"Remember, doing things yourself is fun and usually cheaper!"
Perhaps, these words are the best to describe an attitude of Bomb! According to Jeff Rosenstock, the founder and the only constant member of the project, “Bomb the Music Industry! is a collective of musicians moreso than a band”. He calls the fact of the creating of that “collective” (seriously or jokingly) just a drunk idea. Though that idea was put into life as 5 magnificent albums full of hopeless optimism, sarcasm, childlike naivety and some unusual energy that will make you listen to those creations of Jeff Rosenstock’s fevered brain on and on and on. Despite the name of the “band”, Jeff is not a terrorist, he doesn’t call to radical actions and sings not about politics, but about the ordinary trifles of life: from outpouring of anger with his job / unemployment, loneliness, daily troubles and insomnia to how awesome it is to drink beer in a shower, sleep till noon, grow a beard and not to care about all the bosses and glamorous beard-haters. How cool it would be, if any problem could be solved just by blowing on it! Bomb The Music Industry! is a cry from the heart of romantic dreamer against dullness and daily routine, boredom and humdrum, excessive seriousness, insincerity and pretence expressed as a delightful mix of punk, ska and electronic music. “Quit scramblin' to fit into a failing system, GO OWN YOUR LIFE!!!!”
But the name for collective wasn’t chosen just for a cause and indicates Jeff’s attitude to making money of selling cds and merch. That’s why all the albums were recorded by Rosenstock to his MacBook either in his bedroom, or in the bathroom, or at some friend’s place or somewhere else and are spread in Internet and at the shows (don’t forget to bring an empty cd to the next Bomb’s gig). No merch available! That’s why in order to get a t-shirt with the logo you’ll have to do it yourself or to bring a blank tee to the show where someone will share a stencil. Did I mention that the line-up’s inconstant to say the least of it? Anyone can learn parts, come to the show with an instrument and play with the “band” (don’t forget to let guys know about it before the show starts). In addition Jeff runs tiny but very proud label Quote Unquote Records – the first donation based label, where all releases are available for free download.
So here we go! I had to wait much for an answer, but what I got was much more than enough.
P.S. This interview is already one year old. For that time Bomb The Music Industry! released the fifth album “Scrambles” and a compilation of covers and unreleased stuff called "Others! Others! (Vol. 1 2005 - 2008)".
But the name for collective wasn’t chosen just for a cause and indicates Jeff’s attitude to making money of selling cds and merch. That’s why all the albums were recorded by Rosenstock to his MacBook either in his bedroom, or in the bathroom, or at some friend’s place or somewhere else and are spread in Internet and at the shows (don’t forget to bring an empty cd to the next Bomb’s gig). No merch available! That’s why in order to get a t-shirt with the logo you’ll have to do it yourself or to bring a blank tee to the show where someone will share a stencil. Did I mention that the line-up’s inconstant to say the least of it? Anyone can learn parts, come to the show with an instrument and play with the “band” (don’t forget to let guys know about it before the show starts). In addition Jeff runs tiny but very proud label Quote Unquote Records – the first donation based label, where all releases are available for free download.
So here we go! I had to wait much for an answer, but what I got was much more than enough.
P.S. This interview is already one year old. For that time Bomb The Music Industry! released the fifth album “Scrambles” and a compilation of covers and unreleased stuff called "Others! Others! (Vol. 1 2005 - 2008)".
Hey, Jeff! Thanx for finding time to reply my questions. First of all I'll ask you to make something like a little introduction to Bomb The Music Industry! for unfamiliar with the band people.
Bomb the Music Industry! is a group comprised of a few dozen individuals all across the United States, but we're currently mostly living in Brooklyn or Long Island. We play music that is pretty fast and annoying and has too many parts to discern what's going on sometimes. When we play live there is a good chance that we're going to try covering a 311 song, and there's also a good chance that there will be no band, just me and a computer. We try to keep things open ended so everyone can go on living their lives and enjoy playing music when they have a chance. Except for me as I have no life.
What music, literature, movies, arts etc. influenced you most of all? Do you have something like a source of inspiration?
It sounds cliche, but Fugazi were definitely the hugest influence on this band, as they operated outside of the mainstream music industry, did everything on their own, always did it their way and never compromised that. All the while they managed to be very successful, and now they're legendary. That's pretty inspiring to go against the grain. Also, I really liked seeing how They Might Be Giants and Against Me! could evolve from being a one or two person act to being full grown bands, and when I was starting this out in my bedroom and eventually decided to play shows with or without a band, looking up to bands like that made me feel like what I was doing wasn't COMPLETE bullshit.
Let's talk a bit about creation of new songs. How, where and in what circumstances does it usually happen?
Jeff Rosenstock
Can you remember all the instruments you'd involved in your music? Do you wanna use more?
I always wanna use more instruments... I guess I'm not a good enough songwriter to keep writing songs on guitars and have them sound different! I got a baritone guitar recently and have been writing a bit on that which has made the new record I'm working on have some slower and dirgier jams and also some weirder chords. But just having a midi controller and a handful of computer programs kinda gives me the opportunity to play with a million different kinds of sounds while writing. The hardest part on Get Warmer was trying to find real instruments to match those sounds, like "fuck it! who's got a violin! a timpani! a mandolin! a harp!"
Does mixing of genres and experiments with music attract people to Bomb The Music Industry! or push away kids from what you're doing? What kind of people does your audience mainly consist of?
You know, whenever we get described in any kind of mainstream publication it's always as a "punk/ska" band so I don't really know if all too many people are cognizant of the fact that we do all this other stuff too. At the same time, people have already started to describe our NEXT record as "a huge departure" and "influenced by indie rock" when it hasn't even been recorded yet and it pretty much stays along the lines of the last two! So I don't know, I think people kinda make their minds up about what a band sounds like before listening to them, at least my band. I hope that people like that we mish-mash a bunch of stuff, I know I like it when bands to that and keep shit interesting. I have no idea what our audience consists of though... hopefully uniformly nice people!
I don't know why, but I'm absolutely sure you have lots of weird stories about what happened to you while touring, recording etc. Can you tell any, please?
We were just on tour with Less Than Jake for a few days and one night we were drinking and talking about shirts and not making shirts and whatever, and somehow it got to the point of escalating dares that ended in both of us agreeing that on our last night of the tour, they would not be playing their encore, instead we would be playing their encore as Goldfinger. The only rule was that we were not allowed to practice any of the songs we would be playing, or even listen to them. Now, usually this would just be a drunken idea and forgotten about but I guess since both of our bands are dumb, sure enough we ended up doing it at this huge place in Richmond, way bigger than anywhere we'd ever played in town. So we got on stage during their encore, they introduced us and we planned to pretend to be too drunk to play our instruments or set anything up. They seemed pretty nervous that we were gonna not just be bad, but so bad that we weren't even playing. After about five minutes of us saying absolutely nothing and pretending to be too drunk to do anything, we started "Miles Away" without saying anything at all and all these kids start freaking out as if we're actually Goldfinger. I'd say that was probably the most surreal moment of my music playing career, also probably because we were all wearing fake moustaches and I was wearing only cutoffs and had "FAT DICKS" written all over my sweaty swarthy torso.
A few words about Quote Unquote. How did you get the idea of starting a donation based label and what pushed you to do that? Did you start it alone or someone helped you with that? What was the purpose of its creation?
Well, Bomb the Music Industry! started as a way to give people music without asking them for pretty much anything in return and by giving away free music, a lot of people heard of us and started coming to our shows to the point where we could book tours and people would come. So it was like "wow, this is great!" and we would have a donation bucket at shows and people would always throw in. So Rick Johnson and I were touring together and the second or third show was with my friend Matt who was a one man band... we'd never seen him play before really, and I think this was his first show. So he plays these AMAZING songs at our show and we flipped out and said "shit, let's take Matt on tour," we took him out and asked everyone to put him on the shows and people were super receptive. So I decided to try putting out Matt's record the same way as mine, and put up some donation links to hopefully cover recording costs and such. After that the label just kinda grew very slowly with friends' releases and it's continuing pretty much the same.
Do you at least get back money that you invest in keeping label alive, recording/releasing albums etc?
Quote Unquote definitely pays for itself because the overhead is so damn low. It's also paid for a few bands to record and Bomb donations have paid my rent or van repairs once or twice when I was just too busy working on all this to work a real job enough. The profit is not nearly as grandiose as it has been for bigger artists who have recently been adapting the same method, but that's not really the point. I think what's more important is that we're creating a little family where it is clear that we are all into people hearing our music more than we are into making shit for people to buy.
Who are all those bands and one man bands on Quote Unquote: your friends or just guys who asked you to help with promotion? How did they get signed on the label?
Matt Kurz
Rick Johnson
How much time does it take to play in Bomb The Music Industry!, Pegasuses-XL and run Quote Unquote Records? Do you have other occupations, bands? Have you ever thought of leaving it all and starting a "normal" (boring:)) life?
My life is extremely boring! There is often a lot of working at office jobs, food service jobs, commuting, working 12-hour days coming home, making dinner for me and my girlfriend and falling asleep watching movies. I try to keep music as a secondary thing in my life as much as I possibly can, because I don't want to make something I love that much a stressful thing. So whenever Bomb is taking up so much time that I can't really maintain the relationships in my life or pay my bills, we kinda lay off of touring for a little bit. Sometimes I have to do that or I don't have enough left to make my part in Pegasuses fun and important, and there have been times when keeping it all together with Pegasuses Team Georgia has been tough and they've gone and made their noise without me. The problem I have is that music will NEVER be secondary to anything in my life, I'm always thinking about songs, always writing music in my head, always thinking about playing and interesting and new ways to approach things. If I completely give in to all that, I'd be starving in a gutter somewhere or a total douchebag rock star touring the world 12 months out of the year talking about how my shit doesn't stink. So basically, it takes up just about all my time, but it would do the same even if I had no bands so I'm very thankful I have that outlet, I would go insane without it. But I'm still a bit wary about making the most important thing in my life have anything to do with how I pay my rent. Rent and bills is something that the world kinda makes you do, where music is something that my body and brain make me do.
All that aside, Quote Unquote is very very very easy and does not take up much of my time at all. There's simply not all that much to do, it's just been so exciting to start a tiny little snowball and watch it keep growing. I think all the bands on the label agree that we're not into shoving what we do in people's faces, so I feel like as long as there's the internet and net neutrality, Quote Unquote will keep happening.
Bomb The Music Industry! has over 1.2 mln plays on last.fm and over 600.000 plays on myspace.com without being promoted by mass-media, right? What do you think is the cause of this outstanding popularity?
Well, my first thought is "is that a lot?" I don't really know how many plays bands get, it probably doesn't sound true but we really really don't pay attention to this kinda stuff. I think we have a lot of music that we make available on the internet, so maybe it's more visible on the internet because of that? I have no idea! It does make me smile that people pay for shit like this, and that bands pay for myspace hits and last.fm plays and stuff like that to give the illusion that they're bigger bands and all we really do is enjoy music and release it when it's made and we get the same result. I hope that maybe that helps a few people who are thinking "well, should I be more like Cute is What We Aim For or The Minutemen" realize that jamming econo ain't so bad. One thing I am sure of though is that it does not translate to money, or even people really coming to the shows.
I know that now Bomb The Music Industry! plays at shows with the full line-up and "Get Warmer" was recorded by a "real band". If so what's the current line-up? Will you record your following albums in a studio or in the good old way: in a bedroom (bathroom) on MacBook?
Sean
The next record is gonna have live drums, but like Get Warmer, I'm gonna record most of the instruments myself. I think Tom is gonna give me a hand with making it not sound like shit, and Mike's gonna play drums, John probably playing bass. Despite what a lot of people have misunderstood, Get Warmer was recorded pretty similarly to the other ones, except the wonderful Joel Hatstat had a couple of nicer mics and some good pre-amps. I still recorded a bunch of parts in my house - my bathroom, bedroom and tiny practice room in Georgia. This time, I think we're gonna do drums in a real studio again and then get a practice space in Queens, put all of our equipment in there and make some loud noises. Then we'll go to Georgia to record piano parts and then hopefully not get a shitty mastering job done again.
How did Bomb The Music Industry! get signed on Asian Man Records? Does it prevent your way of spreading music absolutely for free?
How did Bomb The Music Industry! get signed on Asian Man Records? Does it prevent your way of spreading music absolutely for free?
I had kinda known Mike through a mutual friend or two, and I got his e-mail address so I asked him. I talked to him on the phone and it was really really really awkward, at least for me, I was crazy nervous. He was actually super into us continuing to release the records for free, and I think that was part of what was appealing to him about Bomb the Music Industry! in the first place so that was nice. I would have had to sadly turn down putting something out with my favorite label of all time, and I was kinda ready to do it to so I guess it was reaffirming to my life that I was willing to say "no" to something that has been a goal since I was little because I believe in what I do. That should help me pay rent this month.
What are the things that Bomb The Music Industry! and you personally will never do in no circumstances?
I don't like to say "never" because we don't really have a map for what we're doing ya know? I see no reason to ever sign to a major label, but if say Epic offered us a ten million dollar signing bonus on top of everything else, it would be pretty selfish to our friends and families to not take it after all the shit they deal with... even to our fans because that would allow us the means to play completely free shows wherever the hell we wanted to, donate money to good charities, etc. Also, we'd probably end up breaking up within a year and just have millions of dollars. That won't ever happen I'm sure, but, I mean, everyone REALLY does have their price. Ours is particularly high though... we like doing things the way we do them and I think it helps it to grow naturally. It's like the spraypainting shirts thing... we never had any plans to sell shirts and people still think that's completely crazy, but as the band grows the people who are coming to the show for the first time to see us have their blank shirts, the people who have already seen us already have their shirts made, and the people who come next time will have their blank shirts ready. With that said, I'm pretty sure we're gonna steer clear of the racist, sexist, homophobic thing... that shit's for fucking assholes.
Is it difficult to book a tour by yourself in USA? Have you ever thought of touring another countries? Any definite plans about it?
It is getting a lot more difficult to book a tour across the USA that you won't go completely broke because of. We started touring right when gas started getting a little more pricey, and the more people we would bring to shows (and therefore the more money we would get) the higher gas would be, and eventually cancel out the money we were making. The whole country is so fucking big, and the drives are so long especially when you get out west. Getting shows isn't too tough, we have had a really great underground ska scene for the past decade, and in the past couple of years there have been so many amazing punk houses opening up and every town always has one or two really awesome bands that are really honest, and we've been fortunate enough to kinda come up at the same time as them so we get to play together. We do really wanna tour other countries, but thinking about plane tickets makes my head explode kinda.
What is your favourite 8bit videogame? =)
Yoshi's Cookie is the most underrated game of all time. The one player mode is alright, but the two player mode has provided me years and years and years and years and years of fun. You can get it on the Wii now which is awesome cause my friend lost her copy of it and I hadn't played it for a while. Other than that, I think Bubble Bobble is probably the best one player game, but then again you can't REALLY beat it unless you have two players.
Excuse me for such an intimate question, but how often do you shave? :) I noticed that i see only bearded men while looking through the photos of Bomb! Can a man play in Bomb unless he has a beard?
I don't shave very often because I choose looking like an asshole over looking like I'm six years old. However, there are a few baby faces in bomb, they are generally the ones that girls talk to. To further illustrate that our beards are not a sign of masculinity, we do have some ladies in the band who do not have beards but occasionally wear fake moustaches. We only dabble in hilarious facial hair.
I have no idea. I guess I'm always trying to do two things that are exactly the opposite of each other: make intricate arrangements with non-traditional instruments and make every song as concise and small as possible. And all of that while trying to write pop songs that anyone could listen to and go "hey, that's good." That's why the sound is all over the map, probably... most of my friends don't really like punk rock or my music so I figured if I can make something that is good enough that my friends would like it as well as me, that'd be awesome 'cause they'll be more likely to buy me drinks when we go out and I'm broke cause i just got back from tour. I'm pretty sure my friends still don't like it, but I think that striving for something like pushes you to try a lot more things instead of saying "I'm gonna make a punk record and try to appeal to punk rock kids and sell them some shit." Yeah? No?
What's the most important thing for you in punk rock?
The most important thing for me in punk rock is the idea that no one is in charge, and you get to make up your own rules - its open-endedness I guess. I really don't like when people are militant about their ideas (left or right), because I feel like this is truly a counter-culture where we can be presented with a lot of awesome choices and actually decide on our own how to be an individual. For me that involves being a vegetarian, being positive and not being sexist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic... just trying to be open to where other people are coming from. I think those are important things about punk rock that are often pretty absent from our culture.
Thanx for the interview very much! I hope to see you on the show in Ukraine as soon as possible and to have an awesome time and wish you more amazing albums and tours with friendly people. Good luck!
Thanks, man! Sorry it took so long to get back to ya, these were some serious questionzzz!!!
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All the albums of Bomb The Music Industry! are free to download at:
http://www.bombthemusicindustry.com/
http://www.quoteunquoterecords.com/
www.myspace.com/bombthemusicindustry
Discography:
2005 Album Minus Band
2005 To Leave Or Die In Long Island
2006 President's Day [7 inch] - Split with The Rick Johnson Rock And Roll Machine
2006 Goodbye Cool World
2007 Get Warmer
2007 Split with O Pioneers! [10 inch]
2009 Scrambles
2009 Others! Others! (Vol. 1 2005 - 2008)
Author: ihatepunk
Date: July 2008 г.
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