Well, some of you who read the previous issue of this zine might
remember the review of Fast Times' 7" "Where were you?". When I
received that record and first listened to it I was a little surprised. It was a very different kind of punk, fast, with a female vocalist. To be honest, I was a little skeptic in the beginning, but as I listened to this strange record I kinda grew into it. I ended up just loving this wicked music.
So, when we (me, Jake and Kolbjorn) decided to go to Vanersborg for
a little festival (Vanerrocken) and we found out that Fast times were
coming there, we were quick to arrange an interview with them... Ok, so we got to the festival after 14 hours on train and we met Ali. I
talked to her and she was friendly and clean. We decided to do the
interview after they'd played. I couldn't do more than agree. The show was GREAT! If the 7" was good this was a blowout! Ali was working like a crazy on stage and it was cool to see the before so calm and quiet girl completely explode on stage. The calm eyes were on fire and the cute face looked furious and I almost got scared looking into it. While singing the songs Ali totally ripped up the stage and she seemed to enjoy every second. It was nice to see and Fast Times made the kids
dance like crazies in front of the stage.
Here you go, the interview with Ali (song) and Chris (Guitar) made the
29th of May in Vanersborg with a shitty tape-recorder and two shitty
brains (my and Jakob's) who are trying to talk English. So, Silvousplait,
Créme la Fast Times, Bon Appetit!
- Viktor.
CONCUSSION: Ok, we don't know very much
about you so maybe you can give us a short history on the band...
CHRIS: Me and Ali, I think it was the summer of ninety-seven, sat
up to form Fast Times but nothing really happened until April when we finally
had four members and we began to play shows that month. Uhm, it took us a while, and you know, no one ended up showing at our practices.
ALI: I think we've played with about thirty different people.
CHRIS: Yeah, until we got a solid line-up.
ALI: People just weren't interested, but look now, we're in Europe, and they are home, working at a job or something... Living with their parents
or whatever...
CHRIS: So, basically, we played at shows and ended up getting hooked up with smorgasbord records. And then, I believe in the summertime, our bass-player left and he was replaced by Graham, who we have now. Wonderful man...
ALI: ...and great bass-player! Hard to keep up with him.
CHRIS: And look out ladies, he's single, beautiful guy. Almost as
beautiful as a Swede.
ALI: Yeah, beautiful enough for Sweden.
CHRIS: Yeah, so it took us to October when we recorded our
seven-inch and we've played ever since, and this is our second show in
Europe... We're having a good time, Sweden was great. A good show
tonight.
CONCUSSION: How does it work on Smorgasbord records? Jeff
Terranova, is it the man behind it?
ALI: Yeah, he does a great job. He spends all his time and energy in
promoting the band and doing new things for the band, like making
stickers. Lot of other little details, he really pays a lot of attention to us.
And that is something that I don't think we would get from one of the
really BIG labels. So we're really happy with him and we'll be staying
with him for the full-length record wich should be coming out soon,
hopefully in September we will record it...
CONCUSSION: It is not very usual to have a female vocalist, what response have you been given from that?
ALI: For most parts, people are really positive about it. I've been going to shows for a long time, always dancing and singing along. So, locally people recognized me, so once I got on stage it wasn't such a shock. I was a friend with everyone. But now that I'm on tour and everybody is a stranger, and when people see me the seem surprised, but it's still pretty positive reactions. I´ve never felt any different from any of the other bands on stage. So I don't really consider myself doing anything different, I mean, I've been into this music for so long time, and I'm just following my heart and doing what came out naturally.
CONCUSSION: Because I've heard that Doughnuts were told
after their shows in U.S. that they were good... to be girls of course. So you haven't experienced anything similar to that?
CHRIS: Doughnuts is a whole band full of girls, and you know, we are three guys and just ONE girl. You know, the truth is, I don't think of Ali as a girl, she's just being friend.
ALI: Yeah, I can fart in front of the other guys.
CHRIS: She's doing her job and I basically don't think of her as a girl.
ALI: Although, Doughnuts is a little bit of a different scene and I think that the metal hardcore scene is having a little bit of a problem with people trying to be macho and like not wanting to hear a girls voice behind that music. I think that one of the advantages that we're having is that you know punks like us, old-school hardcore kids like us, even some metal kids i think, can develop a liking for us. We are pretty universal and that's to our advantage to.
CONCUSSION: Do you know anything else about Umea? Cause
we're from Umea.
ALI: No, I have no idea what you are talking about. Is that a town..?
CONCUSSION: YEAH. We traveled like 14 hours to get here.
ALI: Wow, just to get here. Is it that way for most of the shows? You
always travel that far?
CONCUSSION: Haha, No, because Umea has got a pretty big
scene. Both Refused and Doughnuts are from Umea.
FAST TIMES: OK.
ALI: Those are the only two Swedish bands I've heard of.
CHRIS: ...Abhinanda..?
CONCUSSION: Abhinanda is also from Umea. All of the good
bands are from Umea. Haha.
ALI: (a little embarassed) ..well... ehh. But this is our first time in Sweden, our first time in Europe, pretty much everything is new for us. At least for me. It´s really an exciting trip.
Damn, that was a disappointment. They didn't know about Umea. And we were so eager to brag about our city and they didn't even know about it. Umea, once the Hardcore-capital of Europe... We are sitting in a little basement where the bands are hanging out and it's a little noisy and a lot of crazy foreigners are walking around here. Some wild Englishman is undressing just two meters from where we are sitting, trying to keep this conversation relaxed. Although Ali and Chris are very nice and understanding concerning our shitty english. Me and Jake must be sounding like some russians or something. But they are relaxed and we don't have to worry very much about our Swedish accent.
CONCUSSION: Do you consider yourselves as a political band? Like preaching feminism or socialism or whatever...
ALI: I never wanted to think of myself as preachy. On the seveninch the lyrics are about how much I love going to shows, and how much I love the hardcore and what it does for me and what I can do for it. But I think that was because I spended so much time trying to do a band, that was all that I could think of. You know, now that we´ve put out our first record I´m moving on to other things, writing lyrics that are a little more substantial. We got a new song just about respecting others and abusive relationships. Just songs about more political issues. The seveninch was more of a "good-time-fun-record", in the next one you might see a more serious side of Fast Times.
CONCUSSION: The song "Garbage day" what is it
about?
ALI: It´s about having your heart broken, and lots of Hardcore bands, - even the tough ones -, have songs about their hearts being broken. So I wasn´t ashamed to write about it when it happened to me. I don´t want to have too many songs like that but you know, one every once in a while is acceptable, because it´s a human issue, it happens to everyone. It´s something that we can all relate to. Men or women.
CONCUSSION: Absolutely.
CONCUSSION: Which are your influences, what bands do you listen to?
CHRIS: Old, early eighty´s hardcore, punk rock, 7 seconds, Minor Threat. We all grew up listening to different things. Ali, she´s more into N.Y. stuff, Matt, our drummer, is into more crusty stuff. It´s so... I don´t know, it all comes together nicely.
CONCUSSION: Ok, on to a totally different question, do you like video-games?
ALI: Video-games? I'm not very good at them, especially not with the new graphics, they confuse me. So I'll just stick to play Pacman.
CHRIS: I like video-games. Actually, before we left, do you know James Bond 007?
CONCUSSION: Yep.
CHRIS: ...me and Matt played six hours straight before we left.
CONCUSSION: Goldeneye?
CHRIS: Yeah, Goldeneye, It was chaos.
CONCUSSION: Goldeneye is great.
ALI: I'm very uncoordinated when it comes down to pressing buttons and looking at the screen, so... I like playing real sports though, I like playing softball. (It's some kind of softer version of baseball to enlighten our swedish readers...).
CONCUSSION: (to Chris) Which is your favorite weapon in
Goldeneye?
CHRIS: The grenade-launchers. I like all the big stuff; grenade- launchers,
rocket-launchers...
CONCUSSION: ...the mines...
CHRIS: THE PROXIMITY MINES! Oh my God. You can't walk three steps without gettin blown up. It's wonderful.
CONCUSSION: OK, haha, let's leave that and move on to
something else.. Umea has got a really political scene, but it have gone too far. There are a lot of PC-fascists, or fascists, yeah, you could call them extreme in almost a fascist way... They are deciding what everyone else should think... Is that something you've experienced in the U.S. ?
ALI: A couple of years ago there was a pretty stron PC-movement but it seemed to kind of die out and it stepped of the hardcore scene. I mean these people still exist, but I don´t see their faces on shows anymore. It's funny, because it seems as if the things that happen in America will happen in europe not too short after.
CONCUSSION: It's kinda tragic, because it's killing the
scene.
CHRIS: Yeh.
ALI: It totally holds back your minds and holds back the openness that
you have to other people. And our song "Riot act" kind of addresses the
feminists who take their beliefs to the extreme, to the point where they want to shut off boys from their lives, and from whatever they do. With any extreme attitude like that, you're not going to open up other peoples minds to your ideas. You're going to close them off. It's counter-productive.
CONCUSSON: Where are you guys from, New Jersey?
CHRIS: New Jersey.
CONCUSSION: N.Y. and N.J. are pretty close to each other,
are the scenes connected in any way?
CHRIS: It's right in the middle of Philadelphia and New York, so all the bands go through there. I guess all the bands from N.J. go to play in Philadelphia and N.Y. on a regular basis. Although it's harder to get shows in the N.Y. scene.
ALI: N.Y. has its own sound. Like S.O.I.A. , Agnostic Front it's a lot tougher. And the bands that comes out of N.J. are more like youth crew, like Floorpunch. They define the N.J. scene today. But there's a lot of other good bands to. Like The Worthless, Dead Nation...
CHRIS: N.J. scene is much more varied, N.Y. is more "This is what it
is, this is what it sounds like". There's not very much difference between most of the bands.
ALI: The unfortunate thing is that the shows that happens are very separated. And that's a shame, because we have so much to offer each other. It would be so much more interesting to go to a show where, you know like the one today, where you get a little taste of different things.
CONCUSSION: Yeah, but there are a lot of old-school
youth-crew bands tonight.
CHRIS: Yes, that seems to be the general overture but still, I mean Turmoil, Converge and Samiam who aren't really like that... So, it's good to mix things up. If you had more shows like this the shows would be bigger.
ALI: We are really happy with the show today, we're impressed with the scene, it seems strong, the kids did a great job putting on the show.
CHRIS: It was nice here, very nice.
CONCUSSION: You did a great show onstage also.
CHRIS: Thanks.
ALI: Yeah, thank you. Especially on tours, after sitting in the van for 14
hours, all you want to do is get out as much energy in a short period of time as possible. It's like the ultimate workout.
CONCUSSION: That flip-thing you did...
ALI: Oh, the Cartwheel.
CONCUSSION: Yeah, it was awesome.
ALI: Well thanks, that´s become to be my trademark. Me and Chris were laughing about it, like "what about if Sick Of It All did that"
CHRIS: Yeah, some tough-guy-band, tatooed guys.
ALI: I think that we are allowed to do other unique things, the mix of the
four of us it comes out to be very different from what I´ve seen. I love playing with these guys.
CONCUSSION: What has surprised you the most here in Sweden?
ALI: I didn't come here expecting anything, so nothing that's happened is
a surprise. I was really happy to see such a strong scene. But you know I´m coming to this tour expecting some bad shows and some good shows, and I don't know where the good and the bad shows are going to take place. I'm just living each day. Not expecting anything.
CHRIS: We don't really know what to expect from which countries, but
I couldn't believe how many good-looking girls there are in Sweden. You guys have got it made.
ALI: HEY! The guys aren't so bad looking either. The swedes are very beautiful people… (short break, thinking) …and I'm very comfortable with that, I'm not feeling threatened.
CHRIS: I feel very ugly around here.
CONCUSSION: Where are you going after Sweden?
CHRIS: To Poland. And after Poland a lot of shows in Germany, England, France, Belgium, Croatia...
ALI: ...Switzerland, Netherlands.
CHRIS: Yeah, we're ending the tour in Netherlands.
ALI: It's funny that we are playing Sweden and Poland back to back,
because the inflation is so high in Sweden and so low in Poland. It's hard enough getting used to the money.
CONCUSSION: Well, I think we're out of questions, so we'll have to say thanks for this interview.
ALI: OK, thank you very much and good luck with your zine. Thanks for thinking of us.
CHRIS: Yeah, thanks for the interview.
