Eric Davidson
Introduction
Eric Davidson sings for the New Bomb Turks, writes for a number of music publications, puts on shows periodically, and is trying to start a small label called Perineum Recordings. Photo by Jim Thompson.
Interview
How have you seen punk rock change since you became involved with it?
Eric: Well, I was talking about this the other night with a friend. Not the exact same thing, but when we got involved, we formed as a band and punk rock was one of various musics we listened to, but after we got going and turned into a punk band, it wasn't really our goal, like "Let us now be a punk band." I was like that. I was listening to a lot of old, obscure American punk singles, like the Saints and the Ramones, some of the more raw, early stuff, and Jim was too, but overall, we all had our own ideas and we played and saw what happened, so as a whole, it comes down to how you define punk and what it means to you and all that. We lean toward the style of music we're into, what we call punk, which is, again, early Pagans and Dead Boys and Saints and Ramones and that stuff. I was talking the other day about that Slayer record that came out, you know, they did covers of punk songs. To me, a lot of that, like Verbal Abuse and D.I., I wouldn't really call those punk bands, musically. My ideal of punk was a little more humor involved and not such a heavy sound, but whatever. So that all comes down to what it sounds like, and then the politics of it that always get aligned to punk compared to about any other music is a whole 'nother story. I guess over the last few years, the word punk is used among mainstream press and music fans maybe a little more than it used to be. In the 80's, I remember going to an Aerosmith show and my friend bought me a ticket so I'd go to see them. This was probably 1987 or something, which isn't really that long ago. I mean, it is, but in the whole range of history, not that long. I was walking up the steps of the Coliseum in Cleveland and all I had on was jeans, a T-shirt and red Converse tennis shows. I remember hearing this guy yell out, "No fucking punkers allowed, faggot!" Something like that. I thought it was so bizarre that because I had red Converse tennis shoes on, this guy would use that and obviously in a very derogatory manner. That was the extent of what most people probably knew about punk and a lot of that was English-aligned, like crazy hair, crazy clothes, that's about it. Now, people in the mainstream actually talk about what the music is and they think it's like Green Day, Offspring, Rancid and that's fine, I think those are forms of punk but, again, not really the punk rock I think of musically. As far as the whole scene idea on a local, smaller level, I think sometimes people worry a little too much about it. I'm sorry if I go off too because it's complicated of course, it's hard to say quickly, but to back up a little bit and not go off too much, this whole thing about alternative music and how everybody says "Alternative!" I was sitting at a bar the other night and somebody's said "What kind of music do they play?" and the guy's like "Oh, you know, alternative." To me, it's more rock. Alanis Morrisette still uses guitars and drums and she screams, like Robert Plant did, you know? I think people aren't used to the fact that, since Top 40 radio isn't really rock-oriented anymore, it's more dance and rap, these are new rock bands but, at least for a while, they aren't really Top 40. They're Top 50 or maybe Top 100 or whatever and they're new rock bands. I think people worry so much, like "This is alternative and it's different and it's crazy," and it's because things change and people's attitudes change. They weren't calling Led Zeppelin an alternative to Little Richard in 1970. It's more of this music and it's sellable. It's still all crap. I mean, Alanis Morrisette and Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Jam, they all sound like Boston to me anyway, so I don't even understand why people even worry about all of that, like the alternative "movement" and all. They're just new bands. Green Day was poppy from the beginning, it doesn't really surprise me that eventually they would sell. It's just that most punk bands break up. Most bands become successful because they lasted more than three years and had some amount of marketability or were actually a good band in some way. Most punk bands break up after an album so that's why they remain cult bands and never sell anything and blah blah blah. With us, I don't feel we're making music any differently than we did when we started but I'm sure we'll be judged differently because we've lasted longer and now we're on a bigger label and everything else. As far as on a local level, there will always be changes and there will always be controversies like that, but there's always going to be some 15-year-old kid who wants to try to set up a show or wants to form a band or doesn't like the bands that come through town so he buys his own records of weirdo, out of town bands. That's always going to go on. I'm not trying to be overly optimistic about it, but people tend to get so quickly bitter and cynical, and I know about cynicism I'd like to think, so I'm not averse to cynicism, but I think people get way too far out of proportion, like "Now we won't have punk anymore! Punk won't be our music!" Punk, to me, is an attitude of going into music with a band and an energy and whatever comes out can always have that punk attitude. I think Prince has a little bit of a punk attitude in him and I think Brainiac does and I think Gaunt does. I think that attitude and spirit can survive any marketing changes in the mainstream. It seems a lot of zines and a lot of fans of independent rock and punk rock worry way too much about the mainstream. Maybe you should let it fuck off and let it be boring like it always has been and let it sell to who it wants to sell to. If you don't like Green Day anymore, if you honestly don't like the music, there are more than enough bands around to listen to, you have to search it out. I think what you were saying before, you want people to not have an excuse and to so many people it is an excuse because they want either other people in town to do it and if nobody is, they say the scene is dead, or they don't want to do it. They don't want to take the time because maybe, deep down and nothing against them, they don't really like music. They're probably doing it as an identity. They don't have an identity yet, they latched on to something, "Oh, this little club scene, this little all ages house or whatever, they brought me in as a friend, they talked to me, they gave me an identity." They latch on to that for a couple of years and then a couple of years later, the might be into something else. So they don't really want to go that extra yard, that extra ten yards or whatever to put on shows or start a zine or start their own band or try to stay optimistic about the one or two decent bands in the region. I know what you mean about that, everyone's always like, "Oh, the scene this and the scene that." People I know in Columbus who actually try to do something usually don't bitch that much about the scene because you have to worry about yourself first, I think, and maybe your little group of friends, make sure you feel like you're confident and you're okay with that and then worry about if some scene exists. You're not always going to have New York in the late 70's and London in the early 60's. It's not always going to be a huge city with tons of great artists all working at one time for a common goal. On your own level, you have to work for yourself and your friends sometimes and keep that going. People, probably outside of Columbus, talk about the Columbus scene, but if you actually live here, bands backtalk each other all the time. It took us a good three years before we could actually get steady gigs in town and get a lot of people out to see us, so all I worried about was our band and maybe Gaunt and a couple of others and tried to bring in out of town bands and try to keep it going.
Is it better now or worse than when you got involved?
Eric: I think I'm starting to see some things that are better. When we started playing out, around here there was a little scene of straight-edge kids and there was a little indie rock scene. We didn't really seem to fit in anywhere. We were sitting here saying "We like the Ramones," or the Saints, and nobody gave a fuck, or those "Killed By Death" compilations, all these old, obscure punk singles, and nobody really cared. That's fine, whatever. I didn't care and I liked them and that's what we went by. Then Teengenerate, they said they got the same thing in Japan, that nobody cares about this shit anymore. So what I'm seeing now though is I'm actually meeting people under the age of 35 who have heard of the Dead Boys or who have heard of the Pagans and that's because those bands didn't do much. The Pagans did a few singles, the Dead Boys did two albums, one which wasn't all that great. Most of these bands that are earmarked now as these roots punk bands, the Nervous Eaters and all these, half these bands [only] put out a few singles so of course nobody heard about them for a while. Now, through various compilations and all these different bands that are starting to cover the more obscure, I think crazier, more chaotic, fun, weird, early punk rock. I see that stuff finally getting around and I'll see people, younger kids and stuff, who actually like this stuff because you're so weaned on musicianship in this country. On the independent, underground level and in the mainstream, so many people think you have to play really well and you have to be a really good band and I'm meeting kids that don't care. They don't care if they're as good a player as this band or that band, all that stuff that I think punk rock is about, getting up onstage and playing and living a different lifestyle, not following the same old course. So I'm seeing a little bit of that happen. It's like any music. I worry sometimes it's going to become oversaturated, like rockabilly. I love rockabilly, original rockabilly I think is really wild, but if you come out today and play straight rockabilly, you're going to look silly. It doesn't have the same power. Time has passed and things have happened to music. If you come out and try to sound exactly like the Ramones, i.e. the Riverdales, you're going to look silly. You have to do your own spin on it and you probably have to do something different to it, but also maybe that time for punk rock based in rockabilly and some of the 60's pop group roots and the Stooges, maybe that is going to pass. I don't know. I'll find that out as I get older. Right now, I think there's a lot of fun bands around. I think it's like anything. It becomes a little well-known and it's not quite as offensive and strange as it was in the beginning. I still think Minor Threat is a really great band and really powerful music when you listen to it, but if a band today comes out, a bunch of 16-year-olds playing exactly like Minor Threat, it still could be cool, they could do a good job at it, but it may not have the same historical power because that time has come and gone. I'm not saying, "Now we all have to play industrial music," or you have to use electronics. I don't mean that because I think there are decent rockabilly bands, I've seen them, but there's always some twist to them and I know I'm giving you a really long-winded answer, but I think punk rock, overall, is probably about the same, because the really crazy, weirdo punk rock that I really get into and I consider influential will always have a little bit of weirdness to it. I mean, the Pagans are never going to sell to frat kids, no matter how much Green Day sells, no matter how huge Rancid gets. Certain bands are always going to be weird. They're not going to sell. There's something about certain people and certain sounds that are always going to hold, for at least as long as I'm going to live and probably longer, a certain weirdness. To me, the political or philosophical end of punk rock is trying to live a different lifestyle. Don't follow what everybody else does, don't follow what you're supposed to do in life and try not to be wasteful and have fun. Use the energy you have and don't fucking waste your youth because that's what punk rock was always about for me. I think punk rock's about the same. I don't know if it's gotten better or worse. That's a pretty loaded question.
Do you think there's anything wrong with punk?
Eric: Yeah, again, it's like rockabilly when it expanded to everything from the white southern hillbilly sound to the more city Black sound like Little Richard and all that, it was all rock 'n' roll, rockabilly, whatever. Then there were rules and by the 1970's, you had to have a big pompadour and pointy shoes and you were this revival act and that's what rockabilly was. It couldn't be anything else until the Cramps came along, or whatever, and bands like that can change those attitudes. I think that happened with punk. First it had to be all fast and short like the Ramones, then with Minor Threat it had to be super-serious and had to be connected to some solid scene and fanbase and constructed scene somewhere and that was boring because I think people in D.C. and L.A. in the 1980's looked down on Midwest towns and bands that came from the Midwest because they didn't have this huge, informed scene with tons of fanzines and everything else. I think that whole thing has taken over. So many people that argue about these topics in fanzines, a lot are from the two coasts and I've noticed through traveling and touring and everything, people in some place like a Frisco or a D.C., they have an elitist attitude, like "You're stupid in the Midwest and you don't know enough." I know growing up I lived 15 minutes outside of Cleveland, a pretty major city, and I had a hard time finding independent records or fanzines and that was outside of Cleveland. What about somebody who lives in Kansas or Montana? You can't expect them to know everything and have their entire punk rock philosophy worked out by the time they're 19. I think some of that attitude has to change a little bit, that elitism about who knows what and what the rules are, because, again, to make a very generic statement, punk was always about not having any rules and [when] you start setting up too many rules, it gets goofy. I know that the next logical step is to go, "See, with Maximum Rocknroll," but that's their magazine, they can do whatever they want. As an overall thought, I do think punk got a little too politicized and thrown into one certain genre and one certain ideology. I'm a very leftist guy politically, I agree with a lot of those ideologies and I'm not saying I think punk rock should be open to racists and fascists, but it should at least be open musically and socially. So many people get so mad, like "Oh, now frat guys like Green Day," and it's like, "What would you rather have them listen to?" The dream about music in my opinion was always to bring people together and get the mainstream to hear something different. Little Richard was weird first but 20 years later he was in beer commercials. Same with the Ramones. The Ramones are on beer commercials now. It's like, "Look, sorry to tell you, but eventually whatever your music is, sometime, at some point, it's going to be accepted probably." I don't fear that. It's not my little game, it's the whole world's. It ain't just my little band that I like or whatever. I guess I'd rather have frat guys listening to Green Day than Bon Jovi being big for another 20 years and I don't even like Green Day that much. Musically, they're okay, but I guess if some 15-year-old kid who had never heard of the goddamn Buzzcocks reads about them in a Green Day interview, it's better than nothing. A lot of kids don't have access to the shit that I did in Cleveland. I did get to see a lot of bands, I eventually found out where the record stores were in Cleveland and so I met people in bands, or the guy at Scat, he made me tapes of all this early Cleveland weird shit and old punk from L.A. and stuff. I was able to learn about that, but not everybody has that and I think you have to be tolerant and supportive of that person. I'm one to talk, I sit here every day bitching about what bands suck all the time, but that's an aesthetic [thing]. Overall, I'd like to think I'm supportive of people trying to get a band going. If the things that could be changed about punk would be to pull the reins in a little bit and not get so exact and dogmatic about the rules and keep a little more open mind about things. The whole argument about distribution, this world is so huge now and with the Internet and multi-national corporations and everything, it's next to impossible half the time to not have some huge corporation touching some arm of distribution or something somewhere. Yeah, on a local level, you can do it. I can go down the street to MusicAll, have them press my records and I can put them out, which I'm about to do. I'm doing a compilation. Eventually, sometimes, you're going to get stuck and you have to learn about it first and find out how to distribute and everything else. I very much agree with that. I think that's the good thing about an Epitaph and this trend in music, small people who aren't sitting back and saying "Well, I don't know how to do it," who are trying to figure out these alternative ways of getting records out and distributing them. I think that's cool. I'm definitely caught sometimes. Sometimes I want to decry the dogmatics of punk these days and then other times I totally agree with them. Overall, I think people should worry a little less about Green Day starting to make a bunch of money. Go listen to another band if you're that pissed off about it. Green Day will go away. Eventually they'll break up and the money will be dispersed here and there and people will trade in CDs and 10 years later you probably will have forgotten what the hell you were busting a blood vessel over.
What's good about punk?
Eric: The original idea, when punk does act open-minded and lets you do what you want to do. We've never been ones to have big mohawks and that thing, we've never been into that thing. We do what we want to do and I think that's the same thing as if you wanted to get a mohawk or whatever. I think what's good about punk too is musically sucking out all the bloated shit that I hated about my brother's records when I was growing up. My older brother's records seemed boring and long-winded and didn't connect to me and when you go to a punk club and the band is right there and they're singing about something that pisses them off rather than spangled trolls flying around in the sky or some shit that I was hearing growing up, you can relate to it more and then it makes music a bit demystified and that makes art demystified. You feel like you can be an artist and you don't feel pretentious saying that. I can make something other than an engine in a factory or something like that. I can go out and maybe make a piece of music or try to write a poem or try to do something different and have art be part of your life and not something that hovers above you. Punk is right down to earth and very gritty and angry and more like everyday life and I like that. I think music is probably the most perfect art form because you can't really touch it and grab it. It flies out as sound waves and then it's gone so it's the hardest to really pin down and explain and punk is the hardest and loudest and fastest and angriest so I like that. Politically, again, I'm a pretty leftist guy, I believe in most of the very generic things. You know, don't rape women, don't hang black people. Not to make light of it, I'm just saying your general anti-fascist politics that have been aligned with punk over the last 20 years, I'd pretty much agree with, and if you can slip those into the mainstream, if you can get a Green Day, guys who were probably listening to Def Leppard 10 years ago anyway, if you can get a band like that to move into a magazine and talk about a Buzzcocks or talk about "Hey kids out there, do what you want with your life and you'll be happy eventually if you do," that's cool. Actors can do that too, and directors and cartoonists and writers, so it's more of an attitude thing for me and not always the construct of punk rock.
How have you seen the crowds and people at shows change?
Eric: That's definitely a problem too because as things get more popular, there's definitely more fucking boneheads that come by and they're there because there's always people like that, who do things because it's popular and because they think it will make them popular so you get a bunch of fucking frat guys showing up at a show and they think, "Oh, you're supposed to mosh," and they end up stepping on someone's back or something. That is really annoying. At the same time, when we're at a show, sometimes I get really pissed and then I think, "Well, you know, those guys did pay their fucking money." No, they don't know the whole history of punk and underground music and everything, but whatever. They probably know things I don't. I don't like it and it annoys me, but at the same time, they paid their money. If they're being complete assholes and beating up on people, sure, kick them out. That sucks. Not everyone's like that. I'm sure a lot of kids in punk bands were your normal average joe like that, who was probably on his way to being a frat guy and then one day went to a punk show because he thought it would be goofy, "What the hell, let's go out and get drunk," and then maybe one out of every 50 of those kids might go, "Oh, it's fun music. These kids all seem to be doing whatever the fuck they want to do, that's cool." Most of the time, yeah, most people are going to be jerks. Most people in this country are going to want to make money and step on everybody to get ahead, but there is maybe one out of 50, hopefully, that will go to a punk show and get something out of it. So yeah, as punk gets bigger and more popular, it's definitely annoying. Things have changed a little bit. We've been around six years now, all through this whole whatever you want to call it, punk resurgence or whatever. I'm sure we don't see the change in the crowd as much as Green Day, but they're on a much bigger level. You definitely see a little more of the bonehead guys, but I saw that when I saw Black Flag in fucking 1988, so I don't know. Yeah, crowds have gotten a little bit nastier and now, moshing, they use it in car radio ads, "Turn your car into a mosh pit." It's like that's not even weird anymore, like "Rules to Moshing" in Good Housekeeping. "When your kid goes to a show where there'll be 'moshing'," in quotes. It's become so commonplace that it's in magazines like that. I know the immediate reaction is "Boy, that sucks," but I think a little deeper, to me, that's progress. I don't want violence, but it used to be you had to be all cool at a rock show. Now, it's cool to be a goofball. I think that's what Iggy Pop was trying to say 30 fucking years ago. Maybe the chickens are coming home to roost, you know? A lot of what punk was about was violence too. I'll admit it. I don't like it, but I'm sure that I whip up violent energy in certain people. I can't have a computer check at the door for every single show and make sure violent people don't come in and I'm sure that I raise that Hell sometimes and I'll have to answer for it if anybody gets hurt. That's okay, because a large portion of the music I've listened to over the years was about violence, from the Stones to the fucking Dead Boys and to today, whatever band I'm listening to now. There's definitely violence in there and it's going to be exacerbated when bonehead guys come in. If you find these old articles, punk has always had a really weird, macho edge to it. I've always tried to avoid that. I try on stage, with the energy and everything, I also try to project certain androgyny and not always be super-macho. I try to be fun with it and goofy and kiss all sorts of people and be strange and make sure people don't think this is all just Henry Rollins up there flexing his muscles. Sorry. I'm really going off. My problem is I think I go off so much and people say "Oh, you don't even know what you think and you're just skirting the issue," and all that, but I think on this level, these questions are important and they're not easy, one line answers and that's a problem too because you read a lot of zines and kids have a two or three sentence paragraph about what punk is and it's like, "Wait a minute." I would like to think it's a little deeper than that. You don't have to be fucking T.S. Eliot about it and spend 40 years trying to write three different poems on it or something, but you should think a little more about it and realize there's a big fucking world out there and lots of people with different opinions on it.
Do you see any problems with the way people act at shows?
Eric: Yeah, again, an inherent quality of the music is that there's an energy, a certain violent energy so it's hard to blame people. What you see now, it's more like old school rock shows. You go to see shows and I'd like to think I give as much credence to the first two or three bands as the last band, the headliner or whatever you want to call them. I see now the more average joe type guys going in who have only heard of a Green Day, who've only heard of a Supersuckers, they're goofing off or no one's showing up until the main band and it's turning into the whole 70's thing again, like who's the main band? I don't like that. If you're a big punk fan, get there when all the fucking bands are on. At least try to see a little bit of each. I even notice that among punk fans too or "alternative" music fans, whatever. Sometimes when small bars are starting to get bouncers too, I think they can be too rough, like Polaris which is this big outdoor amphitheater in Columbus, they recently had a big training session. They brought in this guy who trains bouncers on how to deal with alternative rock act crowds. This guy had a three day seminar of hugging and kissing and films showing how to gently approach these people and be their friend and not have an affront to them and I think it's probably a really good idea because the bouncers were real assholes at Polaris during Lollapalooza and crap like that. I think that's getting a little better. The only problems we really run into are the same old problems I've always run into and probably my kids will. Drunken frat guys. We drink a lot too, but I try not to be violent when I'm drunk. Just last Saturday I got really loaded and ended up bawling my eyes out for some reason I really don't remember.
What can we do to make the scene better?
Eric: I think locally, so many people have their little cliques that it's like high school. This is the indie rock clique and that's the little anarchist group clique and that's the little record store workers' clique. I try to be open to everybody. If that band is full of a bunch of guys you know you wouldn't normally hang out with, go check them out anyway and see what they're like. Maybe they have something to offer. Try to pick up the zines in town if there are any. See what people are saying in zines and on your own, there are millions of things you can do. You can finish college and concentrate on that, you can start a zine, you can start a band. You can make mix tapes for friends and try to spread music you think is good, and also try to find a place in town where you can put on shows and where you're fair to bands because a lot of kids try to put on shows and either they get their little clique where they keep booking the same two or three local bands or if a band comes into town, they don't know what to do with them. They think they can say, "Okay, can you give us 50 bucks for the beer?" Something like that. You have to understand where bands are coming from when they're touring. We haven't had that much trouble with it, we've been pretty lucky, but I know in town here I see some bands come through and shows aren't promoted. If you're going to do a show, put up fliers. It's not that hard. Hand them out to friends if you're not allowed to put them up in your town. Call up the local papers, maybe you can get in touch with the music writers and say, "Hey, would you mind throwing in a mention of this?" There's a little place in town here, the Neil House, in fact, I'm going to see the Makeup there. They're really great live, it's three of the guys who used to be in Nation of Ulysses. They're playing at the Neil House and the Neil House is a good idea, these guys are trying to put on shows, but it's such a little clique. When you walk in, it's almost the same feeling I get at a frat party. People look at what clothes you're wearing or what age you are or if you're drinking or not. I want to see a band, but also I understand that the whole history of music is that young people want to have a place they can call their own and feel like they're around their own kind of people, so that's cool. Whatever. But [the Neil House] never puts up fliers, you never know when the show is or where it's at. To me, the Makeup is such a good band, I wish a lot of people could see them. It was funny, last year, I write for a local paper every once in a while, and I did a short little column about the Neil House, a really short thing, I forget what band it was, I said, "It was a good show, this and that." I reviewed the show and then I said, "Hopefully the Neil House will ditch the country club attitude and put up some fliers next time and get some people out to see them." That was a little snotty-worded, but all I meant was that you can't keep it your own little club in my opinion. Music is a communal thing. That is my opinion, but it's a natural thing. Then they put up fliers on High Street saying "Fuck Eric Davidson" and all this stuff. Sure enough, their very next show, they started putting up fliers. Now I'm not saying that was because of me, but I think it's because some of the bands were complaining, like "Man, we didn't see any fliers," or "It's cool that you're doing shows, but you have to fucking try to do something with them." So that's what you can do to help out on a local level. If you know a friend who's putting on a show and he doesn't have the time or money or inclination to put up fliers, make some yourself. Ask him. Say "Hey, is it cool if I make some fliers?" It's fun actually. I never knew anything about layout or design or art and after a few years, it was fun to learn how to do everything and make fliers and stuff. Other than that, again, if you want to form a band, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid if you can play or not. Support the groups in town that seem honest. There's a lot of collectives that come and go through Columbus that rip off people or leave town or don't really do anything or they're full of a bunch of junkies or people doing acid all the time. Find a collective in town that's really doing something, that really seems they have their shit together and not [use it] as an excuse to sit around and get loaded or something which is pretty much what our band is for us, an excuse to sit around and get loaded. I should talk. Anyway, that's all I do. My girlfriend is like, "Man, I can't believe you. You're in this band and you've been around for a while. You have nothing to prove here. I can't believe you still go see bands and you still go see every local band that you can." I'm like, "Well of course I do. Why wouldn't I?" That's the way I've always done it before. I like seeing bands and I always think there's somebody who could come along and do something I haven't seen before, or at least do something really well. I've seen bands in this town, they get a split single out and their heads get really big. I think a lot of people in the independent and punk scene are as susceptible to everything that all Americans are susceptible to. We're all raised here in America and the minute a little bit of fame or notoriety comes into some people's heads, they start thinking they're really cool or they're the king shit of the town. You can never think that. You always have to keep an attitude of you're a worker, trying to help out. At least, that's the way I look at it. I guess I can't speak for our whole band which is probably what you should put in there too, that this is just Eric really blurting off after drinking a lot of Coca Cola. I never understood that. Lots of people tell me, "I don't know why you even go out, people fuck with you." This is a small town, people give you shit. They give you shit when you're the goofy new band and if you have any success, they give you shit for that. It's like a medium fish in a small pond, and I'm like, "Well, I'm not going to give up going out." What the fuck? I like going out. I like seeing bands. There's Internet stuff you can do if you live in the middle of fucking nowhere where are there are no clubs and there's not a goddamn thing to do, if you've got a computer which, again, most people don't. As huge as computers are these days, most people I know still don't own one. If you do or you know somebody who does or there's one at the local library, maybe hop on the Internet every once in a while. It's hard man. When you tour out in the middle of fucking Kansas, you're lucky if you don't get your ass kicked, much less have 12 people come out and watch a punk band. This is a big fucking country filled with a lot of racist, backwards people who don't give a fuck about anything you and I are talking about right now. That's most of the people who politicians and Kmart are trying to sell to, so we're definitely on the fringes.
