Adam Nathanson.

Back in the glory days when i was 15, I would listen to Killing Time and Mob 47 and Merel and Submission Hold back to back like it was no thing. Older friends with extensive music collections made sure I could blow my allowance on blank tapes full of esoteric punk records I was anxious to discover, during otherwise pretty bleak high school days. It always rained back home, and being able to listen to now-forgotten 90s crap like Zorn, Revolución X, or Health Hazard made it all a bit more bearable. At one point, I would buy a full case of 10 tapes each week, but my favorite in the midst of all this sound overkill was a certain tape made in dark green plastic which contained Poison Idea's immortal epic 'feel the darkness' on one side and Born Against's 'nine patriotic hymns for children' on the flipside. I would listen to that little fucker at least daily, often more. I was soon consumed by Born Against (Poison Idea too, but that's another story), I loved their smart-assedness approach to preachy HC politics, their tough-yet-somewhat-brainy sound, the artwork and layout on their records...I somehow got a hold of their related bands and became a fan...(Young) Pioneers made me dig deep into the Minutemen and Bob Dylan, Life's Blood sparked my interest in searching out rare late 80s NYHC, and Men's Recovery Project ended up being a key part in my later obssession with noise/experimental/electronic crap. I was a teen obssessed. Many years (yes, more than 9) and vital mishaps later, I still find myself grooving hard to the rebel sound of shit and failure.

The interview could have been longer and better, but Adam is a busy guy and so am I. Do your own.

1) let's start in the pre-Life's Blood days, what was Albany like? scene-wise it's always seemed heavily NYHC influenced, so what were the popular local/regional bands that shaped the scene? I'm thinking stuff before NY Wolfpack and the likes..Mental Abuse?
Well I’m from New Jersey unfortunately, but as a teenager I felt strongly that my music and social world was in New York City.

2) tell me about Life's Blood...how did the band come about? was there any preconceived notion about what the band should sound like/stand for/deal with? Was there any pre-L'sB band?
No pre-Life’s Blood bands released any records, but when I was in 12th grade, I did a band with Sergio from Quicksand, John from Nausea and Dan of Smash Apathy fanzine called Trauma. It was kind of like Crucifix and Discharge, but not super noteworthy. Simultaneously I was the guitar player in Mr. Softee (the name of an ice cream truck company) with Anthony from Raw Deal and John Wrecking Machine. Anthony had a song called 'Summer of Fun 1981' about skateboarding with Johnny Feedback from Kraut. The music later became 'Never Make a Change' by Life’s Blood. The idea according to Wrecking Machine was that we’d be the hardest band in NYC so there would irony to the ‘soft’ name. The true irony was that I was arrested by the transit police for hopping the PATH train into NY to see Straight Ahead and the Mob one Sunday and my father subsequently grounded me as punishment. I was respectful enough of my parents not to break their rules, so I had to quit both bands since I couldn’t go to the city to practice anymore.

Life's Blood @ Nightingale's 1987. Pic donated by Freddy Alva, according to whom: 'The skinhead w/the Skrewdriver shirt was later jumped outside of the club by Minus of the Sunset Skins, beaten up & got his boots taken, true story.'

3) Life's Blood seems to have been a pretty confrontational band from the get-go, from song lyrics like "never make a change" to the "FUCK/NY" labels on the 7". Also, the zines you were doing at the time were also very controversial and outspoken...Did you catch a lot of flack or even engage in actual beef with NY scene moguls because of these things? In general, how would you say L'sB was received within NYHC? this is probably one of the (still) most folk-lored and legend-plagued music scenes ever..any interesting anecdotes like your 'tattoo run-in' with John Joseph?
Life’s Blood had beefs with straight-edge bands, but it was mostly due to my unfocused, irrational acting out. Those silly bands weren’t the real evil in the world or anything close to it, they were just normal jocks invading the scene, which upset me as an 18 year old maladjusted Jersey kid who thought that hardcore was “the way, the truth, the life.” The real rotten things going on back then were the gentrification of the Lower East Side, corruption between housing developers and city council people, and the police state after the Tompkins Square riots; and that’s just what was right under our noses, not to mention the U.S war in Latin America, and the spread of crack cocaine, all of which were related on a macro level.

4) how do you look back on the band, considering it wasn't very long lived or prolific, yet remains intensely influential 20 years after the fact?
The biggest honor bestowed upon Life’s Blood for me was when Steve from Heresy stayed at my house in Jersey City in 1993 and told me that when Heresy recorded the 'Whose Generation' 7”, they were listening to Life’s Blood. Fresh.

5) Was Born Against seen as a continuation of L'sB or some kind of fresh, new, start? It sometimes seems like your initial intention was to piss off as many people and stir up as much shit as possible? how about your leftist leanings, how did they fit in the scene at the time? i've read an interview in which the drummer of Citizen's Arrest bashes the band for "introducing socialism in the NY scene" or something to that effect...
I only wish we had been able to impose my own benevolent dictatorship style socialism on the scene. The revolutionary cadre turned on me at the last minute.

Adam in the BA days, photo by Chuck Miller.

6) you're probably gonna hate this, but this scene trivia and gossip is what the kids want, I've read and heard many stories about crazy beef BA got caught up in, a few of them involving narrowly avoiding crucial beatdowns at the hands of NYHC heavyweights, like you saving McPheeter's ass from the Killing Time dudes...care to elaborate?
There’s a recording floating around of Born Against and Charles from Rorschach “debating” Sick of it All on WNYU’s Crucial Chaos radio show in 1990. It was a circus of stupidity that only Born Against could have created.

7) BA did a Euro-tour, how did you find the audiences? did you ever encounter a room full of people expecting a full-on standard NYHC act and being severely disappointed? any particular euro bands from the time that stand out in your memory?
The problem was multi-faceted: We were ungrateful, dysfunctional misanthropes AND the Europeans consumed our band the same as Kentucky Fried Chicken and Chicago Bulls jerseys. When we’d mention Negazione, BGK, Porno Patrol, Raw Power, Pandemonium, Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers, The Wretched, Declino or any other great Euro band, we just got blank stares. We also saw that we had been busting our asses touring in the U.S and Canada and releasing our own records for years before we went to Europe, paying our dues at home. But there were so many American bands over there being treated like royalty that never bothered to play 30 miles outside NYC or even release a record in some cases! Yet in Europe we were indistinguishable from the American slackers. We were enraged and no one cared; which made us more enraged. Very teenage, even though we weren’t teenagers anymore.

8) I really don't know shit about music, so this is probably gonna sound like a terrible explanation, but I've always found your guitar style in BA to be way personal..there's definitely a classic, basic hardcorepunk sound, but there's also a lot of very "creepy" almost melodic guitar picking going on at times,and an almost folky melodic influence on the chord progression to some of the songs, particularly the later ones ('i am an idiot'), or things like the intro to 'shroud'...so what were your influences when learning to play?
'Shroud' was supposed to be like something off of Amebix 'Arise' or 'Monolith'. Learning to play punk, I listened a lot to the 'Blasting Concept' SST sampler, and 'The Big Apple: Rotten to the Core' volume 1 compilation.

9) The early 90's HC scene, particularly the one centered around ABC NO RIO was a peculiar blossoming of creativity, with kids coming from the increasingly violent NYHC scene in search of something different, something i guess a bit more thoughtful and positive, and some of the bands were incredible in the sense of yrical content and emotional depth..which were your personal faves at the time, and the one(s) you felt that BA as a band had the most kinship with?
I can still listen to Rorschach, Chisel and Citizen’s Arrest. Jawbreaker transcends, but they weren’t from NY.

10) I was always curious about the Screeching Weasel split..it seems like such an odd pairing...
We were friends so the pairing made sense to us. What I didn’t like from the get go was the meant-to-be-witty lyrical reversal and horrifying layout of that record. Yikes!

11) How did the move to Richmond and following break up come about? what was sharing a house with Mcpheeters and Neil Burke like?
Richmond is and was an easier place to live than New York or New Jersey. I came down here with $500 I borrowed from my brother. Since then I have been able to contribute to the community through Food Not Bombs, have children, buy a house, finish college, and pursue graduate studies in Adult Literacy. I was however, unprepared for the terrible level of gun violence down here; it seems to be part of the culture.

12) This was also the beginning of the (Young) Pioneers , a fantastic and unique band in which you seemed to pick up on a Woody Guthrie/Bob Dylan/Springsteen bent..a friend of mine once said "it's what Billy Bragg should be if he wasn't such a pussy"...how did this come about? how do you feel about being extremely influential on the current 'folk punk' bands, or having a band that sings your praises in one of their songs (Against Me!) being on MTV?
I am flattered that bands on MTV like (Young) Pioneers. Let me know if you can think of anyone else who’s moderately famous who likes (Young) Pioneers so I can brag about it to my friends and family. I always thought the best reviews of the band were the negative ones. In Panic Button fanzine in 1994, Ben Weasel said that on the first EP I sound “like Arlo Guthrie with his nuts in a vice.” Truer words have not been spoken. I was shooting for a Palace Brothers/Silver Jews angle, but that’s not how it came out. Another later Pioneers review said we sounded like ‘a sore-throated Springsteen shouting Marxist slogans over a poorly recorded garage band.’ I could not come up with a better description myself.


13) (Y)P was, to my knowledge, not a very heavy touring band, but decently prolific..which would you say was your favorite release by the band?
Actually, check it out: (Y)P’s touring included the following- December ‘95/January ’96 U.S. tour (West Coast w/Clikitat Ikatowi & Cars Get Crushed) October/November ’96 U.S. tour (Northeast with Avail) September/October ’97 U.S tour (mostly w/Karp, Peechees) May/June ’98 Southern U.S. (Virginia to Texas w/Avail) February ‘99 West Coast tour (San Diego to Seattle w/the Locust) Plus we played several times a month in places like Chicago, Philadelphia, Raleigh, Detroit, Cleveland, New York and Boston during the same time period, including lots of those ever present 1990s DIY festivals. My favorite releases would be the 'On Trial' and 'Crimewave' EPs by far, recorded by Andy Ward (once of Antioch Arrow) in San Diego at Matt Anderson’s Gravity studio.

14)You're currently (?) involved in Teargas Rock, I don't really know much about this band, so if you could please introduce us?
Teargas Rock was Martin Violence of Y(P), Corporal Randolph Davis of the Great Unravelling, and I. We recorded a 12” EP that never came out but can be found in its entirety at myspace.com/teargasrock, along with more detail about its genesis. Last year I recorded one additional song 'John Brown’s Raid' in my basement, as well as another called 'City in Freefall' with my friend Jonathan Fuller from Sleepytime Trio.



15) I know Latin American history and politics have always been a big interest of yours, what's your take on Chavez and the current situation in Honduras? Do you see Chavez as a viable leader, or a charismatic but inept goon?
I am disappointed in Chavez’s authoritarian anti-democratic tendencies as of late, but clearly my country needs to back off and stop creating such strong justifications for his harsh measures. It’s like a slightly milder version of the Cuban conundrum. Subcomandante Marcos said Latin America doesn’t need anymore Caudillos, and I agree. I am torn on Cuba, Honduras and Venezuela because I see the world through such a strong anti-capitalist inter-communalist framework. I do NOT believe at all however, in Mao’s precept that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

16) What's your day to day like? how do you make a living nowadays? Also, the interview ends here, what piece of sagacious old man advice would you like to share with the readers?
I have two beautiful daughters, Reina and Bella. My wife Alyssa was one of the singers in the grind/crust band Disrupt, and she started Food Not Bombs when we moved down here. We will celebrate our 10th anniversary on Friday. I make a living teaching Adult Literacy, including English as a Second Language. My advice for readers is Joe Strummer’s advice from one of the documentaries released about him: Don’t always look to the past, do something new. Somewhere out there young people have started an urgent political or social movement or music scene that we can’t even conceive of. Make it your business to find out about it before it’s already past.