Storming The Studio :: 40 Years of the Future Worlds of Jack Dangers (Part 5)

Igloo Magazine presents a serialized, long-form oral history of the work of Jack Dangers, front man for Meat Beat Manifesto, Perennial Divide, Tino Corp, The JDs, and countless other monikers. These monthly installments will hopefully provide a definitive insight into the works of the man (originally) from Swindon, underrated genius of the last 40 years,  and pioneer of three distinct musical genres of the late 20th and early 21st century. Chang Terhune’s interviews take twists and turns as he seeks to plumb the depths of this musical mind in a series we’re calling “Storming The Studio: 40 Years of The Future Worlds of Jack Dangers.”

Dirty jobs — with Jack Dangers

Over the course of these eight hours of interviews two things are clear: Jack Dangers is an incredibly funny guy, friendly and open about his challenges in the nearly 40 years of life in the music business. There’s been ups and downs over the years of course (Jack’s spoken at length elsewhere about label issues which are all too common within the music industry). And despite the wounds and scars, he’s still working, not letting it stop him from doing what he does best which is bring this weird hybrid of industrial, noise, hip-hop, punk, and funk to the world.

“Compared to the worst jobs I’ve done, the music business—with all its crap and terrible people—is still preferable to the worst jobs I’ve had,” says Jack. “Like, you go on tour and you’re at an airport waiting for a plane, and some asshole’s stuck this contract in front of you. Because if you sign anything in an airport, it gets around the laws about contracts. There’s someone saying “Oh yeah, we can get the contracts going as we need to at the airport between flights,” you know, shit like that. And then you get an extra year out of the year because it doesn’t kick in until the next year.”

“But there’s like loads of other labels I’ve worked with who weren’t like that whatsoever. And sometimes things like that get in the way and you just end up with more time on your hands, more time to do things without them on your back saying “You got to go on tour in a few months!” Subliminal Sandwich was the first one since Storm The Studio that was our first album which wasn’t on this strict timeline regime where you feel like a slave and all the enjoyment of what you wanted to do with your life is being sucked out of you by money grabbing crooks. Yeah, it’s like that. (LAUGHS)”

Igloo :: It’s like that great but awful quote from Elvis Costello when he says something like “The world gives you 20 some odd years to create your first album and then just one for the second.”

Jack Dangers / MBM :: Yeah, exactly. I don’t want to sound bitter because I’m not really, you know, unless I start thinking about it. Because I would rather be doing that than the jobs I started out doing. Like go into a lift shaft and scoop out a foot of maggots basically.

What? That sounds awful.

Yeah—the worst. My brother had a lift maintenance company and he’d get me to do the worst bloody jobs cause he’s been through them before. We were in a meat market and there was an elevator there. There was blood all over the floor and everything ‘cause they’re rendering meat that’s soaked up with sawdust. And the lazy ass cleaner there would just scoop all this with a push broom down into what’s called a sill between the floor and the lip of the elevator. So they just scoop all this crap down the lift shaft where it gathered on the bottom over the years. And I was the one lucky enough to have the job of jumping down into the bottom of the lift—and it had a big spring at the bottom. It sounds funny like something out of a Tom and Jerry / Warner Bros. cartoon. But there was a strange huge spring just in case everything else fails and the lift is out of control.

That’s crazy but still…

Yeah—and at the bottom of this shaft in this pit is a stenching (sic) fricking horrible, claustrophobic hot environment. And I had a torch shining on the walls of this lift shaft. And there were all these flies in different stages of being maggots, then growing into this thing growing their wings out and then the actual flies. So you’ve got flies flying all the way through the bloody lift shaft. And I was basically standing in a foot of writhing maggots and sawdust and I just vomited. So then of course I had to clean up my own vomit while cleaning up a foot deep sheet of maggots. So yeah, I’d rather get ripped off by a labels than do that. (LAUGHS)

 

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Thank God for Jack’s perseverance through it all. Because after 30 years of listening to the music of Jack Dangers in either his Meat Beat Manifesto, Tino Corp, The JD’s or his solo work I can firmly say this: Jack Dangers is one of the most criminally underrated musicians of the last 40 years and most certainly the late 20th and early 21st century. Furthermore I will double down and say he is more important and influential than say Aphex Twin (who sampled “Radio Babylon” in a number of his early works). Jack Dangers is responsible, I believe, for the emergence, growth and popularity of three or four distinct genres of music. Fight me, as the memes say.

Jack Dangers is one of the most criminally underrated musicians of the last 40 years and most certainly the late 20th and early 21st century.

The first would be what’s best called industrial dance, though industrial metal might suffice. But it’s the music he made after growing up on British punk, industrial and experimental music as well as good old rock and roll that fully gelled when the first hip-hop tracks hit the UK. Once Jack got a taste of those, the sound of MBM turned into something wholly different and new. There was nothing else like “God O.D.,” “Psyche Out,” or “Radio Babylon” before—nor has there been anything like it since. Bands like Autechre, The Future Sound of London, Aphex Twin, and my own music as Cathode Ray Tube—among many others—were catapulted into a frenzy by Meat Beat Manifesto’s music but instead of tearing off our clothes—as Jimmy Swaggart warns the listener in the opening of “It’s The Music”—we turned around, headed to our bedrooms, and began to make music like we heard Jack doing.

A few years later, Big Beat would gain more popularity with acts like Fatboy Slim, The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, Basement Jaxx and others. None of them would have found any sort of footing in the charts, ears and minds of listeners were it not for Meat Beat Manifesto. Jack—again as the founding member and leader of MBM—pioneered the combination of drum machines, synthesizers and sampled hip-hop breaks like one if his idol’s Hank Shocklee. He did so long before most of the big names of the Big Beat genre were making the music that would eventually make them famous. “Strap Down,” “I Got The Fear” and “God O.D.” pre-date most of the music of famous big beat bands by up to ten years in some cases. Without his work they’d be stuck in the rave loop, an arena Jack dabbled in before moving onward as ever.

Come to the early ought’s when dubstep began to emerge in the UK and who do you find putting out some of the earliest dubstep influenced music? You guessed it: Jack Dangers and Meat Beat Manifesto. The influence of dub music was apparent early on in Jack’s catalog going back to “Radio Babylon,” to the Satyricon album, Subliminal Sandwich to “Prime Audio Soup” and beyond. Hints of dubstep show up in RUOK? but don’t truly manifest in the forefront of MBM’s music until the arrival of Autoimmune. The tempo, arrangements and reliance on echo, reverb, heavy beats and heavier bass are all traits found in Meat Beat Manifesto’s music going back to the beginning. Put together in specific form on Autoimmune and Answers Come In Dreams we find a dark, heavy and dramatic music rivaled only by the demonic deep hip-hop of Scorn (I could make the argument he was a cornerstone of the downtempo movement as well, but I suspect the previous five paragraphs have already set enough people’s hair on fire for now).

 

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Everything from right-wingers to miscellany to maggots to, um, children locked up in the attic

It’s interesting to be at our age and see this second wave of electronic musicians coming along with apparently little or no awareness of what preceded them only ten years before. Like there’s this newish singer who goes by the name of Laika. When I saw her mentioned I was surprised because there was a band in the 90s called Laika.

Jack Dangers / MBM :: Yeah—I did a remix for them… it’s got the Jupiter 4 all over like right in the main sequence. (ref. “Looking For The Jackalope (236 Mix)” — Breather, Too Pure, 1997)

Oh yeah! Excellent—great band! So Vice posts about something on their Instagram and I was like, God forbid they took 30 seconds to Google the name Laika.

And find out it’s a dog!

Yes! (LAUGHS) So I mentioned this on her Instagram and then she’s says: “Whatever, old man.” So that was nice. And I actually had to chase some dude in the Atlanta using the names CRT and Cathode Ray Tube—I had to politely let them know I had some legacy with the name. As I said to them I’m the first thing you see if you Google “Cathode Ray Tube” or “Cathode Ray Tube music,” it’s me.

You know the George Martin reference, right? His first project was Ray Cathode—this really early electronic single.

No, I forgot about that. But I had to basically tell the guy who ran the label “These are my initials. I’ve been under this name for 20 some odd years.” So we worked it out, but no one seemed to get they might want to Google the name.

Yeah, I do that. I always do that for an album. I was really surprised that no one had used Impossible Star. I figured someone had used it as some fun name—this amazing optical illusion, right? There was a thing Galileo saw, he came up with a phrase after he saw a planet which was there one month and then gone the next month—then came back again. It must’ve been an eclipse or something like that, so he came up with “Impossible Star.” But I was just surprised it hadn’t been used.

Me, too! I mean, it’s not, it’s obvious, but it’s not more obscure like “Opaque Couche.”

Yeah. I always put in whatever the title is, and then “CD” or “BAND,”—to see what comes up. And someone did a song called “Opaque Couche.” I found it on Discogs, then I said I don’t care, I’m gonna use it for the whole album.

Good call. Now it’s pronounced Opaque Couche but is it Couche or Couché?

Couché, you know, with the little thing above the “e.”

Is that accent grave or accent aigu? (Either way we talked about sort of deciding on that color and then the name.) Did you intentionally want to kind of put your finger in people’s eyes with that? Kind of a dig?

Well, you know, I do tend to see that everything is shit quite a lot. So that’s referencing pop music and pop music is awful these days.

It is. It’s sort of terrible and worse than other decades at the same time.

I saw it coming in the 80s. It was all this type of music coming out—then it got into Britain. People like Stock, Aitken and Waterman and then it just exploded. I couldn’t believe that it actually managed to come over here now again, Katie Perry and all that.

Oh, I know. Garbage. (editorial note: CRT has publicly stated how much he loves “Teenage Dream” by Katy Perry).

It’s just not good like pop music used to be in the 60s. Of course some people will say I’m starting to sound like a stick in the mud, or a stick in the Opaque Couché.

(LAUGHS)

But you know, if I’m being truthful and honest, it’s all aimed at 10-12 year old girls these days.

I think there was less of a machine around (pop music) and less machinery to make it as sort of automatic and easily digestible where someone like, you know, Timberland—who’s an amazing producer—can still book a studio for six months and churn out hundreds of hits with barely more than an MPC and a laptop. It wasn’t like that back in the 60s, you know? I mean Joe Meek was recording stuff out of a rented flat with all this weird ass equipment he either invented or modified himself. It was a bit more of a wild frontier back then.

Oh yeah. But you know, that’s been taken over with computer games, isn’t it? That’s what the wild frontier, the new frontier—that’s all it is now. The excitement you might have got from (adopts announcer voice) “A new rock and roll, Eddie Cochran’s new single is coming out.” Or Buddy Holly’s new album came out and sold six million copies in the first day or whatever. But that was the fundament of that and it’s sort of been music been replaced by other things now like you know, video games, or bloody social media, you know? It’s all different.

Yeah, true.

Plus, it’s all free. You know the minute this album comes out someone will fucking upload it to YouTube thinking they’re doing someone a favor. It’s not helping me at all, is it?

No. Not to make it about me, but one of my albums came out one year on April 1st (High Cube Drifter, M-Tronic, 2019) which I worked very hard on and is a “free / pay what you want” label because that’s where we’re at, right? And the next day I get a Google alert. So, I look and it’s on a Russian shareware site. Sons of bitches! And they don’t have an email address where you can send a DMCA notice or tell them to just take it down.

That’s the main reason when someone says “Oh you want to do a remix? I ain’t got any money.” I’m okay, I’ll do it for nothing. Because everything else is done for nothing these days. Literally the minute before it’s available, someone’s putting it out there for nothing. And that mentality is just so ingrained in everyone. And many of them aren’t aware they’re doing it. They’re just so into the music and want to share and be helpful. I mean, I don’t like the word “fan” or “followers,” so I don’t know what you could use.

They’re enthusiasts, not fans.

Right! Enthusiasts are excited but sometimes don’t even think about that, you know? My manager would just about kill me if stuff gets out early.

Your manager or publicist?

Manager—but yeah, I don’t envy his job either. Press for a band that has been around this long is tough. It’s such a young person’s industry. Not entirely, but the excitement is in that narrow band. It’s like in the first 12 years of your existence as a group, the first 12 years of any band, if it’s The Beatles, Kraftwerk, XTC—it’s always good and healthy and exciting. But after that it’s old news regardless of the band. And some bands don’t even get that long. You get one album. But after that 12 year period you’ve gotten old and fat and gray and it’s just turned into something else. And I don’t know how people are supposed to be interested or excited. Or you know, you spend two months making a video then slap it up on YouTube, and everyone’s dissing it because they can. It just sort of makes it seem like whatever.

It’s just the shitty baffle of anonymity that the internet gives to people who would have been relegated to muttering about something in the corner of a pub or a coffee shop. Now they have this voice and platform.

Right. Everyone’s an “expert.”

Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

Nothing is secret anymore. Nothing is to be found. It’s all up there. You know, if you’re looking for particular records, you know, it’d be available somewhere if you’ve got enough money. The same for equipment. In the 80s you’d have to go to a reference library to find out anything.

I tell this to my kids all the time: “You don’t understand life without the internet.” You would get a record in a place like say like, you know, okay so how far is Swindon from London?

It’s about 80 or 90 miles (editorial note: 80.4 miles to be exact. Spot on, Jack!)

Right. So it’s even further than where I lived outside of New York City. And I would get these records like yours, like “God O.D.” which are like a portal to another universe. And you wouldn’t hear about them. They would just fucking appear like radio waves, or something washing up on the shore of an island and spawning a cargo cult. These things would blow me away. Now on the one hand, I love the fact that the internet allows you to get that.

Yeah, me too. Me too, for sure.

Like you said, you go YouTube and you hunt these things down. Patton Oswalt, the comedian, actor, author wrote about like how the internet has made it so there’s nothing you can’t not find anymore. I’ve actually got two things that I still haven’t found any mention of. I almost don’t want to look too deeply because I like the fact that there’s this mystery around it. Or like there’s the little red haired girl from second grade who I had a crush on. Of course—I’m sure my wife would love me looking her up.

She could well be a world famous porn star! (LAUGHS) But yeah, back in the day John Peel was my reference library. He was my “internet.” You could tune into him anywhere in Europe. He had shows in Germany and Holland as well. Now you can go on YouTube, type in “John Peel shows.” But you’d tune into him and he’d be playing whatever was getting sent to him or whatever he thought was interesting. And it was way better than reading a music paper and someone else’s opinions on what they think they know is the best single words of the week. He’d play them and you wouldn’t see anything about them. Like it’s up to you if you want to pursue it any further. So I still go on YouTube and find old shows of his which I had never actually heard. And then, you know, you find new stuff like that Blade 12″ I’d never heard that before.

Yeah, that’s amazing. I don’t know if you are aware of this but another huge source of really interesting stuff for me was when Autechre a few years back did a 12 hour DJ set.

Dude, I’m sorry, did you say 12 hours? 12 hours?

Yeah. It’s completely worth it. It is mind boggling because they go everywhere from like old school hip-hop, to Merzbow to 1970s ECM jazz.

Is there any Meat Beat in there?

Of course! Someone actually put a minute by minute playlist up for it. There’s a ton of stuff in there. It’s amazing because there’s all these things on it like they put a Herb Alpert track in called “Rotation” which is beautiful. It’s got a very minimal drum machine in with these arpeggiated synths and of course exquisite trumpet playing. Or this Billy Cobham song. He was—I’m sure you know, he was…

Yeah, he was the drummer with Mahavishnu Orchestra. Yeah.

Sadly I know him because he played with Phil Collins. But there’s a shitload of stuff.

Yeah that Herb Alpert one sounds like it was sampled on an album by Biggie Smalls.

Yeah there’s actually a song from that album.

The album is RISE.

Today I was having a horrible, shitty, shitty day. But I went out on my lunch break from work and was listening to the new album (Opaque Couché) and it just clicked—all of a sudden I got it. You know how you’re listening to an album and suddenly you “get it?”

Yeah, I know. And actually getting the vinyl, when you’re holding it and you feel and see the embossing maybe that might even sort of accent it, and enhance even more. It always puzzled me why journalists would get, you know, pre-released copies and they don’t like it. Like Impossible Star. No one actually got that finished version who would have written about or listened to at all or anything. Not even a CD, it would have been files and I never understood that because it’s like getting a book without the finished covers. You haven’t got the whole finished product but I understand why it has to be done. It’s more so like labels I worked on before would have something in a finished format. But doing it on your own is sort of time runs out and then all of a sudden, you know, it’s all go, go, go. And then the record comes in a couple of weeks after the release date because the sun era or the, you know, something’s wrong. And that seems to happen more recently than in the past. We should have had that synthesized, you know, like the film Polyester had scratch and sniff cards. We should have done that with Opaque Couché and had like a smell of shit or something.

(LAUGHS) Yeah, I scratched it and smelled beer, weed, vegan ketchup. Just a hint of long, long ass beard and unwashed Englishman. Mmmm.

Yes, “Scratch here for the full on effect of it.” Definitely smell a pair of Kleenex tissue boxes, worn as shoes for six months.

Oh my God, that would both be amazing and horrifying all at once! (LAUGHS) Or you could even learn to program like a smell synthesizer or something that it gives you that in the brain. So the album came together in my head like the moving parts working together. And I think that something to say that I know is that you’ve had a long and fantastic career. And I know you’ve had your challenges, sadly, and again I’m not blowing smoke but I believe you’re criminally underrated.

I’ve always liked the underdog. And that sort of makes you keep on going. And I think it’s good being the underdog because you can come up with surprises.

Yeah and if you stay hungry, it keeps you sharp. Yeah. You know, I mean, as a music fan,who else can you think of that’s had a 30 plus year career? And again, not blowing smoke but you’ve had over 30 years consistently putting out pretty fucking amazing shit every time. And you’re still doing that at this point where Aphex Twin didn’t put anything out for a long time. And when he did, everyone was losing their shit over that album Syro and I didn’t get it. I mean it’s good but it’s nothing new, sadly.

Sort of like Merzbow, yeah? He’s still going, going for years at least. And he’s never, ever compromised. Autechre are sort of like that: no compromises. He’s been doing it that long in that sort of music and it’s still rendering like a lot of respect. But you know, I respect that from an artistic point of view. And he actually came to our show in Tokyo and was hanging out.

No! No way!

I think it’s good being the underdog because you can come up with surprises.

Yeah, well I did a remix for him and yeah he listens to anything, everything. He doesn’t just listen to noise, same as me, which is good. But you know, he’s able to be in one place. All those guys like Aphex Twin or Boards of Canada do what they do which is great. And I can’t do that. I’m all over the place! It’s a record label’s worst nightmare. Like At The Center, you know, let’s compare that Storm the Studio. It’s a jazz record or no it’s an electronic record. Now on this one (Opaque Couché) it’s jungle or is it drum and bass. No it’s all over the shop! And I found that doing anything else but what I do does not change that. It’d be like doing a show on your own. I do the same thing over and over and over again.

Yes it’s like: “I’m doing a show on my own again. I’m opening my laptop and pressing play again.” Yeah, that’s why I haven’t played live in so long.

But to work with other people and bounce ideas off of them live is the best. When we play live, me and Ben Stokes, we surprise each other with new video samples which we don’t know the other is gonna bust out. And you know 9 times out of 10 it’s just to make each of us laugh out loud. But that makes it fresh and interesting and not the usual sort of rigmarole. So we’ll continue to do that.

Yeah. I think I felt a certain kinship with you before talking to you finally after 31 years. I don’t often tell people this but when Moby moved to New York City with a friend of mine I helped them load their U-Haul. And just before they’re about to drive off he’s like, “Why don’t you come in with us? Like get an apartment with us?” And I think you can probably guess where the story went. But like, cleaning maggots out of the lift aside, you love the underdog and you probably always knew after your first taste of hearing certain music that you were going to be doing music forever. Like that was your thing. And you know, you’re so bloody lucky that you made a career out of it. You’ve made a living and you live a beautiful house with a beautiful wife.” (LAUGHS) And you know you’re keeping working basically.

Yeah well being able to have a talent like anything I was good at was English. Or art. So as a kid I was always drawing, painting, doing stuff like that. So I know I’ve got talent, but you know, you have this sort of bad side of that is that you’ve got all these other weird traits like agoraphobia, schizophrenia and a little bit of paranoia and those things don’t make life a whole bed of roses with me. But that’s the people around me as well.

I was going to say, I wish you hadn’t listed all of my least favorite traits about myself just there, but, you know (LAUGHS)

(LAUGHS) Yeah. There’s nothing perfect is basically, you know what I’m saying? Otherwise there’d be something wrong.

Oh it’d be dead fucking boring. I mean, there just wouldn’t be interesting.

Um, yeah.

And something I think you said in an interview you don’t clean up a lot of the music. You want it to be there kind of with bits and bobs and warts and all.

Bogies and warts. But the warts actually have like a hair coming out in the middle.

Yeah. The green on the edges, they could start smothering you. Yes, exactly. I think that’s just an amazing part of the okay of your music is that it’s not this crystal clean, clear thing. But you can make it clean if you want. When we first started talking, you mentioned “Wildlife” which I think is actually a beautiful song.

Thank you.

You’re welcome and it’s true. You can make this very lovely, lush music, but you’re obviously and understandably and well you should, you’re making your own music. And then you’re like, “Well, okay, it’s nice to get that from you. And I did stuff with vocals, but I want to do this thing where I’m rapping.” But then you filter it out so no one can understand the word (LAUGHS).

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, you’re, you’re letting it go. And I think that’s a powerful thing to be doing. Think of your favorite musicians and what they were doing at your age. I’m not trying to necessarily give you a pep talk, but I think it’s coming out that way. But you know, it doesn’t hurt. But I think it’s interesting to think of other musicians at that age and were they still trying to innovate and really trying to listen to new and different things?

Yeah, we never had kids so I’m the kid in the household. I think that’s got a big part to do it but to be honest with you, you know, you just go down that road and all those things which can take up time. You know doing things with your kids, in a positive or negative way any of that. So I’m the mature but 56 year old kid that I am. That’s got something to do with making it sound interesting or different or wanting to do something different.

These records are my children

Yeah, I guess I’m talking about your conscious approach to your art.

There you go! These records are my children.

There is is! That’s my title. “These Records Are My Children.” Perfect. Only took us 7 hours to get to this! (LAUGHS)

Only took us seven hours.

Yeah, exactly. It’s “Records Are My Children” and my job is done in 45 words. Pietro is going to be like “What? That’s it?!” “Well, we’ve talked about veganism for a while…”

The only problem is my children are sort of locked up in the attic and never allowed to see the light of day. Oh wait that’s not right! It’s just terrible. Scratch that! (LAUGHS) I like to keep my albums chained up in the attic!

(LAUGHS) Well back to my original thought here I think with your sort of, your conscious approach to your music and your awareness. With regards to veganism and vegetarianism it’ll be interesting to see if we get to a point as a society where it’s not and inherently political, you know what I’m saying?

Right. I suppose it will always be, it’s like religion and politics. Like it’s like if you’ve been brainwashed at an early age to believe in God or to be a right winger or whether there’s going to be very hard to crack that egg and, and you know, come out of it.

Yeah. No, I know. I talked about that a lot with my wife. She’s like, I don’t get why people like can listen to Trump and think like that as it does because you’re a wonderful person and you have a brain in your head and think critically.

You know, you look at him and he’s like Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka—the little rich girl running around throwing shit everywhere. He’s like a monkey in a cage throwing shit or like the Jerry Springer Show. And he’s the fucking president. And there’s people out there who are like him, also assholes, right? Right-winger assholes, but even worse far right shit. So they’re going vote for him, and they’re gonna stand behind him—wear stupid fucking banners and that stupid hat because they’re like, they’re dumb motherfuckers who have now got, you know, they’ve had their chance with their guy. Then for them to turn around and say the Russians didn’t help them in any way. It’s just absolute fucking bullshit. You know they conned people in Florida to dress up in orange prison gear, get on a flatbed truck, drive around shouting “Lock ‘em up! Lock ‘em up!” And then with Facebook posts (and all their organizations) like they’re doing a great job. And the only way they’re succeeding is because they know they can’t do that with the left because they’ve got a brain so they just have to do it with the right. All the way through history, you know, right-wingers, people like Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. I’m sure Genghis Kahn would have been a fucking Republican if it existed then because they’re just horrible people. I don’t like the right wing in any way whatsoever.

Oh yeah. No, there’s nothing there, no redeeming qualities with people like that.

You know, that sort of shit now. They’re good for the military, or good for the stock market, or they do good for this and that. Good for guns—always good for the wrong. And I don’t know what I’d do if I met someone who was proud to be a Republican. I don’t know, I suppose the only thing to do is walk away.

So I’m going to guess you’re not pro Brexit, right?

No, not at all. (LAUGHS) So sad, really. It was just a big lie. What’s worse about them over there is the conservatives over there are always from some really fucking well off background. They’ve always got posh accents. You can spot them a lot easier than you can spot them here. So that’s why it was always a division—more of a division over there, a class warfare thing. Over here it’s sort of more spread out and you can’t always tell who’s who which makes it scarier.

Yeah. Here in America it’s just that, you know, ultimately most of the people arrived on a fucking boat 400 or 500 years ago. And whether or not they were enslaved to work on a plantation illegally, or if they came of their own choice. Ultimately at the end of the day they’re a little more—I don’t want to say working class—but there’s a little bit more of that of a common denominator. But at the same time they fail to see this great divide between, you know, the haves and the have nots.

That’s like Britain. The people, “the haves” over there, are the people who were saying separate from the UK. They needed the working class to be behind them. It’s so sad, so silly. And so you step out of London and it’s different bloody place anyway.

That’s what I was amazed by when I was there the last time I finally got to Oxford of all places. I was like “Oh gosh, it’s actually kind of nice.” Whereas in London it was very much like that great quote from a movie: “London is a country coming down from its trip.” Damn, what movie is that from? (editorial note: It’s “Withnail & I” sampled by Wagon Christ for the song “London Is A Country.”)

I’m not sure.

I guess the thing with Brexit is, you have people who have been nobility for hundreds and hundreds of years yet the divide is possibly even deeper now and yet they can’t see it.

It’s more ridiculous than what’s going on here.

All right, well anything you want to say for the last minute? Anything else?

I think we covered everything from right-wingers to miscellany to maggots to, um, children locked up in the attic, I think. Yes. I don’t think there’s anything else to talk about.

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