively concerned about their profits at the expense of everything, even dignity and rights.

RP: Speaking of media. Were the articles or videos that came out true to what you communicated or were they sweetened or worse censored in some parts? If so, this is the right space to say what has possibly been edited/omitted.

T: The media exposure in which we were overwhelmed was partly intentional, because as we have already said it has allowed to spread the campaign and then the possibility to stop paying rent to many people in trouble, of course just being literally bombarded by the demands of journalists of all kinds we had to impose a certain, let’s say, radical leftist policy to our community and the strike, so we refused interviews and interventions in television programs just to avoid the ambiguity with which certain press manages to revive social problems, like this one.

RP: Did you receive feedback from the rest of the city or from the rest of social realities? How do you see the scenario in Bologna and in the rest of Italy and the world on this kind of struggles for home?

T: The struggle for the home is one of the most important and fundamental struggles, precisely because the home is a necessary good without which existence and dignity are debased and cancelled. However, we like to talk, more than about the struggle for the right to the home, about the struggle for the right to live, which deals with issues other than those more closely related to the simple satisfaction of a need like the home, from the self-reduction of utility bills for water and electricity, also considered a common good, to the so-called “expropriations in supermarkets and bookstores, struggles that have the ability to make people start talking about food sovereignty, the right to culture, the right to health, the environment and the right to the city.

RP: Prospects for future struggle in general. What awaits us from now on? What do you think we need to do to regain ground and stop succumbing and pay the horrors of power and capitalism on our skin?

T: It is very likely that the health crisis will turn into an economic crisis and this will reproduce, as already happened with the economic crisis of 2008, a context of deep poverty and extreme poverty in our cities, it is up to us to understand how to act, passivity and acceptance are absolutely harmful for us only social struggles and resistance have shown, in history, to be able to assert important collective results. We believe that we will soon witness (as it is happening in America with the black lives matter movement) a new wave of struggles for the right to social redistribution, which will have as a priority the fight for the improvement of the uneasy condition in which we find ourselves living, and we certainly do not want to be caught unprepared.

L'articolo Interview: RentStrike Bolognina proviene da Radio Punk.

Alessandra Kersevan, about Aiello’s “Canzoniere popolare”: “With the Canzonir we started singing in Friulian dialect because this was the language of farmers, blue collars and partisans […] Going on we realized even more that the language itself was in slavery and needed liberation. Also for this reason it needed to be used in music and communication.” (from “La me lenghe e sune il rock” by Marco Stolfo).

On PCI’s (Communist Italian Party, N.d.t.) weekly journal a young Friulian marxist efficiently summarized the opinion that: “a serious hystorical-materialist class analysis” absolutely can’t “reduce itself to a pure and simple abstract contraposition between bourgeoisie and proletariat because, in the epoch of imperialism, not considering the categories of nationality and colony, not to mention all that regards feminism, the private-public relation etc., is anti-historical and anti-scientific.Therefore class war must be seen as a struggle inside dominating and dominated nations and nationalities, otherwise the risk is to do bad service to the creation of socialism, which would bring with itself unresolved historical knots (minorities and oppressed nationalities) that would easily be exploited by the right-wing and revived as nationalistic conflicts […]” (from “Patria e Matria” by Sergio Salvi).

Unfortunately most formations that use so called minority or local languages are not interested in using their instrument’s notes as vehicles for social change and limit themselves to a folk revival of songs from the popular tradition of the respective territories.

However, it should be added that many of these songs of the past were lively forms of protest, which played today are not dated as they should (society has not progressed as intellectuals and neoliberal leaders would like to believe and indeed the most recent legislative formulations of many States detract from the rights of the weaker sections of the population). More importantly, the very decision to use languages long banned and opposed by bourgeois institutions and used by the poorer sections of the population is already an act of resistance. For centuries the colonialism of the so-called “great nations” has attempted to eradicate and destroy these languages, in particular but not exclusively the most reactionary regimes (just think of Fascist Italy and Francoist Spain, but has democratic France perhaps used better methods towards the Bretons and the Courses? And the sticks on the hands of those who spoke Sardinian or Friulian at school until some time ago?). For the avoidance of misunderstandings, as the author of this article I emphasize the recognition of these “minorities” in a framework that does not refer to that ethnic-localist vision much appreciated by the hunters of demonstrations of the old days and even less to that of nationalism.

First of all, the undersigned considers it an abomination to define these populations as minorities (for example, compared to whom would the Basques be a minority? To the Castilians? But who is the minority in the Basque Country?), Secondly they are real peoples fighting for the right of self-determination, just as much as the Vietnamese during the French and American invasions or the Kurds nowadays. The right to self-determination is a principle to be considered fundamental both for Marxism (or did you think that the Soviet Union was formed in a federation of republics because it was fun to create the flags of Turkmenistan and Armenia?) and for the anarchist movement (see Bakunin’s support for the Slavic liberation movements or the Basque Felix Likianiano, among many examples). The Italian constitution’s affirmations do not interest us at all, phrases such as “Italy is unique and indivisible” we consider them antics written by the bourgeoisie who with these territories, peoples and idioms in most cases had nothing to do.
What is Italy if not an imperialist program based on colonialism to the detriment of the peasants of Sicily and the South, who since the unification have fought against this state of affairs, giving rise to the first uprisings against the post-unitary bourgeoisie ( following the obvious betrayal of most democrats and reformers of high social backgrounds)?

In general

Before analyzing the musical situations, a brief summary of the languages ​​historically spoken in the peninsula (although it would be interesting to analyze also those present from more recent times and their impact on pre-existing musical traditions). Italian in the strict sense at the time of unification was used by a small section of the population and was spread through schools and later on television. There is an open debate between linguists on the recognition or otherwise of those linguistic identities recognized by the State as dialects (we speak of Ligurian, Lombard, Piedmontese, Veneto, Emiliano, Romagnolo, Sicilian and Neapolitan, all recognized by UNESCO as true idioms as they evolved from Latin parallel to what is now called Italian). Most of the others are Indo-European and officially recognized and more or less protected. Often less. On the Rhaeto-Romanic side there are Friulian and Dolomite Ladin; in Sardinia the Sardinian language; in the south there is the Arbëreshë community, spoken by communities of Albanian origin; several Germanic languages ​​as well as the German of Südtirol and some small areas of Friuli, such as the Cimbrian, the Mocheno and the Walser; the Greek islands of the south; Slovenian in the border areas and the ancient Croatian of Molise; romaní; Catalan in the city of Alghero; Occitan in Piedmont and Franco-Provençal / Arpitano in Valle d’Aosta. Most of the musical scenes that use the aforementioned languages ​​refer almost exclusively to the folkloric tones, as already mentioned. Fortunately, several artists have managed to go beyond this aspect and there are numerous formations that use more contemporary tones (metal, rap, punk, blues, jazz, reggae, dub, electronics, pop rock, etc.).

In detail

Sardinia

The richness of Sardinian music is known all over the world and has been studied in its popular and historical meanings by ethnomusicologists and anthropologists from all over Europe (Edouard Fouré Caul-Futy and Andreas Fridolin Weis Bentzon among others) and boasts its particular instrumentation ( launeddas, pipiolu, trimpanu, serraggia, etc.). Nowadays ethno-pop and tenor singing formations like the Istentales are not lacking and proliferate. In the sixties, apart from the Salis related to the Stormy Six, it is necessary to remember the Rubanu Group, which introduced the political lyrics within the tenor area following the revolt of Pratobello (which gave birth to one of the best known Sardinian songs of revolt together with “Moderare Procurre”, “Sa lottata di Pratobello”) and the meeting with nothing less than the Inti-Illimani. They also had the merit of being the first group of tenor singing to merge with experimental jazz. In addition to these, the famous Maria Carta can also be considered a committed artist who made use of the mother tongue and the Canzoniere del Lazio, who recorded some pieces in Sardinian.

In the eighties there was no shortage of hardcore punk groups born in the wake of Crass and Discharge such as P.S.A. (just as there is no shortage today), but most of these used Italian or English. For combat rock in Sardinian it was necessary to wait for the arrival of Kenze Neke, the spearhead of militant island music. Born in Siniscola in 1989, the name in the Baronese dialect means “without fault”. These words were chosen in memory of Michele Schirru, a Sardinian anarchist shot in 1931 for planning to kill Mussolini, who ordered him to be assassinated by a special platoon. They have disentangled themselves in various themes such as anti-militarism, anti-colonialism, anti-fascism, the independence of peoples such as Basque and Irish, immigration and the life of the Sardinian proletariat and sub-proletariat. The obvious source of inspiration is Clash, and in fact their combat rock has incorporated sounds of all kinds, such as punk, reggae, metal, ska, traditional Sardinian music (including instrumentation, such as the accordion, the launeddas and the trunfa). Several of their works have been published by Gridalo Forte Records (Banda Bassotti’ s label) and have developed into different projects over time. The first derivation was the acoustic one of KNA (“Kenzaskra”) in 2006, born from the fusion with another important red and militant formation like the fellow villagers Askra, with whom they previously shared a mini-cd. Following other important projects continue a story made of music and militancy, the Tzoku and the Soberanìa Populare. Also interesting is the hip hop scene (Balentia, Menhir, Malos Cantores, Sa Razza, Funtana Beat), in which the Stranos Elementos and Dr. Drer & CRC Posse stand out for the topics covered. The first more recent (they also recorded an anti-fascist song with Acero Moretti), the second have held out since 1991 (they are part of those formations born in the parades and influenced by the Red Wave Posse, rather than listening to black music or hip hop concerts). To share the aversion to a permanent state of “bombs and tumors”, self-production and support for the most disparate causes. Also noteworthy is the independentist Futta of Sassari. Other recent musical upheavals are represented by Dr. Boost‘s reggae / dub, the post-folk of Boghes de Bogamundos, the borderless ska punk reggae of Ruja Karrera, the militant punk of C4 Combat Rock (which at the moment use Sardinian only partially, just like the first Kortatu with Basque), the anarcho punk A Fora De Arrastu and Keret Korria (still red punk). Unfortunately I found the example of an oi! band nominally independentist, but actually affiliated with the neo-fascists of CPI. I do not name it because reactionary propaganda, even when wearing the mask of alleged artistic ambitions, must be eliminated without doubt.

North-East

Moving on to the north-east, the first outbursts par furlan of political resistance in music are related to the phenomenon of songbooks, namely the Canzoniere Friulano and the Canzoniere Popolare di Aiello (or Canzonir di Dael, which also includes the researcher Alessandra Kersevan among the founders) . Although the texts do not refer to Friulian language in their own language, they meander between the poems of Pasolini and the revolutionary Giovanni Minut from Friuli, social rights, workers’ and peasant struggles, emigration, anti-fascism and anti-militarism (much felt both in Sardinia and in Friuli because of the military easements present in both places). In the early eighties the first politicized punk and experimental groups appeared in Friuli (Eu’s Arse, Warfare, Detonazione, Soglia del Dolore), while in the nineties we can find a hardcore punk band singing in Friulian, the Inzirli, and rappers in Marilenghe ( like the DLH Posse). Furthermore, Radio Onde Furlane, the Premi Friûl and the Usmis magazine (close to the self-managed social center of Udine) also developed in this period. Unfortunately there are no bands that can be considered analogous to the Basque Kortatu or to the Kenze Neke.

On the other hand, in Friuli, it is necessary to add, the autonomy organized into parties has always been fairly bland, almost always bourgeois in character or even tied to the old school Northern League, if not to the Front Furlan which has a footprint worthy of Forza Nuova as far as social policies are concerned (it’s no coincidence that it was founded by leavers from the mother party), Sardism instead had and still has examples of organizations ranging from the vaguely progressive Left to the more combative far left (like A Manca Pro S ‘Independence or anarchists). In any case, in the Nineties the phenomenon of Gnove music furlane was born, which brought together very different groups. In this sense, interesting patchanka or modernized folk formations, such as Sedon Salvadie, the Mussels FLK (leading exponents of Friulian music; the acronym stands for “Furlan Liberation Kongress”), Bande Tzingare, Kosovni Odpadki, Zuf de Žur (who have recorded a disc on the partisan resistance with Ivan Della Mea, Moni Ovadia, Giovanna Marini and Vlado Kreslin), Povolâr Ensemble, Furclap, Lino Straulino (who rearranged the texts of Victor Jara and collaborated with the organizations of relatives of the Argentine desaparecidos) and important Arbe Garbe. Many of these bands share an authentic passion for the southern hemisphere and cultural diversity, have recorded songs against military servitude and war, on the anti-fascist historical memory, but it would be incorrect to define them as militants or underground, in many cases the approach is more similar to lighter Modena City Ramblers or songwriters. A couple of curiosities: the bluesman (or bluesom) Fabian Riz boasts a song with the heirs of Kina, the Frontier, and the Francis and the Phantoms are a darkwave group in marilenghe with nihilistic and socially oriented lyrics.

Occitania

Even the “Italian” Occitania can boast several very interesting formations, which combine the most traditional and medieval sounds with the most modern ones (punk, ska, reggae, jazz, etc.). The spirit is often combative and between live covers of “Bella ciao” and the proximity to the No Tav movement, it is inevitable to mention at least the most important formations such as Gai Saber, Lou Dalfin, Lou Seriol (dedicated to self-production) and Lou Tapage.

As for the other linguistic “minorities”, most do not present formations interested in the political struggle (or devote themselves to rather bland forms of commitment), with the exception of the Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino. Nowadays it does not retain any of the original members, but was founded by the writer Rina Durante whose musical approach stemmed in the first place from a need for political militancy and denunciation towards the overpowering that the peasant and working class had suffered throughout their existence.

Alessio Ecoretti

L'articolo Linguistic minorities and militant music in the peninsula and Sardinia proviene da Radio Punk.

The history of punk rock, through many of its most exposed personalities, made us aware of the extreme, of the “no future” attitude, of auto-celebration until self-destruction or of the pain deriving from lack of self-acceptance or lack of acceptance of one’s relevance within a certain scene, always with tragic endings.

Universally known and acknowledged figures are part of the public domain, even on the silver screen: Sid Vicious’ history with the Sex Pistols (portrayed by Alex Cox in the wonderous “Sid & Nancy”, from  1986), or the downward spiral of Germs’ Darby Crash (the controversial “What we do is secret” by Rodger Grossman was released in 2008), up to Joy Division’s Ian Curtis (Anton Corbijn’s “Control” biopic was released in 2007).

The list of artists, singers and frontmen that lost their bet against life or got out of it irreversibly damaged in their bodies and souls is way too long.

There’s, none the less, a crime news story that took place in the early 90’s American punk scene about which (almost) nobody said much and about which pieces of news or leads concerning the motive are hard to find.

First things first.

We’re in Ohio, it’s 1986.

Andrew Kessler, Matt Dresdner e Steve Moriarty, respectively guitarist, bass player and drummer, decide to form a band.

They need a singer and decide to ask to a friend of theirs that immediately accepts: this girl has been playing guitar and piano since she was nine, her idols are Ray Charles, Hank Williams and  Billie Holiday above them all, and she couldn’t wait to be in a band.

Her name is Mia.

Mia Katherine Zapata.

She comes from a well to do family but she doesn’t want any help from her parents, in fact, she decided to move to Ohio to go to college and work to pay for her tuition.

After three years spent writing and playing songs the four-piece (that, meanwhile, chose the name “The Gits”) moves to Seattle where the music scene seems to flourish and expand even to the venues, Mia will find work as a waitress in one of the said venues. 

The four youngsters start living in an old abandoned house that will later become their practice room too, they will name it “The Rathouse”.

Things are looking good for The Gits, the first promotional singles given to local radio stations and independent record labels are well received, they’re making a name for themselves and the band starts playing frequently throughout the area.

The band’s first album is released in 1992, “Frenching the bully”, a powerhouse of rough rock’n’roll mixed with some ’77 punk residues, in which Mia’s voice towers with fury and energetic confidence, lyrics aren’t particularly original, but the girl’s scenic presence and even more her attitude while singing are a catalyst.

At that time the scene in Seattle took off dramatically and the band, after the first enthusiastic feedbacks, was planning a European tour and the new album release in 1993.

The night between  July 6^th and the 7^th  of that year, after her shift at work, Mia takes a walk around the block to go to a friend’s house.

At 3:30 a.m. her body is found near a crossing in Central District Seattle, the coroner’s findings are unforgiving: she was beaten, raped and strangled.

Moreover being a fan of the band the coroner recognizes her, on the contrary, the police after some observations and in the absence of documents labelled her as a Jane Doe.

From here on we could consider the case as filed.

Nobody really seems to worry about finding a responsible or a motive.

Meanwhile, through their concerts and personal initiatives, Soundgarden, Nirvana and Pearl Jam raise, behind the scenes, almost 70.000 dollars to pay for a detective agency.

Press doesn’t cover the news, just like anyone else outside Settle’s community (and probably not even all of it), Mia Zapata’s name seems to be forgotten.

Obviously music will keep her memory alive: her friends, along with ex-members from the band and other bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Heart, and The Presidents Of The United States Of America create a self-defence group called “Home alive”, organizing benefit gigs and events to sustain women on their own or in trouble.

Meanwhile, Joan Jett records an album with the ex-Gits, “Evil Stig” (the palindrome for “Gits Live”) and along with Kathleen Hanna from Bikini Kill writes a song, “Go home”, in which video a girl is being stalked and then assaulted on the streets by a stranger, she manages to keep her calm and defend and repel the attacker…there’s no need to say all the international networks refused to show the video.

Sadly, what will happen to Kurt Cobain in April 1994, will just cloud even more the participation to the initiative honouring miss Zapata, whose homicide is still without both a killer and a motive.

We’ll have to wait until 2003, ten years after her death, when Jesus Mezquia, a fisherman from Florida, will be framed by some saliva traces found on the girl’s corpse.

Supporting this undeniable evidence, Mezquila has a history of arrests and accusations concerning domestic abuse and violence towards his girlfriends and ex-girlfriends.

There are no common threads between him and Mia Zapata before the aggression, but that’s the man that killed her.

Within feminist communities throughout America Mia Zapata’s name has become a symbol as an activist and artist free from preconceptions thanks to her freedom and autonomy.

The Gits have been a great band despite their singer’s wings were clipped just before the great breakthrough.

They’re a band that should be (re)discovered.

And Mia’s story should be rediscovered too, since it’s been buried and kept out of the spotlight for too long.

Que Viva Mia Zapata!

Sources:
‘Heavy Angel – Mia Zapata: Exploring the living memory of a Seattle legend’ – Margaret O’Neil Girouard
‘The Tragic Murder of Mia Zapata’ – Gregg Davidson
‘The Gits: The Band The Music The Legacy’ – directed by Kerry O’Kane (DVD)
Atlanti Musicali Giunti: ‘Punk’ – Federico Guglielmi 

Who Killed Mia Zapata – Article by Ricky Koppo
Translation by Ivan

L'articolo The Gits – Who Killed Mia Zapata? proviene da Radio Punk.

Interview by Alberto from Flamingo Records.
Leggi la versione in italiano qui.

Forty years ago, one of the most influential bands of the Swedish new wave/punk scene of the 80s, KITCHEN AND THE PLASTIC SPOONS, was founded. I was able to have an interview with the founder IGGO (now involved in the Iggof Foggy and The Plenty and ToStupidToDie project!!), who was kind enough to give us a little bit of his time, answering our questions with such passion that while reading it is hard to believe all these years have passed since the band broke up. A good lesson in DIY and life in music that I find important for current bands. I often find myself interviewing groups that are not yet established and who answer the questions listlessly, as if the promotion of one’s music project were something obvious or secondary.

Kitchen and the plastic spoons had some fleeting reunion on the occasion of the release of an incredible collection on vinyl called “Screams To God” (already at collector’s prices) by the never too praised “Dark Entries”, of which I’m a proud owner. Inside the vinyl there’s a little pink leaflet that tells the band’s story and summarizes its discography. The small paper was my bible during the interview and it’s pretty much the only well-written article that you can find online about the group (in English, I did not search in Swedish).

If you search on YouTube the songs by Kitchen you will immediately realize that this is a sui generis band that had already surpassed the punk as a musical genre and took free musical expression towards new frontiers, marrying what was the nascent new wave scene, but without reclining on its already present clichés.

“while everyone was talking about how depressed they were, Kitchen talked about eating ice cream with God.”

You used to play the synth in a band called Psycho, then you founded Gdansk which later became Kitchen and The Plastic Spoons. I’d like to know something about you before all this happened: how did you approach music and this particular genre?

I’ve always loved electronic music from the time I was introduced to Wendy Carlos soundtrack A Clockwork Orange. I started listening to Kraut Rock around 1974. From age 14 I spent about five years in a record store called Space Records located in central Stockholm City. In that shop I lived through the Glam and Prog Rock and Disco era over to the Pre-punk era that then transformed into the Punk and New Wave. One of the best usical
educations I ever have had. I stopped work there in end of 1978.

In 1979 me and Helena (keyboards in Kitchen), my girlfriend at the time, were listening a lot to all kinds of new music coming up, especially from John Peel at Radio One.
After the punk music attraction started to fade away and a lot of Post Punk stuff started appear like PIL, Magazine and the never the less influential pioneers Ultravox, we went totally hooked on all of that alternative Do-It-Yourself kind of records that started to pop up like Throbbing Gristle, the Human League, Fad Gadget, Thomas Leer & Robert Rental, Cabaret Voltaire and This Heat etc etc.. There wasn’t that much like that going on in Stockholm at that time except for a few obscure events here and there. One had to really have wide open eyes and ears to get in touch with that movement at all!

I first met Mats R of Psycho at a postmodern art event in a massage parlors basement. There was a band called Plast that performed and some other spectacular constellation doing an hilarious Venus in Furs cover, everyone was dressed up in beautiful vintage clothings and with makeup. That experience really blew my mind. Especially Plast that was using tape loops and synthesizers. Later on when Plast had disbanded and changed name to Rhure we did an amount of gigs together.
Mats R had a rehearsal place and a couple of synthesizers and introduced me to come visit. I did and brought my bass and we started jamming and then we decided to do something together. We were both into stuff like Silicon Teens, Kraftwerk and Gary Newman and sounded like a mix of that. I rather quickly abandoned the bass and a couple of months later I bought my first Yamaha CS10 that I upgraded to a CS15 a couple of weeks later. Mats R used a Stringman and a Roland SH 2000 and a Boss DR-55 Suddenly this new band showed up in our rehearsal place called Porno Pop Moon Family.

We immediately started to spend time together partying and having fun and after a couple months one of the singers, Jarmo opened up Club Mods because that was the latest trend from London at the time. In that club Psycho had our first gigs and we also started a mod band with the bass player Jackie and Mats W the drummer from Porno Pop, called the 60s!
Together with Mats R girlfriend and her sister on vocals we did mod sixties covers and played at Club Mods a couple of times.
In May 1980 Psycho finally had the opportunity to attend with a gig at one of Stockholm’s most attractive venues, Musikverket and we were so very ON to do that! Unfortunately Mats R catched a cold and we had to cancel. But I wouldn’t let that chance to perform slip out of my hands so I asked Jackie and Mats W if we could just kind of put something together for fun and they agreed to that and we then asked Jackie’s girlfriend Anne to join, because she had the coolest look in town and she just stepped right in. So in one evening we had made three songs and as our name we took Jackie’s birth town Gedansk, and later we would change name to become Kitchen And The Plastic Spooons (as it originally was spelled).
We made such a fantastic performance and a huge impact on the audience and from that on we decided that there was no return. Then we took my girlfriend Helena in on synth as well and then a while later, to broaden our sound more, we took Patrik in on guitar.
We still did, at the same time, tried to keep our other bands alive as well but they slowly faded away…

The band didn’t last long, you released a few songs on various compilations, a 7” and a flexi, but you broke up before an LP. You were still able to leave a mark though, to the point you got reprinted by III Wind records on CD and by Dark Entries on vinyl. Why did you disband so quickly?

From having started off as a funny joyful and very easy going approach I guess we slowly ended up with the well known big issue called expectations on ourselves. From being very playful we started to need to compromise and sometimes almost fighting to get our ideas come through.
We also constantly wrote new songs and dropped the older ones in a rather hysterical tempo. The set lists where never the same.
The usual procedure making a song was that Jackie came along with some new bassline and the rest of us dressed it up. Mostly me Jackie and Mats W did the main arrangements together.
But one other problem was that Jackie started to do slower and darker stuff as well and we became more and more kind of dark ourselves, thanks to that. It wasn’t so much fun anymore. Anne broke up from Jackie and later left the band. We tried to keep on going with Iodine Jupiter on vocals, the other singer from now closed down Porno Pop but most of the joy had seeped out and after a while also Mats W left.
A while before Anne left we had signed up with our so called manager, Syk, that became rather disastrous. He was an old friend of mine but in this situation it turned out that he was very unreliable and struggling to deal with. He and I had earlier started Castor Records together.
Kitchen also started to record what would have been our first album just before we broke up.

How was being a band and trying to arrange gigs in Sweden in the early 80s? Have you had the chance to play outside Sweden as well?

When we started playing with Kitchen, all the doors were suddenly open to the at the time existing alternative stage. Many wanted us to join in on their arrangement. It was a new building spirit that was later taken over by more professional players. We just did one pretty big tour in Sweden, Lokaaalen Turnén. That tour was like a showcase with some of the other bands we shared space with in our rehearsal place with. The bands was Hörförståelse, Rhur, Helen & the Warriors and Silicon Carne. Here’s a link to some of those bands from a Swedish Punk & New Wave page called PUNKTJAFS.
Kitchen only played abroad when we reunited in 2008 at the Drop Dead Festival in Lisbon, Portugal and then we did a gig in Dresden a few years later.
If singer Anne had not dropped out, we might have continued to play abroad. We received offers from many different countries but we were forced to refuse.

The compilation Cosa Nostra delivers an idea of a high-profile, multi-coloured artistic environment that must have been really stimulating to be in. How was “the scene”? Did you have the feeling to be part of something destined to remain in punk enthusiasts’ memory?

The Cosa Nostra was mostly recorded at studio Humlan in the same basement as we rehearsed, owned by this Italian guy called Lino Ajello. All the bands were rather close friends of ours. Syk was involved and partly behind it all and surprisingly it actually became more than just talk, and it was finally released as a cassette.

I don’t think we carried any thoughts about being kind of special or something. We did what we did instead of doing nothing. Stockholm at that time in general was a rather good boiling pot with several good venues that offered a pretty good mix of genres. There were maybe a couple hundred or more people that rotated at the same places and with the same bands and everyone supported each other, very alternative and most of us were all comfortable to belong under the Syndicalist flag if one can put it like that.

Your music, with a predominant artistic and avant-garde component, detached from the first wave of punk and refused to abide by its clichés. It seems art music based its production on stylistic cues given by pioneering bands such as yours. What’s your opinion on this?

Yes, I definitely think that, for us at least, our playful and naive attitude to what we were doing was the biggest reason for how we sounded. We deliberately tried to, as you say, avoid the most worn-out cliches almost all the time unless we were joking about it instead. It was much more easy in the beginning when we allowed everyone to contribute with their own part of the whole, but when we later started poking in each other’s expressions, it became much harder to maintain what we once started as. I think that is also heard when listening to how we developed and later advanced.

What kind of music do you listen to these days, in 2020? Any new bands and artists you really dig?

Oh, that’s a tricky one. Among other things, I listen sporadically to all sorts of old music I haven’t been able to listen to before, as well as very old classic obscure stuff I have in my vinyl collection but which I can’t access now because I live abroad. YouTube is my salvation then.
I also listen very much to the artists I have come into contact with during my about five years stay here in Bangkok where I live now. Everything from Harsh Noise Ambient free Jazz to blah blah blah, haha! Impossible to describe, but I change taste almost every day and listen to everything except Hip Hop and Top List Chart music, quite simply.

Here’s a list of stuff I’m listening to:
1900 – Den minsta av segrar   
Shitkid – Sugar Town  
Keren Batok /Isotropia – Antidote 
Stumm / Risberg – Rise and Fall  
JG Thirlwell & Simon Steensland – Heron  

My wife and I playfully covered Liberty, your most popular song which I particularly love. I played the bass and she played the synth and trumpet, but when we tried to put everything together the tracks didn’t “bond” properly, we were not able to make synth and bass lines sound harmoniously. Played by you, the song works perfectly. Did you work on the songs methodically or you had more of an instinctive approach?

I have always adhered to the instinctive strategy because I always trust my intuition.
I am not a trained musician in any way more than as a child I was forced to play flute and clarinet which I abhorred. I wanted to play guitar! So when I then finally got my father to buy me a guitar, it was too hard to learn the chords so I started playing bass instead. After the first meeting with the synthesizer was what finally released all my creator joy and to this day I think it is very entertaining to twist and twerk among all filters, envelopes and oscillators!

Liberty is recorded at a reel-to-reel tape recording in our rehearsal place and it has one Yamaha-CS15 line that is dubbed twice with a Farfisa or similar organ, I don’t remember the brand anymore. I think that’s why it’s not so easy to cover those synth lines… hehe

L'articolo Interview with Kitchen And The Plastic Spoons proviene da Radio Punk.

Dear diary,
I’ve been writing diaries since I was 16.
They’re all gone now though, left at a festival backstage, disappeared while moving, forgotten in a train somewhere.
I wonder what the people who find them are going to think about me.
The sound engineer from Genova, the new resident in Marchi road, the girl who took my place as I left the train in Barletta.
It would have been interesting for them to find a manuscript in order, flawless pages that flow like the days in a month; it would have been stimulating, kind of like those centuries-old, dusty diaries that reveal scenes from a different age, the portrait of a man, or a woman.
Instead, my sound engineer, my new resident, and my girl on the train held in their hands a disconnected script, thoughts that are not well-articulated, full of anger, bits of stupid songs halfway erased, with no logic, obscene drawings: my testimonies were left putting together pieces that paint immense loneliness, with no readable date, with no use for history.

Silence

Have you ever heard the silence? The real one?
The one that makes heartbeats sound like bombing while breathing sounds like a strong wind in the countryside?
The one that makes evident that little ringing in your ear, so you cough to make sure you’re not deaf?
So you begin to wonder how is it possible to hear all of this silence right here, right now, and you start to hope that someone or something will eventually break it, but not you?
The phone hasn’t rung in weeks 
The doorbell even worse
Not a single voice from the street
My dog’s not barking
Far away someone starts to chop down a tree
And I cling to that with all the force I have left.

7 seconds. Four artists broke my 7 seconds of attention threshold with their records in the last two months.

Almost nothing really impresses me anymore.
Time passed by and I got musically lazy, I’ve become the Spotify’s tester’s mock-up: You have 7 seconds to get me.
Otherwise, I’m moving on.
What’s left?

Bricì, FKA Marco Colagioia, an old acquaintance of Molise’s hardcore-punk scene, paradoxically manages to get me in a field I’m not easily hooked on: songwriting.
It’s a genre that’s spiraling down, trite nowadays, but “So youth for the Coccia sane” had me glued to my chair for 4 or 5 consecutive listens, intense, genuine, rough, a harsh dialect from the south feeling huge on top of songwriting that seemed to have bypassed (Luckily?) the last 25 years.

Gab de la Vega lands after his trips around the globe with an album, “Beyond space and time”, that hides under a Brit-rock armor the typical soul of a songwriter from Brescia: frankness, sentiment.
If the world makes it out alive from this apocalypse, Gab and the open cages will restart from this record, from its supporting tour, from when they left it all.

Jumping in the USA, the guy that released another banger is Jake la Botz with “They’re comin’ for me”. He’s a blues/folk songwriter that keeps me company since more than 10 years already, he was the faithful soundtrack to dark times and sunny moments, you could say I love him (if you’re interested his masterpiece will always be 2008’s minimal “Sing this to yourself”)

But what about Oi!? Honestly, to find a good band you have to dig with shovels and pickaxes lately, but I heard a song from Stiglitz, from Genova, and they brought a smile back to my face, sometimes I think that only in Liguria is still present the brazen way to play real punk, the one that gets you thinking about some kids yelling in the streets, and not about some drunk douche that sings terribly.
As for the rest, the end of this quarantine should bring with it some fantastic records, something I heard a sneak peek of (I won’t tell who), especially One Snack Band, City 493, Rocker Ritz (recorded by me at Folk Beat Vendetta), Dalton.

Free Rain and 7 Seconds by PATH

L'articolo PATH: free rein & 7 seconds proviene da Radio Punk.