Gig Reviews
Cult Leader
Stengade, Copenhagen, DEN - 15/4
Album Reviews
Less Than Jake
Previous Nextauthor PP date 15/12/08
It's been five long years since the last time Less Than Jake played in Denmark. Knowing that punk bands are known to avoid this country like plague for some reason, there was no way I'd pass by the opportunity of interviewing one of the most influential bands to have existed in the genre. What's even better is that I was given Vinnie, the 'brains' behind the band's lyrics as well as their own record label, the dude who started Fueled By Ramen, signed bands like Panic! At The Disco and Fall Out Boy, and helped them become the success stories that they are today. When at the same time his own band made a great return to form with "GNV FLA" after a few disappointing major label releases, there were just so many questions to be asked, which is why this interview lasted about ten minutes longer than they normally do. But it turned out to be one of the most interesting interviews I've conducted to date, enjoy reading it.
RF.net: So what's new in the band?
Vinnie: Finishing off this European tour in about a week, and then taking time off for the holidays, but nextyear will be busy. Australian tour, Soundwave Festival, Punk Spring in Japan, full South American tour. Also we are confirmed for the Vans Warped Tour in the United States so it'll be busy next year.
RF.net: Sounds good, so how's this tour going so far?
Vinnie: It's been great, it's been three weeks. Been to the UK, then came over to Europe, and we've just about done three weeks here right now, and we have about a week left, so it's been awesome.
RF.net: Have you actually played here in Denmark before or is this the first time?
Vinnie: We played about five years ago in Denmark at Christiania...
RF.net: Oh yeah, at Loppen right?
Vinnie: Yeah, long time ago.
RF.net: That city seems to have a pretty vibrant music scene, what are some of your favorite bands from the area?
Vinnie: Absolutely! Oh man, Hot Water Music's great, Against Me! is great, Strikeforce Diablo, Young Livers... you know, there's a lot of great bands.
RF.net: Why do you think it is such a hotspot in the states?
Vinnie: It's a university town so I think that a lot of the times when a town just has the university, that's sort of the focal point. You have lots of influx of people coming in from every place around Florida and beyond, so I think that it starts to become a hotspot. It started to become a hotspot back in the late 70s and then it started to continue the tradition. The only thing I can really attribute it to is a rich tradition in music and a diverse cross section of people that come there for the college.
RF.net: I'm just going to skip one question cause this is related to what you just said. When I was reading some interviews while researching for this one, couple of them stuck out to me. In one of them, you said, and that was before the previous album, you said "you shouldn't make or can't make the same record twice because you need to keep pushing the genre and the band forward, right, and then on the interviews for this album, I saw JR say that for this record you guys just wanna do it like you said, do what you do best. So does that mean that your view or outlook has changed?
Vinnie: No, I think that with the new record, I think that we pushed the boundaries to inside the genre. But not necessarily pushed beyond the boundaries of the genre. I think that on the last record, we pushed beyond the boundaries and I think that for ourselves and our fanbase both, we felt that it was a bit beyond what the safety zone I guess was. Looking back on it, I think there's good songs on there, but I think that it suffered from overproduction slightly. I think that it was us being a band for fifteen years experimenting with sounds and trying to do that. I think that if we did it again, I'll go back to my statement, you can't do "Hello Rockview" part 2, you can never do "Pezcore" part 5, you can never do "Losing Streak" part 6, you can't do those records because that's when you start to stay stagnant. But I think when I saw doing what Less Than Jake does best doesn't mean a static thing. I think that we always push ourselves musically forward. But I think that doing what people know us for is not necessarily a static move or a linear move.
RF.net: Are you guys planning to maybe sign some other bands in the future?
Vinnie: We've talked about it, I think we just have to find the right band to do that with.
RF.net: Have you thought of about a style? Is it going to be more ska-punk, is it going to be metal?
Vinnie: I don't know, we'll see. We first have to find... we've found a few bands that we like, we always read on something. We'll see how it goes. I'm in no rush because I've released records on another label that I owned, so for me, it has to be the perfect storm to do it for the Sleep It Off side of things.
RF.net: So is there some label out there that you perceive as the vibrant one that you're describing here?
Vinnie: I think that on a smaller level obviously but a level that they stayed at the same level, which I find sort of mid-level label, not massive like Fueled By Ramen. But lets say No Idea Records, also from Gainesville, I'll use that as an example. They've been doing it for... going on twenty years, sold a lot of records. They release a lot of records and they sell a decent amount of each record, but they do from grindcore to pop punk to acoustic country tinged music. I think that's a cool thing to do and I always look back to No Idea as a blue print of a label that can sustain itself through two decades. Ultimately, if you're in that business of selling records and putting out music, I wanted to be a part of something that can sustain itself. When faced with that not happening, I decided that it was a great time for me to cash out, no big deal. I can put my energies and creative thought into other places than into something that I don't have my heart and soul in.
RF.net: Do you have a favorite band on Fueled By Ramen?
Vinnie: It's a hard thing actually because there was bands that were my friends that aren't necessarily my favorite band musically, you know? I'll go with Kane Hodder, they released a record.. I really liked them as people. As for the music, I thought that it was great but not my favorite. Punchline the same way, great people good friends, not my favorite band. If I was going to mark something that was my favorite thing on Fueled By Ramen, it was "Papercut Chronicles" by Gym Class Heroes, because it blended the perfect sense of hip hop but live music. And mind you now it's so far from what that was when we released that record, it's more loop based and rap based, but "Papercut Chronicles" by Gym Class Heroes is my favorite thing. And among anything, when I listen to that record, it was the start of something cool, and I wish they had continued in that direction instead of going in the usual direction, you know? I thought that was cool, I thought that early on we did records... I would say The Impossibles record is the record that, for me, made me really like putting out records. I listen to that record when we are on tour, I listen to that record so many times just as we're driving around, it was insane. That made me fall in love with wanting to put music out and things like that.
RF.net: What about Jen?
Vinnie: Jen was a real person, she had a crush on Chris, and she was a very weird character. Just her whole family was sort skewed, she would just sort of pop over at random times at our apartment, me and Chris were living together, to sort of make food and then really not talk to anyone and then leave. And she told us stories about her kissing her cousin and her dad basically waiting for you to go to the bathroom and then unlock the door and surprise you and take a polaroid of you going to the bathroom and things like that... so yeah, real person!
RF.net: Where's "Lion City"? Is that Gainesville?
Vinnie: Lion City is a metaphor for any place that was a vibrant city that now is falling apart because of economics of life.
RF.net: Where does your lyrical inspiration come from?
Vinnie: If I were to sort of cut everything away, there's little bits of Billy Bragg in there, little bits of Bruce Springstreen in there, little bits of Elvis Costello, but my major influence is from a writer, his name is Aaron Cometbus. He played in bands like Crimpshrine and played in Sweet Baby for a while, and he does a magazine called Cometbus, which is like a travel journal kind of thing. And that's my main inspiration as far writing lyrics goes.
RF.net: I was kind of more going for the things that you write about, how do you come up with them?
Vinnie: No idea, I just do! That's one of those things...
RF.net: So you don't like sit down and say "now i'm gonna write about this topic" and then...?
Vinnie: Not really, I'll explain the writing process for me. Lets say on this tour, I'll have my phone and I'll go "oh! just think of a phrase or a word" and I'll write it down or I'll have scraps of paper on fucking napkins and like backs of packaging and scrolling, and I just save all them up, and when it's time to write a record, I just take everything out, I print out everything that I've written on either a computer, just like typed up randomly, or on the phone... print everything out and take all those scraps of paper out and just dump it out onto a table and I just start filing through it. And then I look and sometimes I don't even remember, you know, lets say because you just mentioned "Lion City", there was a piece of paper it said "Does The Lion City Still Roar?" on it, and I don't remember ever writing it, I don't remember ever why I wrote it or any reason, but I picked it up, and said to myself "oh yeah I like that". So I wrote it down on a piece of paper, and immediately, as soon as I sort of picked things up, I go "oh, this is about this" and my brain just adds to that, and there we go. It happens, so I just write throughout a year or two, and then just go back in and collect my thoughts that I don't remember and write off of it. It's a very sort of organic process too, it's not a very forced thing. I usually pick things up and just go "oh yeah" as soon as I pick it up or read it, I know what it's about. I like to sort of tie titles to people a lot so lots of things are based off of people I know, family and friends, acquintances... everything is sort of based off that. A lot of times, more so than anything, 75 to 80% I use other names but I always refer back to myself. So even though "Al's War" is called "Al's War", it's about me, I just used Al for short for alcoholic, so it's "Al's War", alcoholic's war, but "Al's War" is not about me per say, but I'm writing it about myself. I use other people to personify, weirdly enough, that's what I do!