Archive Search Results for: The Chats

News of the dramatic upswing in the sales of vinyl albums over the course of the last decade – to levels not seen since prior to the digital age – should come as no surprise to faithful Dying Scene readers. While reissues of classic albums from the 1970s and ’80s tend to rule the popular charts, the punk and hardcore and metal and indie scenes are well represented in the area of sheer volume of new releases and options and variants being cranked out week after week.

Leading the charge in the vinyl revolution has been none other than dyed-in-the-wool punk rock label Pirates Press Records. Founded by Eric “Skippy” Mueller back in 2005 as the advertising arm of the vinyl manufacturer that shares its name and was started a year prior, Pirates Press has built a name and reputation as putting out some of the more special and innovative releases available, particularly under the street punk umbrella. Cock Sparrer “Essentials “boxed set? That was Pirates Press. 46-album Rancid 7-inch boxed set? Pirates Press. Noi!se 12-inch single featuring three-dozen assault rifle-style bullets milled out of the vinyl itself as a fundraiser to tackle gun violence and school shootings? Pirates Press. Playable The Ratchets hologram vinyl (yes…effing playable hologram vinyl!)? Pirates Press, of course. New The Old Firm Casuals full-length that allowed me the opportunity to chat for like an hour with the great Lars Frederiksen a few weeks ago (okay, maybe that one’s not necessarily cutting edge, but it’s my story, dammit)? You guessed it: Pirates Press.

We caught up with the one-and-only Mueller over the phone from his Bay Area, California, office a little while back and found in him a kindred spirit right from jump street; despite living in and operating Pirates Press from the Bay Area, Mueller is a native of Massachusetts and, as such, a diehard – and we mean DIEHARD – card-carrying member of Red Sox Nation. Yet his level of passion for the Red Sox is surpassed by leaps and bounds for his level of passion for the punk rock community and for giving back to a scene that’s given him so much. Case in point: his loves of punk rock and his label and his manufacturing business and his two hometowns collided last weekend when Mueller attended the San Francisco record release show for The Old Firm Casuals’ Holger Danske, left early, caught a red eye flight to Boston in time for Lenny Lashley’s gig at the in-the-shadow-of-Fenway-Park House Of Blues supporting Dropkick Murphys, complete with a hockey bag full of Lenny Lashley’s Gang Of One-themed merch…then flew right back home to San Francisco.

Mueller is endlessly positive and energetic (perhaps more accurately “shot out of a proverbial cannon”), equal parts ultra-confident salesman for his cutting-edge business and, in many ways, quintessentially proud papa for a label that he literally grew out of his old bedroom. In a nutshell, it kinda works like this: Pirates Press, the manufacturer, presses products – mostly vinyl albums and mostly in the Czech Republic – for labels and products of all shapes and sizes. Revenue from the manufacturing side gets infused into Pirates Press Records, the label, offering the opportunity to put out albums for bands and projects that they personally support. And if they come up with a cool new idea or technology or color variant in the manufacturing side, they can use that first on Pirates Press Records releases, allowing an album from The Ratchets or Noi!se or Bar Stool Preachers or Lenny Lashley to effectively become a real-life business card, showing the world via the label the things that the manufacturer is able to do, thereby drawing more labels and artists and brands into the fold on the manufacturing side, and so on and so on. Mueller remains vigorously committed to putting out new and unique and innovative products on the manufacturing side of the business, using the label to showcase some of the things they’re able to pull off, and reinvesting the money earned from larger manufacturing projects into the label, helping bands he loves and respects to put out new, vital music. It’s a fascinating win-win cycle that should continue to provide constant wind into the sails of the good ship Pirates Press for many years to come

Head below to check out our chat with Skippy to find out just what goes in to pulling off some of the seemingly endless options that Pirates Press’ manufacturing arm is able to pull off, particularly their recent run on flexi vinyl and how they were able to reverse engineer new presses to expand their line, and how the label offers Mueller and his fellow Pirates to invest in a record label that offers a home for projects that they – and we – love and support!

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This week on Dying Scene Radio, Bob Noxious and Bobby Pickles connect with Joey Cape live from his van. The three discuss Joey’s new solo record, Stitch Puppy,  the story behind the song, “Tracks”, and what it was like to record his latest acoustic album using a similar formula to that of his label, One Week Records.  Bobby uses his “Wop Dar” to uncover the Italian roots of the Lagwagon frontman, insinuates that, like most musicians, Joey is inherently lazy, and then asks Mr. Cape a very pretentious question, which Joey has not the authority to answer adequately, given that the punk rock ethos transcends ideas and is really a part of one’s DNA. But, Joey agrees with Bob’s ethos, being a 46 year old man who lives his life like a 17 year old boy.

SYNOPSIS OF BANTER: Jason 3D of The Jasons designed a FAT ENZO t-shirt depicting The Bobs getting killed by The Jasons. Lou Koller, frontman of NYHC greats, Sick Of It All, speaks with ten year old Elliott of Little Punk People, and Bobby wants to make him a DSR war correspondent because he’s interviewed many of the same people as Bob and he’s a much more talented interviewer. The Bobs discuss their impending full-coverage of FEST 14 in Gainesville and Pre-FEST in Tampa. Bobby doesn’t know who Mikey Erg or Ronnie James Dio is. The Svetlanas are from “Mother Russia” just as PigPen are comprised of more bacon than Bob puts down during breakfast. Why does EVERYBODY think the iconic Motörhead frontman, Lemmy Kilmister, is going to die? Bob says if Lemmy isn’t really afraid to die, he’d have played a fourth song in Austin. Bob thinks he might need to go back to the dark liquors. Bob says, “Lemmy will live forever and what kind of world are we going to leave for Lemmy?”

AND VIGNETTES BY: Elliott Fullam of Little Punk People, J. Prozac of Doubtfire, Todd Dulawan of Distorted Signals, Dylan Flynn of Pass The Bass, and Mike Hansen of Pentimento.

Episode 28’s recurring theme: bad/spot-on accents, artists who’ve recorded records in one-week’s time, and Bobby’s three keys to success – Persistence, Arrogance, and Stupidity, with major emphasis on the latter. 

Hear all the incessant blathering, plus this week’s new music and headlines, below.

THIS WEEK’S PLAYLIST
Night Birds – 8 Inch Betsy
PMX – Pull The Trigger
8 Inch Betty – Mean Days
Svetlanas – Siberia
PEARS – Snowflake
Guilty By Association – Coming Home
Doubtfire – California
The Mahones – Fuck You
Joey Cape Interview
Joey Cape – Spill My Guts
Lagwagon – Made Of Broken Pieces
Pentimento – Sink Or Swim

You can subscribe to Dying Scene Radio via RSS, on iTunes or with the TuneIn or Stitcher apps for iOS and Android. We also enjoy reading listener feedback on the air, so feel free to send us an e-mail. Or call us on the hotline – (347) 754-PUNK.

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This week’s sponsor is, as always, FAT ENZO.

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Shane Henderson, the frontman of Philly pop-punk act Valencia, recently sat down with the folks at Radio 104.5 to chat about his new solo career, saying that he’s looking to put out some music with not as strong pop-punk influences.

You can catch Shane’s full interview right here.

Valencia announced their hiatus this past October and played their last show together in Philadelphia at the end of 2011.

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Rise Against have announced through a Facebook post that they will be having 4 online chats on Alternative Press‘s website, starting next Monday, January 23rd. Each chat will feature a different band member.

Click here for more information, including the schedule for the chats.

Attention les filles et les filles! Si vous écoutez Paramore, il faut regarder ce petit truc! Ooook, now that I’ve narrowed my audience to two people…Paramore has just released a video of an interview they did with a French radio station, while on tour in Europe. The interview is really just Hayley trying her best to answer inappropriate questions posed by two creepy Frenchies, while the guys sit back in silence. Check out the entire interview here.

Paramore begin touring back in the states next month, so be sure to check out their Dying Scene Shows page.

Wade and Beard from Alexisonfire took time out of their busy schedules to have a little fun with Canadian rock show Talk Show Night at Juicebox Manor. During the interview, Wade and Beard discuss their most recent album, Old Crows/Young Cardinals (which was released this June on Vagrant Records), as well as the horrors that come along with making a music video. They even have time for a little game show! Check out the video here.

Alexisonfire is currently on tour. Find more info on dates and locations at the band’s Dying Scene Shows page.

Every year we do a list (or, in some cases, many lists) of punk rock songs for you fine folk to listen to on Halloween. Since we’ve exhausted all options for topics, including songs about zombies, vampires, and aliens, we’re going with 13 Halloween-ish songs released in 2013 this time around!

Check out our list below and feel free to complain about how (insert song name here) by (insert band name here) was left out, even though it was probably released a decade ago and has already been featured on one of our previous Halloween lists! [Read more…]

Sometimes when I conduct an interview with an artist I’m a fan of, I find it best to pull out a few noteworthy quotes, craft them into a story that I find interesting, and then allow the reader to click through to read our full conversation to provide some level of context. Usually, this finds me asking the subject a number of sort-of fleshed out questions and engaging in a conversation that goes somewhat as planned, and I can almost start to write part of the story in my head as we’re talking. I try to go in with more material than I need, and don’t always get to touch on all of it. But even by my own standards, I had a lot of questions for Josh Caterer.

I’ve been a fan of seminal Chicago band Smoking Popes for the last couple of decades, So when the opportunity presented itself to chat with the band’s songwriter, frontman and principle voice about their new album, Into The Agony, I jumped, even though it came with little in the way of lead time. Given that we’ve never spoken for Dying Scene before, there’s a lot of subject matter to mine: obviously I wanted to talk about the new album, because it’s stellar and upbeat and incredibly melancholy at the same time. And obviously I wanted to talk about the changes in band dynamics that came with founding drummer Mike Felumlee’s return to the band a couple years ago after a decade out of the fold. And about their sticking with Asian Man Records. And my daughter wanted to know if he actually ever broke his arm on stage. And I wanted to ask about issues of faith and politics and punk rock, particularly in the present sociopolitical climate in this country. And about the idea that Smoking Popes seem to exist at that curious intersection of “Bands That Are Immensely Influential Avenue” and “Bands That Are Wildly Underrated Boulevard.” And maybe even his thoughts on whether or not Smoking Popes were miscategorized as a “punk” band early on, particularly when held up against some of the more noteworthy alternative bands that they came through the ranks with. And while we did touch on a few of those things, a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum.

That funny thing, as it turned out, was Judy Garland.

In hindsight, had I been paying close enough attention, I should have seen it coming. A black and white picture of Garland serves as the focal piece of the cover art of Into The Agony, and the album’s halfway point is marked by a cover of “Get Happy,” a tune first popularized by Garland in the 1950 movie Summer Stock. But Garland’s presence on this album runs far, far deeper than that. It might be presumptuous to assume that most readers of Dying Scene are primarily aware of Garland due to her iconic performance as Dorothy in The Wizard Of Oz. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the “child star” nature of the early part of her life, Garland would go on to have a career that spanned more than four decades, though she became a quintessentially tragic figure (much to her chagrin), long battling issues of an unstable home life, chaotic and at times abusive interpersonal relationships, alcoholism and substance addiction, mental health and more all while desperately trying to put on a brave, happy face and bring joy to the masses through her art.

Stylistic differences aside, that’s a profile ripe for exploration by a punk rock songwriter, especially one with a penchant for crafting poetic tales of love – albeit sometimes unrequited – and loss and hope and heartbreak all with a tremendous pop sensibility. Now rest assured Popes fans; Into The Agony is not a Judy Garland-themed rock opera, not by any stretch. While the idea of diving into the agony might be the central thread that ties the album together, it finds specific inspiration from issues that are both macro and micro, political and personal. There’s despair, for sure – these are desperate times – but there’s a trademark Smoking Popes sense of optimism present in droves, sometimes defiantly so.

With that as a bit of a teaser, I decided in this case to just let our conversation stand for itself, because I found it one of the most interesting chats I’ve had in the roughly 100 interviews I’ve run here at Dying Scene. It was challenging, thoughtful (and thought-provoking), funny, and a little melancholy. We talk about the specifics behind a few tracks, for sure, and also talk about the nervousness that comes with actually revealing the backstory to a song, thereby stripping the listener of the context they’ve provided to the song. And we of course talked a little about the band’s history and the renewed energy they’ve found since Felumlee rejoined the ranks. Head below to check out our full conversation with Josh Caterer. You can also head here to check out Into The Agony for yourself, and head here to see where you can catch the Popes on the road!

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When one eventually looks back on whatever chapters in the annals of punk rock history encapsulate the last couple of decades, there will undoubtedly be more hand-wringing over the sections labeled “emo” than in the remaining portions combined. No term, or genre, within the collective umbrella of the punk and DIY and indie rock worlds has been more maligned, more ostracized, more negatively stereotyped than that of “emo.” Seriously; run an “emo” Google image search or run the term through the search feature on such varied websites as Buzzfeed and Pinterest and Wikihow and Dictionary.com and the results, while redundant in their theme, will be seemingly relentless in the lack of seriousness with which they approach the style or the culture or, most importantly, the music.

But that wasn’t always the case. Somewhere along the the way to the Forum, something happened to the term and the image and the subculture. Through mainstream media outlets and suburban shopping mall-based clothing stores of the early aughts, “emo” got bastardized, stripped of its original context and transformed into something wholly unrecognizable from its origins.

The last small handful of years, however, have seen a bit of not only an emo resurgence, but an emo reclamation. Not the emo of the Hot Topic era, mind you, but from an earlier time. The Get Up Kids and Braid and Rainer Maria got back together, put out new albums, and continue to tour periodically. Texas Is The Reason reunited for a while. American Football reunited. Knapsack and The Promise Ring reunited and then reunited again. Cap’n Jazz played for the first time in seven years. Hell, Jawbreaker played Riot Fest a couple months ago and you know this because all 689 people you follow on Instagram were there and live streaming and so-this-happened-ing. And perhaps nobody has been flying the original emo flag higher and prouder over the last decade as Tom Mullen.

Mullen, a native of Vermont, has been working for a variety of labels and entertainment industry outlets by day since the turn of the century. In his spare time and due to an unwavering love of the earlier days of the emo years, he launched the Washed Up Emo podcast in 2007. He’s interviewed well over a hundred scene veterans in the decade since, and recently published his first book, The Anthology of Emo – Volume One, that compiles transcriptions of about a dozen interviews from the podcasts that help shine a light on what the term meant and, more importantly, what the music meant. There are chats with some of the pillars of an earlier time, like Mineral’s Chris Simpson, Christie Front Drive’s Eric Richter, Norman Brannon from Texas Is The Reason and, of course, Mike Kinsella who’s been in basically all the bands. There are also higher-profile, crossover names like Chris Carrabba and Matt Pryor, as well as Rainer Maria, who’ve seen a bit of a resurgence lately, and Blair Shehan from Knapsack, The Jealous Sound, and more recently Racquet Club.

Like the Washed Up Emo podcast and its related offshoots like the hilarious IsThisBandEmo.com, The Anthology of Emo – Volume One is a labor of love that draws direct inspiration from the creative breeding ground that was Burlington, Vermont, in Mullen’s formative, DIY years. There’s little profit involved — most money made from the sale of Volume One will go directly into the publication of Volume Two, already in the works — but that’s obviously not the point. The conversations are authentic, with Mullen and his subjects thoughtfully and sometimes humorously retelling stories that demonstrate the interconnectedness and passion and creativity and – I can’t stress the point enough – the authenticity that drove the scene in the early days and that have inspired a groundswell of not just Emo Nights at your local club but a new legion of bands flying the emo battle flag.

Head below to check out our full conversation with Mullen. He and I are roughly the same age and grew up in neighboring (some might say Shrine Bowl arch-rivaling) states and have a lot of overlapping experiences in spote of the different, circuitous routes we took to get to this conversation. Oh, and make sure you pick up Anthology of Emo: Volume One here!

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The Menzingers are the latest guests on the Mike Herrera Hour podcast. The MxPx man chats to Tom May and Joe Godino from the band on episode 220 of the show. 

You can listen to this episode – and the entire back catalogue of shows – on Mike Herrera’s website.