Dienstag, 7. Juni 2016

TRIAL Interview (2012)

TRIAL




Hey! How are you? Please introduce yourself and the rest of TRIAL.

GREG: Hi there.  Thanks for the interview.  I am doing well.  Trial is made up of the following members: Timm plays guitar.  He runs the hardcore record label Panic Records (http://www.panicrecords.net) and a car company called Aces For Hire.  EJ also plays guitar.  He plays in about eleven different bands and is a musical genius.  His wife stars in horror movies as an actress.  Roger plays bass.  He has really good hair and he plays in a band called Braeg Noafa who are also amazing.  Alexei plays drums.  He has long hair and is a really snappy dresser.  I sing.  I just got back from my second spoken word tour of the summer in 2012 and am really happy with how things went.  I am looking forward to coming over to Europe on a spoken word tour in 2013.  I will be putting updates online at http://www.wordsasweapons.com.

Please tell something about TRIAL for people who don´t know this band.

GREG: Trial is a passionate hardcore band from Seattle WA who have written songs about human suffering and survival, with lyrics that are political and psychological.  We all like food.  We all like heavy metal.  Ronnie James Dio (rest in peace) was a genius.  We like a restaurant in Seattle called The Veggie Grill.  Its vegan.  The band formed in 1995, broke up in 2000, and started playing shows again in 2005.

Why did TRIAL break up? What were the reasons for a reunion?

GREG: We broke up in 2000 as many bands do, because of disagreements between us.  We started playing shows again in 2005 because the ideas were always very important to us and the feeling and energy never left us even though the band wasn't playing for almost five years.  We never really wanted to stop in the first place.  We just let dumb fights amongst us get in the way. WE were dumb but then we got smarter.  We're all very happy to be playing again and who knows, maybe we will even write another song or two sometime.

You write very powerful and political lyrics, I really like that. Please explain the lyrics from the song "are these our lives?"


GREG: That song takes a look at the way our lives are spent.  And I use the word "spent" very specifically here. We pay for things with money.  We trade our hours for that money.  The hours we trade for that money are hours of our lives that we will never get back again.  And sometimes we forget that the effect of that entire process comes at the expense of someone else somewhere in the world who is less fortunate than we are, and who actually works to support the lifestyles we lead...just as we work to support someone else's lifestyle.  Its a very twisted process, and the song looks specifically at a number of ways that this effects us and effects people in the world.

You did a workshop at Fluff Fest 2012 about writing more effective lyrics. That whole spoken word thing, how did that come about? (You are a great speaker by the way!)

GREG: Thank you. I appreciate you saying so.  Fluff had asked if I would come over this summer to do that workshop and I was really happy about it.  I didn't do a full tour in Europe, but I did one in the USA before and after Fluff like I mentioned before in this interview.  This is the way I described my workshop at Fluff: "For singers, lyricists, poets, and writers: come and share ideas and hear thoughts about how to make our lyrics meaningful, vital, and real.  No more boring lyrics!  We don’t live boring lives, so lets not have our words be boring either.  Lets have our lyrics perfectly reflect the fire in our hearts!”  I always want lyrics to be better....to capture my heart as well as my mind.  I thought, maybe if we can all talk about this at Fluff Fest, it might inspire some thoughts in other people about how to make their own lyrics better as well.  I think it worked!  I got a lot of feedback from people and the emails with people having new inspiration didn't stop for weeks afterwards.  The turnouts on each day were really good too.  Overall, I am really thankful for everyone supporting those workshops like that.

Fluff Fest is and always was a big inspiration to me. It also inspired me to do my own Fanzine. 
What do you think about Fluff Fest? 


GREG: I will tell you the truth....but you have to lean in close because I am going to have to whisper. (Greg lowers his voice to a quiet whisper)  Fluff Fest is the best hardcore festival on the planet.  I love it.  I have to whisper this because I don't want to upset any of my friends at home who put on the incredible fest called Rain Fest or my friends in Belgium who put on Ieper Fest.  Both of those are amazing too but Fluff is pretty unique in many ways.  Great vegan food, lots of different types of people coming together, all sorts of bands, and also: my friend Kucin who is always there selling these incredible handmade writing journals. Talking to him alone is worth flying over for from the USA, not to mention how great it is to see all my other European friends. (Greg raises his voice again) There you go: these are my thoughts on Fluff Fest.

What does veganism and straight edge mean to you?

GREG: I have been vegan for more than half my life.  I love it.  I think eating cheese is silly.  It’s not necessary.  And I say that knowing that a lot of my Italian friends might disagree because they love cheese and they suck it down all the time.  But I really do believe that eating dairy is unnecessary for anyone who has the option to live an alternative lifestyle.  In fact, even people who don't have "vegan products" available often find when they are educated about nutrition and new food choices that eating a vegan diet is cheaper, easier, and better for local agriculture than a meat or dairy diet.  As for eggs, eating them is really weird.  And eating meat is just barbaric.  As for being straightedge, I am straightedge because I don't think I need alcohol or drugs in my life.  Or caffeine.  These are things that make me feel terrible about myself, because I like to see the world through eyes which are as unfiltered as they can be.  We will always have filters of some kind.  And even our food affects our bodies and minds.  But drugs and alcohol affect me in ways that I don't like.  And this isn't even to mention how stupid people get when they are drinking.  Drunk driving for example is something that makes me incredibly upset.  I would love to see a world in which drunk drivers are used as targets for archery practice.  These are dangerous people and stopping them by any means necessary is entirely okay.

In my band (Charly Bone (RIP) ) we write about topics like veganism, animal liberation and other political stuff. We also do speeches on stage between our songs. But sometimes people show up and say things like "talk less - play more music". And then to me it seems like people don´t care about a message or about lyrics anymore. It’s so disappointing to here such things from so called hardcore kids. What do you think about it?

GREG: Its not one or the other.  You have to have both.  Think about it this way in terms of the word "SONG".  If you only have lyrics, or you only have music, then you either have "SO" or "NG".  But with both you have the entire word and the entire experience.  Sometimes you can find a balance, meaning maybe you say things more specifically from the stage.  Maybe you use your words more effectively.  That's one way to satisfy both the people who want ideas and the people who want to rock out.  Generally, I think its safe to say that people who yell "talk less...play more music" secretly don't care about hardcore.  They are just there to impress their friends, to look cool, and I guarantee you that every single one of them will drop out of hardcore within the next couple of years.

You founded the organization "One Hundred For Haiti". Please tell us something about that.

GREG: One Hundred For Haiti was founded just after the earthquake in January 2010. I sailed to Haiti on the Liberty Schooner, a sailboat with ten thousand pounds of medical supplies and food along with a crew of ten volunteers. After we got to Haiti, I stayed in Haiti as the boat returned to the USA. I found my friend Dr. Jacques Denis who is a doctor at a public medical clinic in Port au Prince. After the quake, Dr. Denis had been giving away medical care and medicine to people who couldn't afford to pay for it.  When I got home to the USA I founded One Hundred For Haiti to do three things: first, to provide relief to the people of Haiti overall through sending food and medical supplies; second, to support Dr. Denis in his mission to continue giving free medical care to the people he serves; and third, to support the people in a small village near Jacmel.  I started raising donations through our website (http://www.onehundredforhaiti.org) and through Facebook postings and Twitter.  At Dr. Denis' medical clinic, we also hired Haitian workers to repair cracks in the foundation and walls from the quake at Dr. Denis' clinic.  The people who live in the area served by the clinic are afraid to walk into buildings that were damaged in the quake so these repairs let the clinic continue to serve people.  You can see videos about this work on http://www.onehundredforhaiti.org and on YouTube by searching "100forhaiti".  In the last year we started a new program called "Moto Logistics" where we give loans to organizations so that they can buy motorcycles to use for transportation and also for the raising of money as most people in Haiti travel by motorcycle taxi.  We create opportunities for people to have jobs driving those motorcycle taxis and this in turn raises money for the organizations we serve.

I don´t know if you heard about the "Tierschützer Prozess" in Austria. Animal rights activists have been treated like terrorists and criminals for doing normal and legal animal welfare activism and demonstrations. The judiciary used a so called "mafia paragraph" to get some of the activists in remand and after that they had a long trial. Although the activists were acquitted of charge they got smashed by the system. Some of them lost their jobs, they lost their existence (because they had to pay charge for the trial) they got mental pressure and so on.
What do you think about that?


GREG: I think its part of a growing trend worldwide to suppress alternative voices and opinions through branding anyone with a dissenting voice as a "terrorist".  Read a book called Green is the New Red if you can find a copy in Europe.  Its written by a guy named Will Potter and it decribes very clearly the current state of affairs in the United States about this issue.  Many people have been jailed for their ideas and for speaking out about them.  And ideas - as we read in the 'V For Vendetta' comic and then saw in the movie - are bulletproof.   They tend to threaten established power structures, and since power doesn't like to lose its hold, those who run the risk of losing something if opinions change tend to want to keep new ideas out of the minds of people who might run with those ideas and ask for something new for themselves and for the world.

Any bands we should check out?


GREG: Bridges Left Burning (Germany); Wolf X Down (Germany); Braeg Noafa (Seattle, USA); Unsilent (Belarus); and of course everything ever put out by Robert from Refuse Records and also his new label Warsaw Pact Records. Robert is a genius of hardcore.  He has brought back to life bands who otherwise would have faded into history, and he brings releases to the world from bands who might otherwise never have been heard.

The last words are yours.

GREG: Go vegan, be straightedge, do something in your community to make someone's life better.  Read things from the CrimethInc Collective.  Watch the movie "Ghost Dog".  Memorize every single second of the movie "The Big Lebowski". Get a copy of the album "New York" by Lou Reed and listen to it a hundred times.  If you're in a bad relationship, get out of it today (I mean it...don't wait a single second).  Go to the Villa Borghese in Rome and look at Bernini's statues.  Try eating peanut butter with chocolate.  Go on an adventure that you think is impossible.  Make out with someone new.  Go somewhere you're not supposed to.  Hide a smoker's cigarettes and pretend you don't know where they are when they ask for them.  Don't text and drive.  Support your local hardcore scene.  I think that just about covers it.  Keep in touch anytime through facebook (http://www.facebook.com/gregbennick) or through my spoken word site Words As Weapons (http://www.wordsasweapons.com). I hope to see you on the road sometime. Thanks for the interview!

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