Unlike other musicians, punk/hardcore singers who enjoy a long career in several bands over the years are few and far between. It takes the right combinaison of talent, charisma, passion and dedication, and Chris Colohan is one of those exceptions. When virtually all of your bands have been acclaimed, you must be doing something right. From Left for Dead to The Swarm to Cursed to Burning Love to Sect, Colohan’s bands have consistently been putting out quality records and killer live shows. The raw honesty of his carefully crafted, thought-provoking lyrics has been a common thread throughout that run, and he is not about to say his last words.
-Ben F.
Name EIGHT songs that you consider “perfect songs” and explain why or what they mean to you.
That’s a weird number but sure. Ok, so you know, most of this whole thing is going to have little to do with hardcore:
COLLETTE KELLY – Long and Lonely World
This is actually the b-side to City of Fools, the one northern soul hit this Stax/Volt artist had and maybe the only thing she recorded. It’s a totally simple sad song but so hypnotic.
ROY ORBISON – Breaking Up Is Breaking My Heart
Overall pitch and intensity rises and adds little things every time it goes around. Starts out with a bass line and drumbeat and ends in an operatic cacophony, all in maybe 90 seconds.
THE EQUALS – Honey Bee
I’m a big fan of repetition (if I like what’s being repeated) and when someone beats the hell out of a great chorus. This song is just an excuse to wrap something around an ass shaker of a chorus.
THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN – Head On
Presented without comment. If I get a choice of the last song I ever hear, it’s this.
JOE TEX – The Love You Save
It’s just the goddamn smoothest soul song, and he namedrops Left For Dead so that’s cool too.
JOHN FAHEY – Red Cross, Disciple of Christ Today
This is just a dark, reverb-drenched guitar track but, fuck. I play this through a speaker in the forest a lot.
NEGATIVE APPROACH – Pressure
If you had only 10 seconds to summarize all of hardcore to someone from scratch, I say this is how you should spend it. And maybe punch them in the stomach 8X to the pressure-s.
BOBBY FULLER FOUR – I Fought The Law
Just a perfect song, for my money.
Which music genre do you listen to the most? List your five favorite albums in that genre.
I probably listen to old blues on LP more than anything. Pre-war blues LPs themselves don’t represent the same as LPs of other genres do since they were mostly collections of 78 sides made later on LP format, so it’s more a matter of who it is and what era and songs. These are both pre and post-war but off the top:
BLIND WILLIE MCTELL – Last Sessions
SKIP JAMES – Skip James Today
JOSH WHITE – Vol.1 1932-33 (where Zeppelin stole In My Time of Dying from)
LIGHTNIN HOPKINS – Lightnin Strikes or Mojo Hand
JOHN LEE HOOKER – It Serve You Right To Suffer
Five greatest hardcore EP’s of all time?
BLACK FLAG – Nervous Breakdown
SIEGE – Dropdead
CITIZENS ARREST – A Light In The Darkness
SIDE BY SIDE – You’re Only Young Once
NEGATIVE APPROACH – S/T (Touch & Go)
H100’s – Dismantle
INFEST – S/T (Machismo – Pliers)
UNBROKEN – Absentee Debate / Crushed On You
PITTBULL – 1990 7″
RASH OF BEATINGS – S/T
Your five favorite rappers of all time? Name one song that best exemplifies what makes them great.
Im gonna give this to GETO BOYS, GHOSTFACE, A TRIBE CALLED QUEST and then my top 2. I like the fun and freaky characters that most of the rap world doesn’t even know what to do with. This pretty much boils it down to MF DOOM and KOOL KEITH (mainly his Dr. Doom, Black Elvis / Lost in Space, and Dr. Octagon material). Dude makes a fun game of rap tropes like petty hater-ship (“your performance was garbage bag!”), rap braggadocio (I Run Rap) and poor people stuff (You Live At Home With Your Mom) that takes it to another level and shoots itself in the foot commercially at the same time.
Great songs from each?
– KOOL KEITH (from Dr. Octagonecolegyst) – Blue Flowers. Show me any other 90s hip hop song that namedrops SPAZZ and SLAYER, works 70s porn samples into it, has Pushead art and beats as good as this LP.
– MF DOOM – Fall Back. Doom is so dense with ideas and rhyme structures that it takes you 10 seconds to catch up, but keeps such a beatnik-like eccentricity to it that he can take any subject (like MMM…Food, a whole LP about snacks) and make it timeless and awesome.
Favourite Producers – Tony Visconti, Allan Toussaint, Rick Rubin. Boom.
Five hardest riffs of all time?
Not one of these is a mosh riff in the modern or metallic way, but the all-time riffs that make me wanna punch life in the face:
X – Nausea (the hardest riff ever riffed? I do believe so.)
T-REX – Children of the Revolution
HENDRIX – chorus of One Rainy Wish (from “I have never laid eyes on you”)
CRIME – Piss On Your Dog
COC – Kiss of Death
What’s the album you’ve listened to the most in your life? Do you still listen to it?
Possibly the CURE’s Faith. My copy has a little hole punched in it, it was overstock when they were blowing out vinyl in the late 80s so I’ve had it since going into high school, and all through the changes my tastes ever went through, dreary-ass Faith has been a go-to that I still go to.
What are some of your favorite song lyrics? Lyrics that have been important to you or that had an impact on you?
I’m a writing nerd, so some of my favourite lyrics are literary and artful. LEONARD COHEN lives at the top of that mountain and will not likely be displaced. “We are ugly but we have the music” comes to mind but there are so many. NICK CAVE has some greats, like “I remembered all my friends that had died of exposure and remembered other ones who had died from the lack of it.” But some of the most arresting combinations of words that hit me are totally simple but hit some emotional nail right on the head. NINA SIMONE has this line from In The Morning: “Please be patient with your life”. Sounds weird for being only 6 words but in context of the song and the singer, that one always stops me in my tracks, like a therapist just cracked me open in one swing. The PAUL SIMON line “How long you think you can run that body down? How many nights you think that you can do what you been doing – who you fooling?” does the same, forces some brutal self-honest reevaluation that I can’t brush off. I like shit like that. TOWNES VAN ZANDT bowls me over with his lyrics. People that seem like schlubs and then sneak up on you with undigestible amounts of wisdom while you’re wide open. “close your eyes, I’ll be here in the morning”? Let’s not get started on that guy, or sad love songs, or old country music, or Deep Soul. You’ll run out of Internet. I’ll just say that with sad songs, I think that grim and defeated acceptance is way more emotionally brutal than lovelorn sadness.
And for punk songs and political, argumentative lyrics, I could go all day. Off the top though: CRASS – Bloody Revolutions would hold the #1 spot. BORN AGAINST’s Mary and Child single handedly challenged my pro-life upbringing and won, as did Eulogy for the Catholicism in me. And pretty much all DEAD KENNEDYS And SUBHUMANS (UK) lyrics still hit home and hold up.
It’s funny though – with hardcore and generally angry music we get to think of “good” lyrics as being some ultimate brutal zinger but more often words LOSE their power and emotional realism when that’s the focus rather than the idea or reasoning that would make them powerful to begin with.
Do you have a favorite setting or place to listen to music? How does the setting influence the type of music you’ll listen to?
I’m feeling this, I totally do think atmospherically like that about music. I have forest land with a cabin off the grid up north here, and because it’s such an escape from the hectic shit in my head at home and near people, from the start I only ever listened to mellow-vibed music up there. Either chill guitar things like JOHN FAHEY, or old drunkard country and lounge (dollar bin records) like RAY PRICE and JOE SOUTH, a lot of DOC WATSON and whatever sounds right coming off an old portable LP player with 4 D batteries.
Driving at night I like listening to hypnotic things like BOWERY ELECTRIC or super slow funeral doom like LOSS. Or SANDY BULL. Or HOPE SANDOVAL. Things that would make you zone out and drive over a cliff, basically.
And when touring/traveling, I like to listen to music from countries I’m in or bring it home as documents of those places and their collective experience. I have a Czech folk record from the 70s (KAREL KRYL’s Rakovina, who was like their Leonard Cohen but under communism – beautiful record) that I don’t understand a word of but put on when I’m missing my friends there.
Do you have an absolute all time favorite band or musical artist? What makes them so special to you?
I don’t think I ever could narrow it down like that. Possibly the KINKS if I had to go there.
What are your ten favourite albums of all time? Name a standout track on each of these albums?
Commencing OCD Meltdown, but here are the 10 that come to mind:
THE CURE – Pornography / A Short Term Effect
CLOCKLEANER – Babylon Rules / When My Ship Comes In
ART BLAKEY – Moanin’ (Blue Note) / Moanin’
WITCH (Zambia) – Lazy Bones / Strange Dream
JERUSALEM – S/T (UK 1972) / When The Wolf Sits
NEUROSIS – Enemy of the Sun / Lost
ANGELS OF LIGHT – We Are Him / My Brother’s Man
COCK SPARRER – Shock Troops / Take Em All
MURDER CITY DEVILS – In Name And Blood / Idle Hands
CHANNEL THREE – Fear of Life (Posh Boy) / Manzanar
Do you remember the first time you really appreciated an album or a song?
The BOOMTOWN RATS’ I Don’t Like Mondays, on an orange transistor radio, in a vacant doghouse I used to play in in my backyard, in summer 1980…or whatever, you know, I’m not much of a details guy per se.
What were you listening to in elementary school? then in high school? (Your favorite bands/records back then?) How much of that music is still a part of your playlists today? How have your musical tastes evolved since?
Oh man. You know those lists of what the #1 song was the year you were born, in shitty birthday cards? Mine was KARL DOUGLAS Kung Fu Fighting, if that tells you anything about what era of radio I was growing up in. As a kid, GRANDMASTER FLASH The Message might have been the track that first latched on to my brain and did circles like that. And I know it sounds corny now but to a kid there truly was something about the dire, traumatic vibe of late 70s / early 80s pop music, even cornball radio music of the time that sounded to a kid like something really awful and adult had just happened or was about to happen in the world and was far out of any adult’s control. You can point directly to the nuclear crisis, Cold War, the advent of AIDS etc., where much like right now, even the people in powerful positions, or parents/protectors of kids, can’t really reassure a future with a straight face. I think in a deeper down sense, that got in my head as a kid as to what music is and does.
On a lighter note, I loved the KTel Compilations, particularly Hit Express (which I still own). And anything by the MINIPOPS. PRINCE, Licensed to Ill, RUN DMC, and most tapes. By high school, I’d found my way to 100 different things I liked that ran from STEPPENWOLF to THE CLASH. I never really put down one thing because of finding another. I’d liked oldies from the 50s since I was a kid, so that got explored and led off in many directions from folk to soul to bluegrass over time. But it was all on the table at all times and still is. I love hardcore and have spent most of my life immersed in it, but I never understood people that live only in it, or in any one thing. I wouldn’t ever want to know every nerdy detail about obscure NYHC and not have JOHN LEE HOOKER or a thousand other things in my life.
What beloved music do you share with your parents (or children if you have kids)? Any specifics memories?
I only have one of those, but it’s kicker. It was just my mom and she didn’t have the most deep-diving tastes. There was a lot of NANA MOUSKOURI and BONEY M in our house. She loved the BEATLES, who I came to pathologically need to reject the more I realized that I liked digging for treasure in the unsung vaults under the surface more than the standard version of popular culture, which the Beatles epitomize regardless of whether they’re good or bad. But the biggie I have my mom to thank for is LEONARD COHEN. She grew up in that world and that moment (Toronto in the 60s) and got to see him the first time around in coffee houses and poetry readings. I got to see Cohen with her just a few years ago, not long before he died. It was a really special first and last concert to see with your 72 year old mams.
Most memorable show you’ve ever seen? What makes it stand out?
THE CURE (on Disintegration), with LOVE AND ROCKETS and the PIXIES at the CNE Grandstand in Toronto. I mean….
Runners-up though:
– THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN on Automatic.
– ROLLINS BAND and COC on the End of Silence Tour at the Concert Hall in Toronto.
– SWANS at Lee’s Palace Toronto, on My Father… (someone tanked and hit the floor in the first 5 minutes of just the Intro. It was unreal.)
– THE MELVINS at Smalls in Detroit, 2007. You never forget your first time.
Do you have any songs that are meaningful to you because you associate them with important events in your life?
You are tapping directly into my brain with these! Yes. Very much so. I have to leave the room on the very rare occasion that the COWBOY JUNKIES’ Blue Moon Revisited comes on. It was slipped into the background of a sad story of an ex lost to an abusive relationship and a mix tape made the old way through the open air, with our own whispered talking in the background and the 5am hum of a coil heater. And I had a few songs that unwittingly became the background music to a teenage, errrr, suicide attempt. Deepwater by the SELECTER and the DOORS’ Riders on the Storm. And I still love that 2nd Selecter LP (Celebrate The Bullet) and that song in particular but still don’t care for the Doors. So, don’t do suicide? There you go. Brought it back around. Whew!
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?
I can’t intentionally put on anything for inspiration for my own writing. It’s either an argument, eulogy or narrative that’s stuck in the vortex until it’s coaxed out no matter what. But there are definitely voices and attitudes that are ideal guidelines to me: BORN AGAINST, DEADGUY, DEAD & GONE and VOID (so, some combination of an assholish cynic making a good point, an overworked sociopath about to do something irrevocable, a Terry Gilliam character spiralling into paranoia, and a channel for the uncaged wisdom and irrationality of youth, respectively. Not saying I pull any of those off).
And for non-loud music that inspires, there’s even more of an answer there. I don’t necessarily think about hardcore to make hardcore. I love early blues because it’s a direct window to the human experience of navigating a world of unfair power imbalances and wrongs that can’t be made sense of in any way but to vent, to laugh if you can, and to share the worst of what’s in your head, whether that’s murder or heartbreak, in the form of a good story. And that’s more often than not what’s in the back of my head when I dig into my own frustrated thoughts in what happens to be hardcore punk songs, but could be anything.
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?
If impressing myself counts, when CURSED played for a week with DISFEAR and ROTTEN SOUND in Scandinavia in 2005 I kinda couldn’t believe it. I learned stuff like how to have a bangover. And it was just one night at a fest (Fun Fun Fun) so mine and like 70 other bands that played it could say the same, but watching X play Los Angeles from the side of the stage in Austin was one of those transcendent moments that makes up for 10000 bad nights. Straight to the punk memory spank bank with that one.
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?
Until pretty recently I’d been dismissive about just pop music of all stripes, and the art of making it, Jeff Lynne and all things ELO being the best example. So I’m diligently making up for lost time.
Do you have an artist that you love in a genre that you don’t usually listen to? What makes them stand out?
Damn. I like this. Nerd recognizes nerd.
I don’t listen to any 90s pop punk but I once got lost in Atlanta with THE DISTILLERS’ Coral Fang stuck in the CD player on repeat and it turns out I love it.
I don’t listen to much free jazz but I love LAST EXIT and all things Sonny Sharrock, notably his last, Ask The Ages. Sharrock on everything.
I don’t listen to much soul music later than 1978 let alone from the 90s but D’ANGELO’s Voodoo will never not be a goddamned masterpiece.
I don’t listen to much minimalist electronic music but I love PLASTIKMAN – Consumed late into a sleepless night.
Do you have any controversial/unpopular music related opinions that you would like to defend? (eg. The Ramones are terrible, Creed is underrated, St. Anger is Metallica’s best album)
St. Anger can suck it, but yes I think I could rustle some unpopular opinions up.
- The mid 90s BATTALION OF SAINTS (Saints AD) stuff on Taang needs much more love than it gets.
- EXTREME NOISE TERROR’s Damage 381 (from the mid-late 90s with half of NAPALM DEATH playing on it) is a front to back gem. No it’s nothing like their classic sound but if you’re not the actual owner of the jacket on the cover of Phonophobia, don’t be a dickhole about it.
- DAG NASTY is like if MINOR THREAT hadn’t stopped when they started to get watery on Salad Days.
- MINOR THREAT were starting to get watery by Salad Days.
- I never liked any Dave Smalley bands or Shawn Brown bands. Apologize to your fading tattoo for me.
- DEATH IN JUNE outerwear doesn’t make YOU a misunderstood artist.
- Fuck you, WITCHERY is amazing. At least up to Symphony for the Devil. It’s like MOTÖRHEAD on 78.
- To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak the Truth is the best ENTOMBED LP. Fight me.
- The KINKS are like if the BEATLES were a real band.
- Peaked caps are for people who have given up on life.
- I tried to like the DESCENDENTS but I just like that song with the video from the 90s.
- Indie rock bands with unpronounceable wordplay for names are like a personal dare to never even know if your band is good or bad. Challenge accepted, !!! I changed EAGULLS to “Dumb Name” on my iPod because I do dig it but I’m not fucking saying that out loud.
- The early pre-racism SKREWDRIVER material has more black r&b / northern soul bounce and swagger to it than any other first wave UK street punk band, and if a piano had only fallen on their heads leaving the studio with All Skrewed Up in the can, we’d totally be looking at that record today the way we do the Pure Mania, Shock Troops, Do It Dog Style or any other streetpunk classic. Didn’t work out that way obviously and fuck nazis forever period obviously, but this artifact actually isn’t that yet – which is what creates such a delicious conundrum to the left-leaning oi and punk lover for good reason. Just, one that’s maybe best enjoyed in your room like GG ALLIN or CHARLES MANSON records, and never involving swag. Or any other Skrewdriver record. THEN we got problems. *and to anyone that sees one shocking word of all that and not any of the rest of what should be clarifying information and wants to tell an antifascist lifer that liking this anomaly in isolation is nazi apologism, thank you for playing your essential part in keeping this timeless guilty pleasure alive in 2018 and beyond. I will be taking complaints and reasonable discourse from anyone who owns MENACE, BLITZ, SLAUGHTER & THE DOGS, SHAM 69, THE VIBRATORS, 999 AND tHE OPPRESSED on vinyl, as well as Northern Soul 45s, and still doesn’t see it.
- Any BLACK FLAG record after Damaged has about 3 rippers and 6 stinkers. Admit it to your heart of hearts. That’s how great bands realistically work.
- Fuck Rumours. FLEETWOOD MAC had like 8 years and a half dozen LPs worth of Elmore James worship (ie Black Magic Woman) before that bullshit, all of which smokes Rumours.
And yes, NickelCreed is way underrated.
What albums have been on heavy rotation lately?
BAXTER DURY – Prince of Tears
KENDRICK LAMAR – Damn
TOMB MOLD – Manor of Infinite Forms
BLIND CONNIE WILLIAMS – Philadelphia Street Singer
CONVULSE – World Without God (Finland 1992)
KILLING JOKE – MMXII
What are some up and coming artists that you’d recommend?
I feel like that BLIND GARY DAVIS is really going to leave his mark. If you liked the mixtape he dropped, I’d keep an eye on him.
Is there a band that you’ve discovered live recently that blew you away?
Yes, PROTOMARTYR. I was working a show they were on and had no idea about them at all. The band is great and the tunes are catchy, but then their much older singer Joe Casey steps up and it seems like a straight up mistake. He performs like an autistic barfly taking a first crack at karaoke at an empty shitty bar in a strip mall across the street from an awful desk job he just came directly from, like the whole show is not there at all. It would be pretentious if the results weren’t so good and his writing actually so earnest. I had songs like Come and See stuck word for word in my head from just seeing it live once and that’s rare for me. I’m not much of a postpunksman but long may that disarming schlub dance around that Fourth Wall. As somebody who needs the vent of writing and playing music but has much trouble reconciling that with the physical act of standing up there, it shit right where I eat.
What are you listening to right now, while answering these questions?
PAUL CHAIN, Cosmic Wind Pt II, which the good folks at Armageddon Shop put me onto. Chain on a plane.
Final thoughts – Is there anything (new album, tour) you would like to promote?
We’re starting to write the 3rd SECT LP for next year and going back to Europe next month, but that’s about as far ahead of our own plans as we get. And I’m putting more writing out on Permanent Sleep through the fall and winter, to whom it may concern.
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