MAXIMUMROCKNROLL INTERVIEW
Originally published in 1989

Do you subscribe to any political ideology as a band? As individuals? Do you think that all members of the band should think the same politically, that it should be a collective expression of political beliefs?
AMY: We all believe in one basic ideology and that is anti-oppression. That includes such basic things as anti-religion, anti-war, anti-racism, sexism, ageism, class, ignorance, etc., and animal rights. As far as where our ideologies come from, it's important to be diverse, diversity broadens the spectrum, makes the band more creative, gives room to grow. As long as we have the basic fundamental ideologies which make up Nausea. I mean, some of us could be pacifist, some terrorists ...
VIC: It's out of little controversies you expand. If everyone believed in exactly the same thing, it would be very boring.

So could you work with anyone in Nausea, who, say, wasn't a vegetarian?
AL: No.
AMY: Well, Nausea's more than musicians, there's a whole ideology, and no we couldn't work with someone in this band who ate meat, who couldn't agree on what we consider to be one of our basic issues.
AL: Nausea considers that eating meat is av ery basic form of oppression, so no one in Nausea would want to work with someone who ... Christ, we're gonna come off like a bunch of snobs!
AMY: Well, when Roy, our new drummer, was first trying out of the band he wasn't a vegetarian, but he didn't have an understanding of what vegetarianism/veganism meant. If he had, after being educated (not indoctrinated) in the facts of animal abuse and how it applies to humanity as an oppressive force, continued to eat meat, that would have been an intolerable situation. You have to give people a chance to be educated, you cannot conemn them before you give them a chance.
AL: Roy has one very important thing and that is that he wanted to lear, he just wasn't exposed to it before. There is a whole crew of people out there who don't know these things. You think they would because of the amount of publicity that has come to it, but they don't, at least here.
AMY: You cannot condemn people for believing one way when they've never had the opportuinity to learn or understand alternative ways.
AL: However, once they understand the oppression that meat eating really is and then still decide they want to eat meat, I decide I don't want to work with them.
AMY: Wait, I don't like the word "education," it sounds too elitist.
AL: I don't like it either. All they need is a willingness to open themselves up to be better people.
AMY: It's more of a knowledgeable understanding. We don't wan tto confuse education with indoctrination because they are very different things. We are not forcing our ideas on anyone, we're sharing them Sharing ideas is education also, the word has just become perverted because of connotations with school. We didn't set out to educate Roy, he said, "Well, what are your ideas, what's this band about?" And we said, "Okay, this is waht we believe ..." We didn't say to him, "You must know this according to this set of rules." We just talked.
JOHN JOHN: He wanted to know what he was trying out for.

So basically what you are saying is that it is more of a case of having an open mind rather than the correct politcal ideology?
AL: No, not an open mind, 'cause then you're just getting exposed to it, it's the desire to be a better person, to cut curelty... No, 'cause who do we know that has an open mind? (Mentions a friend who tried being a vegetarian.)
JOHN JOHN: No, he didn't know what he was doing, and when other people tried to explain to him better ways, he was like "Forget it. I tried it and it made me sick, that's it."
AMY: Yeah, but he never went after the understanding either. There's more to being a vegetarian than just diet.

Do you think issues such as animal rights, war, etc. have been played out by too many bands and aren't taken seriously anymore? Can you add anything new?
VIC: It's played out in that there's been umpteen songs written about it, but a lot of times bands you hear singing about it a year later are playing heavy metal bullshit with Satan lyrics or whatever. That just totally negates everything they said in the first place.
AMY: People have to realize that these topics are many times taken only on one level, and the problems are very deep rooted in our society. They neglect to make the connections. They're played out on simple ideologies but when you go further into it, there's a whole spectrum of problems that aren't encompassed. Within animal rights for example, you've got a whole medical industry and a whole chemical industry built on the foundation of vivisection. Vivisection is not only an oppressive, sick, cruel thing. It also supporst the military and supporst the drug industry, which produces products built on falsifications from vivisection in order to appease the corporations, at the expense of people's health. The funds just keep going around so people can get wealthier off of it. It's a perfect example of corruption, people exploiting animals for their own gains, but what people dont' understand is that the gains go to, say, Dow Chemical compnay who makes napalm and relies on vivisection. The government can tell people, "Oh, it's been tested and we have cures for it and we can help it," and meanwhile people are neglecting to find out or understand what the true ramifications are. Things go much deeper; it's up to people to investigate and it' sup to the bands, if they're gonna discuss these topics, to realize how important these topics are. We're not talking about some little old lady crying out for her poor kitty, we're talking about 20,000 animals a month and 3,000 people who died prematurely of heart attacks because of a drug that was put out so that the medical community could empower themselves by saying, "Here's a cure for irregular heart beats," and meanwhile, it killed them. They perpetuate the ideas of constant new cures but these "cures" are only money makers, there's a whole negligence of preventative measures. That's why we can't find a cure for cance, there's too much money coming in for cancer research and if there's a cure, there goes billions and billions of dollars that they're getting.
VIC: I think there's already a cure and they won' tlet it out because there's a whole industry built on cancer care.

Do you distribute literature at your shows?
VIC: Yes, a lot of times there's only a certain amount of space within a song to say what you want to say. You have to explain it a little more in-depth so that people can get a fuller picture.
AMY: In order for people to believe things without assuming them ignorant, they have to have knowledge of it. Rarely can an effort be effective if it's not sincere and it can't be sincere without a complete undrestanding. For a long time, it was neglected that eating meat was an integral part of world starvation and deforestation and then that ties in with McDonald's, who also sets up hospitals, which ties into vivisection and more animal abuse. It's a perpetual cycle ...

Do you think that by being in Nausea you can change anything?
AMY: We have. We changed the world. (Laughter - they all break into "We Are the World.")
JOHN JOHN: I figure music has always been the strongest and most potent means of communication. All my favorite bands have influenced me tremendously.
AL: Throughout history, music has always been on of the most powerful means of communication, from the earliest days of a tribal existence up until now, rock-n-roll or rap or whatever. Believe it or not, if you choose to say something productive in a band, you can get your ideas across.
AMY: The music is in motion and the words put with the music is really a potent way of expressing one's ideas and feelings.
JOHN JOHN: Rather tha nsitting down and reading a book, they can hear powerful ideas with music. Everyone loves music, it's an easier approach.

Do you think people pay attention to the lyrics?
JOHN JOHN: I know a lot of kids try to memorize the words, well, maybe more than memorize them, maybe they can actually listen and understand the message.
AL: Music transgresses all boundaries - race, class, everybody, and if you can put across a positive message into something that's powerful enough to go beyond race, beyond borders, then you have something that's universal.

Why do you choose punk/hardcore as your style?
JOHN JOHN: Because that's what we've been involved in for years and at the moment, that's the easiest outlet for us, it's what we do, what we like to listen to, it's our style of playing.
AMY: Aggressive music is somewhat similar to the way we feel about our ideologies.

What about putting political music in a pop setting, such as Tracy Chapman, etc., or bands who sing about politics yet are on major labels?
JOHN JOHN: That's the wrong approach. They're making political statements in their lyrics and right under their eyes, these labels and their affiliated corporations are involved in nuclear weapons or whatever.
AL: They don't care, they're making big bucks.
JOHN JOHN: A lot of these bands sing very strongly against war, but I wonder - do they really know what these labels are involved with, do they know that they are contributing to the tragedies that they sing against?
AL: More importantly, do they even care?
AMY: Well, pop music makes it more palatable so people swallow it but what do they do, they shit it right back out. They might have good intentions in mind but they stay within such conservative limits that they don't get to the truth. They're conveying the idea of being humanitarian - "We are the world." - "Oh, things you can do to help, wear these t-shirts, promote this cause and let people know their help is needed." But they've totally excluded the idea of why these situations exist. Most musicians cry, "Oh, things are wron gwith the world and we as good, rich people should change them," but they're not actually changing anything because they ignore the causes.
AL: They are part of the reason why it's happening.
AMY: Yeah, they're the reason, it's the corporations, the multinationals, it's the capitalist society that's causing oppression in Third World countries. It's not our pennies, our donations that are going to change the world. It's our awareness that we're gonna have to refuse to take part in it.
AL: If you say you are against profits and multinationals and everything and then you do things independently, it's the only way.

Do you think you can ever reach people who are outside of the punk/alternative scene?
VIC: Sure, when I played outdoor shows with Reagan Youth, all kinds of people would show up, and someone might be there that's never been exposed to it an dbe like, "Wait, there's a point being made here," or, "I like this energy." They don't even have to hear the lyrics but they can identify with the energy being put out.
AL: A lot of the time, the music and lyrics don't have an effect, but just the fact that a band like Nausea goes out and plays Rock Against Racism or Squat or Rot, that reaches people, who then may listen to the lyrics or get hooked by the music.
VIC: The whole anti-racist stance right there reaches across labels and musical categories. That's something that affects everybody and you reach all kinds of people.
AL: I work with Rastas and they love Nausea and they've never heard us, and if they did, they wouldn't like the music 'cause it's not their thing. But just the fact that they know Nausea plays RAR makes them into it. ALthough, I hate the RAR organization 'cause it's leftie-commie crap. Anyway, I believe we can reach "normal" people easier than we can reach hardcores who are so "hard" they let their images stand in the way of their true selves. I mean, we can reach people supposedly like ourselves. The Rastas I work with have little in common with me.
VIC: Except your hair! (Laughter.)
AL: Yet they think, well, Nausea must be alright, and they don't care if they never hear us.

Okay, I want to talk for a while about New York City, and how living here has affected or shaped how Nausea is, and what your perceptions of the world are. Do you think Nausea would be the same band if you lived anywhere else?
JOHN JOHN: Well, I think that if we were living out in the countryside, secluded and not seeing what was going on in everyday life like we do when we're wlaking the streets, we couldn't have the same understanding. Our lyrics focus on what we see around us, everyday. But we're not trying to relay a message to New Yorkers alone, obviously, it's just that a lot of bad shit is concentrated here.
AL: NY is living hell.
AMY: It has so much taken from different classes, different races of people, all concentrated in one place, everything is much more intensive here.
JOHN JOHN: It is the extreme of any place.
AL: NY is the extreme of every place.
JOHN JOHN: The prices are high, crime is sick, rents are disgusting, the police brutal ...
AL: Between every member of this band, we've practically spanned the entire globe, traveling around, and there's no city in this fucking world that's this sick, except maybe Hong KOng or Singapore or someplace like that, I've never been there, but this seems to be the worst.
AMY: You can't step out of your door or look out your window without coming in contact with some kind of perversion. NO matter what you do in NY, you become a slave to it. If you live in a squat, you become a slave to protecting it. If you rent, you become a slave to make money to be able to put a roof over your head. If you want to be in a band, you're a slave to a well-paying job so you can afford the practice space.

So let's talk about squatting in NY, and the resistance to increasing gentrification on the Lower East Side.
JOHN JOHN: NY squats are mostly total dumps.
AL: Imagine seeing a place that's been hit by a bomb and living in it.
JOHN JOHN: But you can fix it up if you work hard at it with the right group of people. It takes a lont time, you can't say it's a stable living 'cause you never know when you're gonna get evicted.
AMY: There's been tactics used like burning buildings down, the land contractors getting to "accidentally" bump into buildings and having them condemned and then the HPD will come and throw people out. There was a woman who has been working on her building for 5 years and they were clearing out a lot next to her, and the bulldozer just "happened" to bump into her building and knock the facad loose. The HPD came and threw her out; they gave her 15 minutes to get her stuff, she couldn't even go and get the papers on all the work that had been done to prove that the building was up to code. You can lose it at any time, there's no laws protectnig squatters here; even if there were, the way NYC runs and the way the HPD runs, and the way gentrification works, they wouldn't really care. They don't acer about people tyring to build better lives for themselves, which is basically what squatting is all about. It's to get back what rightfully belongs to the people; it's one of the few methods of direct action that we can choose. Gentrification is an incredibly corrupt force that has been taking over communities and destroying them.

Well, why don't you describe what gentrification is, in case any readers aren't familiar with the process.
JOHN JOHN: Well, I grew up on the Lower East Side; in the 1970's, the LES was a place with really cheap rent for artists, a residental neighborhood for Polish and Jewish people. Then it became more mixed, with Puerto Ricans and Blacks. These days it's a rich neighborhood for yuppies and trendy artists, because it's "cool." It's haven for yuppie bars, suchi bars, art galleries, it's sick. All of the neighborhood stores that I grew up seeing are practically gone, they've been bought out and turned into bars and Korean delis which are sickly overpriced.
AMY: The poor eventually get thrown out of their neighborhoods, discultured, dispossessed, forced into the streets, where there are no alternatives. There is so little low-rent housing, because in Mayor Koch's opinion, if you can't afford to live here, move, you shoulnd't be here. Koch ends up putting them into mental institutions. We have to let people know what it's like to live in a New York squat, other places take their squats for granted, they don't know what it's like to live in a burnt-out shell, always wondering when you will lose your home ...
AL: Five stories of junk, burned wood, shit piled to the ceiling.
AMY: And junkies shooting up in there, and bodies, and dead dogs, and the racist HPD.

What about living in America? Do you think living here has at all helped shape your opinions about the world? A lot of people in other countries think Americans enjoy certain privilages and have certain ignorant attitudes about the world, do you think this is so?
AMY: Those "privilages" are perversions.
AL: I didn't grow up with any "privilages."
VIC: You don't really see publicized all the homelessness, poverty, etc. that there is in this country. Sure, there's a lot less tahn in other countries, but it exists. Most people believe what's exported to them, they think everyone here owns a house and two cars, and a dog named Spot.
AMY: America is the paragon of perversion, the fact that it's all rooted here makes the struggle much more difficult for us, because everything we do against it is so much more important. If we accomplish something, it has strong results because we are so deeply tied in with it, to make the most minute struggle, you have so many more of those privilages to bypass.