I live sweat...

“We should be brilliant on our own terms, for no one else.” - an interview with One Night Stand In North Dakota

Managed to blag an interview with Durham duo One Night Stand In North Dakota. Check it out!

ILS: Right, first things first, introduce yourselves if you could.

N: I’m Nathan, I play guitar and sing, and I write the lyrics.

D: I’m Daniel, I play guitar and sing.

ILS: How did ONSIND get started and why?

N: Well, we‘ve known one another since we were young kids, we both grew up in a small village called Pity Me, in Durham. Throughout our teens we each played in punk bands (although not in the same band), and those bands played together a lot, and then eventually we decided to start a band together, on the premise of being able to do something without a drum kit, and without the need for a van etc.

ILS: Was your folk-punk-ish sound something you consciously decided on or did it develop naturally out of playing together?

N: Before we properly started this band, we’d do acoustic shows and stuff together and a lot of the time we’d be covering pop songs, or doing stuff by our old bands which were both, broadly speaking, poppy punk. So we’ve always just seen it as being a pop band, without a drummer. We like some folk-punk bands, and we understand why we’re lumped in with the folk-punk stuff because we’re acoustic and political. We do have a similar sound to a lot of those bands, generally though we spend an enormous amount of time trying to avoid the clichés of that (or any) genre. We don’t sing about dumpster diving or train hopping, we sing about the Durham Advertiser.

Folk-punk has a really, really bad reputation in certain circles, and it’s been that way since long before we started this band, so it was always a worry that we’d have difficulty getting shows due to being associated with folk-punk. It sometimes feels like we need to win people over one at a time, because we’re being pigeon holed as belonging to the folk-punk genre. But, if it wasn’t folk-punk it’d just be something else. People have been playing songs on acoustic guitars forever, and in the grand scheme of things, hopefully people will judge our music on its merits. If they are so concerned with what is cool that they can’t even do that, we’re not bothered whether they like our music or not.

So yeah, I guess the short answer to your question is that we didn’t consciously set out to sound like a folk punk band, we consciously set out to sound like ONSIND.

ILS: How do you think the UK DIY punk scene is looking right now? What are we doing well? What do you think needs looking at?

N: Self-reflection and critique is hugely important for any scene, improvement is an ongoing task. ONSIND sing a lot about the sexism and homophobia we come across which seem to be perennial problems, we don’t want to seem like a broken record, so we’ll let the lyrics speak for themselves in that respect, and answer more broadly.

I guess it’s difficult to answer your question without comparing the UK to other punk scenes, and we only really have first hand experience of the German punk scene, which has its own, not insignificant problems. Where the UK fails compared to Germany is our apathy, or our apolitical attitude to punk. Politics is fundamental to punk in Germany, here it’s something which sets a band apart. On posters we get called ‘political’, which is weird as it implies that other bands are somehow immune to power relations or political discourse. Everything is fucking political, just because a band sings about killing their girlfriend and not the income gap, doesn’t mean that song isn’t part of a political discourse (in that particular case, an extremely negative discourse).

It’s strange the way DIY seem to have been depoliticized in the UK. On a completely superficial level D.I.Y. means ‘Do It Yourself’, which is a shrewd business model; a way of reducing overheads in a capitalist market context, and that’s why D.I.Y. has been wrongfully applied to dogshit bands like Enter Shikari. That’s a massive simplification and cooption of DIY. At its root (and in a punk context) DIY is an anti-capitalist ideology; it’s about rejecting the profit incentive, building community and creating a space for art and culture free from the market. I’d like to see more people asking themselves what makes DIY important; otherwise it’s just a meaningless consumer niche. I have this fear that DIY is only popular with so many people because they are elitists when it comes to music and you don’t get more ‘underground’ than the DIY punk scene. For some reason it’s always been ‘cool’ to like obscure bands, and there’s an element of that in the popularity of DIY, no doubt. It bothers us that the UK DIY punk scene seems to have the same value system as the mainstream music industry. There’s a definite tendency for UK punk bands to be very proud of getting Radio airplay, or recognition from mainstream profit-seeking magazines like NME, Kerrang, or even FRONT (all of which are publications with hugely hetero-normative, misogynistic tendencies, especially the latter). If we acknowledge these mainstream, profit-seeking publications as the institutions whose opinions we respect, the scene becomes nothing more than a stepping stone to something else, something to pass through on the way somewhere better, a cesspit of mediocrity. In many ways that’s what the DIY scene is to many people, and that’s a shame. We should be brilliant on our own terms, for no one else. No disrespect to bands who want to make a living making music. Everyone needs to work, and if you can make money doing something you love more power to you. But to do that means compromise and connections to institutions which we have no interest in being a part of.

We don’t think that success should be measured in terms of sales, or attendance at shows. That’s an extremely capitalist way to view success. We’d much rather fewer people had heard of us, but that those people really engaged with what we were saying, or that those people became our friends. That’s how we define success, not what the NME thinks.

ILS: A number of your songs challenge sexism, and oppressive gender roles in the wider society. Which bands, authors, or people first drew your attention to feminism?

N: OK, this is a big question, but I’ll keep it pretty brief for the readers’ sake. My first exposure to Feminism was though my mother who has been an activist all of her life. In that sense, it’s always kind of been in my blood. I became very actively involved in Feminism around the time I properly engaged with it academically, whilst studying at the (now, very sadly disbanded) Women’s Studies course at Lancaster University in 2004. I could go on about Feminist authors for absolutely ages, but some key gateway authors for me were Naomi Wolf, Simone De Beauvoir and Sue Lees. Musically, I’d like to say that I have always been into Huggy Bear and Team Dresch but sadly I only really got into the best queer/feminist music long after I turned 20. My first real exposure to feminist song writing was probably Ani Di Franco, in my late teens. So that’s the very short answer.

ILS: As well as being outspoken feminists, you’ve spoken out about homophobic and heteronormative attitudes in your music. How do you see misogynistic and anti-LGBTQ attitudes manifesting themselves in the punk scene?

N: Again it’s a very tricky question. There are overt ways, through language and attitudes; I think we’ve all come across it, and probably all been guilty of it at some point in our lives. What’s funny to me is that punks generally seem to accept that racist language is bad and wrong, which is of course true, but then become guardians of free speech when asked not to say ‘bitch’ or use ‘gay’ as a pejorative term. We’re fans of Political Correctness. It’s important to make sacrifices in order to be more inclusive. As well as allowing us to say what we want, Free Speech also implies a responsibility to actually think about what we say, and to be able to justify why we use the language we use. Otherwise a centrally important civil freedom becomes a meaningless excuse for ignorance. I don’t want to hear sexist, racist (etc) language used in my presence just like I don’t want shit in my drinking water..

ILS: Who are the UK bands/singer songwriters our readers should be keeping an eye on, in your opinion?

N: Well, obviously all the bands associated with the Equestrian Collective and Discount Horse Records in anyway; but specifically, The Middle Ones, Pettybone and No Fit State have been big favourites of ours lately.

ILS: In Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, you’re pretty damning about New Labour. Given the recent leadership election, do you think there’s hope for positive change in the Labour Party, or is it something of a lame duck at this point?

N: It’s funny how that song has been interpreted in many different ways, and that’s the beauty of meaning, it’s fundamentally subjective. It links to what Barthes argued about the ‘death of the author’. Even though it’s a male prime minister in the song, I always imagine the song to take place in a dystopic alternate 80s, because it’s influenced by a Grant Morrison comic called ‘St. Swithins Day’, which everyone should read if they get the chance.

In answer your question about New Labour, we tend to not accept the traditional binary between radical and reformist politics. For example, we are both anarchists but we also think voting can be a worthwhile activity. New Labour is fucking dirt (and is dead, at least nominally speaking), but that doesn’t mean that we should disengage with mainstream politics altogether. Incremental change matters, and the Labour Party could well swing left with the arrival of Ed Miliband and co. Whether it will or not remains to be seen. The Labour Party has done some very bad stuff but let’s not forget that it has done some good stuff too. The Tories have already shown how much worse life is going to get for the poorest and most oppressed now that they’re in charge. We on the left need to pull together to stop them, whatever way we can, either through the ballot-box or through physical direct action.

ILS: Since I live sweat… is focused on comics as well as punk stuff, we’ll veer that way for a minute if that’s alright. Do any of you read comics at all, and if so, what kind of stuff are you into, what are you hating, and what are you tempting to stuff into the hands of strangers on the bus?

D: I really used to be into manga when I was younger and read a lot of online comics. I still read naruto every week online, but I don’t really enjoy it, its just habit. A lot of manga is sexist and hetero-normative. I also pick up a lot of zines at shows and i enjoy them.

N: I am a big fan of the comic medium, if not the comic industry. I like a lot of the ‘punk’ comic artists; Ben Snakepit, Mitch Clem, Liz Prince, Nate Powell, Jim Kettner. One of ONSIND’s proudest moments as a band was appearing in Snakepit, after we played with Ben’s band Party Garbage in Sunderland. Outside of punk I like a lot of the big hitters; Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman, Joe Sacco, Dan Clowes, Adrian Tomine. I also really like Grant Morrison’s early stuff, as you might have guessed. I really like Posy Simmonds, even though I know that makes me very uncool. I don’t really rate much superhero/mainstream stuff, because it tends to be so fucking cliché. Britten and Brulightly by Hannah Berry was one of the best comics I’d read in a long while. AndyLips is a British kid who does a comic zine, that’d always a good read. I’m sure I’m forgetting loads of stuff.

Incidentally, I also have an academic interest in comics; I’m studying for a PhD, in which comics represent a significant aspect of my methodology. I won’t bore you by elaborating, but in that respect Scott McCloud and Will Eisner are obvious influences.

ILS: What are you up to in the near future, as a unit and as individuals? Are you working on anything creatively outside the band, either musical or otherwise?

N: Well, linking to the last question, my PhD involves the use of comics, so it’s a partly creative, partly academic exercise. I continue to write, often under the pseudonym William G. Pilgrim, some examples of which can be found online at: http://williamgpilgrim.blogspot.com.

We’re also both involved in a new musical project (which also features members of FASHANU) but it’s still very early days yet. Our main influences are the Housemartins and the Exploding Hearts.

We also both help with the Equestrian Collective in Durham, which organizes shows, and other events, notably a monthly non-profit vegan café and a film night.

Get in touch with us!
nathanisacynic AT gmail DOT com

http://equestriancollective.wordpress.com