Another band Conversations With Punx loves!! Peter Pants! (peep the interview/listen to PP! Click link below)
Conversations With Punx loves WAX WITCHES!
MY NAME IS ALEX WALL and I make music that you might call Brat Punk. I first came to music when I got the Men In Black Soundtrack, that’s when I started liking music. I like the music of Black Flag ’cause it’s energetic raw punk and Thee Oh Sees ’cause they are pretty much the best live band around at the moment.
continued here…/listen to Wax Witches too! :)
![In celebration of love, here are some thoughts on the subject from punk rockers I’ve chatted to over the years (mostly) taken from my
Conversations With Punx project.
“Maintaining a healthy self-image and really loving yourself is something that’s really important to me. People let life get to them too much and they get beaten down by it. They become cynical and jaded. It’s really important for me not to become like that. When I look back and say I want to love myself, it’s not because I’m running from my past, it’s because I’m learning to accept who I am with flaws. It is really hard to do sometimes in life if you weren’t raised that way. I wasn’t raised to speak up about anything or express anything that was upsetting. It was a quiet inner life. Feeling that my life is big and that I love it, is a big accomplishment.” Exene Cervenka, X
“Happiness is freedom. To be free in this life is very hard. You get moments of happiness. When you feel a triumph, that’s happiness and when you have the purity that’s around a little child and that mother-child unconditional love, that’s happiness.” Ari Up, The Slits
“It [love] is real important. It’s one of those things kind of like religion in a way: it fuels you when you don’t have it and it fuels you when you do have it. It’s a really cool thing. I’ve always just been built that way. I’ve always enjoyed having that connection with someone. It’s important to me as a person and the type of person that I am. I really enjoy having someone to pour all of my energies and emotion into. It’s awesome to have the respect from someone else and to have the respect in someone else.” Matt Caughthran, The Bronx
“I always wanted to have that feeling back of being a wide eyed kid looking at the trees, the sky or my mother. It sounds simple but it’s not. Part of the whole quest is to find a place within you that is comfortable and acknowledge that everything is connected. Whatever you feel that brings you closer to that place of pure love or consciousness, that’s what it’s about.” Robert Ehrenbrand, Boysetsfire
“I’m not going to get into all the hippie dippy shit but I love the animals and nature. My house – where I’ve moved from – if you walk out the door and turn right you go towards all the bars where all the bands play. Everyone jokes, “Tim always turns left towards the river. When everyone else goes out to go to shows he’s got a twelve pack of beer and is headed to the river.” [Laughs] That’s where I fall asleep.” Tim Barry, Avail
For more: Conversations With Bianca
Art by Jhonny Russell](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3uhjtKfR21qcytrdo1_250.jpg)
In celebration of love, here are some thoughts on the subject from punk rockers I’ve chatted to over the years (mostly) taken from my
Conversations With Punx project.
“Maintaining a healthy self-image and really loving yourself is something that’s really important to me. People let life get to them too much and they get beaten down by it. They become cynical and jaded. It’s really important for me not to become like that. When I look back and say I want to love myself, it’s not because I’m running from my past, it’s because I’m learning to accept who I am with flaws. It is really hard to do sometimes in life if you weren’t raised that way. I wasn’t raised to speak up about anything or express anything that was upsetting. It was a quiet inner life. Feeling that my life is big and that I love it, is a big accomplishment.” Exene Cervenka, X
“Happiness is freedom. To be free in this life is very hard. You get moments of happiness. When you feel a triumph, that’s happiness and when you have the purity that’s around a little child and that mother-child unconditional love, that’s happiness.” Ari Up, The Slits
“It [love] is real important. It’s one of those things kind of like religion in a way: it fuels you when you don’t have it and it fuels you when you do have it. It’s a really cool thing. I’ve always just been built that way. I’ve always enjoyed having that connection with someone. It’s important to me as a person and the type of person that I am. I really enjoy having someone to pour all of my energies and emotion into. It’s awesome to have the respect from someone else and to have the respect in someone else.” Matt Caughthran, The Bronx
“I always wanted to have that feeling back of being a wide eyed kid looking at the trees, the sky or my mother. It sounds simple but it’s not. Part of the whole quest is to find a place within you that is comfortable and acknowledge that everything is connected. Whatever you feel that brings you closer to that place of pure love or consciousness, that’s what it’s about.” Robert Ehrenbrand, Boysetsfire
“I’m not going to get into all the hippie dippy shit but I love the animals and nature. My house – where I’ve moved from – if you walk out the door and turn right you go towards all the bars where all the bands play. Everyone jokes, “Tim always turns left towards the river. When everyone else goes out to go to shows he’s got a twelve pack of beer and is headed to the river.” [Laughs] That’s where I fall asleep.” Tim Barry, Avail
For more: Conversations With Bianca
Art by Jhonny Russell
Conversations With Punx #7 ‘Gratitude’ preview:
LORD EZEC: …If you don’t believe in yourself, who the hell will? …I do everything at 110%. I am like a pit-bull; I can’t do it half assed. Got to go with all heart and balls! There is always someone younger than you, smarter than you, better looking than you and more talented than you who is willing to sell their soul to take your place! You can’t let them take your ground. You’ve got to fight for what is yours and guard it with dear life. You’ve also got to understand that it is not only about you, your fans are the reason why you are where you are so you got to be cool to them. Also remember where you came from. That is why I always tell people I am from Queens!
Ezec photo by Estevan Oriol.
For more info go to: Conversations With Bianca
Conversations With Punx #7 ‘Gratitude’ preview:
BRAD WARNER: When someone asked the guitarist from The Cramps – Poison Ivy – if she had some advice for girls wanting to play the guitar she said: Give up, don’t even try. That comes to mind. There are things in the so-called spiritual world and religion that are worthwhile. You shouldn’t just reject everything straightaway just because it seems religious. It’s more to the point of just staying true to you. A lot of the problem is that people just fall into the same patterns, like how the punk rock way of dressing became just a uniform in the same way that everybody else has to have Louis Vuitton bags or whatever the trend is. When everyone in the punk scene has to have a leather jacket, exactly the right leather jacket, it kind of loses its meaning at that point.
Brad photo by Svetlana Dekic.
For more info go to: Conversations With Bianca
![Conversations With Punx #7 ‘Gratitude’ preview:
BEN WEASEL: …I had a little revelation when I came home from Baltimore and I knew a door was closing. I knew that it didn’t have anything to do with me in a sense. For years I sat around and had these ideas, almost these revenge fantasies about how I leave music and I’ll make a big announcement and I’ll walk off into the sunset and tell everyone to fuck off! That is like my happiest fantasy [laughs]. That’s not what this was though; a door was closing and one of the things I realised is that, even though this part of my life is pretty much over, it’s not necessarily completely over. I don’t have to close the door completely. I don’t have to go anywhere. I can continue to work with and ideally mentor young bands, which I enjoy doing, and if one day an opportunity comes up to play a set, I’ll go do that. If an opportunity comes up and I can tape some of my songs I have, then sure, assuming I have the time. It’s not a matter of leaving it behind, it’s about leaving behind my attachments to all that. You don’t have to leave music or the scene behind you just leave your attachments to it. Once you do that ironically, you’ll enjoy it more.
Ben photo by Marc Gartner.
For more info go to: Conversations With Bianca](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3uh1qMwUr1qcytrdo1_250.jpg)
Conversations With Punx #7 ‘Gratitude’ preview:
BEN WEASEL: …I had a little revelation when I came home from Baltimore and I knew a door was closing. I knew that it didn’t have anything to do with me in a sense. For years I sat around and had these ideas, almost these revenge fantasies about how I leave music and I’ll make a big announcement and I’ll walk off into the sunset and tell everyone to fuck off! That is like my happiest fantasy [laughs]. That’s not what this was though; a door was closing and one of the things I realised is that, even though this part of my life is pretty much over, it’s not necessarily completely over. I don’t have to close the door completely. I don’t have to go anywhere. I can continue to work with and ideally mentor young bands, which I enjoy doing, and if one day an opportunity comes up to play a set, I’ll go do that. If an opportunity comes up and I can tape some of my songs I have, then sure, assuming I have the time. It’s not a matter of leaving it behind, it’s about leaving behind my attachments to all that. You don’t have to leave music or the scene behind you just leave your attachments to it. Once you do that ironically, you’ll enjoy it more.
Ben photo by Marc Gartner.
For more info go to: Conversations With Bianca
Conversations With Punx #7 ‘Gratitude’ preview:
DUANE PETERS: …Religion is all about fear. Spirituality is all about yourself and tapping into something else that’s bigger than you that’s maybe running the show. Maybe not just one thing but an element of things—you can tap into good shit or you can tap into negative shit.
The word ‘spirituality’ only makes me think ‘hippie’ because of the way I was bought up. In the early punk rock days it was against the law to be spiritual so you never did it. You ran off fear, ego and through battling this that and the other and not dying. You came to the conclusion—if your brain is still working by the time you get to the conclusion—that maybe something else is running the show. Maybe I can tap into some of that. Maybe it’ll help me lighten up. Maybe it’ll help me find something. Maybe it will help me get out of this fear running the show and ego.
COREY PARKS: I’m about nine years off from Duane. He’s a ‘Kennedy era’ kid and I’m more of a Baptist upbringing, the Rapture and a lot of hell, fire and damnation, the devil.
DP: My grandpa was a Baptist minister. There’s all this heavy religion on one side of my family and the other side are cool.
CP: I was born and raised in Southern California in the 70s. My parents were hippies and the only church my mum took us to was self-realisation fellowship, meditation class and the whole concept of there being a power greater than myself. It’s a little bit closer to what I’ve come to believe as an adult. It was a real positive thing. ‘Spirituality’ was a word that I always associated with God not religion that was always too scary and weird to me… like the Revelation, that was all such weird science fiction.
For more info go to: Conversations With Bianca
Conversations With Punx #7 is done!!
The issue features: Duane Peters & Corey Parks, Franklin Rhi, Ben Weasel, Russ Rankin, Brad Warner and Lord Ezec (snippets from the chats below). CWP #7 comes in a variety of (200gsm cardboard) covers including purple, blue and green, featuring heart cut-outs in its design and a decorative lace feature. I’ve also handwritten the introduction in every single zine!
For more info go to: Conversations With Bianca
Punks On Vegetarianism & Veganism: Ian MacKaye, John Joseph, Joan Jett, Mike Ness, Matt Skiba + more!
I’ve been a vegetarian for 12+ years. Since I was young I never really liked eating other animals. For me, it’s something that always felt kind of foreign and awkward to me. When my family would have steak and vegetables for dinner I (more often than not) would have a simple plate of veggies. I didn’t even really try things like roast chicken, lamb or beef until I was around 14; I didn’t eat seafood either. It wasn’t until my late teens that I started to have any idea about the concept of a vegetarian or vegan diet. As silly as it may sound, I didn’t know that it was even an option for me.
I started hanging out with one of my punk friends and his family who were all vegetarian and I was slowly introduced to a whole new way of eating that felt completely natural to me.
(Read more… also features videos of Ian MacKaye, Roger Miret, John Joseph & more talking about their experiences)
Japanther’s Ian Vanek: “I don’t make art to be popular or seen, I make it because my hands have to, otherwise I’ll extinguish my own life”
(A preview from our chat for Conversations With Punx - click link to read)
