Summer Revisited: Antiproduct at Wickerman 2004

A: Us, Kiss, Abba, Slayer, and Boyzone, so we could all beat them up.

Get rid of them once and for all.

Not really I just think that we’re a combo of Kiss and Abba with bits of and Slayer thrown in there. But I don’t like to point it out, where I steal all the tunes from. Kiss. Slayer. Abba. Throw them in a big flesh-grinder thing and you get us.

Oh, Cheap Trick, Ministry...

They should because they’re still plugging and they’re still awesome.

Ministry is a band I grew up with and definitely sort of…being from Chicago and in the 80’s when they were first coming out, that’s sorta the thing that happened with how ‘Industrial’ originated. You can’t include Einsturzende Neubauten and Killing Joke, stuff like that, but the Industrial that broke through, it was made popular in Chicago. So in 1992 when Trent Reznor decided that he invented it, we were already like ‘What about Al Jourgensen and Ministry? We’ve been listening to this shit for 6 years!’

You. I know you need the dough.

My band. Playing in front of people that enjoy the spectacle and the lack of inhibition that I think is crucial to truly appreciate where Antiproduct is coming from. Because frankly in world of bullshit and lies where nothing is important and the value of the individual becomes less and less essential towards the propagation of the species, real music, about the connection of people and individuals, because I see myself and I don’t hold myself in a loftier position that anyone who comes to see us is that I do think that the need for ego’s in musicians has come and gone. It’s actually Rock’N’Roll sort of, being a Shakespearean art-from if you will, is one of the last places where it’s not whored out by the corporations where people can actually be different colours, different sizes, and different economic backgrounds and come together as one. Having said that, I guess fisting would make my world go faster.

The first stuff I totally mean, the last stuff, I usually have to pay for.

I do think we’re on our own little quixotic quest of finding commonality with people. And we might as well fucking get along as individuals because our politicians, the corporations, and all of that have no interest in us beyond the bodies we can throw in front of ammunition, the money we can work to spend on their clone bands, one after the other, so, we don’t want anything to do with that.

Rubber gloves. It’s like Caligula back there. I dress up like Helen Mirren.

When we started the riot at ‘The Gods of Milan’ I liked that. We played this metal festival with a bunch of bands; I don’t wanna be weird but….

No, not even that good.

Exactly. Yeah, that vibe. But don’t get me wrong, I do respect Doro Pesch because anyone that gets on fucking stage is kinda my hero anyway, but, it was in Italy and we decide to play our pop set. Just playing pop songs, just to see what would happen, and it was going out live on TV. Maybe they’d just lost a soccer game to Croatia and maybe that was the first thing I said and that ‘your aim sucks and that’s why you lost a soccer game’ so I’m at that for 45 minutes. And then I jumped into the crowd at the end of the gig and then I think after everybody ran away. The onslaught of 150 guys with balled fists just looking to punch my eyes out! The weird stupid thing about that is that the subsequent month, the label that puts us out in Italy sold out of the album and it wasn’t a good performance, it was hostile, but people like that kinda shit. The funny thing was, the amount of people who came up to me after the gig, and I was doing anything to encourage that kinda thing obviously, the amount of people that said in broken English ‘you know, I hated you’re fucking guts and I wanted to kill you, but now that I’ve seen four bands, you guys were my favourite band of the day, I really had a good time!’ And that’s what it was about. We were gonna bond one way or the other and we’re not gonna pretend that we’re heavier than Slayer and plus, it’s just fun to piss people off. It’s not like just deliberately trying to piss people off as much as it is getting them to challenge their own preconceptions of how things should be done. Sometimes you’ve gotta slap ‘em in the face to make them aware of it.

Read? TV guide. The Sun. Just whatever fascinates me at the time. Right now I’m reading this thing by Marshall Mcluhan called Understanding Media.

That’s the one. That fucking guy was so far ahead of his time that 40 years ago, and it’s one of the most resounding parts of the book, is that he was talking about the problem with the human condition was the self amputation that we’re doing, particularly by having technology replace what our arms and legs and just what everything’s for. There’s one part in it where he talks about how the biggest mistake mankind has made is how it’s put its central nervous system outside of it’s body. Now this was before the computer explosion. Anybody that reads this will know that if you’re computer crashes, you no longer have a life, whereas before you had a computer, you did have a life. Mobile phone goes down, you have no friends. You’re just out of the loop.

Watching the girls change. Watching the girls change for gigs.

The periods. They synchronise. It’s a nightmare. Me and Simon (Gonk, the drummer), when it happens we’re just like ‘don’t talk to any of them.’

And then it just bounces back and forth.

Hopefully these because I’m gonna get thirsty later.

Depends on your buzz. If you’ve been awake for 3 days, you better get some sleep. I don’t think there’s any hard and fast rules with how you should behave at festivals, like some people here are definitely in their 40’s and 50’s, and I they will probably be taking me more drugs than me.

Do you mean a film I would like or a film I would recommend? Because I like dumb shit.

I wanna go with Cannibal Holocaust. Or Zombie Holocaust. But I don’t like that as much as Cannibal Holocaust. It’s pretty intense, but you don’t get the real version over here, you get the edited version. The real version is fucking gnarly!

The first thing I’d do before sex, drugs, and Rock’n’Roll is build myself a studio. 2^nd million, ah, buy something off of Gene Simmons.

Yeah, I’d wear them and turn them into cut-offs.

Meeting people and the camaraderie of a bunch of divergent humans that have nothing in common except that they’re all in one place at one time and they’re all gonna have a party. I view myself as a service provider and my service is to provide something good and do my job properly. And if I’m not able to accomplish that, I feel really bad about myself because I view the people out there as my boss and the fact that I get to tour and play in different countries and that I’ve got the best band in the world that’s willing to make it’s own rules up, and that people actually show to watch us do our thing keeps me really really humble because they could go see somebody else. Frankly, I know enough guys in other bands that are total dicks and ego-maniacs that feel that they’re owed something and quite frankly I don’t have time for them, and I’d name names but it’d make me as shitty as they are.

When you end up sleeping in your own puke. That’s one of the down sides.

I’d go for Jamaica frankly. In the States you get more of the creature comforts and you get a spoiled society. That’s what I grew up with and that’s what I’m used to. In the UK, you’re immediate gratification needs are tended to. I like seeing movies at 11.30 at night, I like getting booze at 2 o’clock in the morning and I like being able to call up Pinkdot and say ‘hey, can you bring me 5 packs of cigarettes’ and they will at 5 o’clock in the morning for 3 dollars a pack. It’s easier, but it’s a waste of money. I’ve gotta tell you, this country itself, I have no fondness for England, but there are large numbers of people there that I really enjoy their company, but the way the country is run is just a fucking joke. The whole repression thing drives me up the wall. The further North you go, the cooler people are, and I have not met one asshole here yet. In London, within 5 minutes, there’s somebody who wants to get in your way. In as much as I’m from Chicago, and it’s working class and we haven’t lost the ‘yeah, well, whatever’ thing so I think that’s why I resonate with people up North and get on with them so well because it is a different headspace. Some days it’s like ‘Look, you wanna be living in New York, but you’re stuck in London, so don’t take it out on me!’ I hate London. That’s partly why we tour so much, it’s just to get the fuck out of London. Repressed. I would definitely move to Newcastle, but I’ve gotta think about the band first. Whenever we come up North, there are these great places, just real cheap…

Describe the Wickerman Festival in 10 words.

Friendly, wasted, fire, toilet, (walking up to a surprisingly beautiful security guard), blue, hair, gorgeous, fingernails, walkie-talkie.

www.thewickermanfestival.co.uk