BIZARRE magazine July 1999
Explain the power of the pulpit to us, Ian.
I grew up a block away from a Baptist chuch, and I've always been
impressed by the hypnotic repetition, the rapture that the audience
goes into, the catharsis, the Vaudevllian aspects. That's why we took
to the sermon form in gospel music, because not only is it cathartic
music, but also at once exhilarating and topical.
And preaching goes with sartorial elegance...
We have to keep it interesting for us and for the audience. One of the
earmarks of capitalism is creating new ideas for consumption, and
artists are encouraged to do the same. We are not posturing gangsters,
but revolutionaries. When we dress up it's not a gesture to the old
days, it's just tactics for self-empowerment now.
What does rock-n-roll mean to you in 1999?
Rock-n-roll destroyed theatre and art, it destroyed a million things.
But now, as a power, it's pretty much a corpse. We're really
dumbfounded by people trying to milk it - it's all they know. Money is
what defines musical categories; all that changes is the technology
that music is made with. Rock-n-roll is an economic term, it's a
machine for making money.
How do you take it to the bridge?
Live, I have broken my leg onstage, also my arm and smashed my head
open several times. Now my violence is projected towards my enemies.
Do you still get high on your own supply of adrenalin, rather than
indulging in any rock cliche snorting and spiking?
The smallest children in the U.S. are being diagnosed with attention
deficit disorder and prescribed Ritalin by the pharmaceutical Big
Brother. Everyone else takes Prozac. The pharmaceutical juggernaut, in
the spirit of capitalist psychology, ignores context and society in its
diagnosis, and pretends that depression etc, stems entirely from brainb
chemistry. With the masses opiated in this manner, a revolutionary must
abstain, from perhaps the most psychedelic experience of all.
Cathi Unsworth
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