When you go to a BANE show, there are some constants you can expect. One of them is massive sing alongs: kids piling on top of each other, passionately screaming the words that Aaron Bedard wrote back in his face. Aaron is an artist whose integrity, honesty and openness are really transparent through his work. He opens his heart and truly engages with his audience and, in return, they engage back. It is with that same openness that he has approached this interview and we are truly grateful. Check out his awesome new hardcore band, ANTAGONIZE, who just released a demo!
When presenting the questions to our guests, we always tell them that « why » is implied at the end of every question and that they can be as elaborate as they want. Here’s what Aaron had to say about this:
Here, before I start, let’s just establish quickly that while I certainly have very strong opinions regarding favorites or songs that I find to be perfect or life-changing, the explaining of WHY will be a bit difficult. I can’t explain why the BUZZCOCKS speak to me and BAD RELIGION make me wanna tear my hair out. I don’t really know why. I think they are extremely fun conversations and debates to have but in the end it really comes down to simple taste… how I’m wired. I will argue that CHAIN OF STRENGTH are more interesting and lasting and worthwhile than PITBOSS 2K, but again someone else will tell me I’m crazy and there is no “right” answer, so forgive me if I’m not able to appropriately get to the “heart” of some of my opinions, all I know is that they have been tested through being a person who loves music and playlists and listening to favorite songs on repeat 1,000 times and for me, that is where the truth lies… in that repeat button.
Name five songs that you consider “perfect songs” and explain why or what they mean to you.
Off the top of my head without any research:
1. No Joy – Shame Cave
For me this just nails the way I most like music to make me feel inside…all dreamy and anxious. Truly my most beloved band in the last 10 years.
2. Y-Di – Get up and Fight/Zombie Youth
This is just so pure and immediate. Hemingway like lyrical attack. They’ve been echoing in my head since I first heard them at like 15 years old.
3. Liz Phair – Don’t Hold Your Breath
I consider myself a bit of a sad song connoisseur and this is the gold-star standard. Crushes me every time.
4. Deftones – Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)
Everything I love about QUICKSAND and MY BLOODY VALENTINE, but with that perfect love-sick voice.
5. Ceremony – The Understanding
Just seeing a band who I love and consider to be personal friends, go through the many different stages and transitions, following nothing but their own gut instinct and bravery and all of it culminating with L-Shaped Man which I consider to be a triumph of a record, a poetic ripping out of ones heart, a lyrical masterpiece. This is my favorite song on it and it has the ability to get stuck in my head at any given moment. Every time I see Ross I just want to hug him and say thank you, thank you, thank you.
Which music genre do you listen to the most? List your five favorite albums in that genre.
Well I hate not being able to get SMITHS, JOY DIVISION, MBV type stuff onto this list, cuz I fuck with them an awful lot but for me it really ends with those 3.
Another favorite would definitely be girl-fronted, jangly indie type stuff that leans towards the sad. I joke that I like stuff that sounds like they barely know how to tune their guitars.
Liz Phair – Exile in Guyville
No Joy – Wait to Pleasure
Stereolab – Mars Audiac Quntet
The Sundays – Reading, Writing and Arithmitic
Heartless Bastards – All This Time
Tegan and Sara – The Con
Cat Power – The Greatest
… is that 5?
Hardcore is also fun and pretty easy for me to list:
Minor Threat – Out of Step
Bad Brains – ROIR cassette
Cro-Mags – Age of Quarrel
Youth of Today – Break Down the Walls
Hatebreed – Satisfaction is the Death of Desire
Arguably not quite Hardcore:
Quicksand – Slip
Rites of Spring – End on End
Title Fight – Hyperview
Far – Water & Solutions
Embrace – s/t
Five greatest hardcore EP’s of all time?
Breakdown – Demo
Quicksand – Self-Titled
Youth of Today – Can’t Close My Eyes
Burn – Last Great Sea
Chain of Strength – True til Death
Unbroken – Absentee Debate/Crushed On You
Your five favorite rappers of all time? Name one song that best exemplifies what makes them great.
Chuck D – Welcome to the Terrordome.I listened to it on steady-repeat back when that hit. Unreal to me that after the complete assault that was Nation of Millions, they came with ANOTHER record still completely fired the fuck up and spitting facts.
Biggie – Really just pick a track but his Live at the Garden I got 7 Mac-11’s about 8 thirty-eights free-style is always gonna twist my hat back.
Lil Wayne – Endless tracks but when he was just steady dropping bombs and features in the mid-late 2000’s, no one was better. It was getting hard to argue that anyone ever was a better rapper. He kicks off this track, Cannon (remix), with one of the most vivid paintings of hood-life. I can’t really explain why but when Weezy talked about the life it always seemed somehow more scary and intimate to me.
Jay-Z – Again, brutal having to pin-point one highlight cuz he’s such a god to me, but his verse in the U Don’t Know remix from Blueprint 2. Keeping pace with those screaming MOP lunatics and just tossing a cherry on top with one of the hardest lines I’ve ever heard, “razorblades under the tongue, I will eat your face”. He the king.
MF Doom – Love that cat. Always interesting and hitting from way out in left field. The entire track Vaudeville Villain is one of endless examples of his brilliance, “Doin 80 down the Van Wyck on horseback”.
Gotta just be real here and drop an honorable mention even though I’m prolly gonna get dragged and have the purists wanting to jump all over my neck but honestly I’ve listened to more LIL PEEP in the last couple of years than any other rapper (although CARTI’s Die Lit is also real, real fucking good).
But yeah, Peep has been a constant in my headphones, something about his voice matched with that ability to be really honest and scared and vulnerable and all those lines that used to feel kind of cool or wild to me, became very real and heartbreaking and I find myself repeatedly going back to them with my heart in my chest. The tracks like Cobain and Beemerboy would be examples of songs that I just cannot stop listening to for seriously months and months now.
Five hardest riffs of all time?
Ahh this is always hard for me, especially lately cuz there are just endless hard riffs being written. It is an art that really feels like it has been perfected and I guess in that has become a bit less interesting to me, but lemme try.
Definitely the breakdown from Killing Time – Backtrack
Leeway intro
Trapped Under Ice – Brainwaves breakdown. That thing is fucking perfect.
Ending of Burn – Shall Be Judged
Pick ANY moment in Hatebreed – Satisfaction and wait 30 seconds… you’ll get smacked with the hardest riff imaginable.
What’s the album you’ve listened to the most in your life? Do you still listen to it?
Man, it’s gotta be close between a few and they definitely have become records that I know so well I probably don’t revisit all that often… throw a song on a mix here and there or get super happy when someone else throws it on.
The Beatles – Revolver
Liz Phair – Exile In Guville
My Bloody Valentine – Isn’t Anything
Led Zeppelin – I
Dinosaur jr. – Bug
I really couldn’t even begin to guess which of those I’ve listened to more than the other over the course of my life.
What are some of your favorite song lyrics? Lyrics that have been important to you or that had an impact on you?
More than any other it would be the Embrace LP. Those, for me, were the most profound and affecting lyrics of my life.
KINGFACE, another DC band, had lyrics that shaped me, so much so that I paid tribute to their song Like a King with my own lyrics in Bane for the song What Makes Us Strong.
The CHAIN OF STRENGTH lyrics for the youth crew stuff cuz they were so earnest and wide-eyed. Really heart on your sleeve type stuff that spoke very deeply to me.
Y-DI A Place in the Sun 7” had unfucking stoppable lyrics.
A ton of MORRISSEY’s stuff I would say are absolute favorite lyrics: Rubber Ring, Sing Your Life, Rusholme Rufians, Sleep, I could go on and on here…
CEREMONY’s lyrics consistently blow my mind. The words to Hibernation could straight up be put in a frame.
There’s this below-the-radar band FILM SCHOOL who I love a real lot and anytime I look at their lyrics I’m blown away and a bit saddened that I don’t know more people who appreciate them. This week I’ve been listening to this track obsessively, looked up the lyrics and couldn’t believe how beautiful and sad they were.
FILM SCHOOL – Activated
Remember now you hanging out
The saddest one, the saddest song
Whistling the melodies
Of marching bands, here we come
Promising you’d never run
Too far away, away you run
And then we made a satellite
That sends these songs further on
What does it take to activate
To keep you here, keep you on
Remember what you used to say
The tightest stitch will come undone
All that we could do was run away from here
All that we could do was run away from here
All that we could do was run away from here
Do you have an absolute all time favorite band or musical artist? What makes them so special to you?
If you put the gun to my head I guess it’s gonna be MINOR THREAT.
Then I listen to THE BEATLES and I think fuck that, this is the greatest band of all-time, I don’t give a shit how cliché that is.
Then I listen to Meat is Murder and think, man, I can’t make this decision… it’s too big… it’s too hard. These things are too important to me, they’re almost religious, how do you pick one?
Then I see an old MINOR THREAT clip on instagram, a room full of punk kids losing their minds and the whole cycle repeats…
What are your ten favourite albums of all time? Name a standout track on each of these albums.
Alright so this is not favorite SONGS… this is not a mixtape I’m gonna make for someone to get them to understand the songs that destroy me more than any other… this is ten fave RECORDS with a stand-out for each.
Liz Phair – Exile in Guyville – Shatter
Title Fight – Hyperview – Mrahc
No Joy – Wait to Pleasure – Lizard Kids
The Beatles – White Album – Happiness is a Warm Gun
Fiona Apple – Extraordinary Machine – Red, Red, Red
Quicksand – Slip – Slip
Led Zeppelin – 1 – Good Times, Bad Times (imagine being a 17 year old kid when this first came out, taking it home and listening to it on headphones for the first time)
Dinosaur Jr. – Bug – They Always Come
Greg Laswell – Good Movie – Good Movie
Joni Mitchell – Court and Spark – Trouble Child
Radiohead – Hail to the Thief – There, There
Times New Viking – Rip It Off – Faces on Fire
That’s fuckin 12 and I can’t even fit in Tegan and Sara – The Con – Nineteen
Do you remember the first time you really appreciated an album or a song?
Yeah pretty vividly actually. My mom was a big music lover, had a record collection when I was younger and was not allowed to mess with until I was old enough to know how to handle the records, turn the stereo on/off, and all that.
I remember THE BEATLES – Sgt. Peppers with that glorious gate-fold vinyl… all the lyrics right there like little stories you could read along to. That was pretty life-altering stuff, for sure. That feeling of reading along with those crushing lyrics to She’s Leaving Home and suddenly music had this whole other power over me. It could touch me deeply, as well as making me want to tap along to the beat.
What were you listening to in elementary school? then in high school? How much of that music is still a part of your playlists today? How have your musical tastes evolved since?
Pretty much just what my mom had in her collection that I dug. THE BEATLES and CAT STEVENS, JONI MITCHELL.
I had an older cousin who was real into rock and roll and he would tell me about BLACK SABBATH and LED ZEPPELIN, he’d be rocking VAN HALEN shirts but I never really had a way of actually LISTENING to that stuff or if it was on the radio I wouldn’t know who they were.
I had a neighbor who had KISS records, I remember being blown away by those, all the blood and wildness.
But it wasn’t until like 7th grade that I started to figure stuff out on my own, buy my own cassettes and I was far from being super into music back then… it was just something that my friends was doing, going to the record store. I remember having stuff by ADAM ANT, THE POLICE, AC/DC – Back in Black I definitely had.
Then at 15 I made a friend who was into skateboards and he had an older brother who had SEX PISTOLS and BLACK FLAG records and then the lightbulb finally went off, and it was game over, suddenly ALL I cared about was music and finding more of it.
What beloved music do you share with your parents (or children if you have kids)? Any specifics memories?
I definitely got to turn my younger brother into some stuff, not the straight up HC that I was in love with, he was more of a hippie, followed PHISH around, loved the BEASTIE BOYS and I remember being psyched when he started to borrow my QUICKSAND and FUGAZI stuff. I brought him to see BURN in like ‘91 to show him what to me was the most important band on earth at that time.
Before my mom died, she and I had enough time together for me to let her know how much I had come to love a lot of the stuff that she had played around the house when I was a kid, especially THE BEATLES and JONI MITCHELL. VAN MORRISON was her absolute favorite and his records are extremely powerful and nostalgic to me because of that.
She was rad. BANE came after she died, but she woulda been at every show that she could have with the biggest smile on her face, and had every color zip-up in her closet.
Most memorable show you’ve ever seen? What makes it stand out?
I saw the BAD BRAINS in ‘89. Quickness had just dropped. They were still at the absolute top of their game. LEEWAY opened. That’s the one that stands out above all the others. I saw a lot of cool YOUTH OF TODAY/BOLD/INSTED type bills. I was 16-17 years old then, had friends with cars who were down to roll to The Anthrax and CB’s, saw a lot of those that were very, very electric and life-affirming and truly shaped who I still am to this day.
But something about that BAD BRAINS/LEEWAY gig in a room that was so packed I could barely breathe, never mind dance. Just seeing HR up there, looking like he was floating, everyone singing.
For me that was the #1.
Do you have any songs that are meaningful to you because you associate them with important events in your life?
God, so so so many. Most songs that I hold dearest hold that ultra-personal, real-world connection. I could list 100 easy but I’m gonna name just one and leave it at that.
THE CRANBERRIES – What’s on My Mind
There is a person in this world who has made me nod my head emphatically to every single word of that fuckin thing. Think about that.
What music or artist has been the most influential to you as a songwriter? Do you change what you listen to when you write music? Do you have a go-to record that you use for inspiration? How have these influences changed over the course of your songwriting career?
Nah, no go-to. I tried not to let myself be too strongly pulled by any one source. I’ve always carried a deep love for what I considered to be me amazing lyrics, so there was certainly a goal in mind there.
EMBRACE, SWIZ, JONI MITCHELL, CHAIN OF STRENGTH.
I’d respected what they were pulling off so deeply that I couldn’t help but to be at least trying to strive for that same level of honesty and creativity.
What is the most impressive band you’ve toured with? The one that you just had to watch every night? Did you learn anything from them/by watching them?
BANE got to do a chunk of our final tour with BURN, for me that was monumental and I felt like a giddy kid for every single night of that.
TURNSTILE is another one that I just had such deep respect for… loved their vibe on stage, the way they made the room feel. For me they are one of the most pure live bands of all time.
We got to roll with HATEBREED when Perseverance dropped and they had just exploded in popularity, the wildest shows. I’m pretty sure not a single member of BANE chose to miss one of their sets on that fucking run. It was insane.
Is there any classic / universally acclaimed artist or that you missed out on when they first came out and discovered way later? Any artist that you didn’t like at first and learned to appreciate over time?
Yeah it took THE RAMONES awhile to really hit me. I’m not really a fan of music that leans toward the more light or silly end of things. I think I was a bit too “serious” for them… but as I got older and watched vids and heard that live album that just blazes. I lived with a roommate who loved them and was always telling me cool stories about them and then I saw the documentary End of the Century and finally fell completely in love.
More recently I’d say NEW ORDER who I’ve been very in love with recently… but for years I sort of stuck my nose up at the idea of them. I was such a JOY DIVISION purist and I just couldn’t take that wide turn to all the synths and dance-music vibes, lately though all I want to listen to is those early NEW ORDER releases.
Which hardcore scene from what era produced the best bands? What makes it different? Name your favorite bands, as well as a few of the lesser known bands you enjoy from that scene/era.
Late 80’s Revelation Records #1-22.
For me it just felt cooler and more urgent than anything that had come before it. I was the perfect age. It was the perfect backlash to what I was seeing in the punk scene around me. They looked amazing, went off on stage like nothing I’d ever seen. It was just a very pure year or two of music and an aesthetic that came along for me at the perfect time in my life.
Lesser known?
Early 80’s was Y-Di who put out the A Place In The Sun 7’ that is woefully under-celebrated.
UPPERCUT were another band who in my opinion stood shoulder to shoulder with bands like SICK OF IT ALL and RAW DEAL.
EYE FOR AN EYE were a Boston band who at the time were very beloved within that community.
Do you have an artist that you love in a genre that you don’t usually listen to? What makes them stand out?
I really don’t listen to any R&B or mainstream type dance-music but I definitely fuck with SANTIGOLD and always check out what she’s putting out.
Do you have any controversial/unpopular music related opinions that you would like to defend?
I’ve been a closet drumNbass head since like 1999. Have never had a single close friend or girlfriend who got it or wanted to share in that with me. Have withstood the endless glow-stick jokes, have gone to hundreds of raves all by myself cuz I just love it so deeply and want to be around it.
I don’t feel any need to defend it or talk anyone into all the beauty that I personally see in it, but for sure that has been a constant and lonely love-affair for me… but if I’m being honest, that’s partly what makes it so special to me. It’s just purely about the love of this music that I cannot escape. Nothing else. No social expectations, no influence from my peers, it wasn’t passed down to me the way some hardcore or hip-hop was.
STEREOLAB would be another band who I just love so fucking much, their old albums aretrue favorites of mine and I just have no one around me who loves them the way I feel like they should be loved.
Years ago, in my early 20’s, I went through this phase where all I cared about were old delta blues records… Like 1920’s, a guy with a slide on his fingers, tapping his foot on a porch and singing the most haunted lyrics imaginable. I was obsessed. I used to go out to a local college radio station and record them all onto cassette, and I’d wrote down all the liner-notes into this note-book I carried everywhere. It was my favorite fucking thing and I walked it alone and just didn’t care. I’d play it for my friends and then they’d look at me with these blank stares and I figured out that you just can’t make sense of what hits one person straight through the soul and means absolutely nothing to someone else. I hear Fat Records type bands, bands that are fucking HUGE and I seriously feel like I’m being pranked, I honestly can’t believe that anyone, anywhere listens to that stuff. I know I’m wrong, again it’s just a matter of taste but it really blows my fucking mind.
In general, do you most often appreciate a band’s early material or its latest?
It really depends. A lot of stuff is certainly far more interesting to me when they are clearly fired-up and young and hungry and bursting with inspiration.
The early SABBATH and LED ZEPPELIN stuff.
The first two X records are all I can really fuck with.
I love Break Down The Walls and We’re Not In This Alone but will argue that their absolute best stuff was the 7’ and comp tracks that came before those.
STEREOLAB for sure grew less and less interesting to me as they went along.
But THE BEATLES were the opposite: I don’t like their early, head-shakey, happy stuff and don’t get interested until the second half of their career.
THE DEFTONES don’t hit their stride for a few releases either.
TITLE FIGHT and CEREMONY also… their latest records are so good that it almost makes their older stuff hard for me to re-visit
The some nail it right in the middle:
TEGAN AND SARA – The Con
DAYLIGHT – Jar
SUPERCHUNK – Foolish
What albums have been on heavy rotation lately?
Lately we got:
Fiddlehead – Springtime and Blind
Wicca Phase Springs Eternal
The Horrors – Skying
Lil Peep
Film School – Alwaysnever
New Order – Power, Corruption and Lies
Mil-Spec – Changes
Germs – MIA
What are some up and coming artists that you would recommend?
Mil Spec, Drk Blu, Maniac
Is there a band that you’ve discovered live recently that blew you away?
MIL-SPEC
FREE fucking ALWAYS puts me through a wall live.
HAIRSPRAY QUEEN blew me away the other night.
VEIN are infuckingsane live.
Every time I see an ECOSTRIKE live-shot I fall in love with hc all over again.
What are you listening to right now, while answering these questions?
This Eagles/Falcons game.
Doing this did get me excited to whack together a 12 song mixtape, for anyone who might be interested in where my head is at with music these days. It should be enjoyed in this exact order. Thanks for the fun interview!!
Two Inevitables
1 – Wicca Phase Springs Eternal – Absolute in Doubt (ft. Lil Peep)
2 – Nada Surf – The Way You Wear Your Head
3 – Fiddlehead – Widow in the Sunlight
4 – The Horrors – Three Decades
5 – No Joy – Blue Neck Riviera
6 – Title Fight – MRAHC
7 – Film School – Activated
8 – Stereolab – Transona 5
9 – Oliver Francis- AEOU
10 – The Vaselines – Lovecraft
11 – Camp Cope – Done
12 – Superchunk – Certain Stars
No Comments