Sterotypes are generally stupid and asinine. Sometimes, you find someone who seems to be contortioning themselves to fit one. That seems to be the case here. When I was given the opportunity to interview Thomas from Strike Anywhere again, I was pumped. Last time I got stereotypically punk gems such as “cultural baggage” and tirades about corporations. Now, he has points, but when the man in front of you is a dreaded, patch-ridden, pasty punk kid, there are fewer things more exciting for me.
The Emperor!: So what have you been up to lately?
Strike Anywhere Thomas: I lived in Southern California for two years up until three weeks ago.
TE!: Where abouts?
SAT: I lived in like South LA, like Crenshaw and Adams. I rented a house with my wife and some friends. She had a job with the city attorney’s office out of law school and she was going to be the prosecutor for the animal protection unit. And of course, as you know, governor Schwarzenegger gutted all the public legal aid programs in LA County’s city attorney’s office, so not only was she furloughed and reduced to a contractor position, but all of the attorneys with seniority were furloughed and frozen from their jobs.
TE!: Jesus.
SAT: Yeah, but she became a part of a case that became part of a giant lawsuit against the banks who illegally evicted like six thousand working class first time home buying families, which was a huge part of ,you know, the general destruction toward the chronic poverty and homelessness that has happened during the recession, especially in Southern California. So she was a part of the case that was gonna bring justice; to just punch these banks in the mouth, and bring the teeth back for the families. So that was cool.
TE!: Now is that case done?
SAT: No that case is still being built. The other attorneys downtown took it from the West LA city attorney’s office, and that place pretty much closed. And right when we thought we were going to be like homeless and unemployed, she got a job doing corporate council for publications, so we’re moving back to Norfolk, Virginia.
TE!: So I was helping my friend move today, and now that you are in the process of moving, how much does moving suck?
SAT: Oh, not only did I move three thousand miles to Norfolk, Virginia on the Atlantic coast in the middle of winter, I have a bunch of rescued animals, rescued dogs and cats, like pit bulls and abused animals and feral cats and stuff. With our former guitarist Matt Sherwood- he flew out here New Year’s Eve, to help me move all of our animals to Norfolk, to get them resettled and comfortable in our new house and all that – and set them up with list of the best dry dog foods if they run out of the pile we left- and Mark, our guitar player, he moved from San Francisco to Richmond, but he got dropped off by his ex-girlfriend and his dog at the first show of this tour in Nashville, TN. We went back west, so he’s still moving on this tour, not quite getting back to Virginia. So we are totally in that, so, how much does it suck? And we are both doing moves that are from California back to Virginia.
Yose: Now, do you only have two or three animals, or do you have a zoo?
SAT: We have a zoo; we have seven cats, and four dogs.
TE!: I just have my one cat, and then my parents have currently seven dogs- well, four of them are puppies- and a parrot and a cockatiel. I never thought about how much I disliked an animal before, until I met this parrot.
SAT: Parrots should live in the rain forest.
TE!: Parrots should live not in a cage in a house, yeah.
SAT: I’m not that pro pet; I’m just pro animal rescue. And I’m really pro passionate-euthanasia for an unbelievably suffering gigantic urban and rural feral pet population. Like dogs living on chains and like puppies being born into soil contaminated with parvo. We’ve dealt face to face with these issues. Some of my band mates as well, like Garth, have rescued a bunch of pit bulls and re-socialized them, got them medical care and made them into good pets. These are pit bulls that have spent two years in captivity after being rescued from Katrina in New Orleans.
TE!: So what reality TV shows do you watch?
SAT: Kind of an embarrassing amount when I get a chance.
TE!: Really?
SAT: Yeah, but I don’t have much time to watch too much TV, cause we tour a lot.
TE!: Are you a big Project Runway fan?
SAT: No, no, no… I mean, I don’t hate it, but PETA2 is on this tour and it is awesome to have them, and other animal rescue and rights groups have been a presence in our lives touring with us for a long time and like the cove project, to expose the dolphin kills in Japan and get like a huge public outcry…Is that a fruit basket?!!!
TE!: It’s Edible Arrangements, dude.
SAT: I love it. It’s a huge part of what we do and yeah, just all of the animal rights, that consciousness that has been a part of hardcore since before we were a band. It is something we care about a great deal.
TE!: Ok, we’ll steer clear of that cause ah, I get uppity with PETA sometimes.
SAT: No, they’re a controversial organization; they are quite radical. They have their hands in every aspect of life, like pop-culture, celebrity culture and then what they call the “dirty work” that society doesn’t want to think about having to do. There are shelters, and animal pounds in parts of Eastern North Carolina and rural Virginia, that don’t even properly kill the animals they are supposed to euthanize, they leave them half dead in piles, rotting in the sun. There is one of these shelters in Richmond that did the same thing. So there is this sense of unbelievable suffering; ending animal suffering is extremely important to me.
TE!: Got it. With the Bush administration out of the office, which is something that has changed since the last time we chatted, do you think that punk has their source material has sort of dried up?
SAT: No, I think everything was kind of safer and easier when we had kind of a one-dimensional villain, and you could rally around a certain thing, but no one was really talking about other solutions. I think punk, when it started, was pretty anti-politics. It wasn’t about apathy but it was about the larger questions, the systemic structures of everyday life. Like we’re just sold into this duality, like democrats, republicans, liberals, conservatives, like that is some meaningless bullshit. You know, and it roams the world. It is a projection of America. It’s not really how we can better organize ourselves, or have an equitable civilization. So, rocking against Bush was cool, but getting deeper is important, and now we have an opportunity to do that. And when our video comes out next week, you will see that we are doing that.
TE!: Now I hear a lot of people are like, “Oh, America is all jacked up,” and this and that. What country do you think is the most fucked up? In terms of how it treats its citizens.
SAT: Oh Jesus. I mean, it depends on where the citizens are at like how you would define the borders of a nation-state.
TE!: I mean, what country would you least want to be a citizen of?
SAT: Um, things are pretty bad in Somalia.
TE!: But then you could be a pirate.
SAT: If you’re in Somaliland, which is the autonomous zone north of Somalia. But no, I’m sure there are lots of people escaping to Somalia to become pirates. There’s a lot of repressive regimes. We managed to get into Belarus and play a show in Minsk, it is a locked-down, state-controlled, surveillance-run, totalitarian dictatorship. It doesn’t get a lot of press cause it doesn’t have nukes like North Korea, but it is like North Korea. It’s in Europe, Belarus. So those kids, they’re all like 19, 20, they’ve all been arrested for democratic protest, for just being punks, on the one summer day in the squares. And you know, they have engineering degrees, they could be scientists, they could be, you know, poets and artists, and they just can’t leave, they can’t travel. So that’s a pretty rough place that we’ve been to. I would not like to be a citizen, but I would love to go back and play a show for those kids. They presented us a book that they had downloaded and printed pictures, and written our lyrics, in English, to make a story to thank us for coming. It’s pictures of us and pictures of them, the kids from Bella Rouse, being punk rockers, living their lives. It was so sweet. It’s not a particular beef with like, “I’m resentful that I’m an American.” Nation-states are fucked. It’s the illusion of like having independence inside of a country. You know, we are run by trans-national corporate wealth, that doesn’t give a fuck about America, Australia, Germany, whatever the nationalities of those people are: greed is their master. So you know, that’s a huge part of the trap that we’re in right now; it’s that we’re not living up to our human promises, our actual morality. I think that’s going to take, not just politics as usual within the borders of a country, but something outside of that; something bigger. Like a movement of consciousness. That is always what we have been plugged into and writing songs about and trying to live up.
TE!: Are any of you papas? Have any of you brought in babies into this greed-ridden world?
SAT: No, and there are some vasectomies in the Strike Anywhere camp. Not to say that we wouldn’t, that some of us wouldn’t procreate, but we’re just as excited about fostering or adopting or just being good childless citizens of a community.
TE!: Alright, what is your favorite jam from the 1990’s? I was going to say 90’s, but then I got the “I love the 80’s” but the 1880’s CD.
SAT: Man, what is that shit like?
TE!: It’s like all Brahms.
SAT: Yeah, Brahms was running that shit. He was the Jay-Z of the 1880’s. Hey Mark, what’s your favorite song from the 1990’s? Like a radio song?
TE!: Yeah.
SAT: I wasn’t listening to much radio in the 1990’s; I was collecting vinyl.
TE!: I think it’s the only time I did listen to the radio.
SAT: I like that, love song, that one that was popular. Do you know, do you know that band? Um, I can’t remember the name of it, that’s not gonna help. Everclear? No, no, wait! It’s… I liked “Tennessee” by Arrested Development.
TE!: Ok, good jam. Between that and “Mr. Wendel” man they had that shit locked down. I was like “This band rules!”
SAT: I love Arrested Development. That shit is, I still have the cassette tape of that.
TE!: Any time someone says “Tennessee,” I just start repeating it…
SAT: “Mr. Wendel” was a good jam, too.
TE!: Yeah, but there’s a street in San Diego that I used to work off of called Genesee, so I’d repeat that, too.
SAT: Also we just played the first show in Nashville. Which was pretty fun, we have a song that name-checks the state of Tennessee, so of course we started with that and the kids were like, “Yeah, Tennessee” and of course you know all our songs are about like, fucking nuclear devastation and industrial military complex and like birth defects, and like childhood traumas and like, you know, anti-war songs, cheery topics. So when we talk about Tennessee, we are talking about some bad shit happened in Tennessee, and Oakridge, look it up, your shit is fucked, and the kids are just like “YEAH! TENESSEE! YEAAH!” You know, that’s how we roll.
TE!: Now do you think that corporations by just being a corporation is evil or do you think it’s something bigger than that?
SAT: Corporations are given legal rights of a person without any of the responsibilities to answer for their crimes. They are empowered in a way which is a huge perversion of the free market individualism philosophy of America. It actually subverts individual creativity and it puts shackles on people’s ability to control their fate, and to control the fate of resources in their communities. Um, yeah, I think philosophically the nature of a legally protected corporate entity means that there is no individual responsibility for running roughshod over the planet in the name of some kind of deep hyper perverted, perversion; it’s a perverted perversion.
TE!: I like it: double perversion. Pervy squared.
SAT: Of a fairly idealistic naïve entrepreneurially impulse that pundits right now, billionaires screaming at you on AM radio, telling working class people that trying to care for their families is betraying America. And trying to organize for their rights is betraying America… So I mean, you can take patriotism and jack up any evil, immoral idea that you want. I mean that’s why nation-states are the enemy: nation-states protecting corporate wealth is right now the furthest exponent of this idea.
TE!: A problem I have with both the left wing and the right wing and anywhere around that, is a seeming lack of balance in where people get their information. Where it’s like, lets just take your stereotypical republican, where it’s Fox News or nothing at all. Where do you get your information and how do you find a balance?
SAT: That’s a good question. It’s really hard. I mean trying to read newspapers that you think are neutral or even trying to read and understand; its better to go into something understanding the biases than to go into something than going into something expecting information from a neutral source. Whether its ZNET, or you know, whether it’s like the typical extremely literate compassionately international left wing essays and websites like John Pilcher and Howard Zinn (RIP) and things like that. You do understand those biases as well. But getting an international perspective on news is really important. So like, reading your local paper, and if you’re in Virginia, you get some wild shit like “Tobacco: What’s really wrong with it?” You know, or like front page questioning of Obama’s citizenship, like those non-ideas are selling insane amounts of papers in the southeast. Like, being comforted by ignorance and all that is a huge part of media and so moving past that and just trying to be brave with what you read and trying to understand other cultural ideas. Looking at nationalism not from the idea of being a super-power but from indigenous communities that are trying to free themselves from an oppressive majority. You know, maybe that’s an acceptable nationalism in this particular moment. You have to look at it in these waves. I think there is way too much duality. I think you can read it in the press, I mean there’s comic books and cartoons, there’s fan sites and websites which use the top web development companies, that have a lot more intellectually responsible content than most major newspapers and news sources. When I see the intro to the Steven Colbert Report, the new intro with the eagle that’s painted red white and blue, I’m like, this is supposed to be parody but the rest of the world, the serious news has caught up to this and this just looks like everything else looks. Billboards, MSNBC, FOX News, you know I think being driven into left wing, right wing camps is also an aspect of this dehumanizing retardation that has happened to us.
TE!: Oderus from GWAR was on Fox Redeye last night.
SAT: How was he? I grew up with him.
TE!: It’s like the 7th time he’s been on it and it’s just ridiculous. He just talks so much trash and hits on the anchors and shit…
SAT: He’s a brilliant man.
TE!: But just watching Fox News for a half an hour just irritates me, because it’s not a problem to be exposed to the super conservative ideas. What pisses me off is they did a poll where more people trust Fox News than MSNBC, and then they run this weird computer graphic, like freshman level computer graphics, where it’s like them making fun of MSNBC, and talking about how much better they are, and I’m like, “This is supposed to be news? I’m supposed to get information from this?” It just lost me completely. I mean, I don’t watch news, and that just really solidified it. But GWAR…
SAT: GWAR’s first show I saw, before they had a budget and they were making their own masks, roller-skates, foam battle-axes, loin cloths; I saw a free show. It was like, they were just crazy art student punk rockers from the mid 80’s, and in 1987, it was my first show, and we had a two-story grainery in the country outside my hometown, in Richmond, and we had them come play a show. We had like stolen power and we didn’t know that we were doing like a DIY show space, cause that nomenclature hadn’t been developed yet, so we just did this thing, and had these shows and it was really fun and GWAR came and they were also invested in like tons of warehouses and art spaces and practice spaces for all the bands and stuff. Growing up in GWAR’s shadow was like pretty awesome. Occasionally you would have to wipe off slime.
TE!: Yeah, my friend today, you could tell, the pants and shoes he had on still had the red and green specks from the GWAR show we went to in November.
SAT: No doubt. That’s awesome.
TE!: It was good. Just after I saw their show on November 23rd, went home, and my mom’s dog was in the house, normally just chilling in the backyard, I come into the house and I’m like “Hey puppy!” and it just up and bites me in the face. And all I could think, was “This is how GWAR ends: having my nostril torn from the inside by a fang.”
SAT: Sorry.
TE!: No, I mean it was all right, like it wasn’t terrible. I wasn’t upset, I was just like “Oh, real blood mixed with the fake blood.” All right man, I think that’s about it.
SAT: I hope you can pull some good quotes, you know, like the Jay-Z thing.
TE!: Oh, the Jay-Z thing is so good.
Yours in GWAR, The Emperor.