Interview with Propagandhi - Podcast 8

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All right, well, thanks for tuning in to Sound Scene Revolution. I am, of course, Rich, your ever-weekly host. And today we finally round out our Canadian interview session with the great Winnipeg band, Propagandi, or as they say in Winnipeg, Propagandi, Gandy. I don't know how they do it. They have weird Canadian accents. But we actually got to ambush George from Propagandi before they went on to play in Santa Cruz. So we have an interview with him talking about everything from politics to some of the stuff off of the new album. So it should be pretty good. But before we get into that interview, if you guys get the chance, you should listen to this track. It's called Rock for Sustainable Capitalism. It's off their new album, Potemkin City Limits.

So this is Propagandi. This is Sound Scene Revolution. Stay tuned for the interview if you want to hear everything political and everything Canadian from George from Propagandi.

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Thanks for listening to Sound Scene Revolution. We're here with George from Propagandi. If you could say hello. Howdy. Thank you so much. This is... We kind of ambushed you into this interview. So thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. So first off, I guess, if you could just... I don't know. I wasn't really expecting this. So if we could just start with, I guess, the basics of the band's history, how you got involved, and just, you know, the 30-second synopsis. Chris and I met in high school. As we were both kind of getting into... He introduced me into a lot of underground metal at the time. We started just getting into music, I guess, and talked about having a band. Five years later, we figured out how to play some instruments a little bit.

And by that point, we were getting, I guess, more influenced lyrically, at least, by a lot of political bands. Yeah. MDC, the Dead Kennedys, that kind of stuff. Yeah. And I think it was pretty much a decided sort of idea that we were going to try to be a political band from day one. And we did our first show in 91. And now it's somehow 2005. Years later, here you guys are. That's fucking awesome. Now, what was... I mean, you guys have obviously come from... I imagine being as political as you are, it's a very difficult path to travel. I mean, just a lot of adversity and stuff. Like, how has that been for you guys? Like, I imagine there are people who just don't like you because of what you say. Yeah. I think in terms of, like, touring the United States, it seemed like mid, later 90s that we'd run into some folks that were, you know, definitely not into what we're saying or what we're about at shows.

But since then, it's been really overwhelmingly positive, actually. That's excellent. The people coming out, I guess. You know, why would somebody pay 10 bucks and come out to a show where they're, you know, all they can do is tackle and it's kind of getting drowned out by other people or whatever. So, no, it's been pretty easy going. That's excellent. Yeah. What has been... Now, you work... Do you work at G7? I did for the first number of years and I haven't participated in about the last, I think, year and a half or two years. But were you part of the original? Yeah. The starting of it? Yeah, we started it all up. Okay. I don't know. I just found myself becoming less and less interested in new music, actually, to tell you the truth.

Just the amount of stuff happening and just the regeneration of the industry from an inside perspective. I ended up just kind of not really enjoying the day-to-day of it anymore and wanted to do some other sort of community activist-based work in Winnipeg. So, as long as I can kind of keep my bills paid, I'm sort of at the point where I'm, you know, debating, looking for other work and that kind of stuff on the side. But if we can kind of keep touring and that allows me to pay my bills. And then I work pretty much these days with a group called the Canada-Haiti Action Network, which is exposing Canada, U.S., and France's role in what's going on in Haiti these days. And it's just tremendously uncovered in the media.

Like, the corporate media is just not doing their job at all. Or, no, I guess they are doing their functional sort of job. They're not doing what they were intent. Well, it's hard to say anymore. Yeah, so, yeah, we've, like, this situation's basically developed in February 29th of 2004 when their democratically elected leader was basically put on a plane and shipped out of the country. And it was done so with military support from Canada, which is, you know, the Paul Martin government of Canada is basically in a tight spot because we didn't go, we weren't playing ball with the Americans in Iraq, nominally at least. There's a lot of other sort of financial support and a lot of corporations taking advantage of it and facilitating the U.S. Army there.

But I think this whole Haiti situation was just a way of Canada kind of getting in good with the Bush administration and sort of... Kind of like, we won't do the thing that everybody knows about, but this one that's going to be kind of under the radar, we'll help you on that one. That's exactly it. And it's basically stifling this movement towards independence that Haiti's battled for for centuries. And now they're just being, having their affairs governed by a bunch of white businessmen from overseas. And it's back to like pretty much an illegitimate sort of puppet regime that's using a lot of like terrorist activities to keep the population subdued. And that's where our tax dollars are going. It's very, very frustrating for me to, as a Canadian, Canadians have this idea and this myth about our status globally, like in terms of international relations and stuff like that.

Everybody believes that Canada has a pretty clean record on a lot of that stuff, but you dig down into it. There's a lot of fucking bullshit going on, that's for sure. Well, unfortunately, I doubt anybody in the developed nations probably has their hands clean altogether. So, sadly enough. All right, we're going to take a quick break from the interview there with Jord from Propagandhi. While we do that, we're going to play a couple of tracks off some of their older albums. The first track you're going to hear is called A People's History of the Earth off of Less Talk, More Rock. And then after that, we're going to go back to their first Fat Wreckers release, How to Clean Everything. And we're going to play Stick the Fucking Flag Up Your Goddamn Ass, You Son of a Bitch.

That's the entire song title, and it's mostly one word. So, we're going to play those tracks, and then we'll hop back into the interview with Jord from Propagandhi. And hopefully at the end, we will get to wrap it up with another song off of Tempkin City Limit. So, keep it tuned as we talk about all things going from the song Rock for Sustainable Capitalism to Minor Threat to Jord's interpretation of American hockey. So, be sure to keep it locked and enjoy the songs.

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Does it bother you that things like something that shouldn't even be in the news, like, I can't even, like, the new toys that are coming out, the Xbox 360 that's coming out for Christmas is making headlines on, like, CNN and things like this, which are obviously of greater importance globally, and, you know, in the scheme of things, are getting no coverage at all. Does that, like, just scratch your head sometimes? Well, yeah, yeah, for sure. Like, I mean, I think a large part of our, the way things are run, there's a whole lot of distractionary media out there, like, from, and, like, like, I participate in a lot of that stuff too. I was, I grew up on hockey, you know, and I still kind of have this need to root for, like, the Canadian national team when it comes to the Olympics or something like that.

It's, you know, just all these absurd things that we spend our time on while the shit is hitting the fan everywhere. And, but, yeah, and I would place a large percentage of just independent music in that same camp. Like, I think a lot of it's just, you know, kind of a soundtrack for a bunch of affluent kids to sort of party their whole lives to, and it's like, fuck, I don't want to be a part of that. I think it's horse shit, most of it. I can respect some of it. And I like some of it a lot, but, but, you know, it's just, some of it is true. A lot of it's just this industry repetition. It's, it's just really homogenous and stale. Yeah. Well, definitely, I mean, touching on that, you guys talk about that a lot in your new album.

I mean, like, the song, Rock for Sustainable Capitalism. Are you guys, have you gotten any flack for that? Are you worried that people are going to interpret that the wrong way and assume that you guys are just... We have a lot of people asking us about it, for sure. Like me? We haven't, in terms of flack, not really. Yeah. Like, from other people and bands and stuff like that, or... Like, other bands, or like, even just bands of other bands. No, I think, actually, surprisingly, we've had a lot of really good feedback from people emailing us. Whether, I don't really know, but we don't hang with a lot of different bands. We're sort of like, somewhat isolated up in Winnipeg, so maybe that's how we can get away with some of this shit.

But I mean, like, that whole issue of just like,

corporate interests, using youth culture to extend its influence, you know, I think this is something that will inevitably happen with any form of culture, especially ones that have like, touches of dissident politics to them, and that kind of stuff. Like, with hip-hop, jazz, everything's like, it's sort of like a farming ground. If those people can kind of win the influence over, and legitimize their corporate interests to a young generation that will then accept that it's okay that MasterCard is sponsoring the Vans Warped Tour or something like this. Or, the best example that hits really close to home is Nike on their last tour, the skate tour, when they stole Minor Threats' logo. Oh yeah, I heard about that. It's not available from anybody at Discord.

Yeah. I mean, it's strange to see things like that. Yeah, and they're desperate to legitimize themselves to young people. Because, I mean, like, before 9-11, sort of, the kind of like, the media current that took off after that, just like, everything is about 9-11 now. Like, before that, like with Seattle and Quebec City and all that G8 stuff going on around the world, the protests was globalizing. I think young people around the planet know that things are fucked and that things have to change. Yeah. And, and now you have a form of culture that I think was largely, inherently critical towards this system. Yeah. Just being used to replicate the system itself, it's really sad to see people just, you know, more or less playing it for, for cash.

Yeah. Essentially. And, I don't know, it stinks. Well, yeah, like, along those lines, I mean, when you guys started and you won't, I don't know exactly when you started, but definitely, you know, early to mid-90s, there weren't a lot of political bands, I mean, certainly not a lot of ones that are worth anything and now it seems like everybody from Limp Bizkit to Green Day has some sort of political album. Do you guys feel you have to like, now when you play, it has to be more important and it has to be more driven and it has to have that much stronger of a message to separate yourself from just what's become kind of the white noise? That's an interesting question. I don't think we've really thought about that too much because we don't really listen to those bands or anything and I don't really know like what I sort of see how Green Day's album was sort of represented in the media.

I didn't really find it to be that political to tell you the truth. It was sort of kind of convoluted and sort of and it's so filtered through so many layers of fucking just, you know, direction from whatever media agencies they deal with and all that kind of stuff. It's just weird to sort of get a feeling of what everything is about at that level. Yeah. You know, maybe it's just straight up opportunistic kind of, you know, ploys being, you know, set out, but I don't know. That's a difficult one. Yeah, that's fair. But we, yeah, I think we just kind of do our shit and it's like, you know. Just go about it

for us at the time. That's cool. Like this tour, we're sort of speaking a little bit less in between songs and stuff like that and just trying to keep the show kind of going. But we have a very, very extensive book table that's like, you know, covering a whole, whole lot of stuff from a radical press, AK Press based in San Francisco or in Oakland now, I guess. But yeah, so we get rid of that, like a whole lot of radical literature on the road and some pamphlets and stuff. And we've had a speaker out to one night, actually a journalist based in Haiti came and spoke to the crowd in San Francisco and played a short film. And yeah, I welcome that kind of stuff. Like keep, you know, commentary towards like people who, you know, really know what's going on.

And yeah. Would you rather somebody comes to your show and walks away with, you know, a book or, you know, a CD, a lecture CD rather than walk away with one of your guys' t-shirts? Yeah, yeah, fully. Like we almost didn't do any t-shirts on this tour at all. We were sort of ready to get, kind of give it up. But Todd managed to sort of find some organically, like their organic cotton with, I believe they were sort of produced with like fair labor practice. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's sort of like, I guess the only way we'll do t-shirts at this point, so. But yeah, I fully am more into kids picking up the literature. Yeah. That's nice. Yeah. Hold on real quick, two minutes. All right, well, we'll get into, I'll get into a question that I, I don't know if anyone else will care that you answer this, but I'm interested.

You were talking about hockey and recently they just got back, the NHL just got back this season from the lockout. Yeah. And they've instated a bunch of rules that are supposed to make the game faster paced and higher scoring. Yeah, yeah. What are your, what are your take on those rules? Like the new hockey type rule? Well, I was a goaltender for about 10 or 12 years in Winnipeg and Portage of Prairie where I grew up and just thinking of the size of the equipment and how it just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and like some of that gold equipment. Like I went into a place to get my skate sharpened last year. I was just laughing at the size of the equipment. It's just like tripled in size. Yeah, it's huge. But no, I haven't really had a chance to check out too much of it, but my friends back home that are back into watching hockey have said that it's, they think it's better.

They think it's better? Yeah. Now, one minute? Oh, okay. However, man, I think when we get to Phoenix on this tour it's our last show and I'm going to fucking put the curse of the Coyotes back on them like last time we were down there and they will not make the playoffs this year and with Wayne McGretzky running the show, fuck, he's better off peddling burgers than coaching hockey at this point. Fuck that guy. Not a Wayne McGretzky fan. No, not at all. Can I ask why? I think he helped Americanize hockey. Oh, that's very... He was the vehicle, the symbolic vehicle for it and yeah, like fuck, he's, why does he need McDonald's money to play with? The guy didn't make enough off hockey? Holy shit, it's just fucking absurd. Yeah. Well, unfortunately, like anytime there's somebody who's good and we associate him as American, all of a sudden that sport, whether it's hockey or F1 racing, becomes fucking huge over here and then all of a sudden it's our sport, which...

Oh, I think it might collapse. It's my hope that the NHL just completely falls apart and something else kind of replaces it that's a little more seen.

as little as I know about hockey, I'm not about to start, you know, calling shit on you. Don't worry about that. All right, so real quick, I guess we'll wrap it up. Is there anything you'd like to plug, website? Yeah, shit, I'm trying to remember the website for the Haiti stuff down here.

I'd really encourage any of your listeners. I think they're based in the Bay Area and they're doing a lot of great work. They're doing a lot of great direct work in Haiti itself and I would really encourage people to find out what's going on down there. Fantastic. Hopefully, I mean, at least one person will hear this and it'll take some interest in it. That's all we can hope. Yeah. All right, man. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. I know you guys are busy coming down. Cheers. All right, well, that wraps up our interview with Jordy from Propagandhi. We'd like to thank him, as always, for taking the time to come and sit with us because we're pretty much complete fuck-ups and I'm happy anyone takes the time to talk with us. But if you guys would like, we have interviews from every band on that tour.

We have interviews with Western Addiction, Greg McPherson, and even Jesse Luscious of The Frisk who played with him in Gilman Street. So if you guys want to check out any of the other bands on that tour, check out our website. We got them all. All right, we're going to wrap up this interview with a new track off of their new album, Potemkin City Limits. The track is a speculative fiction. And again, if you guys have any questions, comments, or concerns, hit us up at soundscenerevolution at gmail.com or hit us up on the message board. Thanks a lot for listening and hope to have you here next Tuesday.

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