Fucked Up Interview

Interview by: Tommy H. Perkins
Big Wheel Staff Writer

This interview was conducted by Tommy Perkins with Jonah and Damien of Fucked Up downstairs at the Heirloom Arts Theatre in Danbury, CT. All photos by David Rohlfing.

THP: How did playing on MTV go compared to the first time?

DAMIEN: it wasn’t as fun as the first time. It was super weird, and they cut us after one song and now they’re threatening to sue us.

THP: Did they give you a damage estimate? I know the last time was $2,000.

DAMIEN: I heard it was $6,000 but I don’t buy that because all that was destroyed was the ceiling and some graffiti on the walls and stuff.

THP: Didn’t they say they wouldn’t do [another live Fucked Up performance] after the first time?

DAMIEN: No, they kinda said they wouldn’t and as soon as we told people “MTV said we were banned” they were like “Oh, no you’re not!” And I’ve been on MTV a lot just as a guy who talks since then, and this time they were like “Yeah, you guys, be crazy?” and we were like “really?” and they said “Yeah, be CRAZY!”

JONAH: They did say “Don’t bleed. They told him (points to Damien) not to bleed.”

THP: Did you bleed?

DAMIEN: No. Actually, that’s not true. I bled from here (indicates back of hand), but the only other thing was some kid was bleeding because somebody threw a mirror into his head. So, I guess, a mirror got broken too.

JONAH: Maybe blood is what causes all the money damage. Because they have to call in-

DAMIEN: They have to call in detox and clean up.

JONAH: The kid [who bled] was under eighteen also.

DAMIEN: They gave him money to get a ride to the hospital and he just walked to the hospital and kept the money. So, yeah, the whole day they were coming in the dressing room or green room or whatever and saying “Yeah, so be crazy. We want to get a new bathroom, smash this bathroom up.” So we did.Last time they were mad when we left and I thought “This is bad but not that bad” This time though I actually thought “They might call the cops on us.” Timmy Hefner was with us and he just ran out of there like “I gotta go” because they called the cops.

THP: How many people were there?

DAMIEN: Not that many people.

JONAH: We played in a room that was much smaller than this.

DAMIEN: There were 175 people there. I guess that’s a lot. There were only about 40 people going nuts and trying to get into the bathroom. The big problems were the motorcycle, which was blocking the entrance, a huge mistake.

THP: You guys brought that, right?

DAMIEN: Yeah. I didn’t want to.

JONAH: We were silly enough that we figured it wouldn’t get so hairy, that having a motorcycle in the bathroom-

DAMIEN: MTV kept saying “We’re going to allow people in the bathroom.

JONAH: And I think if they had let people in the bathroom, without a barricade preventing people from getting in, shit wouldn’t have gotten as fucked up.

DAMIEN: They put a barricade in with no security guards manning it so kids just toppled the barricade and climbed in. Then the motorcycle got knocked over and the gas started spilling on the floor and then kids grabbed the mirrors of the wall.

JONAH: There were cans of spray paint brought in-

DAMIEN: Oh yeah, and they thought I was going to…I brought in lighter fluid. My original plan was to fill the sink with lighter fluid and light it on fire so it would be a big fireball and MTV is now convinced that we were going light the motorcycle on fire and blow it up, which would have killed…everybody. It would have killed everyone, so obviously that wasn’t part of the plan.

JONAH: The motorcycle was only in there because, have you ever seen Class of 1984? We figured this would be a great time to recreate something from that movie- spray painting on the walls, people kind-of dressed up and there was a motorcycle

DAMIEN: Ben was wearing makeup like the main character

JONAH: Yeah, we had him posing on the motorbike, smoking cigarettes, and there’s that bear/skinhead dude. But, of course, it doesn’t go down that way.

DAMIEN: It took a really bad turn.

JONAH: A really bad turn. There’s a lot of remorse from us because our friend’s bike got trashed, and also this kid, Warren, got his face blasted open, but everybody survived. The guy whose bike it was rode it home.

DAMIEN: He said there was like fifty dollars worth of damage by the time he has to replace all the parts.

JONAH: So that was MTV 2008.

THP: You just got back from Europe, right?

DAMIEN: Pretty Much.

THP: Pretty much?

DAMIEN: The whole summer we’ve kind of been going back and fourth.

THP: How was that? That was your second time in Europe?

DAMIEN: It was our tenth if you count just going to England, and it was, I guess, their [the rest of FU] third time in Europe proper, and my second time in Europe proper.

JONAH: it was a much different experience though. We’re going on a European tour in a couple of weeks, for actually a significant period of time, going city to city, whereas that tour was a really big first for us. We did a lot of the festival, mainstream rock festivals and alternative festivals,

DAMIEN: and one hardcore fest.

JONAH: and one noise rock fest.

THP: Where was the Hardcore festival?

DAMIEN and JONAH: Belgium.

JONAH: Where the Germans first used mustard gas in World War I.

DAMIEN: Imagine how great the bands were.

JONAH: The best band was Skarhead.

DAMIEN: Skarhead were amazing. Legit amazing. But, the rest of the bands were like “Do you like Madball? Well, here’s a sub-European-Madball.” But it was a fun show, super muddy.

JONAH: Yeah, it poured rain. It was somewhere between Lollapalooza and Golipoli (?)

THP: Was anyone throwing mud?

JONAH: Yeah, this is going to turn into a series of anecdotes, but talk about making the best of a potentially bad situation. It looked the set of like Black Adder in there, blood and wood and people throwing mud, and Ben and Mike are playing spin the bottle with the audience, but then when the bottle went to someone they were like “You and the person next to you, you two kiss.” And some people did.

DAMIEN: Ben kissed some girls.

JONAH: Mike…is chicken. So that was different for us. The real European tour is coming up. And honestly, when we did Hidden World and we went out and did touring it wasn’t so far of a stretch of the imagination as to anticipate what the tour was going to be like because it was still essentially for the same crowd. This tour, and the one in Europe is after a year of really big changes.

THP: Who’s been setting up your shows? Is it the same people that have been booking your shows for the past few years?

DAMIEN: No. This year we got a booking agent finally.

THP: Was that through Matador?

DAMIEN: No, it was through our own thing. It just got to the point where Mike who booked all the shows became really, really salty and pissy about it and we got really ripped off last summer when we did our shows. We had a few shows where at the end of the night they’d be like “Here you go, One Hundred and Fifty Dollars!” and we’re like “There’s like three hundred kids here and it was ten bucks each” and they’re like “Yep, $150”. So we just decided to bite the bullet and get a booking agent and see how it goes, and that’s what we’re kinda doing now. In England is this guy Ross Warwick who we kinda-

JONAH: Warnock.

DAMIEN: Warnock?

JONAH: Rich Warwick.

DAMIEN: Anyway, Ross Warnock, his Dad booked Pink Floyd, but he knows nothing about classic rock. I’ll talk to him and ask “So, was your dad booking Syd Barret-era or what?” and he just says “I don’t know”. But he likes lots of weird shit. He was booking us, getting us on these festivals and we lost a lot of money playing them. We were getting paid a lot of money but it’s so fucking hard to get to them.

JONAH: I guess these festivals aren’t made for routing a tour. If you’re a band you probably pick the one that’s going to showcase you the best and do that, and book a tour around it, whereas we just played every single festival which meant the routing was…you know.

DAMIEN: We also flew to Spain, flew to Ireland, a lot of shit that we just wanted to do because it would be fun, not realizing that we would lose our shirts on it.

THP: Prior to that you were in America? The Mid-west and West Coast?

DAMIEN: After that. In a little vegetable-power-

THP: Yeah, I was going to ask, what were you touring in?

DAMIEN: We were touring in this school bus that they converted to run on vegetable shortening or vegetable oil. And let me tell you, it doesn’t work. You guys are going to be dependent on foreign oil for the rest of your lives because biodiesel is a long time coming before it works.
Everyone was like “it works perfectly” and we were going up that hill. You know the hill region between Portland and San Francisco? Have you been there?

THP: No.

DAMIEN: Oh okay, well it’s huge, these hills, and all of sudden, we’re going up and the bus drops, and you can’t get it over five miles an hour.

THP: What happened in California with the Gilman show?

JONAH: Oh, it got real ignorant.

DAMIEN: I don’t know. Every time we play California, at the Gilman there’s always fights. Always fights. And this time there were fights at a Fucked Up show. Fucked Up is basically a hippie indie rock band. We played at the Gilman with Trash Talk and there was a miscommunication that ended in a fight. Someone said “Yo, fuck all these muscle men,” and the guy in Trash Talk who is Muslim thought he said “Yo, fuck all these Muslims,” and freaked out and a fight-

JONAH: The fight wasn’t even over what was said it was over what could have been said.

DAMIEN: Yeah.

JONAH: This one guy was like “Why could you say something so ignorant?” And the other guy said “I didn’t say that, I said this, but who cares if I did?”

THP: Kinda like the O.J. Simpson book?

DAMIEN:Yeah.

JONAH: Yeah, yeah. “I if did kill her”

DAMIEN: I think it’s weird when you play the Gilman because there’s all these different groups of people that go to those shows, and California, I think more than anywhere else, is really segmented. You’re this type of kid, or this type of kid, or this type of kid. There’s some crossover in some types, but when Righteous Jams played there and got into a huge fight when they played. We played there three times and there’s been a fight-

JONAH: It’s always been something. One time Nazi skinheads showed up, supposedly, and they got ran out and someone fought. This time it was just a slip of the ear.

DAMIEN: One time a girl we know got into a fight with a guy and then it just became a huge fight.

THP: The show tomorrow, the twelve hour show, there’s been a lot of talk about this. What was the cause for it?

DAMIEN: When we met Matador they asked “So what do you guys want to do [to promote] the record?” I said, “Well, Fucked Up is like a job now so we should treat it like a job and do an eight hour show.” Somehow eight hours got spun into twelve hours.

JONAH: Originally it was supposed to be nine-to-five.

DAMIEN: Yeah, so we could do an eight hour show. Clock in like a workday, play, and go home at five o’clock. Now it’s a twelve hour show and there’s a lot of bullshit that we started by joking around, but sometimes the reality is stranger than the fiction. Like Akon is not going to be there, but Moby is coming and Michael Stipe is coming.

THP: Jonah mentioned before you having J Mascis and John Josephs?

DAMIEN: Yeah and David Cross doing standup. We should get him to do a song.

(laughter)

JONAH: I don’t know what song.

DAMIEN: It just shows you that anybody can be touched. If you get enough people in a room, someone is going to know someone who knows someone. Basically, at first we had David Cross, he agreed to do it, but we had no one else. Then it just kinda happened with people being like “Oh this person’s doing it? I’ll do it.”

JONAH: Basically exploiting curiosity, because I’m sure a lot of people have never heard of Fucked Up or care, but they’re friends with someone who’s friends with someone.

DAMIEN: I think the only person that’s a “Fucked Up fan” who’s involved is J Mascis. Everyone else is just there for shits and giggles.

JONAH: It kind of speaks to the fact that you can call anything “art” and enact some sort of legitimacy on it. Like if we just called this a “12 Hour Concert” I’m sure we’d have a lot harder sell but this is almost masquerading as an art installation so-

DAMIEN: People are going to come in and just check it out.

JONAH: Yeah, there could be nobody there, it could be a complete disappointment.

THP: I know you posted on your blog the open invitation for people

DAMIEN: Anyone.

JONAH: We also posted big ads on Craig’s List for movie casting, a drum circle and a guitar orchestra.

DAMIEN: So we could have random dudes thinking they’re going to be in a movie, or thinking- I told the guy at Matador who’s putting the ads up to email people back saying it’s going to be a goth movie so they have to come dressed in goth clothes so who knows what is going to happen. We could have dudes with Bali drums come up, and dudes in goth clothes-

JONAH: Also, it was listed as an audition for bands to try out to be a band on Matador so hopefully a lot of wicked bands show up.

THP: And there’s free beer the entire twelve hours?

DAMIEN: Free beer and Vitamin Water.

JONAH: And we’re giving away a record, a single version of “Royal Swan” that will be handed out at selected times.

DAMIEN: It’s just giving us an excuse to do something stupid. Fucked Up is never going to be a band that makes money like in terms of profits. So we might as well make things that make life interesting.

JONAH: Also, Fucked Up is never a band that can pull something off seriously, with a straight face.

DAMIEN: Yeah, we couldn’t just sit there and pretend to play for twelve hours.

JONAH: There’s no way. The only things that are serious and untainted by sarcasm are our thoughts. Everything else that gets birthed into the real world gets slapped around a whole lot in Fucked Up, okay?

THP: On that note, kind of, on Chemistry of Common Life, compared to Hidden World, the songs are a lot more concise, melodic, and it seems like a lot of things you were trying to do on the last record have become more cohesive and in some cases metered down, such as having just instrumentals instead of instrumental breaks.

DAMIEN: I think what it comes down to is that when we did Hidden World it was really rushed.

JONAH: Also, it was piecework a lot. We were going to rush this record too. This record was supposed to be out in May. We went into the studio in November, right after the last Fucked Up Weekend and we were like “Let’s get this done in a week and a half and get it out by May” and it ended up taking seven months. So, let that be a lesson in creating something that is cohesive. Y’know? Don’t do it in a week.

DAMIEN: I also think that the last record we were hesitant about the kind of band we were becoming, I know I was. I got into Fucked Up as a fast hardcore band.

THP: I know the band has significantly changed musically. But vocally, though you’re not in the same spot, your range has changed some, and the lyrics-

DAMIEN: I can’t sing. That’s my big thing.

THP: Do you feel in ways that you are the anchor for some songs?

DAMIEN: I think I am definitely what keeps Fucked Up grounded in what we were.

THP: Like one toe in the hardcore scene?

DAMIEN: Yeah, sort of, but at the same time I am also probably the thing that’s holding Fucked Up back from becoming a really big indie rock band. I think if they had someone who can actually sing, someone who looked like me but could actually sing, they would probably be a lot more popular. I’m not saying I’m good looking, but I’m saying people love a freak show.

JONAH: I’m saying you’re good looking.

DAMIEN: Thank you. I think part of the thing is I am a 300 pound man and people love freak shows.

JONAH: Yeah but, agreed people love a freak show, and he’s great at it. But all this speculation about what we could be without Damien is nothing more than a “what-if” because right now what Fucked Up is, and always will be, is a perfect storm, because there’s no way we would have garnered the same attention or the same arc in popularity if we had a guy who just sang like a wimpy frontman, or a girl, who could sing really well, but it wouldn’t be the same storm. It would have changed drastically and there’s no way we would have had the same momentum. Where we are now is a result of those two gears grinding against each other as much as it is them working together.

DAMIEN: Jonah and I still listen to the same music as we did when we started. I swear to God I have Battery on my iPod and I still listen to Battery. Talk about embarrassing. I am in no position to, I like Vile and Battery and that’s the shit I listen to. And rap music. So maybe I’m the most immature member of Fucked Up.

THP: On the new record there are a lot of vocal collaborations, one of the most notable being with Vivian Girls. How did that come to be and are they going to be performing with you live on tour?

DAMIEN: No, they haven’t done any of the shows on tour but they are going to do the twelve hour show. I think because I have a limited vocal range and I have always liked when hardcore bands have other singers come in. I love the change. Like the Battery song where they have his brother from Damnation A.D. come in, I think that’s awesome. I like the last song on the 97-A record where the other singer comes in. I’ve always loved that, and I like in rap music when they have guest rappers and stuff, so anytime we can have guest vocalists we have them. With the last record it was a lot of people that made sense, friends and stuff, this time it was like “let’s just see who we can get and hope for the best.” I think next time we’re going to get more hardcore people to come in and sing and stuff.

JONAH: Scott Vogel.

DAMIEN: Scott Vogel’s been on a Fucked Up record. He was on David Christmas.

THP: How many of the lyrics in Fucked Up do you write?

DAMIEN: It’s fifty-fifty.

THP: A lot of the songs on the new album seem to be dealing with religion in more depth. What would you have to say about that?

DAMIEN: I was raised Anglo-Saxon, we went to church on Christmas and-

THP: Protestant?

DAMIEN: Anglican, poor man’s Catholic, err, rich man’s Catholic I guess, in the history of things. I was raised with it then I went through a real Atheist stage where I was like “fuck this, fuck religion”, total rebellion, and now I’m at a point where I’m obviously not a believer, but at the same time I really wish I was. I really think my life would be a lot better if I had faith, and I know that’s kind of lame to say in a lot of circles but I really wish I could get back, and I think belief is such a wonderful thing and I kinda wish I had it. A lot of these songs are about trying to find religion without having religion-something else to believe in or believing in a lot of stuff in the Bible but away from religion.

JONAH: It’s a very secular take on religion, like when people look at the Bible as literature. You can still examine that as a text, you can still examine as a narrative. I don’t write any of the lyrics but as a passive observer I find that what Damien talks about, these really religious aspects, that’s sort of it. It’s a secular outsider’s take and it’s an intellectual’s take or an academic take. So if you were a minister or a priest you probably wouldn’t appreciate it, or find it to be an affront, but it’s just a close reading as opposed to a faith based reading.

DAMIEN: Yeah, but it’s also a desire to find faith. Y’know? And I think my life would be a lot better if I believe. So now I wouldn’t say I’m an Atheist, I’d say I’m an Agnostic.

THP: The lyrics to “Twice Born” talk about losing sight of dreams which can be openly interpreted as a lot of things.

DAMIEN: I think that song is about how everyone thinks that they’re having a unique experience, but nobody is having a unique experience. People think “Oh, nobody has felt what I’ve felt” but everyone feels these things, everyone has dreams that don’t come true and we’re all going to die and we’re all going to end up the exact same way. The song talks a lot about the life of Jesus, how he’s held up as being this ultimately unique individual. But Jesus probably didn’t view himself as the literal son of God but rather as a child of God as all Jewish people did and so, we can all be Christ and we all go through what Jesus went through everyday. We all have our trials and tribulations and we’re good people and we’re bad people. There’s nothing unique about the human experience, it’s a shared experience. Obviously some people have it worse, I’m not as bad off as some guy who isn’t 300 pounds and isn’t playing in a band full time, but in general all the things I go through in a day, someone else goes through to a
greater or lesser extent.

THP: With writing songs, are there Fucked Up songs that get scrapped?

DAMIEN: It wouldn’t seem that way. (laughter) With the new album there was a song that was supposed to be on the CD but it didn’t fit thematically so it’s on the vinyl as a bonus track. It would have been scrapped otherwise or used as a b-side. Normally, when songs don’t get past the idea stage or the initial riff stage, they’ll get scrapped.

JONAH: It’s a weird process. You assume that a band which puts out this many records would sit down and be like “Okay, let’s write ten songs and figure out how to distribute them” but it’s done on a strictly need-oriented basis, super strict. There have been times when Mike and I will sit down and practice and work on a riff and think its good enough to do a song. Then we’ll get Josh or Ben to come and plot it out as a song but if there’s nothing to use it for it gets forgotten. When it comes time for a record it’s not there, it’s gone. The songs get written really rushed, I feel, and so the discarded songs are usually the most organized ones which is the irony.

DAMIEN: And we don’t do really comps or anything so there’s no reason to go in the studio and record extra songs. I want to do a song on a Swinging Utters tribute comp that’s coming out though, and I want to do a Nerves tribute comp 7” that I want to put out.

THP: What Nerves song are you going to cover?

DAMIEN: We want to do a whole set. I think “When You Find Out”. I want to do those things, but besides that, when people ask us to do comps we usually say no.

THP: In seven years how much has Fucked Up become or remain a part of each member’s life outside the band? How significant is it in the scheme of things in each of your lives?

DAMIEN: Right now, Fucked Up is like 95 percent of each of our lives. It won’t be that way forever. In five years we don’t want to be doing this band, but right now it’s like our jobs.

THP: When do you feel the band shifted from part-time to full-time? While you were doing singles on Deranged or after the first LP?

DAMIEN: I think the change happened before Hidden World came out. We were going to break up between Cascades and Crusades, releasing two LPs at the same time, but then with Hidden World we decided to just see what would happen. We don’t really like to practice because we don’t all like to hang out. Jonah and I will go to record stores but that’s about all the real interaction we’ll have as a social thing. We’ll run into each other at shows.

JONAH: Yeah, that’s the weirdest thing. In the past we probably would all have hung out with each other independently of the band, I mean not everybody in the band. Damien and I would maybe watch a movie together. Mike and Damien would definitely have hung out together. They were or are best friends.

DAMIEN: Yeah, I love Mike, he’s my best friend, but I also hate him more than anyone.

THP: Considering that it’s now more work than play, how do you anticipate things going on tour and on your coming European tour?

DAMIEN: Well, it is what it is. It’s one of those things where we’re in a really unique experience. Fucked Up is not that big of a band in the overall scheme of things. A band like Have Heart, realistically, is about three times the size of us, but if you were just to read music press you would think that we were fucking we were a billion times bigger than them. But it’s fun. It’s now at the point where we go on the road and we come back and we can pay our rent. I miss my wife, I miss my dog, I miss my house and my records but at the same time we’re on tour, we can eat, it pays our rent and we get free clothes. For the time being it’s really awesome.

JONAH: It’s a pretty good state to be in. It’s a really secure feeling.

DAMIEN: It could fall apart tomorrow, though. We could break up. We could also get to a point where no one is coming to our shows, where we can’t afford to tour-

JONAH: It’s not this stable generation of income. It’s a job in as much as you have to work to it everyday to get by. But it’s not a lifestyle yet.

DAMIEN: I think if we got a little bigger than we are now, like staying in hotels and stuff it would be a different thing entirely, it would be a lot more comfortable-

THP: Are you guys still mostly crashing on floors and staying at houses?

DAMIEN: Yeah, mostly. It’s the same way as before. We could stay in hotels once every couple of days. We wind up staying in a hotel probably about once every week on tour just because there’s no place else to stay or we have to drive really far the next day. It’s definitely not every night, for sure. Last night I slept in Chris Corey’s bed, with him. We stayed up gossiping ‘til four-thirty in the morning, two grown men.

JONAH: How harsh is that?

THP: Considering what you said about bands like Have Heart, bands their size versus your size, Fucked Up tends to do things their own way. Do you think starting off being a D.I.Y. hardcore band has helped being a bigger band?

JONAH: You learn certain things about being in a band when you start there that you don’t know if you just are in some schmoe band that rises from your garage straight to the big stage.

DAMIEN: People tell you the first thing you need to do is to hire a soundman. That’s just someone else taking a cut of money. People say you need someone to carry you gear, well if you load your own gear and rope other kids into doing it for free that will cut corners.

JONAH: It’s not just about saving money, you learn how to be a band and then if you’re a band long enough it’s pretty easy to make that transition into being a full time band, which is really what we’re talking about.

DAMIEN: You get to this stage, not that we’re huge, but there’s a lot of things that other bands do and we don’t understand. The other day I was on the phone doing an interview, and someone from Matador got on the phone and told the interviewer their time was up and I said “No, it’s fine.” I don’t someone to tell the interviewer I don’t want to talk anymore, If I don’t want to I’ll tell them. It’s fine. I think a lot of bands get to this stage and there’s just a lot of hand-holding involved. Coming from punk and hardcore, you don’t have hand-holding.

JONAH: You learn not to depend on it. It’s something that doesn’t exist. That being said, we’re now huge pussies.

DAMIEN: I would love to stay in a hotel every night.

JONAH: I would love someone to hold my hand everyday, other than Damien.

DAMIEN: Except if I can stay in Chris Corey’s bed.

THP: One aspect about Fucked Up that seems to have stayed a constant is your approach to releasing records and nuances of punk you have embraced which could be called “cult”. Do you think that now that you’re on Matador, while still doing independent singles and the blog, that Fucked Up is still a cult-oriented thing?

JONAH: I would say that, for sure.

DAMIEN: I would definitely say that.

JONAH: And that’s the point of Fucked Up.

DAMIEN: I think the cult is changing. I think a lot of people who were in the cult have been deprogrammed and not brainwashed. Maximum Rock’n’Roll declared our record ‘un-reviewable’ and that was the magazine that big-upped us the most in the beginning. But yeah, it is a cult thing. Fucked Up has been a band that from day one has never really fit because none of us really have the same tastes. I like Battery, Jonah likes The Dictators, Mike likes Hercules and The Love Affair, Sandy likes Radiohead, Josh likes…who knows what Josh likes? Drugs. So, y’know, it will never be that band, it will never be that defined. When you’re like that you’re never going to attract one type of kid, it’s just going to be a small smattering.

JONAH: That’s the point of making it cult-y. It really commands your attention.

THP: Would you say that helps with the changes you have gone through or makes it easier to shift from one thing to another?

JONAH: It at least helps you to proactively relate to your past self. We haven’t lost ourselves and that was something I was really worried about. Even when we signed to Jade Tree I had a talk, I was really drunk mind you, with Mike, where I expressed great sorrow and worry about us handing over all this momentum thought and things that we’d built to these people who don’t know the first thing about us. Thinking we were just flushing it down the toilet, putting a drop of bleach in what we’d created. He was courteous enough to talk me down. But it hasn’t happened and that’s the point. This level of organization is what helps you relate from your future, present to your past.

DAMIEN: It’s like Police. We could have written Police twenty more times but people who have been sick of us doing that, so we went and changed naturally, I think, some people are into it, some people hate it, very violently, which I don’t understand. I mean, it’s just a band.

JONAH: It’s still framed the same way. So you don’t really lose sight of it.

THP: So, you’re on the road another two weeks in the U.S. and-

DAMIEN: And six weeks in Europe, which should suck.

THP: And how many records are coming out or in the process?

JONAH: Year of the Pig is out. Chemistry of Common Life is out. The Royal Swan e.p. is being given out on Tuesday. Year of the Rat is coming out soon and will be on What’s Your Rupture records and there’s going to be a split with No Age where they cover our song “No Epiphany”.

DAMIEN: Aren’t they doing a remix?

JONAH: Oh yeah, we gave them all the files and they’re going to do something.

DAMIEN: And that’s it for the foreseeable future. There’s the Swinging Utters tribute comp which I am really excited about.

THP: Who’s putting that out?

DAMIEN: A place called Red Rocket Records, out of Chicago. I read about it on PunkNews.com and contacted the guy, now it’s just a matter of deciding what song to cover.

Fucked Up are online at www.lookingforgold.blogspot.com