ARTICLES OF FAITH
with VIC BONDI
Punk rock in America could have never survived without politics. Bands from the Dead Kennedys to MDC (Millions of Dead Cops/Damn Christians or, Multi Death Corporation, whichever you choose) and onto Black Flag, the FUs, the Fartz and many, many more, helped to bring political consciousness to a new generation of lonely, disparate, disillusioned kids who learned their politics and social messages through television and music, as opposed to fireside chats with mom and dad listening to Ronald Reagan's far right banter. Yet, one of America's most intense, in touch and honest political punk rock machines took place deep inside the Midwest. Made up of a group of five under-aged kids from inside Chicago's city limits, Articles of Faith took the realities of politics to the youth of America's exploding hardcore punk scene, exposing them to issues far beyond what they were reading in newspapers or saw on the six o'clock news. With a creed that demanded equal amounts of action and ideas, AoF's ultra-liberal politics resonated far beyond their four year existence in the back rooms of clubs across the country, but few knew the name.
On October 8, 2002 Alternative Tentacles re-released all of AoF's vinyl output, along with a share of unreleased and rare tunes, onto two retrospective CDs entitled Articles of Faith Complete, Vol. 1: 1981-1983 and Complete, Vol. 2: 1983-1985. While their live sets were filled with some of the most cutting edge political music and banter of the early 1980s Reagan era, songs such as "By This War" and "Buried Alive" are seemingly more relevant in America's current political climate than they were 20 years ago. Musically and politically nothing will prepare you for what real hardcore is like these two records.
This interview took place on October 10, 2002 with former AoF frontman Vic Bondi and NNNS reporter, Tom Molony.
*Note* The interview begins with about 15 to 20 minutes worth of chat about kids, parenting and current popular music, which is where this interview picks up. That portion will not be included.
NNNS: Whatever makes a buck, I guess.
Vic: . . . Sure, I guess. But no, not "whatever makes a buck." Some things that make a buck are OK and some things that make a buck aren't OK.
NNNS: Well, I'm not saying from my perspective. But definitely from the perspective of [the mainstream music industry] . . .
Vic: No, even objectively, that's the way, right? People make guns and weapons of mass destruction, and these scientists who spend all their days in the lab figuring out how to develop a biological strain of virus that will murder 2 million people. So that's not a good way to make a living (laughs). That's a bad way to make a living. And there's other ways of making a living that are just perfectly fine and there are just millions of ways of making a living that are just malignantly evil. Brittney Spears is borderline malignantly evil.
NNNS: I agree.
Vic: There's dozens of pop stars that kick out a good song or two, that you're just like, "Ok, alright, I'll go with that." Madonna's done redeeming music in the past . . .
NNNS: Ehn . . . I don't know.
Vic: Brittney Spears and Backstreet Boys, they're just product. They're just commodity. They're human beings that have gone through the grinding gears of commercialism and come out as something less than human . . . the only really great thing about really bad music is that it's out there for the majority of the people to anesthetize themselves with, and then you have the opportunity to just completely shock them and confound them, and put on something that is so genuine that it sends their whole contrived state of being into a panic.
NNNS: How long had you considered the re-release? Was it planned out?
Vic: No it was really fast. I was playing music, like the liner notes say, for my daughter. I was listening to a lot of old Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, old protest music. Going through the whole Genoa riots in 2001; and that's the great thing about the internet, you don't have to rely on the completely controlled American press, you can go read the European papers . . .
NNNS: Were you over there at that time?
Vic: No, no, I was here. But I'd dial up El Pais (spelling) on the internet and read, or Le Monde and read and see what they had to say. The American press would present this "Well, G7 leaders of the world are trying to bring the glories of globalization to the world." Then you read the European press and it's like "Mass Riots in the Streets," and that picture in Le Monde, the agency press picture with the Black Block guy just blew me away. [Jello] Biafra and I had been talking on and off for quite a while. I was going to be in No WTO Combo with him. What happened was (laughs), it's the oddest thing in the world, but, when those guys did that here in Seattle, I had to go to Mexico City on business. When it all went down my wife phones me up and said, "there's tear gas coming down our street" (laughing). Ever since I moved out to the west coast, we'd talked about doing this or that and it's not that far from Seattle to San Francisco. I had a collaboration with Morello and that was easy, and between [Jello and myself] it was sort of the same thing. He would hum, he sort of hums and thumps out stuff, because he doesn't play an instrument. So, you have to sort of figure out what he's humming on guitar. But we've really never managed to do anything. But still, we keep in touch and I see him whenever he's up here. And we were talking about the AoF stuff and he felt that it really never got the recognition it deserved. And I felt like that naturally.
NNNS: Even from being here and discussing general [punk] history with my friends and discussing history with my older sister, she didn't know who Articles of Faith was.
Vic: The thing about it was, and the Steve Blush book, when it came out, I saw it in the boom store and sort of cursory stuff they gave AoF . . . if you were gonna talk about an alternative scene that was under age, do it yourself, left wing politics, against the system, it was us! The Effigies were hell bent on being rock stars.
*Note* here begins some talk about The Effigies, my in-laws and their right wing leanings versus independent politics
Vic: ". . . well don't bother me with the truth, because I don't want to know."
NNNS: So, was [radical politics] the agenda of the band when you got together?
Vic: I think that was a big part of it. I think all of us were kind of incensed (his daughter shows up for a bit) . . . we were all incensed in those days for one reason or another.
NNNS: How old were you when you started the band?
Vic: 20. I wouldn't say that my politics were well thought out at the time. I'd say I was a little anti-authoritarian. Bill's were religiously ideological, I should say, Virus [X]. He has a religious ideology that buttresses his political thinking. Joe was probably the most enlightened of us all, in terms of having read a lot of political theory and thought about stuff and having a fairly articulate view about things.
NNNS: Were you guys college students at this point?
Vic: Joe and I had met at Northern [Illinois University] actually. We had started playing in a band out there.
NNNS: Were you going to school out there?
Vic: Yeah, I was going to school out there. We'd play new wave covers, punk covers. We'd do Blondie and Buzzcocks and The Damned. Then we moved to Chicago in '81, just Joe and I.
NNNS: Were you originally from this area?
Vic: No, I wasn't, actually. My father was in the military, hence the anti-authoritarianism, and I went to high school in Pensacola, Florida where the Navy base is. I had come up to Illinois to go to school and sort of discovered punk rock. I actually discovered punk rock in Pensacola, of all places. It was pretty hard, but that second Clash record managed to find its way there, but the minute that I first heard that snare shot in "Safe European Home," I knew I was hooked. And I knew that's what I wanted to do . . . [was] play music. Seeing the Clash right after I moved up to Northern, playing at the Aragon on the [Pearl Harbor . . . Explosions – can't understand] tour, I still had my long, surfer hair from Florida. I saw that show and the next day went out and shaved it.
NNNS: Had you had any idea of how political they were?
Vic: Yeah, yeah. I'm a product of the "three-minute left." I think there's probably an entire generation that gotten their basic impudence for politics from rock 'n roll.
NNNS: I'll admit to it.
Vic: A lot of people, at least the start, the smart ones go further from the music, 'cause three minutes isn't a very good way to get informed about much of anything, to studying a lot of other things and I think a lot of people have done that. And I think it's reflected in the culture, too. There's sort of an anti-authoritarianism and cynicism about the power that exists in the world today as a consequences of not only hardcore punk, but the new wave forms and some of the milder forms, and certainly by the time the Clash ended up, they weren't playing any kind of music that was recognizably hardcore, but the message was still fairly left wing. Midnight Oil did stuff like that. It makes you conscious because you're not going to get that from the media. Not from the "healthy debate" in America.
NNNS: When you guys started playing here, was the scene a-political?
Vic: Yeah, and truthfully, if you listen to Effigies songs and listen carefully, the message was fairly right wing. "Mob Clash" said "don't bother to go out there folks, you're just a bunch of dumpheads." I don't want to make it sound like I'm not actually an Effigies fan, the first time I saw them I was blown away. I thought they were just great. I saw them at Oz, early 1981. January or so, or maybe as early as 1980, at one of the Ozes that kept floating around from place to place (laughs). It was just a great sound. Initially, I'd say, I was an Effigies fan and I still think "Haunted Town" is an awesome record. So I'll give those guys their due, although they were kind of a one-trick pony. That record sounds like every other record they did. They never moved beyond those base three chords. They don't necessarily have to. The scene seemed very old to me. I shouldn't have even been in some of the clubs. I was sneaking into these clubs and seeing these bands play, those guys, that older scene, they kept the punk rock thing to themselves. That was the other thing about it. It was a lot of real fucking attitude. I mean all of these guys were like, "who are you? You've got a southern accent," which I'm sure I was still carrying around. "You're some hick from the sticks, get the fuck out. You're not cool enough to be with us." Half of them were affecting British accents. It was funny. There was this side of the scene that was very art school. I can remember this from like '82, '83, the biggest band in Chicago was Orange Juice, this completely obscure British pop band that no one listens to anymore. They were just the rage of the city. Everyone was listening to Orange Juice. "Oh, they're so great!" I was like, "this stuff is wretched, what are you talking about?"
NNNS: Was this a lot of kids who went to Northwestern?
Vic: Oh yeah, there was a lot of Northwestern kids. I don't know that a lot of them went to Northwestern. They were either Northwestern students, or seniors in high school and they lived in Evanston and were kids of the professors up there. So, I don't think I felt very at home in that scene. There was another scene in Chicago at the time, there was sort of this art school, rich kid scene and the Effigies were a big part of that. Then there was another scene down at space place, now I think is completely forgotten. It was in the meat packing district, in the old locker buildings there. We would rehearse there. We had a rehearsal space at Space Place. They converted a bunch of the meat lockers into rehearsal spaces. Ministry used to rehearse next door to us, in the locker over. Back when they were in their New Romantic phase. They had a performance space upstairs and there were a lot of other bands that didn't quite fit into The Effigies' world and the whole Evanston art-house scene, like DV8, Subverts, to a lesser extent, and Urban Decay and then us. But I don't think, especially when we first started in '81, we had not found our voice at that point.
NNNS: You're talking politically, or in terms of your sound?
Vic: We didn't have our sound together. You know. Those bands kept looking for a place, sometimes you'd play at O'Banions, sometimes you'd play at Space Place, it was really kind of, there wasn't really any hard and fast distinctions between scenes at that time, pretty fluid. There were new wave bands that shaded over into punk rock, punk rock bands shaded over into new wave. Bohemia was a group that sort of had both crowds. Phil 'n the Blanks, Lasmo Nareez (?), people really liked that guy. It was pretty fertile. The thing about it is, one of the things that was really . . . that you didn't like about the whole art school, Evanston scene, was that they had rules. They weren't, you had to be a certain way, the bands had to sound a certain way; it was very, sort of, rule oriented.
NNNS: Did that affect the way that you guys decided to do your presentation with things?
Vic: Awe, no, man, we just played the way we felt. The only thing that changed Articles of Faith and the thing that made Articles of Faith, actually, a pretty good band, as opposed to just another, sort of, punk rock band, was seeing the Bad Brains in DC in 1981.
NNNS: Did you just take a trip or were you there seeing your parents?
Vic: My parents lived in DC then. I knew about the DC scene and I wanted to check it out. I went down to 9:30 Club and it was Faith and Bad Brains, and Bad Brains just ripped the joint apart. They were so phenomenal! I mean, the only other band that inspired me so much had been The Clash. Then to see the Bad Brains to do it in that way . . . when I started listening to music, in Pesacola, Florida, you're not going to listen to anything other than rock and '60s shit. I listened to a lot of Who and Beatles and The Stones, so when The Clash came along I was in this Stones phase when The Clash came along and I just sat all of those Stones records to the side and said, "It just doesn't matter anymore. This is what's happening." Then I got The Jam and The Ramones and the punk rock records I could get my hands on. Then when I saw the Bad Brains it was like, "Wow, so, that lame, new wavy crap doesn't matter now too. Who gives a fuck about this Irish U2 band? Fuck that, this is what's happening." That's when I came back from DC and I told the guys, "Why are we just playing mid-tempo? Let's play fast. Let's play like no other band in the city." There's one band that started playing kind of speedier and which was Trial by Fire, which was Chris Bjorklund's band. And they had started playing sort of thrashy stuff. And then The Stellas, they weren't yet Die Kreutzen, The Stellas from Milwaukee, who even back then they were just (Side-A stops here). Let's play our own style and get where we need to be. Let's stop imitating The Clash and imitate the Bad Brains (laughing)! I don't think it really ended up coming out quite that way cause . . .
NNNS: Oh no, absolutely not. You can imitate to some degree, but those first two records are in a league of their own.
Vic: Oh yeah, the first record is just amazing.
NNNS: When I heard [AoF's] stuff; I've always loved the "Chicago Sound," but the Articles of Faith stuff was always a step ahead of everything else that was put out in the city. People would say, "You can't say that, Naked Raygun is from here . . ."
Vic: Well I appreciate that. I think that's a great compliment. I wouldn't take anything away from Naked Raygun, I think they were a fine band. Actually, to tell you the truth, Haggerty, I like Pegboy better than Naked Raygun. I mean, Naked Raygun's cool, but Pezzatti, he's kind of a different person, where Pegboy, those guys were just gonna die on stage. The last time I saw Pegboy here in Seattle, which must have been like, four-years-ago, I took my wife! At the time she decided to go just to placate me. It was just an amazing show because it got just completely out of hand. Those guys got so hammered drunk on stage that the whole thing just ended up disintegrating into fist fights. It was unbelievable. If I had to name a favorite Chicago band, Pegboy would be mine. I really just dig those records. The first record is just phenomenal.
It's funny because Articles of Faith aren't the Chicago sound. The Chicago Sound is this mid-tempo, with this really, high to mid-guitar crunch thing going on. Articles of Faith was just chaos! I listen to those records now and they are almost completely out of control. Definitely the live shows were out of control.
NNNS: Who did the main song writing?
Vic: We all did. It was a practicing democracy man. We lived it the way we talked it. We wrote songs all together. Any song that's on those records that is credited to AoF all four of us or all five of us had a hand in putting some piece together. Normally, I always wrote the lyrics, except on Dave's songs. On Virus X's stuff, what Bill would do, because he was a drummer, what he would do is he would play this stuff out on a little Casio keyboard and then they would try real hard to figure out the chords. But then I would work real hard with them to try and get the lyrics to a place where they worked. Often his were really polemic. It actually worked really well because I would tell him that I wasn't interested in going up there and sloganeering. And we would strip his songs back to these raw pieces, where it doesn't have to be that way, or just single words, and just screaming, word after word, after word. And I have to think that some of his stuff is some of the best stuff in that collection. The songwriting credits reflect who actually had input in those songs. We all worked together. Joe and Dorian were a little less active than Bill and Dave and I.
NNNS: Were you guys actively involved in politics in terms of protesting things?
Vic: Absolutely. On the Website you have pictures of us playing in Grant Park at the Mother's Day Peace Rally. That was huge. I think there was 12,000 or 14,000 people that marched that day from the Magnificent Mile to Grant Park. That was pretty fun because that day there was a lot of hippy type bands preceding us and the hippy promoters that put it on what AoF was.
NNNS: They had no idea.
Vic: (Snickering) Yeah, we just sort of went up there and rocked the living hell out of them.
NNNS: (laughing) That's amazing.
Vic: Yeah. That wasn't the only time we did that. One of the great untold stories about the early hardcore scene is how much it was indebted to the hippies and the yippies and the anarchists and the drug-fiends. A lot of hippies have gone mainstream and they work as DJs at WXRT. They were snorting coke with Fleetwood Mack and The Eagles. Some of the hippies they founded communes, had shelters. They were malcontent bastards. They were just decaying, so punk rock was perfect for them.
NNNS: Look at Crass. They made no bones about being hippies before they heard punk rock. For them it was the next logical step, it was just a little bit faster, a little bit harder and little bit more aggressive, that's all.
Vic: The other untold story of the hardcore scene is how much of it was a means to an end, which was Kezdy's thing, "I wanna be a rock star." This is just a new style of music. It's tougher, it's harder than it was before. You got part of that from Tesco and a lot of the east coast guys were kind of on that tip. I think the west coast was less so than the east coast. A lot of guys wanted to be star fuckers on the east coast. Not a great band, but a good band like SSD, their last couple of records were awful heavy metal records. And a lot of bands went that way, but New York bands were like that.
NNNS: These two CDs are not complete as far as all of AoF's recorded material.
Vic: They are, they actually they are; everything that got pressed on vinyl.
NNNS: What about the stuff on tape? How come that wasn't included?
Vic: The "Charred Remains" stuff . . .
NNNS: That and, [the song] "Surrogate" . . .
Vic: That song, if you have a copy of that song, send it to me because I don't have one. That song was recorded on reel to reel somewhere in Columbia College, actually. That one and "Fine Line" and I don't know where the tapes of them are. The "Charred Remains" stuff, the reason we didn't put that stuff on here, one, I don't like a lot of it . . .
NNNS: AOF is one of the best songs you guys ever wrote, in my opinion.
Vic: What song?
NNNS: AOF.
Vic: Oh, AOF?
NNNS: Oh my god, if there's one song [by Articles of Faith] that makes me flip out, it's that song.
Vic: (Laughs) I guess what I wanted to do with this thing is that I wanted to make a good package. The package was all the vinyl that we ever recorded as a band, plus a couple of freebies thrown in there, there's a live version of "Fine Line," and that song "Empty Rooms," which I don't know why we never recorded, because it's actually a good song. All the "Charred Remains" stuff is available. A lot of it is on the Core CD that we released in Europe. It's around, so I didn't feel like it wasn't available. That song "Angry Men," I don't want that song to ever be played. I'm not too thrilled with that one. We put "Street Fight" on this one and that's a fucking great song.
NNNS: Did you guys sit down collectively or was this your decision to put this out?
Vic: No, it was my call. What happened was, first off, I had lost touch with Dorian and Bill. I did call Joe and Dave before and said "Biafra thought we should put the record out, what do you guys think? Let me know if you don't want to do it." We would have taken a vote. If it was two against one, we wouldn't have put it out. Bu they were fine with it. I asked them if they wanted to participate in it and they expressed varying degrees of interest depending on when I would talk to them. Then, usually, they would go on to something else (laughs).
NNNS: Are you the only one who harbors any feelings or has any interest in [AoF]?
Vic: What, AoF?
NNNS: Yeah, it sounds like, to some degree, that they're like "It was 20-years ago, I don't even want to think about that anymore."
Vic: I don't think so. I think Dave was kind of like that. I was out in Boston this summer and hung out with Dave a little bit and he was like, "you know, this stuff isn't bad." I think Dave's take on it is that he wishes we would have done the records better than we did. Just some really basic things that we would have done differently. "Hollow Eyes" on the Give Thanks record is out of tune and I wish we would have taken the time to tune up Dorian's fucking guitar to get it right. We have to live forever with what is actually a pretty good song sounding not so good. And then there's, we missed intros and breaks all over the record. We didn't have the luxury of recording anything but fast. I think we made these records for something like 3 or $4,000 each. That was more money than all five of us earned in a single year. Finding the money and the ability to pay for these things was super fucking hard. If I recall, Bob [Mould] fronted us money on both records to them even there. We never had the option of taking the time to do multiple takes. Both Give Thanks and In This Life were recorded in fairly nice studios. The trade off for recording in some pretty nice studios was that you were burning a lot of cash really fast and you didn't have the option of a retake, "Oh, that's good enough. That's good enough for punk rock, oh, let it slide." We did a lot of that and I think for Dave, in particular, living with that is kind of a bitch because he knows how good those songs actually were. Then, Joe, I don't know where Joe's at. I think Bill's very much into it.
NNNS: Where are all the members?
Vic: Bill and Dorian are still in Chicago. Joe is in San Francisco, Dave is in Boston and I'm in Seattle.
NNNS: What does everyone do, at this point, for careers?
Vic: I don't know what Bill and Dorian do. I'm not really sure what Joe does (laughing). I was just in San Francisco. He just got married. I was in San Francisco last weekend, he got married, but I'm still not sure what he's doing. He takes pictures and does sound in clubs once in a while and fucks around on the internet a lot. Dave is a bookstore manager for the M.I.T. bookstore.
NNNS: And you, sir?
Vic: I'm the Business Manager for MSN.
NNNS: You were teaching for a while, correct?
Vic: I was. I taught from 1987 through 1995.
NNNS: And you got out of that because?
Vic: Microsoft offered me a job. I had written a few history books that had done really well. They were a series that was sold in libraries. At the time Microsoft was going to do a CD history encyclopedia. And so I flew out here and consulted with them, and they cancelled that project, but they liked me and they offered me a job. The first things I did was all of the interactive content on (unintelligible) encyclopedia I created. It's still in the product today, it's kind of gratifying. Next I did Microsoft language learning products, so we did a bunch of international products teaching English. They were sold in nine languages and I think they are still sold in three. We teach English by CD-ROM. I designed an educational architecture for Microsoft, server architecture. Then I was the managing editor for MSN, so everything you see on the home page when it logs on, my team did that. Now I basically do all the business decisions behind the page.
NNNS: Do you think that some of the people get into AoF and get into the lyrics would say "He works for Microsoft?" would have some reservations about picking this stuff up?
Vic: Yeah. Dude, if you guys would have bought my records back in 1984, I wouldn't be working at Microsoft! (laughing)
NNNS: (laughing)
Vic: It goes back to the discussion we were having earlier about there are good ways to make money and bad ways to make money. You tell me what's the better way to make money? Throwing black people into jail for dealing drugs or making software?
NNNS: True. I'm not going to argue with you on that.
Vic: I think there's a lot of sound and fury about Microsoft that's completely out of scale with the way the company actually conducts its business and conducts its affairs. I won't defend, for example, Microsoft's labor practices, which I think they've justly been taken to task for. I mean, the whole outsourcing, part time employment that drags on for years and years where you're essentially a full-time employee, but you don't get a full-time benefit. My wife did that, they hosed her over. I'm glad to see that the courts found against them, they have to pay a judgment on it's going to be distributed to those folks, it's the right thing. They were wrong.
NNNS: You haven't turned yourself into a corporate whore, where you'd say, "I'm all for MSN, I've thrown all of that stuff behind me. I'm making money now."
Vic: I wouldn't be talking to you if that were the case. For the last five or six years I've written columns for Hit List and . . .
NNNS: Is that still going on?
Vic: I don't think so. Jeff Bale has now gone on to the Monterrey Institute for Strategic Studies where he's their local terrorism expert. So I don't know that there'll be anymore Hit List. I haven't heard from Jeff since he went down to Monterrey.
NNNS: That was my favorite fanzine, outside from my own.
Vic: Well, it was fun. I mean I enjoyed writing for it. It kept me engaged and it kept me listening to stuff. Actually, to tell you the truth, the thing that keeps me listening to stuff now is epitonic.com. I just think those guys have a lot of good taste and there's a lot of good music up there.
NNNS: Are you still involved in the "scene?"
Vic: No, no, not at all. I've hardly gone to shows here in town, even though there have been bands in town that I like quite a lot. I like Juno quite a bit. They used to play people's living rooms and I'd go to see them. Mainly I like the three guitars, of course I'm going to like that. There were other bands around here that I liked a lot. I like Black Halos quite a bit. What's the SubPop band with Spencer singing?
NNNS: Murder City Devils.
Vic: Murder City Devils. Really good live band.
NNNS: Have you heard Dead Low Tide Yet?
Vic: No I haven't.
NNNS: That's his new thing, he sings for that. It's very much in the same vain as MCD.
*Note* Banter about International Noise Conspiracy and Fugazi and the scene.
Vic: You can count on two hands the number of times I get out during the course of the year. And at least half of those times are to go see bands that I have known personally, just for the hell of it.
NNNS: Do you still get involved politically?
Vic: Yes and no. I'm not in consistent political; I've been more local politics stuff here in Seattle. We did a lot of heavy duty protesting against the two stadiums that went in here and basically have raped through the public treasury to do that. That was the last time we did a lot of heavy work, I mean handing out fliers, standing in the street with signs and door to door canvasing. I haven't done anything like that since then. I'm not involved in any sort of alternative stuff. Other than the whole middle class, bourgeois, donate to your favorite political cause, that's the only engagement of any significance.
*Note* Talking about listening to old hardcore and what he currently listens to.
Vic: My big thing is that I find am MP3 and download it.
Vic: I have sort of been playing lately. I built a studio in my basement and I've been rerecording stuff. I put one MP3 up on my Web site of some of the new stuff I've been doing.
NNNS: Is it similar to the solo record you'd put out?
Vic: I don't know if I'm going to do a solo record yet.
*Note* Talk about Dag Nasty and Minority of One.
NNNS: Now tell me, I know you're going to say no, is there any thought of having any sort of reunion.
Vic: I don't think so. I think that is the most unlikely . . . I don't think Dave or Joe would ever go for it for one thing, and I don't think I would either. I don't think Bill could play the stuff anymore. I'm not sure I could, if you want to know the truth. I mean, it's not 1982 (laughing).
NNNS: Is it something you're not interested in?
Vic: It would take a lot to make me want to do it. I would rather . . . 'cause I've been having fun fucking around here in the basement.
*Note* Talk of his new stuff
Vic: With all that's going on in the world, I wouldn't be surprised to hear more coming out of me at some point.
NNNS: Is that how you filter your ideas out is through the music, in terms of how you feel about what's going on right now?
Vic: I'm pretty fucking annoyed. I wouldn't say I'm annoyed, I would say I'm incensed. You take the better part of two centuries of human aspirations and shit on them in two fucking years, under one tyrannical bastard; yeah, I'm pretty incensed. That's another thing about this record coming out, "Buy This War" . . . now more than ever.
NNNS: Oh my god, I was just thinking that the other day!
Vic: Now more than ever. To tell you the truth, what I would love more than anything else for the AoF records coming out now, is to hear other bands doing the songs. And I would love to hear people sample the shit.
I'm really happy that the record is coming out after 20 years. I think it's time that the other story of what was going on in Chicago in the '80s gets out there. So that people understand that alternative didn't mean signing with a major-minor label and sucking face with this person or that person. There was a scene because people were shut out of other things, they were misfits, they were angry, they were pissed, they had some politics behind them, and they had the balls to do it themselves. We put out our own records, we put on our own shows, we hooked up with other bands who did exactly the same thing. Every single one of the big bands from the old days came to my house. Hell man, three months after I saw the Bad Brains at 9:30 Club they're sleeping on my floor.
*Note* talking about college
Vic: Punk, then teaching, then software. That's my life.
*Note* More chatter about politics
Vic: The sad thing is that the songs that we wrote back then are as resonant today as they were then.
NNNS: Do you think you had some foresight?
Vic: Anybody knows what's going on now if they want to look and see. The issue is wanting to look and see. The whole point of Articles of Faith was to make you look. Hopefully it can serve some of that function today.
There's this enormous denial complex in American culture right now. . . that's the single most important thing about AoF. It's back now, it's a good place for you to start, but it's only a start.
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