from SV #12, mid-'84

Youth Brigade are clearly in a transitionary period. With the release of their new 7" EP, the Brigade are undeniably aiming for a sound that will appeal to a wider audience, but not alienate the older one--not always the easiest thing to do. The 3 Stern brothers who make up the band--Shawn (vocals/guitar), Adam (bass) and Mark (drums)--have started the Better Youth Organization whose primary goal appears to be to present a positive image for punk and energize the scene to a positive end. The Sterns, through the BYO, have started a record label with a number of strong releases to date (Aggression, 7 Seconds, themselves, 2 compilations) and plan to resurrect a magazine, Generation. While some of his ideas may be more idealistic than realistic, Shawn Stern seems to be a man of deep commitment. The band is on their third major tour, this one covering America, before heading for Europe. Shawn was interviewed at the Living Room...

SV: I heard stories that you guys were going to have to play in Boston under an assumed name because of what happened last year.

Shawn: I never heard anything like that. We didn't think we'd be able to play the Channel, but, actually, we had a chance to play there. Unfortunately, the date we wanted was during the time they were doing the renovations.

SV: Why don't you tell me how the BYO got started.

Shawn: It started as a reaction against police violence. In '79, there was a riot at a gig at Elks Lodge Hall. The cops came in and started beating people up and it was just an idea, 'Hey, let's make an organization to fight this kind of stuff.' Nothing happened until about a year later. We had a big house called Skinhead Manor and that was a place for everybody to meet when the whole punk scene was exploding and we had lots of ideals and things that we wanted to do and we built a rehearsal room and we were going to have a pirate radio station. There were always 20 people living there and plenty more hanging out. We had huge parties, a stage in the living room. It was pretty wild. But we didn't have any money and after about a year, the whole thing just folded because of the financial difficulties. Too many people were just being lax and taking advantage of things. Taking, but not giving anything back. And then, when the house folded, the band had gotten together and that went for about a year and it just wasn't working out. We broke it up and Mark was playing with another band and one of the guys in the band worked for some guy who wanted to open a club. The guy put up the money and we opened this club called Godzillas and that's really how the BYO actually became something besides just an idea in our heads. We were making money that way. That's when we realized that if we want to do anything, we had to try to promote the positive side of the punk scene and the ideas instead of what the media always portrays--the negative things. They don't tell the whole side of the story. The best way, we found, is that you have to be a business, because money talks in this country and, as unfortunate as that may be, the only way to sustain yourself is to make yourself be able to pay the rent. That's how it got started. The money we made from Godzillas after it folded, we did a big show at the Hollywood Palladium and then we got a bus, we put out the compilation "Someone Got Their Head Kicked In," we did the tour, we made the movie of the tour, we put out Aggression's album, we put out our album, we just put out the new compilation, our new 45, new Stretchmarks LP and we're licencing the Unwanted's LP and we're going to Europe. We put out one issue of a magazine, Generation, which we're going to try to get going again when we get back.

SV: I'd heard that you were going to put out a fanzine.

Shawn: It's not really a fanzine, it's more like a real legitimate magazine. The idea of it is like the idea behind the BYO. Let's take the new wave bands who've used the punk bands, like the fashion and the image and everything and put them on the cover and use their popularity and, at the same time, put punk bands in the magazine and open people's eyes. A lot of the kids would really like the stuff, but they're just afraid because of what they read in the media about how violent it is. Every time we play, we gain new fans who just come out of curiousity. Because we're not considered as hardcore as some bands, we tend to draw a wider variety of a crowd. That's what we're trying to do is cross over because I think that I've got something to say in my lyrics and I want as many people to hear it as possible. I don't want to stick to the narrow crowd.

SV: On your new single, it has more of a, I hate to use the word, mainstream sound to it.

Shawn: Definitely. I can't deny it. I wouldn't say it was definitely a conscious effort but it wasn't totally unconscious. It was a natural progression for us. The last song we wrote on the album was "What Will The Revolution Change" and then you hear "Care" and this is the way we're moving. We really like a lot of different varieties of music and, like I've always said before, I think vocals are the most important part of any kind of instrumental/vocal band. The thing is you want to hear the vocals. It's the lead instrument. It should be heard. You've got to sing, it's got to be a melody counter to what's being played and, in too many thrash bands, the singer's screaming the same pattern that the guitar's playing. You can't differentiate... I think in order to survive in this, you've got to progress and reach more people and that's the way to do that. I think we've always written songs that have catchy hooks in the melodies and stuff like that and there's nothing really wrong with that. Singalongs are something we've always liked a lot and I think you can maintain your integrity and your sincerity and still reach a larger crowd. The Alarm is a fairly political band. The Redskins are pretty political and they write some catchy stuff. The Clash I still have a lot of respect for. It remains to be seen what they're going to do. They've worked themselves to a position of great power and we'll see what happens. I still have faith in them. A lot of people don't, they think they sold out. But what's selling out?

SV: I think they're going back to their more basic sound now, anyway.

Shawn: Could be, but that may be a regression. We'll have to wait and see. It's not a matter of what they do so much musically as what they do with their beliefs in their head and what they do with the power that they've been able to get through becoming a major recording act with a major label, promotion money money behind them, selling millions of records. They have a certian amount of power. They can reach a large audience and they can influence that audience and so how are they going to influence them? Are they just going to sit back and enjoy the money and the fame or are they going to actually try and do something.

SV: Even when I was seeing them it seems like the political message was being lost to the crowd. It was just another night out for them.

Shawn: Could be, but you've got to try. A lot of people complain and say all the punk kids just want to go around punching people out. In many respects, that could be true, but it still takes a lot of guts to shave your head and wear these clothes. Regardless of the fact that most of the people you hand out with have shaved heads, you leave any major metropolitan city an you'll find that most of the people still look at you like a bunch of freaks. This is our third tour and we still get really crazy looks. The fashion may be there, but the image, for us, is still challenging to people. It takes guts for a little kid to do that. I'd rather see them being influenced by punk bands. Even if they don't understand it at first, they will. It keeps me going. If it wasn't for people changing like that, I wouldn't bother and that's what makes it great. I think it will keep happening. It's better than listening to heavy metal bands who just talk about partying and banging your head and cruising fast cars.

SV: Some of the punk bands are starting to do that, too. Shawn: Yeah, unfortunately, but the thing about punk is that you can't pigeonhole it to one style. No matter how many things I don't like, you've still got to let them have their peace. Punk is not one certain set of rules.

SV: What happened to the "Questions" EP you were supposed to put out?

Shawn: We went into the studio with 8 new songs. We're going through a new period. We didn't want to rehash the old stuff. We could easily come out with something similar to it, but we don't want to just come out with the same thing. We want to break new ground. It's just the way we're moving--we need a new approach. We went into the studio the way we did last year with the same producer (Thom Wilson) and it just wasn't working. We were rushing it together for the tour, kind of like what we did for the first tour, and the producer wanted us to sound the way we did last year and we didn't anymore and he wasn't helping us. We parted and we took the 3 songs we liked and it came out fine. We'll get the rest of it when we come back. We really need a producer who can go in with a different, objective point of view. We don't have that yet and when we do, we'll get it. We're going to England next week and we're going to try and record a couple of new songs that I just wrote and maybe release those over there. We're just trying to do different things. It's kind of in a state of limbo. We want to feel our way around nice and slow and not throw people any ridiculous curves like TSOL, when they put out that album ("Beneath The Shadows"). They barely prepared anyone for it and it hurt them. The problem was they made a record for a different audience and, yet, they were playing to the old audience and the old audience resented the new music and it didn't work.

SV: I was reading the lyrics for "What Price Happiness." What does happiness mean to you?

Shawn: Happiness is doing what you want to do without hurting other people. I believe in existentialist philosophy which is, if you want to go to a few basic ideals, the search for meaning in an absurd world. That makes me happy, just trying to find out why we're here, even though it seems a futile effort. I mean, it also makes me happy to go surfing and hang out with my friends and travel.

SV: Watching the Olympics I noticed the overswelling of patriotism. I remembered the lyrics from "Sink With California." What kind of hope do you have for global unity with this USA #1 stuff and everything.

Shawn: Oh, I still have hopes for it. When the BYO started, we were saying, 'Let's unite everybody' and we realized you can't do that. The thing is, what makes this world interesting is different cultures and different value systems and all that. What you've got to do away with is ignorance, which creates hatred and racism and all the common problems in the world. So, the main thing you've got to do is educate people. If people ask me what's our main message, well, if it's anything, it's that people should educate themselves. Enlighten your minds. I think that America and most of the Western countries of the world have enough money to make this world a good place for everybody to live in--to conrol the population problems, to stop the nuclear weapons, to put in a nuclear freeze, to disarm all the bombs and to live in peace. In humankind, in general, we've got a struggle constantly between our rational and our irrational. I don't know if you believe in Darwin's Theory of Evolution, but the way I see it is that we evolved from irrational animals and what separates us, supposedly, is our rational minds, but we haven't mastered our rational minds and, at the same thime, if we got rid of our rational past, you'd lose something, maybe your humanity. I see us evolving, perhaps, into the point where we use more and more of our brain and, then, we will be able to overcome all the problems. Then again, we may not use our physical bodies, so I don't know--no more sex! That would be really bad!! Just thinking about all these things. That's what you've got to do. That's what keeps you going.

SV: I don't see any hope for international communication. With the US, anyway, it seems to be moving in a conservative direction.

Shawn: Yeah, well, whenever you take 2 steps forward, you take one step backward, but you can't sit around and moan. You've got to get up and do something about it. Go vote, man. I can't vote, I'm Canadian, but I tell everybody to go vote. Even though I think the system sucks and I think you have little choice, I think, just seeing a woman vice president, if I could vote, I would vote for the Democrats, just to see a woman vice president and just because I think Ronald Reagan is fucked in the head. The man's senile.

SV: I don't think you should necessarily vote for someone just because she's a woman.

Shawn: I'm not saying because she's a woman, but with Mondale and Reagan, it's the lesser of two evils, but I would vote for the Democrats just because I don't like Reagan, not because I actually think they're going to change anything and also because I think it'd be cool to see a woman vice president. My point is I don't think either party is going to be that drastically different. They're really controlled by money interests more than anything else. People don't run this country, unfortunately.

SV: The whole system isn't going to change just because someone else is president.

Shawn: Yeah, but it'll be a little bit better. It'll be a little less antagonistic. It'll be a bit more humane.

SV: Yeah, you won't have them trying to take away the right to abortion...

Shawn: No prayers in school, spending billions on weapons systems that are futile. I mean Ronald Reagan seriously thinks that we can have a limited nuclear war. The thing is civilization, as we know it, has been ruled by religion at the center since the beginning of time up until the 20th century. In the 20th century, the center of civilization has been moved towards science and a lot of people can't deal with that because ignorance is what breeds all these problems. Ignorance is what created God, ignorance of where we came from. I can't tell you where you came from and I can't tell you where you're going, but I'm not gonna say, well, I don't need to because God is the answer!

SV: Yeah, everyone uses it as a panacea for everything.

Shawn: That's what it is and that's wrong. Don't make up some abstract figure to answer the question you can't answer. Realize that you can't answer them and try to find the answer to them. Try and make some meaning to things that don't seem to make sense. Try and find them. That's what it's all about...

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