Fucked Up

When I first meet one half of Fucked Up, the trio of Pink Eyes, Mustard Gas and 10,000 Marbles are quietly hunched over their Macbooks in a quiet corner of a darker-than-usual Whelan’s. As I introduce myself, hulking front man Pink Eyes, AKA Damien, jumps to his feet and enthusiastically pumps my hand while drawling “Hey man, you want to go upstairs and do this?” I’d imagined a somewhat less affable first encounter with the band and, as if to remind me of that ‘fuck you’ punk attitude, founding member/guitarist 10,000 Marbles, AKA Mike Haliechuk, meets my extended hand with a watery smile that suggests he is about as fond of journalists as George Bush is of carefully considered foreign policy.

Formed in 2001, the Toronto band (completed by Concentration Camp, Mr Jo and Young Governor) have over forty releases to their name, most of them 7’’ limited edition singles. They are currently on tour to promote their new album, The Chemistry of Common Life, an ambitious opus with a thick dollop of hardcore running through it alongside some surprisingly un-hardcore flourishes. As we sit, Damien offers me a beer and I enquire about their interview process. “Jonah (Mr Jo – drummer) and myself are the two that talk”, he says, as Jonah shouts from the toilet that he’ll be joining us in a minute.

“Generally we’ll all do interviews but the others in the band are more reserved or quiet so it tends to be a little off-putting for some.” I mention the cold shoulder I got from Mike. Damien nods, “Yeah, Mike is like this weird guy. There’s people, like friends of mine from Toronto, who have known him for 10 years and are still like ‘does he hate me?’ So…he has a real issue with opening up and that makes for awkward interviews. He’s great on email though. Mike excels in written communication but his verbal communication leaves a lot to be desired. He and I aren’t speaking right now though; we go through these periods. I guess that’s why we’re still together. You’ve got to love someone to leave them and we don’t love each other.”

I admire his candour, but punk has always been about attitude and causing problems so maybe Mike is just the apotheosis of punk- aloof and moody. I talk with Damien about the musical elitism that has permeated the scene since its inception. “I can understand that. I didn’t like any band that deviated from the formula. And I’m kind of still that guy but now I understand why these bands do what they do. Maybe not as dramatically as someone like Discharge (British hardcore outfit whose changes in sound over the years alienated much of their original fan base) but you get to a point where it’s like, could you write the same song repeatedly?” I remark that Minor Threat based their career on that ethos. Damien sits up. “Yeah and they were around for four years but here we are in year seven.” Jo finally comes out of the bathroom with his laptop, where he has been ‘emailing and evacuating.’ Damien continues, “With this record it wasn’t a conscious thing to change direction. People were down on stuff we did, like the Hidden World album. It doesn’t seem as dramatic for us but I’ve seen the songs evolve. It bummed me out because I can understand what they’re saying but it’s something we had to do.”

Years ago, I read Henry Rollins book, Get In The Van, about life on the road with Black Flag in the eighties. Rollins meets a lot of horrible people on tour and I ask what the scene’s like at present. Damien laughs, “Well he’s a huge asshole. We met him and he was the worst.” Jo cuts in, “We’ve had amazing luck with meeting people though, in a punk canon through the years, but Henry…” Damien is still laughing, “He really couldn’t have given a shit!” Jo is eager to clarify, “And before Henry Rollins picks up this magazine and is like ‘what the hell?’ he was pretty friendly. It just took the right keywords. He was like a voice-operated machine and if you didn’t say the right words he wouldn’t have switched on. One of the highlights of this thing is meeting this imaginary list of people. We’ve met Keith Morris, Jello Biafra, Ian MacKaye, Iggy.”

Our conversation returns to the subject of the new album and its weighty themes. “I think this record is more about understanding,” says Damien. “The last record was about identification and this is about comprehension. The last one was… Not juvenile… But it was sort of a broad ‘Fuck Religion!’ This one is more, ‘why do we need religion?” The door opens and bespectacled bassist Mustard Gas, AKA Sandy Miranda, slopes in and perches herself in the corner. It’s hard to imagine this hodgepodge of personalities coming together on stage, and I’ve recently read that Mike does not enjoy playing live at all. Jo shrugs. “I like playing live. I mean there’s always going to be some pretence but when you hit someone right away with that music and those words, you can’t really sit and ponder it.” Damien agrees. “There’s a loftier ambition with our records but playing live is just forty-five minutes of trying to break down that wall that people have.”

The Matador deal has changed things, with Fucked Up’s profile growing recently. The images of a naked, bloody-faced Pink Eyes, with his genitals between his legs Buffalo Bill-style, have become ubiquitous in the music media. I ask what had happened with previous label, Jade Tree. Damien explains, “I think there was a problem with Jade Tree in the end because what they wanted and what we wanted became two different things. I think with Matador, they know how to make bands feel comfortable. Plus, I wanted to meet Cat Power! She has one of the purest voices in music.” Recording the new album wasn’t without difficulties though and the pair mention an incident involving the master copies of Tokyo Police Club’s newest album. Damien sheepishly mentions the engineer who “Went right from doing the Tokyo Police Club record to us. It was a huge headache for them.” Jo continues, “The room where the effects pedals are is also where the hard drive is and the engineer was like ‘Yeah, go get whatever pedal you want’. All of a sudden we hear ‘What the fuck!’ and he says the computer is frozen. He goes ‘Did you do anything to the hard drive?’ and we were like ‘No’ but…well, one of the heaviest pedals fell on top of a hard drive. They managed to fix it but for a while it was really scary.”

All of Fucked Up’s releases are dotted with sigils from the Aleister Crowley realm of ‘Magick’. For a band of their ilk, this seems quite a Jimmy Page-esque angle and it seems unlikely that the whole band is on board. Damien says he was initially sceptical. “But man, Fucked Up is proof that sigils work.” Jo laughs, “Yeah through effort, good song-writing and black magic, you can make it!” Damien goes on, “black magic is all you can attribute this too. It’s not looks! It’s got to be some evil higher power. But it is seriously practised by some people in the band. Y’know, maybe this band is a sigil. This band is magical!”

In an age when social networking sites are the medium through which bands disseminate their work, Fucked Up are notable for eschewing this approach and using a blog, lookingforgold.blogspot.com, to communicate with fans. Jo talks of “goading and prodding” on the blog and say that “A lot of it is to elicit a reaction while some of it might be because the writer(s) might have a touch of arrogance in their personality…” Sandy interjects, “I like the blog but it’s pretty much coming from one person.” I ask if it’s Mike. They nod.

But Damien adds, “I like reading it and it wouldn’t be as good if it was all of us. We got into it once and put up this photo of Mike with a bunch of Toronto people and we were all ‘Look at Mike’s new band’. After that he changed the password.” “He holds more power than I do,” says Sandy. “He has the clearest ‘vision’ for what we’re doing… There’s an interesting balance of power in the band.” Damien explains the ‘politics’ of Fucked Up to me. “I think musically we have more of a say but aesthetically it’s still Mike’s baby. I’m pretty sure it pisses him off no end that I’ve become the face of the band. “I think he’s one of the most creative, intelligent people I’ve met, so part of it is my jealousy of that, but part of it is that I think he’s an idiot sometimes. I’m sure he thinks I’m an idiot all the time. He probably resents the fact that I can talk to people and don’t have to use a computer to do so.” As we finish up, I compliment Damien on his frankness. He thanks me and leaves me with these parting words, “One thing I’ll give you is honesty. We’ve got nothing to lose! This is either the best, most elaborate persona ever or it’s just embarrassingly honest.”