PipemanRadio Interviews The Subhumans at Punk Rock Bowling XXIV

0:04 Hey, you have done to censure? Wow? Crazy you why become of America. It's time for the Adventures of Pipe Man on W four c Y dot com. Wis pomp Beats is number one internet radio station. Here's your host, the Pipe Man to somebody lost all my rights? Lot you wanna go? This is the pipe Man here on the Adventure's Pipe Man W four c Y Radio. And I'm here with My name is Stick Lucas, I sing for the Subhubans. We're here in Las Vegas at the Punk Roll Bowling Annual event. It is a beautiful thing to have you here at punk Rock boyl. It's really cool because I'm super excited because I'll get to see you here today at the festival and the main festival, but then I get to see you at club show too. That's one of the things I love about Punk Rock Bowling. I don't even remember. Have you guys ever played Punk Rock Bowling? Yeah, I think it was twenty nineteen, perhaps, Okay, we did both the festival and the club show after. Oh yeah, you know what. I think I was at that one. That was the one where the Specials headline. But it's such a cool festival. Isn't though,

1:36 where you have like all these club shows going on around the festival, and yet like basically the punks take over all of downtown Las Vegas. Yeah, so all the weirdos in Las Vegas are not the punks. The punks come along and make it seem a bit more normal because it's just the weirdest place ever. And you see some punks and you think, Okay, everything's looking a bit more sane. Now, you are right, because it is like I've been coming in Vegas since I twelve, and I think the most normal I ever see it in downtown Vegas is during punk rock bowling, right, which says a lot. So I want to know, like, you guys have been doing it a long long time. Man. Yes, scary, but we were back then. You couldn't even conceive, Like I could never conceive that I would be going to one of your shows in twenty twenty four. I didn't even think there would be a twenty twenty four. No, but quite to see people who look trying to look into the future and wonder to slash, worry about what it's gonna be like just wasting the time You're never gonna know, get on with the present and maybe book some it for next week or next month, that's right, maybe next year, but looking forward ahead, and that is just like gonna lead nowhere. Either you think it's gonna be great and it isn't. Disappointed, you think it'd be awful and it isn't. You be cheered up. But either way it's the pointed thing doing it. Might as well work out how this week's going next month and put your heart and soul into what's going on right now. I love that because I'm also a motivational speaker. So I love that you said that, not only because I agree with everything you said, but I like

3:09 the image that when I do interviews with punk bands that we throw out in the world because there's this image of what punks are, and once I do interviews, I think that image is very much different, you know, because we get to find out the real people. People do judge by appearance way too much. Oh no, that party. We live in a totally visual society where what people got to say is secondary to what they look like exactly, and people get to say their stuff because of what they look like way too often. Yeah, one hundred percent. So what would you say in all these years is the best, worst, wildest, craziest, whichever story that you could think of in your musical journeys. We'll call it. That's tricky. Well, let's go for when we were over in La staying at a friend's place. This was we have citizen Fish in ninety wherever year it was a while back. It was the year of the La riots. Oh okay, And we were there and we were looking out this guy's window and way over there in the distance there's just the sky was lit up with fire and stuff, and on the news that the whole place was just going and where we're playing, we're playing like across that and over the other side of that, and it's like, I don't think we should do that. We find out and said we're not turning up. There's a right going and I said, work, you know there's people here. It's like, you know, we've sold tickets. I said, yeah, but look on the teley dot. Your whole area is going up in flames, right, you know, van astands the chance being overturned and smashed the bits or whatever. You

4:43 know, we didn't get all the way over here just to risk being beat up, killed, arrested. Whatever set on fire just because we're playing next to a riot. It's one of the really really rare situations where we had to cancel. We felt the danger level was too high. That's a legitimate reason the council, I gotta say, because I went wind drive through those riots to get to the show. No, as an intendee, I imaginely quite a few people didn't go to the show that. Oh yeah, absolutely, So what was it that? Really? Do you remember that first moment in your life that you thought this is who I want to be. No, these that's all revelations that cocurred there, right, that's fiction. You get it in books, in films. It's like, oh, no, I know what I want to be. No, you don't, you know?

5:31 No, But that's what I think. When I first heard the adverts the UK band back in seventy seven or seventy eight, Singing Board Teenagers on the Alan Freeman Show. It was a Saturday afternoon show on Radio one BBC, and suddenly it was a very startpunk rock where it was for me at least, and I thought, wow, here's a single that combines all the stuff, all the musical bits I used to like from previous bands, all shoved into less than two minutes. And they're not singing about strange, surreal, odd, fairy tale whatever lyrics. You know, all the lyrics up to that point to me, meant more or less nothing, just love songs, yeah, or weird. Say they're sing about board teenagers here, I am bored teenager. That clicked. That could be described as a moment where I felt I found something really in so wanted to be like that and wanted to sing like that. I wanted to do that, and I wanted to be in a band. And so I'll nail it down to that moment, even though the process was a lot more undefined than that. Yeah. Yeah, with reflection hindsight, we'll stick with that moment, all right. And So, since you've been in this punk areena since pretty much close to the beginning, what do you think of punk today compared to punk when you started.

6:55 Well, today, it's a lot safer to be a punk rocket look like a punk rocker, to be in the punk band. Punk bands getting the charts, they actually kind of think of it. They used to get in the charts as well. But the shotgun awe of punk rockers long ago worn off. A lot of punk rockers melded in with pop music and it's got popular in themselves like one hundreds of thousands of units. It's more generally speaking, it's more commercial and mainstream now where else a good thing or bad thing. But there again asking a full cycle because with the sex Pistols, the Clash and all those bands started, they all started on large record labels and they sold a whole bunch of records as well, maybe not as many as para religional rounds of the Green Day. I don't know, I've got the figures, but it was commercial then, it's commercial now. In between then when the press started not to notice punk anymore and declared it being dead, then it started to develop in some more diy scene and smaller labels came up, smaller fans, in smaller radio shows, smaller bands, and they didn't they didn't really aim at being rock stars or the top of the pops and be famous and what sort of thing. But they was in it for the love of playing and mutual feeling you get between band and crowd and being teenagers, just to vent your internal emotions out loud and have it amplified in front of people who like it. It is a great feeling. Yeah, that is your basis of punk rock right there. It's just the venting.

8:20 And once the corporations have decided it was a bit passing and weren't interested in it anymore, then it got more true to life. I think, not to denigrate the first wave of punk rock when it came along, it may had a massive effect on a low load a lot of teenage people just we just didn't know where they were in society. Felt alienated completely by all the rock and roll musically speaking, by all that rock and roll stuff that come before it. It was out of touch. It was you couldn't be in a band. You had to be some sort of god to be in a band and play Wembley and whether bands really did, and you know, you couldn't get any access to it. That's what it felt. And punk rock came along, and it's basic. One of its basic messages was anyone can do this Yeah, And a lot of people just said, yep, I'll give it a shot. And there loads of really fucking awful punk bands and they didn't care and it didn't matter. Some of got records out and some got a lot better, and some gave up some carried on. I was in a my first band called the Mental. We did ten shows, we did a one ep. We were pretty awful. But when you're awful, when you're a band, if you're recording or playing a gig, you were in a band. Yeah, you're a punk band right there. You haven't had like years of musical teaching or music industry specifics of what to do and when to do it, and how to do it and who to manage to do it. None of that. Hut, all that out out of window, back to basics. And that's that's what punk rot is, and that's why it's still going now because teenagers can now just say right and don't get me that guitar and could you want to sing? Can you got a drum kit? Well? Can you borrow one? Let's just whack out some emotional

9:52 inconsistency in our heads and instead of going out there and getting drunk and beating people up, we're going to play some music instead get as well, but probably not beat people up. And listen, you're speaking my language right now, because I'm a big believer. Like people don't understand the pit. The pit isn't about hurting the maiming people is about exactly what you're saying. It's a healthy way to get out all your aggression and like we're all big family together. You're not really looking to hurt anybody. You're just getting that shit out. You're venting and you and I say all the time, it saved me from punching a lot of people in the face, you know, And you get out and then you're not out there doing other destructive things, because how much destruction with all the anger as a teenager and things you're going through, would you cause if you didn't have punk music. That's my view point of the pit, and the pit is very much an American thing. It wasn't a UK thing. It's all first stories, like what the hell was going on? What it does? It's one of the very rare things that combines both aggression and intimate contacts. Yeah, like you are with a whole bunch of bodies going around, there is contacts. You're not on your own flaming at somebody else, You're with something. You're flailing together and it sounds like an oxymoron or whatever, but you're you're being aggressive in a communal way.

11:20 Yeah, I'm not sure, Like a family like siblings. You gotta watch it. If people who are not interested in being in the pit are getting wax and hit by mistake or deliberately, then that is wrong, right. You gotta keep it within the circle. Well, that's why I hate the people that don't understand the pit and they just go in to try to like they think they're tough guys. It's not about the tough guys, you know. And you should have this like wall around the pit to protect and protect the people that don't want to be If you want to be in it, great, you don't want to be it, that's your choice, you know, And that's the way it's cool. And it's so funny what you said about looking at us because me as a teenager, I was a metal head that also happened to be a punker in the eighties when you couldn't be both and uh, basically, which I hated that was stupid, But you know, I always was like, it was my dream to go to the UK because that's where the real punk scene was. And then our image over here is that you guys were more crazy than us when it came to stuff like that, you know. So it's kind of funny that that wasn't even true. It was just our own image. Maybe we were trying to make ourselves feel better that we were looking like a bunch of crazies. But the same situation was occurring on both sides of the planet. The planet is like, we were all looking for other people doing something in the name of punk lot that we could ever join in with, or associate with, or compare ourselves to. Yeah, but it was a massive endo with punk bands all

12:52 over the globe, Australia, India, everywhere it was happening. That's what's so good about it. It was once you dug into it, it wanted to be on the media image of what was going on. Yeah, and all this diy punk consciousness was occurring right across the planet. And I think anybody that meets punks or goes to someplace like punk rock Bawling where we're at now what they find as the punks are like some of the most caring people on the planet, not just about their music, but about the planet, about people, about all kinds of issues that are important for human beings and all of us. Yeah, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. I might be wrong these days because politics has entered all sorts of musical genres.

13:33 Yeah, because politicians have got seriously out of hand. Ever since the Internet came in, We've all become realizing how bad things are, and politicians are going way more right wing across the planet and things are getting seriously dangerous for the whole of humanity. So a lot more people in various diverse genres of music are getting more political when their lyrics and outlook and the benefitings they doing that sort of thing. But up to that point, a few years ago and backwards in time, punk rot to me at least was the one scene where there was way more politics than any other scene, where like there was information leaflets and pamphlets and fanzines at shows that you could pick up pay for or get for free. We'll just tell you some facts about animal rights, human rights, the local scene, the national scene, the global scene in terms of what was going on that wasn't getting reported in the papers, and it was just an information is communication, and that what leads to people changing their minds about things like eating meat, that sort of thing. Without the facts, people just think they're right doing what they were doing because their parents did it, all their mates do it and under pressure and all that.

14:39 But anyone who ever felt a bit outside of society because they didn't feel they fitted in, you go, you won't go on to a punk show and grab a bit of info and buy a fanzine or just pick up what's going out there for free. You can certly realize that you're not the only one anymore. That's the unifying thing about information. It's like people don't feel so isolated in their non us their unusual ways of thinking compared to what they're supposed to be thinking according to TV shows, in the media and that sort of thing. Yeah. Absolutely, and it's so true because one thing I love about these interviews is listeners get to find out what punks are really all about instead of what their images of them. And to me, punks are some of the most intellectual people that can give you the intellectual facts and information.

15:31 And actually, you know, they're using a certain type of music to spread knowledge that is, you know, true knowledge that can help everybody. Yeah, I think you might be giving a bit too much credit maybe if you knowledge with opinions and outlooks, because not everything we think is going to be dead, right, Yeah, that's true knowledge. Is actual factual stuff, and there's a lot of facts that way more facts out there than there is opinions. I may not be true anymore. Ready, opinions seemed to have taken over. People think nowadays that their opinions are all facts. I had somebody ask somebody recently. They post something on Facebook and I asked them, I'm like, you know, is that peer reviewed? And they're like, yeah, all my friends agree with me, you know, So there you go. Well, man, it's phenomenal that you're here once again at Punk Rock Bowling. I'm really looking totally forward to your set here at the festival grounds and at the club show. I'm sure you're going to kill it.

16:34 And one thing to go back to something you said is Punk Rock Bowling is a festival that shows that punk is not dead, and we're much bigger family than we ever were, and it's more inclusive than we ever were. And like what I'm leading to what I said earlier about metal heads and punks can be at the same show, well, everybody can be at the same show now and it's at Punk Rock Bowling. Yeah, that's one of the learning things about punk roll is that you don't have to define yourselves too narrowly. Yeah, if you do that, you're missing out on a whole bunch of ideas from other people who are interested in the same things as punks are. They just don't look the same, And then musical tastes veers out towards other stuff that some punks hate and some punks don't. We got to be more relaxed about what we like and what we don't like, and not argue all the time over what we look like and my musical tastes and whether this band is better than that band, or where we got the whole world out there full of problematic stuff that affects us way more deeply than just tasting music or tasting haircuts. Like I love. You get older, you start taking this stuff more seriously, and start taking punk rock a bit less seriously.

17:34 It's not the only thing there is. We're all punk rockers, but we're good people. But punk rock is your mainstay, main course on the musical menu of life. From there you go, I love it. Let's tell everybody how they can connect on socials, on the web, get all your merch, tourd aids, everything. Yeah, I main outlet for that is our band. Camp site. Okay, so Subhumans, I think Subhuman's UK dot band camp dot com. That's what all our merchant is being sold. That's where our music is for downloading. We're also on Instagram, We're also on Facebook. But those things just they set the life blood out your brain. I want to go back to the tape trading, the tapes, writing letters, doodles in letters, character in writing. You write this bit, big, bigger than that bit, and decorate the envelopes and all sorts of beautiful individual stuff, and you just can't do it with typeface. That's true, and that screen time. So instead we're going to spend some time at the sub Human show right here. Punk Rock Bowling, thanks for being here, and thanks for being on the Adventures of paint Man. Thanks for having me keep it up. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Patemn.

18:48 I'm w for CUI Radio. I Dick Lucas from the Sabium. As you're listening to Pipeman on w fur c Y Radio.