No Deposit, No Return

Part I: The Local Dirt-Punk Stalwarts Of Music Hates You Talk Sounds, Scene And Showmanship

originally published May 30, 2007

Mike White

When Flagpole asked me to interview the notorious cannon-mouths of Music Hates You regarding the general topic of "heavy" music both in Athens and at large, I figured that it would be an interesting experience, largely because I knew nothing about the men in the band: vocalist-guitarist Noah Ray, guitarist Zaxx Hembree, bassist Forest Hetland and drummer Patrick Ferguson.

The band has been around town since late 2001, though, and last year released the album Send More Paramedics, won the 2006 Flagpole Athens Music Award in the Punk/Hardcore category and, according to the loose calculations of the Flagpole music department, played at least 23 shows in local clubs and many more at house parties since this time last year, well more than any other local band.

What I learned throughout our talk, however, is that I actually knew much more about the members of the group than I thought I did, based solely on what I might've gleaned from having seen them perform. If you ask Music Hates You - and for one night I did nothing but - a great band is one that performs music simply because it has to, which sounds the way it does by some inner workings of psyches and not necessarily because it wants to get famous. It'll be made up of musicians who make you feel something, regardless of what they actually sound like.

Even if you hate 'em.

Flagpole

What is it like for you guys to be in a heavy band in Athens, a town not commonly known for things outside of pop-rock and indie-rock?

Noah Ray

It's actually kind of fun. We get to be the big buzzkill to everybody.

Flagpole

What do you mean by that?

Noah Ray

I mean that heavy music in general, if you don't like it, you don't like it. It has been a real uphill battle for us, with a name like Music Hates You in a predominately music town. It's kind of like Nashville; everybody's in a band and everybody loves their music and all that, so people have been offended by our name and by our actions and all the screaming, but I question why this town has never been known for heavy music. It's always had heavy music. When I was 14 years old, I was going to see Waylaid, and Magneto after that…

Patrick Ferguson

Bar-B-Q Killers.

Noah Ray

…and Bar-B-Q Killers, Feltch…

Patrick Ferguson

Porn Orchard.

Noah Ray

…just tons and tons of bands that were not nice people. I mean, nobody is ever gonna be more snide and offensive than Laura Carter [of Bar-B-Q Killers fame, not to be confused with the Elf Power/ Orange Twin Laura Carter] was. I really don't understand why it's such an obscure, abstract idea to have a heavy band in this town, because traditionally, outside of the "top three" of R.E.M., B-52's and Pylon, there have always been very snarling, spiteful bands here.

Patrick Ferguson

When I moved here, it was one of those lulls when there were not a lot of bands in Athens. I moved here right after Green by R.E.M. came out [around 1988], and there were like six bands in town that were playing regularly. One of them was Dreams So Real, and that was really what the college crowd went to see, but the other bands were Porn Orchard, the end of the Bar-B-Q Killers, the beginning of Feltch, Jarvik 8, Damage Report…

Noah Ray

Jarvik 8 was brutal.

Patrick Ferguson

Yeah, those were all real heavy bands. Loot & Booty was a band at the time that was, like, pirate metal! I think the real issue is that it's a college town, and metal is not "college" music. Metal is working-class music. I was fortunate enough to come here as a college student, but I dropped out pretty quick and joined Five Eight, toured with them for eight years.

The other thing about being in a heavy metal band in Athens, GA, is that now it feels like a community because there are the Rat Babies, Bird Flu, American Cheeseburger, The Dumps, so we're everywhere now, and we're the people who have jobs. That's the thing about Music Hates You and The Dumps, and all those other bands, is we have jobs, and a lot of the kids who are in these other bands, it's not a matter of life and death to them - it's a fuckin' hobby.

To me, our music is sincere and it's real, and it's about the thousand petty humiliations you have to endure because you have to go to work every day. If you're an art student, maybe you don't connect with that. You know, to me that's what I feel in common with a band like Bird Flu or The Dumps. They're mad, just because… well it's not necessarily about anger, sometimes it's just about roaring at the world because you've got a huge dick or something.

Mike White

Flagpole

Well, what is it about for you guys? I guess there's not really so much to be earned in the sense that you physically earn money from doing music; there's not really that here. What do you guys get out of doing it? Why bother?

Patrick Ferguson

Man, I tried to stop playing music after I left Five Eight. I thought my head was gonna explode, you know? But this is what I do. Somebody asked me the other day, "What do you do for a living?" I said, "I'm a drummer in a real heavy band, but I hope that if I work at it and really practice and really, really try, then maybe one day I'll be a computer technician."

This is what we do. Beyond Music Hates You for us - say we all put down our instruments tomorrow and locked them in a closet - it's institutionalization, insanity, death, depression, alcoholism, drug addiction. This is our life.

Flagpole

What do you think the general state of the punk and metal scene here in Athens is? Do you feel like it's strong?

Zaxx Hembree

I feel like it's growing a lot.

Forest Hetland

Strongly growing.

Patrick Ferguson

I think that it's still about house parties to a certain extent. It bothers me that all the best houses for house parties have been busted up and have gone away. The thing that made the B-52's a world-famous band was that they came out of the house-party scene in Athens, GA, and moved to New York City and became the biggest thing since sliced bread. R.E.M. was the same way. They played parties.

You go to a house party now and there's some band. It's not going to be some Dave Matthews- or John Mayer-style band, it's a metal band or a hard punk band or whatever. What do those guys in Bird Flu call themselves?

Zaxx Hembree

Power-violence.

Patrick Ferguson

A power-violence band. That's what's in the house parties, and that to me is the scene. Everything else is commerce. Everything else is something they use to sell beer. That's all well and good, but there's a healthy rock scene, a hard rock scene, here.

Flagpole

Do you feel cohesion with the other bands in this scene?

Noah Ray

Not totally. Some of them.

Zaxx Hembree

The Dumps.

Noah Ray

I think there's a lack of total unity. People that like Bird Flu might not like us, or vice-versa. There are all kinds of bands out there. It's very compartmentalized. There might be like 30 people who will go see each style of music, but won't go see anything else, and that kinda sucks. For me, if you do it loud and you have a distortion pedal, I'll be there if I can. I don't really care for genre types or anything, I care to see people up there who aren't worried about scales and tuning; they just wanna do it. That's important to me.

I like technical stuff also, but the main thing to me that's important in going to see a live band, is that, just like a movie, there's some suspension of disbelief. You go and see them, and they believe it, and so they kind of suck you in. Metal is really good at that. Punk is really good at that. Twee-pop, to me, is not so much good at that. It's more people who seem very disinterested in what they're even doing. I don't know how that communicates to a crowd, but it does on its own level that I don't understand, I guess.

I'd like to see more unity [in punk and metal], because we're all the same, we have all the same patches and torn jeans, and work boots or whatever. It just seems like people are too stuck in their one little sub-genre that they like.

Flagpole

I noticed an attitude at certain places I used to go that don't exist anymore - I've only lived here for three years - that indicated that some of the people weren't going to be friends with me because I had long hair, or because I'm wearing a denim vest with a backpatch of the wrong band.

Patrick Ferguson

I think it's silly, and Noah's said to me before, quoting Frank Zappa, "If you don't think we're all wearing uniforms, you're kidding yourself." The bottom line is, we all have to go to work together, we all have a lot of the same issues we're facing day to day, and any kind of ghetto-ization of music is just an extension of consumerism.

It's just bullshit, and to me it's silly. "My friends are really special and we're better than your friends," that's ridiculous. We all stink in the same places, we all go to the same fuckin' places to work our jobs, and it's just life on life's terms.

Flagpole

One thing I like so much about American Cheeseburger is that the members clearly have this sort of punk aesthetic, but at the same time, they have these guitar solos. They're not, like, Yngwie Malmsteen guitar solos, but they're guitar solos that indicate to me that the dude playing them is not doing it so much to make fun of guitar solos. They're automatically alienating themselves from some sect of what could potentially be their core audience intentionally, and I think that's the kind of thing I'd like to see more of.

Patrick Ferguson

There's definitely a weird sort of snobbery that needs to go away. It's tired.

Flagpole

Well, here's sort of a different gear: is there anything you'd like to see change about the club scene specifically here in town? How about Zaxx, with a mouthful of pork?

Zaxx Hembree

[Chews hurriedly, grumbling]

Flagpole

Sorry, I wanted to hear how you'd sound with a mouthful of pork.

Patrick Ferguson

I was talking to Hugo Burnham from Gang of Four when they were here, and he was telling me about this warehouse in Leeds where Gang of Four and the Mekons and a bunch of other Leeds punk bands in the early '80s had a huge space they co-owned. They all went in together and they bought a P.A. and had shows there. I guess "the place that cannot be named" is one of those kind of places, and if we had our choice, I guess we would just always play at that place: "The Secret Secret."

I dig that scene, I think it's awesome. When Five Eight used to play the 40 Watt, we'd play to enough people to get our rent paid for the month, but I don't see Athens being that kind of scene for us [now], or maybe ever again. There's no point in crying about the fact that Athens has changed, because it will continue to change. I dig those shows that we play down at "that place."

Flagpole

It seems that a lot of heavy bands in Athens tend to have this kind of irreverent attitude, and I was wondering if you guys had any ideas about what it means for a band to "take itself seriously," and how much of that is too much.

Noah Ray

We've all talked about this a lot, because people get scared when you become careerists. It's hard to define what careerism is. It's important to take your band seriously, though. It's important for the three of us who are married. I have an 11-year-old child. If I'm at band practice, fuckin' shit needs to get done. If I'm gonna go on the road and travel to Bumfuck, Wherever, spending money out of my pocket and coming back without any, and all that shit, I've gotta mean it. Everybody here has to mean it. I believe in rock and roll. I believe in rock and roll more than I believe in politics, or organized religion, or whatever.

Flagpole

Why?

Noah Ray

Because it's honest.

Patrick Ferguson

At its best, it's honest.

Flagpole

What's the real distinction right there?

Patrick Ferguson

Well when you talk about this distinction between careerism and not, it reminds me of [Flagpole columnist] Gordon Lamb. One of his favorite pejorative terms for a band is "careerist," and I'm sometimes unclear, as Noah is, about what he means by that. What I think he means is bands that mold their shape and sound around this idea of what it's going to take for a major label to pull them in and make them a major-label band. That, to me, is inherently dishonest, shaping your sound for the perception of some A&R guy.

So, at its best, rock and roll is a pure expression of what the guys in that band really believe sounds best, as opposed to what they think is going to get them signed. At its worst, rock and roll is a commodity created to be marketed, and I think that's what Gordon means when he says "careerist," and of course I'm putting words in his mouth.

Flagpole

I'm sure he would enjoy that.

Patrick Ferguson

At the same time, rock and roll should be irreverent. When bands come out and state these political positions, or talk about global warming… the Dead Milkmen had a hilarious "political" song that went, "Apartheid is bad, recycling is good." A lot of bands adopt these ridiculously easy positions on political issues and people act like it's controversial, or somehow they're taking a stand.

For us, Music Hates You isn't about these larger global issues, except in as much as they affect us on a day-to-day basis. Noah writes about work or the relationships he has with people around him, and that to me is honest. For us to write a song about global warming, I mean, you know, it doesn't affect me. I mean, I would love to buy a fuckin' Prius to cut down on global warming, but you know what, man? I don't make enough money. I have to drive a V8 pickup because that's what I got. It's 30 years old and it gets me from Point A to Point B.

But if you want to talk about irreverence, this band has been nearly crucified for spray-painting the wall of the hallowed 40 Watt Club five years ago. It was this huge fucking deal, and I was like, "Sorry, I didn't realize we were slaughtering your sacred cow."

Flagpole

I noticed that one of your guitar cabs has spray-painted on it "You Have Failed as an Audience." Tell me a little bit more about that.

Noah Ray

Well it's one of our songs, but song aside, it's an idea in and of itself. I can guarantee you we're going to give you something, and it's gonna be 100 percent. We think of Black Flag now, and we think of their relevance to the whole of what they did and what music has become because of what they did, but I don't really think it has much to do with them. I think it has a lot to do with the people who were able to be a part of it and perpetuate it. The people not onstage, who were just there to commune with people who felt the same way. I guess you could come up with reasons, but I don't really fuckin' care. I scream because I want to scream. It's loud because I like loud.

We do heavy music because it's what I appreciate, there's no big scheme or reason for it. From when I was a kid, everything's gotta be loud, in your face, it's gotta pull no punches, and to a certain extent it's gotta make fun of its crowd. It's gotta point to the guy out there and say, "I got your number," because they're doing the same thing to you. "You have failed as an audience" is saying, "it's up to you." We'll do our part, what are you gonna do? People have to take responsibility for their own lives and their own involvement. We don't ask. We're not asking permission, we don't care if nobody ever comes to our shows ever again, we'll still do it. That's because it's important to us.

Flagpole

So it's not necessarily to harass the audience, but it is to bait them a little bit.

Patrick Ferguson

Well, not even that. It's to remind them that it's their show, too. Noah makes an incredibly important point, which is that Black Flag didn't change the world. Black Flag put on a show and the people who came changed music. There's this thing we saw on YouTube the other day, this English deejay group called Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip. The bridge to this song they had went something like, "The Beatles? Just a band. Led Zeppelin? Just a band. Nirvana? Just a band." We're just a band. What the audience does with that is their business.

There are kids who come to every show we play, and they believe in what they do, and we believe in what we do, and we all get together and throw beer and mosh, and we've succeeded. If someone stands there and they walk away and say, "Gosh, I was expecting something different," then that's their business.

Forest Hetland

I used to live in Nashville, where half the people who go to see a show are industry people, and the other half are generally people who want to be industry people, and when they go see a show, it's the arms crossed, analyzing every little thing like "American Idol." If you're one of the bands that goes up there and gives it all your heart, and they still stand their with their arms crossed, that's the failure. They just wasted that moment, that moment that you just tried to share with them, [they] threw it away.

Flagpole

A band certainly has a responsibility to give the crowd something. It's not all on the crowd to give a shit because they paid money. How do you balance having an almost adversarial relationship with the crowd versus having a communal relationship with your crowd?

Noah Ray

You're talking about a crowd that has made their life based around calling people on their bullshit. Everybody there has accepted this spot in life where they're gonna go, "I don't need cable TV, cable TV sucks," or whatever, or "I don't trust George Bush, I don't this and I don't that," so I feel that for me to get up onstage and say, "Fuck you, you have failed as an audience," that's my responsibility.

Flagpole

Let's say you think of a band, any band, and you go to one of their shows and it's crazy. Everybody's pumping their fists, going nuts and it's amazing. And then you go see the same band three months later, or two weeks later, and there are a bunch of people there barely paying attention with their arms crossed. What is that?

Patrick Ferguson

I think that there's an alchemy that happens when the band and the audience are on the same wavelength and the band perceives where the audience is at… you get a fingernail under that crack and just rip the lid off. Suddenly you're all in the same mindspace, which is like, "let's trash this place."

We've also played for crowds who were just nodding their heads and kind of into it, but you know what? If that's where you're at and you just wanna come see us and have a beer and nod your head, that's your business. For us, all great friendships have an element of competitiveness. We want to incite the audience to have the best night they can possibly have, and have a good time, and we're out there to do the same thing.

Forest Hetland

Not to imply that we play a perfect show every time…

Patrick Ferguson

I play a perfect show every time. I don't know what you're talking about.

Forest Hetland

…but we still try to give something, and when someone sees something and they didn't quite get it, but they can come away from it saying, "you guys, you were really into it, and whatever you were saying, I believe it all the way," that's a pretty important element of it.

Patrick Ferguson

I hate to go see a big, heavy, loud band and suddenly catch them sort of looking at themselves in the mirror. That drives me insane, because it's like they're just going through the motions of providing what they perceive to be a rock-and-roll spectacle. The guy up there doing a windmill because he thinks that's what the crowd wants, that's a failure as a band. If you're up there posing and going through the motions, you've failed as a band, and if you're in the audience standing there with your hands in your pockets - you pay your money, you buy your beer - and get half drunk and then leave, then you've failed on your half of the deal. Ideally, the rest of our lives would be played for audiences that care, and we'll give them a sincere show and be exactly who we are.

A friend of mine went to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers last year, and he told me that you could see from back in the crowd by the looks on their faces that those guys hated each other. They probably ride in four different tour buses, but they're making a ton of money, so that's what they do. The day we do that, just sneak up behind me and shoot me in the back of the head. I had to leave Five Eight to preserve the friendships I had with those guys, and we're still really close. We were getting to a point, though, where it wasn't fun, and we weren't playing shows that mattered to us, we were playing shows because we had to do it to pay the rent, because we were professionals at that point. To go forward from there would've made us enemies, and I'm really glad I left the band and that we're still friends.

I want to be friends with these guys for the rest of my life. The "you have failed as an audience" thing is a bit of a jibe at the audience, but it's also a reminder to us that if we don't give them 100 percent, then we've failed with our end of it.

Jace Bartet

In Part II of this Q&A, the band discusses what makes a good heavy band, slings a little - okay, a lot - of love towards Harvey Milk, and gets down to the topic of songwriting.

WHO: Music Hates You, Skeletonwitch, Tualatin, Withered
WHERE: Repent
WHEN: Thursday, May 31
HOW MUCH: $3