It's been said of Ian Svenonius that he doesn't talk so much as manifestos come out of his mouth. For those not familiar with Svenonius, he's the primary force behind such legendary groups as Nation of Ulysses and The Make-Up, bands that tied radical politics to increasingly more R&B-influenced hardcore, leaving a lasting impression on the likes of Ted Leo & the Pharmacists (who feature former Nation of Ulysses and Make-Up guitarist James Canty), the (International) Noise Conspiracy and Titus Andronicus.
After a time-zone mix-up that had both of us feeling groggy, I caught up with Ian to discuss his most recent project Chain and the Gang, why music shouldn't be important, how bands are a government conspiracy and bondage. What proceeds isn't so much an interview as me giving Ian a subject and letting him run with it.
What is the basic mission statement of Chain and the Gang?
The mission statement of Chain and the Gang is bondage. I disbelieve in free will and freedom. I think freedom is a weird word, like liberty. I think music and art as expression, as kind of a vessel for innovation is a weird idea, actually. I'm more medieval in my acceptability of music. So Down With Liberty could be referring to the free market, it could be referring to American imperialism, as there's always elements of liberty to that, "liberating" people. But it's also about music, I just like traditional song forms, I like gospel music, I like folk music and I'm not interested in experimental music per se, or the need for music to constantly be transforming. I think the thing that resonates with us is really the personality of music or the feeling that we get from it, or the humor of it. New music is always exciting but I just think that people are always like "what's the concept?" It's a requirement of capitalism, but it's not really what people want out of their music.
For you it seems like the message has always been more important than anything else, too. You always merge style with a mission statement with your groups...
We always want to articulate what we're doing. We're inspired by modernist artists, people like Eisenstein, people that talk a good game. I've always disavowed this idea of the artist as a primitive, I think like anyone else they should be able to talk about what they're doing, just like an electrician would. Or a plumber.
But it's certainly not the most important thing. I mean, I always see the interview as a big part of rock and roll, it's a major part, like Elvis Presley on Steve Lawrence. Or how The Beatles got famous really from their interviews, it was their quips that really brought them to people's attention, people said "oh, they're so charming, those charming moptops." And the interview format is an interesting thing, it allows you to give the music another dimension, and music's kind of losing that now, it's losing a lot of its dimensions. Rock 'n' roll bands are losing their pulpit, their pulpit is diminishing.
I think we've grown up in this era where rock bands, the rockists, they weren't really proponents of music as they had kind of subsumed all expression, all art. They became poets, play actors, their records were art, and I think that was all based on the record cover, it was this extra dimension, it made this music physical but it also had to be filled with something. You had this big picture which lent itself this kind of importance, and then you had liner notes, and those inevitably became propaganda, just marketing.
So groups and musicians became more like cult leaders, more ritualistic, trying to recruit people into their cults. That's really what's interesting about rock, the people aren't just content to play music, they have to be remembered, they demand all this kind of fealty from their subjects. To really be a fan you have to show your fandom, you have to own the t-shirt, you have to know the songs, what songs are on what record...
Follow them on tour...
You have to support them. It becomes a religious cult or a political party or whatever it is. As the record has diminished versus CD's and now the MP3, the whole aspect of a group really diminishes. Groups are becoming much less powerful as cults, in fact I don't think groups demand that kind of fealty anymore, people don't really expect to give that kind of power to them
Do you think in a way, it's the result of the democratization of music? That it's easier for anyone to make music now because of computers and digital technology? Do you think that's diminished that cult aspect of it somewhat?
That's part of it definitely, the fact that you don't have to pound the pavement as much to be known because of the internet, but also, really, I think a big part of it is the lack of records. So few bands are putting out LP's. Portentous isn't the word, but I think it's big, vinyl feels big and important and there's much less importance about music now, and I think that's kind of exciting. I think really good music is kind of like toss offs, it's garbage in a way, you know what I mean?
Like the old junk 45s of the Nuggets compilations...
Yeah, that's really more exciting than the importance of the new 50 Cent record, or Radiohead record, those things that are supposed to be so important. Who wants to hear importance? That's not what music's about, it's about fun, and about feeling, and about affirming some kind of feeling you have and maybe giving a voice to your own perversity that you feel isolated by.
With your music there's this sense of urgency; you typically work with structures that are shorter, you get the point across pretty quickly, and it gives it that quality that makes people be drawn to the experience.
Oh, well, thank you. It's not a new idea, but I like a song that gets it all across really fast. You mentioned 45s, old trash 45s, there's a million of them out there and they're all being reissued on these endless compilations, but each one of them is like a kind of a drug in a way. Music is very interesting because the way that it makes you feel can be that sense of euphoria, and those short songs can be very euphoric, but then you need another one. It's very weird, I don't know if it's healthy honestly. The short songs really feel like a hit of something whereas a CD...it's like a 70 minute block of something. People always talk about how attention spans are so short now but in the 50s, records were way shorter than they are nowadays.
Yeah, it used to be that it had to be three minutes or less to get radio play...
Yeah, 2:40 or less. Now the Kanye West record is like 80 minutes long and who could listen to that? It's crazy. In a sense, I think people's attention spans are much longer than they used to be because they're smoking marijuana or something (laughs). Or taking some other kind of drug that helps them focus, I don't know what it is but it's not natural. It's weird. Honestly I suspect that a lot of people don't really understand music at all. Nowadays it's supposed to be this thing that everyone is expected to like, but I strongly suspect that people shouldn't all be expected to like music. I mean, not everyone plays poker, so why should everyone like music?
Right, right, do you think it maybe goes back to that importance you were talking about? It's almost like when you have these longer albums, which the CD has allowed by letting people put more material on one disc, music has forced its way into the realms of literature, or films...
Yeah, yeah, or that kind of importance music took on with the record album. This whole thing where people thought "Oh, I must be lacking something if I'm not into music..." I think for most people, music is kind of like white noise, and then some people really love it. It's just like sex, you know? Everybody is just supposed to like sex, the great motivating factor for everybody, but everyone knows someone who is sort of sexless, but they're shamed into not identifying as such because it's supposed to mean they're completely lacking, you know what I mean?
Everyone's different.
It's supposed to mean you're a sociopath, but really it's fine, you just don't like sex. It's totally cool. Like, I hate crispers, or something. And you know, there's all these classic sexless beings, from antiquity, but that's not acceptable now. Same with music, and that's why music is overused: it's misused, it's omnipresent, everywhere you go there's music. It's really an unfortunate situation because it makes music less precious...not that it should be precious, it shouldn't be precious, what I mean is when you hear it, it should be "this is awesome, I get to hear music." It shouldn't be at every gas station, being piped out constantly.
When you oversaturate something like that, it loses its value, like you were talking about before; music is this drug that impacts some people but not everyone is going to have that reaction and if you force it on everyone it becomes diminished as a result.
Exactly, totally, it's like the soma pills in Brave New World or something, they're just piping this gas in for everybody and then it becomes like it's nothing special.
I was going to ask how this fits in with your new project, this idea of music as the opiate for the masses. With the way the economy and politics is going right now, do you feel like your kind of music has become more important with its sense of thrift? Maybe it's going to take off in a sense, maybe more people are going to get back into that?
I think that a lot of people are going to go back to an '80s model, where people are just going to make music because they want to make music and there's not going to be this idea that you're going to be famous.
So kind of going back to the hardcore model, of music being your life and not something you expect to be successful at, or be able to make some sort of living from...
Yeah, exactly, that's why people make fun of record collectors. But the beauty of collecting anything really is that you realize the scope of the movement that produced it, all the people that were involved and almost none of them were heralded, really; only a tiny fraction of people are heralded. It gives you a real great sense of what you're missing when you're listening to the Rolling Stone history of rock 'n' roll, or VH1's history of rock and roll. You have this in-born expectation of being remembered, or that you need to be an innovator or important, or that you need to be the craziest guy who ever played the drums or something. But the more you listen to these old records, the more you explore music, the more you realize there's millions of records out there and they're almost all made by faceless nobodies.
You've been able to have a pretty decent level of success just making music on your own terms. With Nation of Ulysses and the Make-Up, those are bands that are still relatively well-known, and I feel like people still have this connection to them, but you guys never really went out of your way to make something out of it, or to lead it to success...
We always had a real lack of ambition (laughs). You always try to do your best, and I don't mean to make it sound like "the musician is just like a carpenter," but I think music groups in a sense have appropriated the identity of a street gang. There used to be these street gangs that were surrogate families. Maybe the reason there's so many groups is because it might have been a conspiracy, a government conspiracy to get people out of these gangs, because these gangs were dangerous, socially malignant, but they also had this political potential.
Some of these became things like the Black Panther Party or the Mafia, you know, so the groups are kind of an inversion of the street gang. They started as doo-wop groups, which were directly a result of street gangs, and then they turned into combos, rock combos, like the Beatles. The groups are also kind of the last vestiges of industry in these post-industrial countries. They're especially prevalent in countries like England, the USA, Germany, Sweden, Japan. They've kind of aped the corporate model, or at least the small business model. There's so many concerns for the group, the group is kind of a full time job, it's really hard to do it.
You've got to do all the marketing now...
Yeah, you've got to market, there's so many aspects that are exactly like the corporation. Like let's say in the '50s if you had a spark plug company. "Handy Spark Plugs." You had to make a logo, you had to think of a way to get it out there, and then you had to make the best spark plug. It's very similar to being in a group in terms of all the marketing and image and distribution and the economy of it. And then during the New Deal, which was kind of the advent of American fascism, was the consolidation of all industry. Now there's very little experience in America anymore of small businesses that produce things. America used to be tons of little businesses. Now there's a million groups, and the groups are kind of a collusion or collision of the small business model, the industrial revolution, and street gangs and it's weird, because they almost never produce any money.
And it's no longer feasible for a band to just tour and be able to succeed, they have to make themselves stand out from the millions of others doing that. In fact, in Seattle, we just had this band, Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band who, before anybody had heard their music or they'd recorded a single note, put these videos up on YouTube. They then got all this attention and got a headlining show and this huge storm of publicity before they'd recorded anything, and that's the model these days. You don't see bands doing what R.E.M. did, just touring the country nonstop, it seems like that has just disappeared.
Yeah, you're right, that's interesting. I mean, there's always kind of been that thing going on. Most of the big British groups, they never played any shows, like Frankie Goes to Hollywood. I don't even know if they were able to be a live band. They were just a series of t-shirts. So that's kind of always existed, except you used to have to have more capital. It's newer for Americans, Americans have always had a real sense of honest work. We're into the pioneer American workman myth, it's different from the English camp model. For Americans it's a little more upsetting or distasteful.
Going back to your more recent work with Chain and the Gang...on the touring model specifically, all your bands have had pretty dynamic live shows. You're really great about just bringing this energy. I saw this one video you had done with The Make-Up on like French TV. or something. It was hard to even tell what era the video had come from, you guys had this fantastic old Motown-style dynamic. Is this something you're still exploring with Chain and the Gang or is this a more stripped down experiment?
Well, you always want to excite people, or engage them. You always have to remember that you're sharing a space with people, it's not enough for them just to look at you, you have to engage them, it's like a conversation. I think it's important to try to be exciting. There are different ways to be exciting, you don't have to jump up and down. I mean, I've traditionally jumped up and down but... (laughs). But that might not be exciting, it's the way that you do it, and it changes often.
If I play a show, I always try to hang out at the show before and after the show, so I get a sense of what the context is. You don't want to put on the same show as the group before you, you want to react to the context. I think that's always my concern. Being on TV that's a whole other thing. Because stage acting, as we all know, is really different from film acting or TV acting, it requires a lot more subtlety. So if you're freaking out on video or TV, sometimes it could be the most exciting thing in the world but it might come off as overblown...
Or fake?
Yeah, gratuitous or something, ridiculous. Ridiculous is usually part of rock 'n' roll though, so it should be ridiculous.
With all the Dischord groups, it's almost like you grew up with this sense of urgency in your live shows. Every Dischord band had this incredible dynamic and it seems like it was pretty important to them. Is that maybe where that came from, just the DC scene in general, encouraging you to act out like that?
It's all the Bad Brains. Every band in DC knew the Bad Brains were the most dynamic live band. Rites of Spring, obviously Fugazi, Minor Threat, Void. And it's all really gnarly, physical, exciting. It's meant to be exciting. And I think a lot of times it really was. That's definitely the context we all came up in. And it's interesting because it's all like a process of unlearning to perform in another way. That's just second nature to people from that generation in DC, to be very physical. But like British people are continental, being cool, like there's this idea like why would I try too hard, it's not very cool.
Just strike a pose and leave it at that...
Right, like Jesus and Mary Chain, or Oasis, any of those groups that just kind of stand there. And that's cool too, that's just a whole other approach...because they're just much more focused on the record. That's the thing, Dischord and DC, punk, hardcore, it all came out of a context where there was a feeling that there was no access, and there was all this anger and just like "how do we get across?" We had to do it physically with our bodies. In England, they've always had access. Now bands in America feel like they have access. There's no longer any anger, no sense of a need to exert yourself because you can do it through YouTube or you can do it through the blogs, do you know what I mean?
Yeah, that makes sense.
I think that whole thing was just like making up for this sense of total alienation, isolation. Not to be to be too overwrought, but it was basically that that generation was the forgotten, nothing was marketed to it. Now you have the Jonas Brothers and things like that, but back then there was nothing for kids, nothing that represented kids. If you were a little kid in the '80s all the celebrities were middle aged.
And so there weren't as many people to identify with. But it's also interesting with Dischord because you guys just seemed to have this short-livedness, everyone just gave the impression that everything they did had the potential to be their last song. So there was this dynamic of "we don't know how much longer this is going to last" and as a result every person in that scene seems to have just been in so many different groups. Do you feel like that sense of "we might not even be here tomorrow" fueled some of that? Do you feel like any of that could come back today?
I think it was more about the localism, and the short attention spans of people. There wasn't ever a sense of "okay, now we're going to tour the world for 10 months and then come back." There wasn't this idea of careerism, there was no sense that you had to brand yourself. If you're not thinking in terms of a career then you're not worried about "oh, nobody's going to buy the next record if there's a different name." Most bands, the reason they stay together so long is that it sucks to start a new band, you have to find a fan base all over again, otherwise bands would break up all the time. Instead they go to counseling and stuff.
Like Metallica, right?
Yeah, because it's like "this is our career," it'd be like breaking up the corporation or the business. So you have to keep the business name, because everyone loves that brand of spark plugs. In the old days people weren't thinking in those terms, but also everything was so local that everyone got really bored really fast. And you still see that, local bands break up really fast because they play a couple shows and then everyone is like "the joke's over" so they start a new thing. A new joke. Not to belittle jokes, because jokes are really serious. Jokes are good.
So why put this album out on K now, since lately it has the identity of a home to more intimate singer-songwriters?
I've had a long relationship with K, since the very beginning really, since I started putting out music. The very first thing I put out was with them. It's more like I like working with K, but also Calvin (Johnson, founder of K) helped organize the recording session. So the songs were all made up...well, they weren't made up...but they were kind of arranged at the K studios. It was just a natural thing.
Calvin kind of has that interest in old things in general too, like their infatuation with the '50s, is that maybe where that familiarity came from, between the two of you?
Yeah, definitely. They're just into fun music, and urgency, and that tossed off idea I think. I don't want to put words in their mouth, because I don't really know, but yeah, that's my sense of things.
And that was a big part of punk in the beginning. Punk was in a competition, really, it was in a zeitgeist. There was a competition in the '70s between the '50s revival and punk and of course punk won out. But that was in the air, that sense of "we're about fun." That was what glam rock was about too. Let's just have fun because things are like Yes, they're so important now. Let's have something that's not important. But it is important, still.
Right, instead of reaching for that importance it kind of becomes important by virtue of being the opposite of that.
Yeah, it isn't lofty, it's just as important as your life.
by Morgan Davis