| Hostage Life Written by Anthony |
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| Hostage Life are one of Toronto’s best punk acts and we talked with their drummer, Paul Miller. Check out their video for “This Song was Written by a Committee” here or their website here. Ambush: You guys are playing the arrrgos game on Friday, how does it feel to have your biggest dreams come true? Paul: Well, it doesn't really feel like too much of anything since they pulled the whole thing on us last night! It's really funny what happened actually - we got the call to do it and figured, ok, this is kind of a fun, ridiculous thing to do. You want us to play in front of 41,000 people in a stadium at a CFL game. Us...for some reason. Ooook. So we accepted and then a few hours later I got a call with the news that someone at the Argos, either someone from the team or their PR people or whatever actually listened to the record and determined that the content wasn't suitable for parents and children and all those assholes. haha. If someone at the game buys the album for their child, the lyrics could influence them to be a bad person or something. And so we got rejected. We're too grimy for the CFL apparently. Ambush: So "Walking Papers" shows a pretty significant leap in sound for the band, was it a conscious decision to bring a new sound to the band or something that just kind of happened? Paul: There's a bit of both in there. First off, our old guitarist quit before we recorded our EP and he had written the bulk of the songs on the album with Colin - so when it came time to write new stuff, we found ourselves wondering where the music was going to come from. Obviously we didn't want to quit because we like doing what we do, so out of necessity I started picking up a guitar and wrote a bunch of songs, then Hai Vu replaced him and did his own share of the writing. Then ANOTHER guitarist, Adam Smith, quit and ended up having a baby with his girlfriend so Patrick Mathers joined the band and also contributed to a lot of parts on the record. Colin is always part of the writing too - so in other words, we all throw in, and there were some new people writing the songs so naturally things sounded different from Sing For The Enemy to Walking Papers. But also, and more importantly, we didn't want to do another Sing For The Enemy where all the songs just blaze along at one speed and then the record is done. The full length was our chance to actually write a record as opposed to recording a bunch of songs we had lying around. Ambush: The video for "This Song Was Written by a Committee" has gotten quite a bit of air play, where did the idea for the video come from? where did you film it? Paul: The idea that we are doing our best to do our 'job' as a band and be as presentable as possible in the face of flying produce, picketing, fights and smashed fluorescent light bulbs ties in with the lyrics. It's kind of a sarcastic take on the notion that a manufactured product being decided by a group of music scientists is still considered artistry. There are plenty examples of this on the radio and I don't think you have to look very far to understand what we're talking about. Anyhow, the video is where this all goes awry, I guess it's taking the mockery of the idea a step further. We filmed the video on a dead end street somewhere near King and Dufferin. Just a small street where we knew we wouldn't be interrupted and we did our best to do it as quickly as possible with the tiny budget we had. It only half went according to plan, but we're happy with the end result.
Paul: Yeah, you're right. It was supposed to be one take because that's all the money we had initially planned to use...well, all the money we had. So we rehearsed it a bunch of times so that we could plan out all the sequencing and camera movements. All was going well and everyone knew when and where things were happening...but then the power generator shut off along with the stereo that was playing the song for us to follow along to. When that shit happens you can only keep going, because as I said, it's not like we had enough money to take our time with it. So amidst some confusing silence and some blank looks we kept playing the song but we knew it was going to be out of sync when the take was done. Also, the whole street and all our clothes were covered in paint and tomatoes and such - however, we realized that if we were gonna actually finish this video we'd need to clean up and do the whole thing over. So we did a second take where I pulled my van up and played along with the stereo but I couldn't really hear it at all, and we ended up with 2 slightly out of sync versions. Anyhow, we put em together and squeezed a bit more money out of the lovely people at UO, and did some editing and freeze framing to make the whole thing gel. Ambush: It looks like maybe some of the people had a little too much fun abusing you guys ... any injuries? Paul: None of us were injured. I got a tomato in the balls at high speed and my head was covered in egg but I was fine. Colin had to be hosed down by three people from the shoot in the middle of Liberty street to try and get the dried paint off his body, most of which didn't come off. But actually, at the end of the video there's a caption that says something like "2 children were injured during the making of this video" and that's true. We had 3 kids on the set and one also got a tomato in the balls but I guess mine are way stronger and I'm more mature, so I wasn't crying like that poor lil' guy. Also, Hai's girlfriend's little sister stepped on some glass and there were a few tears there too. Of course neither incident was serious at all, so it all just seemed kinda funny after all was said and done.
Paul: There may be some of each there. I mean, we've never been one of those bands with a raging left wing political agenda - we always preferred beer, so we end up doing a lot of things like the Argos game because we know it'll be funny and we'll have a good time and get wasted for free. At the same time, I think that's just how Colin likes to approach the topics he sings about: in a tongue in cheek manner. The sarcasm and the fact that we don't think we're on some kind of dumb mission to save rock and roll, are more about who are as people too so I imagine that comes across in the songs. Ambush: Do you feel like it's important to write somewhat traditional music? Hostage Life has definitely created there own sound, but it's definitely rooted in punk rock. It doesn't seem like very many bands are interested in writing good punk records these days, especially around here. Paul: Yeah, we're sort of confused about the whole thing really. It's not like we're breaking all this ground or whatever, we are playing somewhat traditional music as you call it, but so many of the bands we've played with are either some emo-metal or metal-emo hybrid who seem more concerned with emoting inside of tight pants rather than having some kind of backbone to the shit they're playing. And I suppose I sound negative about it, and I'm not, it's just not the sort of thing we expected to be playing before or after at the majority of shows. We get excited when we hear another band from Ontario or Canada for that matter playing straight up punk rock music...Rum Runner from Calgary are great, a new band called The Decay who I just heard recently are also doing it well. I can't think of other examples right now, and of course they exist, but you're right, there's a lack of the stuff in Ontario for sure. Ambush: You guys were also on MTV awhile ago, how was that experience? Paul: Pretty good. They treated us fucking amazingly and they were crazy nice. We did an interview outside with a host called Johnny Hockin who's actually been a friend of mine for a few years so that was cool. And the rest of it was strange, and definitely like nothing we've ever done before or since, given the whole TV stage thing, the chit chat segments leading up to our part of the show, and seeing our friends in the audience on a giant couch with throw pillows everywhere clapping over their heads like an episode of Kid Street. It was funny, and a good time. I'd definitely do it again. The only bummer was that they didn't let me finish my Hillary Duff story about why we were at her video shoot, but I guess I have the tendency to ramble quite a bit, just like this interview righ right here. Ambush: You've started writing songs for your next record, how's the progress on that? Paul: It's great. It's our favourite part actually - better than recording and even playing live sometimes. We've finished about 6 songs for the new record and we're happy with how it's sounding so far. We've also got this cover of MPLA by Tapper Zukie that we changed from a reggae song over to something that sounds more like us, and we're hoping to put that on the record too. We also really want to do a 7" in the next 3 months or so. But who knows, we're kinda broke at the moment. Ambush: Any upcoming touring/shows people should check out? Paul: Yeah, the one we're really happy about is the upcoming Rancid show on December 10th at the Kool Haus (Toronto's worst named venue). We all grew up listening to Let's Go and And Out Come the Wolves so we're psyched. We will definitely have the 12" LP out by then too so it should be a good night. Also, maybe we'll start looking into other sports arenas. CFL won't have us, maybe we'll move into a more badass sport that really gets us, like Aussie Rules or something. Hostage Life is all about the 'synergy'.
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