As a quick aside: while I was at the newsagents this morning I happened to notice a coverline on the cover of this month's Cleo which read, "How To Know If You're Having Bad Sex!" HOW TO KNOW IF YOU'RE HAVING BAD SEX?? Can't Cleo readers figure that out for themselves? If you're actually interested in reading an article with a title like that, you're probably having bad sex. God, those magazines are dumb.
Back to the RUSSH thing, the new issue has a feature on Big Scary who are a really great two piece from Melbourne. Big Scary launched their EP 'Hey, Somebody' with a really really great Sydney band, Cameras when they (Cameras) launched their 'June' single at GoodGod Small Club. I interviewed Cameras for the first issue of Can't Sleep. Actually, they were the first Sydney band I ever interviewed AND they were the first Sydney band I saw live after I moved here from Perth. I can remember it like it was yesterday. At the Oxford Art Factory, with my new friends Jesse and Yiannis, all full of assumptions and pretensions. Telling anybody in hearing distance how AMAZING the Perth music scene is and how Sydney bands JUST DON'T HOLD A CANDLE to that FAR OUT WEST COAST SOUND. And boy, was I put in my place. So it goes without saying that Cameras hold a special place in my heart.
Since their interview was in the first issue, which not a lot of people got to read, I'm gonna post it up right here, right now. The first issue was on the Apocalypse - we did this interview at nobody's favourite bar, The Cricketers Arms.
--
(After you read the interview, click the picture).
Can't Sleep: What do you guys think a 21st century apocalypse would look like? And how do you plan to survive it?
Fraser: I have all these these images... I don't know, maybe it's because of the pop culture ways that it's been put forward to us, I just imagine all these brain explosions and crazy mutant people from nuclear things...
CS: Like a zombocalypse?
F: Yea! Just a whole lot of, maybe every horror film that's ever been made, into one. People walking backwards upstairs, and things like that.
Eleanor: My imagination is very limited, to say the least. I suppose what Fraser said, I guess if we're talking about...
F: Guys on horses, holding their heads. We're quite into conspiracies.
E: We debate it quite a lot.
F: Yea, we're always debating the conspiracies. So yea, it'd be all the themes of treason and all those sorts of things culminating... Does that make sense? Probably not.
CS: Yea, it does. Do you get a sense of the apocalyptic in the reality we're living in now?
F: I think so.
E: Yea, to a degree.
F: There's things in the real world that could trigger (the apocalypse). There's a lot of nuclear arms in the world, that could all, you know, explode at the same time. I think if there was to be another major war, it would be definitely be the one that ends it all. I don't think it'll really get there because all these different countries have got so much power, and they know it, they're always gonna bluff with it.
CS: The power just cancels everything out.
F: Yea, I think so. I think the weapons and stuff have become so sophisticated that no one actually wants to use them. And once they do, they're fucked because people can just bomb them back.
CS: It'd be like Dr. Strangelove...
F: Yea yea, exactly. It'd all go tits up.
E: And all the environmental stuff we're bombarded with, I think all of that is quite, in a way, apocalyptic. All the crazy weather.
F: Yea, all these crap Hollywood films depicting the world ending in a day and stuff.
E: All the latest tsunamis and... it is quite apocalyptic, really. It's pretty scary.
F: Crazy weather stuff, it always conjures up these apocalyptic images.
CS: How do you think music relates to the end of the world? Do you think it'll be able to predict it? Will it survive beyond the apocalypse?
E: I think often musicians like to write about stuff like that.
F: I love it, I think it's cool.
E: I mean music is, I suppose, dramatic in itself so I think the whole apocalypse would... You asked whether music would survive after it? I suppose so. I suppose someone has to write something about it.
F: I reckon cassettes will survive.
CS: You don't think vinyl would survive the apocalypse?
F: No, it'd melt.
E: Tapes would probably melt as well.
F: Yea, but everyone's got (their tapes) stashed away, and vinyl's cool so everyone's got it out going, 'Check out my vinyl!'. But everyone's got their old tape decks tucked away.
E: The digital world might survive. It might just be...
F: Yea, on the internet
CS: Do you think the media is panicking now more than it ever has? Compared to the Cold War, and Hiroshima and everything else?
F: Yea, definitely. The media has the power to hype stuff up so much now, 'cause information is shared so easily compared to ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. It's easy for, you know, word to spread about something and they love to hype it up. Because there's so much news coming through, you know a news story ten years ago would've come out, and people would've talked about it for a few days.
Whereas now, it'll appear on the newspaper's main page and then an hour later it's another story. It's just a constant churn now, whereas before...
E: Yea, it wasn't so in-your-face. I think it just would've been a whole different experience with things happening in the world back in the day. It's just a whole different experience in this day and age.
F: And we're fed a lot more information these days, I don't think people take it in as much. Now a lot of people just walk around quite oblivious to what's going on because they're fed so much information you can't really take a lot of it in. Whereas before you could digest the news you got a lot easier because it was a smaller amount that came through and now...
E: Yea, I know a lot of people who just don't watch the news, because it's all just about Iraq and... (people) don't want to be bombarded with that all the time. It just seems like it's all the same.
F: I think it does get a bit overwhelming sometimes.
CS: Do you think it's human nature to panic about stuff? Or is everything that's going on forcing us to panic?
F: I think (it's human nature). And here's where the conspiracy comes in – governments like to keep people occupied with this sort of thing. And big business, large corporations, they sell things through fear. Fifty years ago it was 'Drink Coca Cola, it's delicious', and now it's...
CS: 'Drink Coca Cola or you're not good enough for society'.
F: Yea.
CS: So who do you think will ultimately be responsible for the apocalypse? The politicians? The capitalists? The religious fundamentalists? Or society as a whole, human nature?
E: I think human nature.
F: It'd be a stupid mistake.
E: I don't know, I don't really like humans that much...
F: She really hates people.
E: I think we're our own worst enemies. I think we're too smart for our own good, and uh... I think we ruin everything. A lot of the time.
F: So to answer your question... I think it'll be something quite unexpected. I'd prefer that, just something a bit unexpected, if it had to happen. Someone like Bob Geldof, just ripping off his mask and going, “Fuck you, I didn't really feed Africa! I ate them!”
CS: Do you ever worry that these 'End of Days' religious crazies are going to get more of an audience, because of all the environmental stuff that's going on?
F: Yea, religion really concerns me. I find it quite frightening that people devote their lives to something they don't know. And religion's really an oppressive regime, they really do control every aspect of people's lives, and I think that's quite concerning when they have that sort of absolute power. I mean, it's good that they don't have as much power as they did in the, say, 15th or 16th century where they owned everything. People are a lot more aware now, more able to choose.
E: There have been books written about how we will eventually convert back to that way of life. Back to the way we were in the 16th century.
F: It always go from the ultra-liberal to the ultra-conservative and back again.
E: And technology will just take over, completely and utterly. And we won't have any privacy whatsoever.
CS: In the event of the apocalypse, who would you have faith in to save us? Would it be the artists, or the politicians? The prophets?
F: It's not gonna be an artist... definitely not gonna be an artist. Not a politician. I don't know, I think we're fucked. No one's really gonna save us. Who's overdue for some goodness?
E: A sports person?
F: Yea, maybe sports people will finally pull their weight in society. They keep winning all these 'Australian of the Year' awards without really doing anything.
CS: What's Thorpie done for us lately?
F: Yea, exactly! He's done fuck all since releasing his line of pearls. And that didn't go anywhere, so yea – he's due for something. I'm not sure if that's before or after he comes out though...
CS: Do you think music will play a role in that? In saving us?
F: It'd be a pretty good soundtrack, I think.
E: I suppose we'd all turn to some form of art, music, to get us through.
F: Yea, people will always listen to music because they feel like they need to, and it relaxes them and calms them. It has all these emotional effects on people, so something like the apocalypse... yea that'd probably be the first thing I'd do, put on a record and go, 'Well, may as well ride this one out'.
CS: Do you think musicians are more sensitive about all this paranoia about the end of the world? Or are they more skeptical and removed from it?
F: I think some are (sensitive to it).There are some bands who like to write about conspiracies, and... Well, in our music I kind of like to play out scenarios in my head of weird scenes, things like that. And there are some artists who write about different aspects of people's minds, things like that. There are some people who write about love. It depends on the artist, I guess. I kind of like that whole world of treachery, and stuff that we don't experience every day and that's kind of far removed from our society.
CS: So you think Cameras would be more removed from the paranoia?
F: No, definitely not. That'd be the time to cash in, we'll ride that train.
E: Yea, as a band I think that area does fascinate us.
F: We do tend to write towards the more epic themes. We've been writing a lot lately and a lot of our new stuff is more big and epic and grand, with an apocalyptic feel, I guess.
CS: What do you think about this whole thing about sending humans into space? You know how they said we're going to open up human colonies on the moon?
F: Didn't they say we were gonna do that by 1980 or something? That we'd all be living on the moon? I don't think it'll ever happen. I'd like it to, it'd be awesome but... yea, I really want to go on that Virgin galactic thing. If I had enough money, I'd do it.
CS: So you don't think it'll ever happen?
E: It might.
F: Yea, it might. If the world doesn't blow up before then. I was gonna say it could be a hundred years, but we could be doing it in ten years or something. Technology keeps moving insanely quickly and a gap that was say twenty or fifty years apart not so long ago, they could be making those advances in months.
E: Possibility.
F: We'll sit on the fence on this one.
CS: So you think we should just cut and run, or stay and try to fix the damage?
E: You're kind of talking about that film. The Pixar film, about the robots.
CS: Wall-E?
E: Wall-E!
F: I thought you were talking about the one with the old guy in the house with the balloons...
CS: Up!
F: Yea, Up! I was like, 'Doesn't he just go somewhere else?' He never really leaves Earth... Yea, cut and run I think.
E: We'll be in a band on a space ship.
CS: So you're not hopeful about the future?
E: Not really.
F: For human kind?
CS: Yea.
F: No, I think we've really gone a bit too far. I don't think things are going to all of a sudden be better. There's too much greed.
E: I think it's going to take a massive disaster to really shake people up. Because people are just so complacent. I mean that is human nature, that we're just very complacent about everything.
F: Yea, as long as the world is run by large corporations and powerful governments, as long as they're the ones brokering the deals. I mean, I don't want to sound like a commie but as long as the structure is in place as it is now, I can't see it changing.
CS: So if Cameras was put in charge of the world tomorrow, how would you go about fixing it up?
F: Probably round up a whole lot of people we weren't too fond of and send them off first. The Rosie O'Donnells, the Bernie Madoffs.
E: Yea, he can go into space for a hundred and fifty years.
F: Yea. The David Kochs... I don't know, what would we do?
E: I really don't think we're smart enough.
F: I think the first point of call would be bringing in someone who knows something about stuff to take care of it. Maybe get Stephen Hawking.
CS: He knows stuff about stuff.
F: He knows stuff about stuff. Plus he's got an awesome voice. We'd probably get him to put down some vocals on a track too.
