Picture courtesy of http://www.returntothepit.com

I sat down with Kevin Baker of Boston’s long-heralded hardcore outfit The Hope Conspiracy last month before a show at the Knitting Factory. The Hope Con leader and I had a good, near-hour long convo about his band’s move from Equal Vision Records to Deathwish, their much-anticipated new full-length (due this fall), and his views on all the young (somewhat clueless)kiddies in the scene. It’s funny too because most of the things we talked about during the interview (essentially, how we hate meathead ape-like dudes causing trouble at shows) ended up happening that night. Well, we called it I guess. Here’s a little excerpt from the interview. Enjoy.

Being around the scene for awhile, does it bother you when you see kids who ignore or have a different understanding of what punk or hardcore means to you?
Everything is a cookie cutter, carbon copy, look, pose or embellishment of something that’s already been done. I can look at five bands right that are really popular right now and I can go. “Ok, they are copying this band. They are copying that band” but they are all doing it half-assed and it sucks. But they all have a video and they all have a ton of money put into them and they are all sound scanning ridiculous numbers. They are immediately on this fest, that fest or this fucking crazy tour, that crazy tour. The whole ethic of it, to me right now, is absolutely fucking destroyed. There are only a handful of bands out there, that I know of, and that I don’t know of that are flying under my radar that are still doing it for the right reasons. Those are only the types of bands I can give two shits about. I put on the radio, I don’t even listen to the radio really, but every now again I’ll put it on and it sounds mechanical and processed. It ain’t my thing. And I’m also, mind you, not a 15 year old girl or an 18 year old kid. It’s all a way to sell a shirt and sell a fucking CD and sell an image and ultimately sell a fucking ticket to a show. Which, I know is, what the music business is. But that’s not what punk is and that’s not what hardcore is.

How do you feel about all the legendary hardcore or punk bands that are reuniting to do tours across the country? Do you see yourself at the age touring the country and still making music?
I doubt it. That’s why we never said we broke up. I don’t want to be one of those bands, “Oh it’s our final show! Come out and buy our last show shirt and our last show vinyl” and then a year or two later, jump on a plane to Europe and then book a show down in New York at CB’s. If it’s your last show, then it’s your fucking last show. Fucking shut up and go home. Go work a shitty job. Everyone gave us shit because like we’ve been around “too long” or “what have they done?” And it’s like you know what, we do what we want when we want, like I said. If anyone doesn’t like it, fuck ‘em. I am not here to make new friends. I am not here to make new fans of the band. If one or two fans that give a shit come out, that means something. I’m not saying that we are the fucking Beatles or something. But make an effort to write a good song. We all have great influences among the band. I hear this shit now and it’s like “Wow, that’s a song? Where’s the song? That sounds like twenty songs as once. I don’t even know what’s going on. My head is about to fucking explode. But not in a good way!” It’s about being a bad ass. These bands, they are just writing riffs just to stoke up a bunch of meatheads. It just looks like a bunch of apes dancing around a fucking fire. It’s not about the music, it’s an image. Whether it be, the skinny kid with the ladies jeans and the swooped hair and the fucking eyeliner or the big meathead that has the scally cap. You’ve got the real people that started it and spearheaded something that looked like that and dressed like that and then you have all the followers. That goes with everything. That goes with every form of music.

The rest of the article will be published in August’s ( Or September’s?) Hails And Horns, which is AMP’s “Loud rock” focused edition.
www.ampmagazine.com/

Be sure to check out another interview with Baker as well as an exclusive Hope Con MP3 on Deathwish’s first Podcast! www.deathwishinc.com

Tags: Hope Conspiracy, Interview //