Protest the Hero’s Dostoevsky grin

^I did not take this photo. Image rights reserved by the respective author.

Last Thursday Protest the Hero came to the University of Guelph and I got a chance to interview the band's bassist and lyricist, Arif Mirabdolbaghi. All I can say is that the guy was really laid-back and that he was totally down with doing the interview. He also loves his Dostoevsky. Here's the article I wrote for The Ontarion:

Protest the Hero’s Dostoevsky grin
Math-metal quintet hits The Brass Taps
by Tom Beedham

Long before MuchMusic’s disBand and before Lights and Stereos were signed to his record label, in 1999 Mark “London” Spicoluk’s Underground Operations was but a small nexus that consisted of a fistful bands that you only knew about from word of mouth, hours spent on Myspace, or from watching George Stroumboulopoulos’ The Punk Show. While many of the bands that originally supported Spicoluk’s label have since left to pursue other things in life and the face of Underground Operations has certainly changed, one group has only changed its name. Once known as Happy Go Lucky, Whitby mathcore act Protest the Hero maintains its association with Underground Operations still to this day, despite having gained worldly success and being signed on to the monolithic Vagrant records since 2006.

In an execution of reifying their contemporary name, last Thursday Protest the Hero took a night off from their freshly embarked upon Jagermeister-sponsored and more commercially attractive Snocore tour to headline an intimate, 350 person capacity show put on by the University of Guelph’s metal club at The Brass Taps.

Assaulting fans with an arsenal of songs mainly from their 2008 studio album Fortress, but also including tracks like “Blindfolds Aside” and “Heretics & Killers” off of their 2005 album Kezia—which combined with a 2006 signing to Vagrant records also brought the band success in the States—Protest unleashed a performance that went against what lead vocalist Rody Walker anticipated about the band at the time of Fortress’ release. In a 2008 interview with MTV, Walker described Protest the Hero as ADD Metal, making reference to how the band gets bored easily and how at the time of Fortress’ release, there wasn’t any desire to play songs off of Kezia ever again because the songs were routine and they wanted to perfect their new and more complicated work. Bassist and lyricist Arif Mirabdolbaghi confirms that when PTH plays tracks from Kezia, it’s mostly for the fans, but also maintains that when Rody did that interview, his responses were indicative of “a time in [the band’s] life where we were feeling this sort of musical frustration.”

The band’s reverence for undertaking onerous tasks might have something to do with its influences. One of Protest’s most overt lyrical influences—especially in pre-Kezia material—is Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. Even the title of one of PTH’s songs, "I Am Dmitri Karamazov and the World is My Father" is a direct reference to The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky’s last novel, which is—in only a few words—about struggling with intellectual stasis.

In 2004, Mirabdolbaghi was even invited to (and attended) the 12th Symposium of the International Dostoevsky Society at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. Reflecting on the Russian thinker, Mirabdolbaghi admires the fact that “[Dostoevsky’s] mind rebels stagnation” while also contending that there is no way he could ever cease to be influenced by him, despite while “perpetually turning into someone else.”

Despite the band’s self-acknowledged short attention span and while tens of thousands of students prostrate the fruits of their hard-earned labour to the university every semester, bassist and lyricist Arif Mirabdolbaghi said that even though the band has made some obscure rider requests in the past—including birthday cakes, underwear, wallpaper imported from China, Persian carpets, and films by Dennis Quaid “because we think he’s a comic genius, even if he doesn’t realize it”—on Thursday Protest played it modest and didn’t ask for anything special to play at the U of G. Mirabdolbaghi also insisted that, “Our rider isn’t ‘make it or break it’ in the sense that if we don’t receive what we request we’re not going to play a show.”

According to Mirabdolbaghi, after Snocore and an appearance at New Jersey music festival The Bamboozle at the start of May, the band—which hasn’t put out any new material as far as songs go since Fortress in 2008—is looking forward to getting back into the studio and recording new work, which they’ve already started writing. Apart from his work with Protest the Hero, Mirabdolbaghi is further pursuing his interest in Dostoevsky. In collaboration with an actor friend, Mirabdolbaghi is currently in the process of interpreting a Dostoevsky work for a string bass piece, the performance of which will premiere in Toronto at the end of April.

From Teenage Sex Pistol to Folk Troubadour: Former bass player and songwriter from the Sex Pistols goes acoustic in Guelph

At the Guelph Youth Music Centre (GYMC), considerable mystery surrounded what Friday evening’s events would entail. Advertising for the show could have been described as minimal (consisting mostly of a few flyers in Guelph’s downtown shop windows), and the GYMC—in all the glory of its theater-like seating—wasn’t exactly the quintessential punk haunt. Smokers shuffled cold feet in the snow outside the entrance, chewing over whether there would be a bar: “There’s gotta be. It’s Glen Matlock. He’s a Sex Pistol for chrissake!”

Glen Matlock has a special place in Sex Pistols history. As the bassist for London’s seminal punk band, Matlock wrote most of the songs on Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, but punklore has it that he was excommunicated from the Pistols in 1977 for liking The Beatles too much. The truth, as Matlock tells it in his autobiographical I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol, is that he left because he was “sick of all the bullshit.” Whether or not that “bullshit” had anything to do with guitarist Steve Jones’ frustration over Matlock’s insistence that he learn Beatles chords for Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, will be debated for as long as the Sex Pistols remain relevant.

Making his way up to the same kitchenette counter that’s open to everyone else in the GYMC lobby, no one recognizes Matlock as the mere footnote in punk rock history that he has been reduced to by some storytellers. But many are aware that this is the man who begat a new sound, and the bassist who could actually play it.

With psychedelic country rock band The Sadies opening, there was not an electric bass in the building. Sadies bassist Sean Dean played an upright acoustic, but it did more than keep the beat, it served as a subtle but downright reminder that it was not 1976, and that this would not be the same set from an early Sex Pistols gig. No one is dressed in robes that are straight out of Malcolm McLaren’s clothing boutique ‘Sex.’ There are no ragged fishnet shirts, no bondage belts jingling among the mass, and leather, if present, is brown and well kept, not tattered and black with haphazard stud jobs. Perhaps this was a crowd that grew up and beyond the unforgiving nature of Johnny Rotten, much like the man they had come to see.

When Matlock was done his sound check, a lone bagpiper blasted into the room and erupted into a rendition of Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” Fusing folk method with a classic rock anthem, this was the perfect harbinger for what was about to come.

Matlock’s acoustic show proves that music doesn’t have to be vicious to be punk. Making a point about punk aesthetic in an interview with Max Chambers, he points out that, “People talk about punk as a musical style, but also there’s a spirit involved in it.” He cranks out covers of Sex Pistols songs like “Pretty Vacant,” “God Save the Queen” and the Monkees’ “(I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone”— a song that every Sex Pistol can say they’ve spent some time with (even Matlock’s bass incompetent, yet crowd pleasing successor Sid Vicious covered it during his brief solo career).

To the accepting crowd that sings along, Matlock has no problem disciplining the audience for their lack of familiarity with the chorus to Small Faces’ “All or Nothing,” looping the chords ad nauseam and saying “I can do this all night,” sitting back on the Sadies’ bass drum to further his point until he got the response he wanted.

Despite the demanding nature he took on during “All or Nothing,” Matlock is anything but arrogant; he is cheeky, but humble. Matlock proves he’s above his Sex Pistols celebrity even when he’s not playing the traveling troubadour. In response to Haiti’s earthquake in January, he’s teamed up with Nick Cave, Johnny Depp, Bobby Gillespie (Primal Scream), Mick Jones (The Clash), and Shane MacGowan (The Pogues) to cover Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell On You,” which is set for release later this month.

Originally posted @The Ontarion

2009, Where Is Your Music?

Today I shelved my editions of Fung Yu-Lan's A Short History of Chinese Philosophy and Wing-Tsit Chan's A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy in a bout of rejection against filial and traditional practice, restraint and lionization.

A familiar pastime to be included as one of my notorious procrastination routines, I sat myself in front of my laptop and sought out my bookmark for the Exclaim Magazine website, plotting to spend the next half hour lurking bands that were slated for upcoming album releases. I was hoping for something fresh that was wholesome, but that also retained what I call necessary contempt for modern maxims. Call me elitist, but without that loathing, music just feels empty and phlegmatic to me - like ignorant bliss.

Exclaim Magazine is a good place to go if you're harbouring a canker of time-killing indulgence in your cheek; its lists of new music releases seem limitless.

However, I scrolled through this list, searching about every other artist I'd never investigated on myspace with hopes of getting a taste of the sound they'd be making available on their respected release dates, and I found little I could appreciate. I found a lot of contempt, but where I did, it was like there was too much.

I felt old and jaded and all I wanted was for somebody to put a record on and leave me to some kind of eternal rocking chair where the soundtrack provided could soothe my deep wrinkles with sweet rhetoric and cunning attitude.

All that said, I did manage to stumble upon a fun little oldie.

Girl Talk, "Feed the Animals"

1. "Play Your Part (Pt. 1)"

2. "Shut The Club Down"

3. "Still Here"

4. "What It's All About"

5. "Set It Off"

6. "No Pause"

7. "Like This"

8. "Give Me A Beat"

9. "Hands In The Air"

10. "In Step"

11. "Let Me See You"

12. "Here's The Thing"

13. "Don't Stop"

14. "Play Your Part (Pt. 2)"

I remember when all of my friends first got their G2s. We come from a small town, where there’s not much to do but complain about the lack of things to do. Instead of being apathetic and contemptuous toward this monotonous and seemingly inevitable boredom, we made our own fun. The weekend would come, and we would pile into friends’ cars, sometimes squeezing four to five along backseat benches. Night would fall, and we would drive.

It was a time of lead-footed drives out of town on backstreets to reach what could only be described as Hope, defined by a freckle-faced pigtailed red head and Frostys; driving reckless donuts in deserted parking and idling to talk and eat and laugh while high-beam-flashing, battery-sucking MCs matched lights along to the rhythm of finger tap satisfying beats – the more complex and unconventional the beat, the better. We played everything from Gorillaz and Radiohead to Pig Destroyer and The Grouch.

We did it often, and we wanted variety. Naturally, an exponential expansion of Windows Media Player and iTunes libraries ensued.

We hated the radio: any commercial break was too long. This marked an age of mix disks, and no one reserved piety for DJ Passenger Seat. An excess production of mix disks occurred often, as everyone wanted to listen to their tunes with the aid of superior car sound systems and share their musical tastes with everyone else.

It was quite possibly one of the single most culture- and counter-culture-filled times of my life.

Eventually we’d greet and strive to understand 6 in the morning joggers running in the opposite direction with disgust and anguish, but we had a good time.

The Separation of Phil and Snit

For those that remember the days when - long before Nuclear Donkey - YTV played "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers," the memory of an unpredictable purple bubblegum TV that went by the name of Snit may still be preserved. Referencing that memory is to recall a time when PJ Fresh Phil talked with Snit between scheduled programming. But lo, another time came when Phil was joined by another YTV host, Paul McGuire.



When Paul ended his stint in the Zone, a young Daryl Jones (MTV Live) moved in.

With two mobile hosts on the set, an old Western sentiment crept its way into the Zone, and it appeared that this place wasn't big enough for three. Presumably, Daryl and PJ Phil sent Snit into space, where the television entity could reside without the strain of producers breathing down its...bubblegum. It's not easy being purple.

Nostalgic euphoria aside, let's talk about now. PJ Phil (known in the real world as Phil Guerrero) has since moved on from providing kids with entertaining bumper programming.



The once PJ now carries on shredding guitar and supplying backing vocals for the Goth/Industrial band, Razed in Black, which has enjoyed sharing a stage with notable acts like Tool, Filter, and Deathride 69 (Elegy Magazine, 1999). Among the five albums they've released are Shrieks, Laments and Anguished Cries (1996), Oh My Goth! (2001), and Damaged (2003).

Razed in Black's success is substantial, youth entertainment has changed, and it is very much unlikely that Phil and Snit should ever be reunited for five-minute increments between "Rugrats" and "ReBoot."