What about that show made a lasting impression on you?
Ben: I think the COFFEE HOUSE show (which I mentioned earlier) where PREGNANT MEN played totally changed me from death metal to punk rock, and from tight black jeans to super baggy jeans.

Nic: I think the first school show that Ben and I went to was actually held at our school FIS, sometime in 92. That should’ve been the first time we saw PREGNANT MEN play. That night, every band pretty much blew me away. It was crazy to see kids my age cover songs by Hendrix, Metallica, Guns & Roses, Mr. Big perfectly. And of course, the highlight was to see you (Riz) cover Slayer and some other thrash/death songs with your band MORTIFIER!!! Haha.

What made you want to start playing music?
Ben: I think I was 9 or 10 when I heard the song “the final countdown” by EUROPE and my jaw just dropped. I didn’t realize how cool rock music was! Each time I heard the song, I fantasized about playing keyboards in a band and being a rockstar on a big stage. I think that was my earliest memory of wanting to be in a rock band (before I even knew how to play anything).

Nic: I fell in love with the sound of the electric guitar because of Paul Wong. If it wasn’t for him and BEYOND, I may very well have never picked up the guitar. How’s that for a generic HK band guy answer? Ben and I had lots of fun jamming in our bedrooms or playing now and again at our youth group, but it wasn’t until we went to Australia that I discovered the real joy of playing at decent venues and touring.

Since you guys are older, can you talk a little about what it was like buying CD’s (or tapes!) back in the day (KPS, etc…)?

Ben: Back then the best places to buy music was KPS – $88 for a CD! I bought a lot of my CDs from there. Remember when CDs had a super long cardboard packaging? I think I bought all the CDs of the popular alternative rock and metal bands of the early 90s there.

Nic: Yeah, it was weird because they had all the punk/hardcore stuff we were into at the time at such a cheap price. Most HK people went there just to rent movies, but we were there because they had all the releases by BAD RELIGION, NOFX, PENNYWISE, THE DESCENDENTS, DINOSAUR JR, all this stuff on labels like Epitaph, Lookout, SST. I have no idea how they got there.

Ben: Tapes were cool too. I remember going to this place in Jordan that sold the tapes of all the hard rock bands. The first tape I ever bought was EUROPE – prisoners in paradise. I remember they were around $50. Later on, there was a really cool store called FRENZY in TST and we would go there every Saturday to pick up the newest metal CDs and t-shirts. I remember Nic used to have a CARCASS t-shirt and a hat and I had a really nice SEPULTURA and HELMET t-shirt – all bought from the same store. The owner was a super nice guy called SONI and he introduced us to all sorts of music. I remember buying bands like HUSKER DU, GREEN DAY and BAD RELIGION there too. This was before punk became very popular.

Nic: Yeah, Soni was a super nice guy. I remember picking up the first RANCID release there and getting all excited about it because it was the first release after OPERATION IVY. I heard he now runs Trinity Records in Mong Kok, but I’ve yet to swing by the shop.

Being that music was so hard to get back then, how did you get into the music that you were into while growing up (metal, punk, hardcore, etc)?

Ben: Apart from buying records at FRENZY, Nic bought a lot of zines and got a lot of stuff through mailorder. We had a few friends who were into similar music and it was just through listening to checking out new bands on each other’s walkmans etc. A friend of mine had an older brother who introduced bands like NOFX and THE LEMONHEADS to us when we were still kids. Also, watching skate videos and going into shops like BFD introduced many more styles of music to us.

Nic: I wish shops like Frenzy and BFD still existed. They served as little meeting points for people with similar interests and you literally could hang out there all day. Besides KPS, the next best thing was the opening up of a Tower Records in Time Square in 1993. They were also pretty good with carrying a lot of good underground punk releases. And yes, they had a pretty impressive books/magazines section, and that was where I was introduced to the world of Maximum Rock’n’Roll, as well as Flipside. I think I may very well have picked up the very first issue of Punk Planet there as well. We relied on zine reviews and ads for discovering a lot of new music. Mailorder was the only option back then for ordering hard to find releases and it was a real hassle because I had to get my father to get me international money orders from the bank. God bless Paypal and mp3s.

If you’d like, can you talk about this “emo” – “screamo” genre. What is it to you? To me bands like Fall Out Boy-The Used-My Chemical Romance don’t sound anything like the “emo” that I used to listen to (like Sunny Day Real Estate, Mineral, The Promise Ring, Christie Front Drive, etc…) or “screamo” like the bands that I associate more with “screamo” (like Saetia, Piebald, etc.). So what is going on?

Ben: The closest thing to what my idea of emo is: www.fourfa.com

I am so sick and tired of the term being used to describe anything pretty. I won’t even bother trying to explain why it upsets me when bands like MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE and DASHBOARD CONFESSIONAL are called emo. Emo lost its meaning a long time ago, but, yea, it’s definitely in the sound. I mean a modern band like SINALOA, I would definitely call that emo. Any of the popular bands calling themselves emo are just MTV hardcore.

Nic: To put it more simply, to call My Chemical Romance or The Used emo is like calling Avril Lavigne punk. It doesn’t really bother me if this has now become the buzzword to be used by music journalists or for describing your band. There will always be good bands out there carrying on the emo tradition as we know it, such as SINALOA and PLATE SIX. These are good examples of where the underground genre of emo is headed.

You guys were actually involved in a hardcore scene in Australia. What was that like? What attracted you to hardcore?      

Ben: Hardcore was very cool because at that time, we were getting sick of the punk rock scene which was somewhat negative, and all about getting drunk. I never drank and didn’t even know what straightedge was then, but the whole idea of a positive subculture where you could be yourself, do things to change the world you live in was really cool. However, ultimately the scene became nothing more than an elite social club of kids who dressed better or had better tattoos than the others. It was very exclusive and if you were not “hardcore”, you needed to become that just to fit in. Just when I thought I was finding a place where I could be myself, I eventually became disillusioned with the “scene”. It preached open mindedness and tolerance but what I saw was far from it. Perhaps I was also tired of the tough guy image associated with mosh pits and tough guy hardcore. However, I still hold the values and ideals of punk rock and hardcore highly. I wish that it could be so much more pure and not need to have anything fashion or even music related. But I guess people are people and that any movement or ideology will ultimately get affected by the same people who carry it out. So anyways, we played in a band called CALLOUS back then, which was a metal hardcore band and it was loads of fun.

Nic: I was initially attracted to hardcore because the bands stimulated me not just musically but also on an intellectual level. Bands had important issues that they wanted to urgently express… about veganism, about gender equality, about the environment, about political awareness. I didn’t agree with or condone all of it, but at least it was refreshing to have this open exchange of ideas. Like Ben, I also identified with Ian Mackaye’s definition of straight edge and found it to be of great relevance to where I was at that time in my life.

Unfortunately, within the Melbourne scene I found that these hardcore ideals often proved to be inconsistent with hardcore in practice. And I must add that I’m not saying all scenes are like that. It’s just that Ben and I were involved with a particularly social/political scene, interacting with people who had pretty strong views on a number of issues; you know… the generic semi-militant hardcore textbook outlook. Our Christian faith led to confrontations at times, to the point where some even publicly voiced at shows that we had no place within the scene because of it. Ironically, these same outspoken people conveniently tossed all their scene rhetoric aside the moment they discovered emo/indie rock, where I guess speaking against organized religion or animal cruelty was no longer of relevance, trading in the Xs on their hands for a bottle of red wine instead.

So ultimately, our involvement with the Melbourne hardcore scene was a lesson in disappointment, at least for myself. I think my sentiments about that and most ‘scenes’ in general are pretty much the same. There are far more important things in life to be concerned about and focus your energy on than getting all caught up in a ‘scene’, trying to place yourself above other members of society and alienating anyone who doesn’t conform to your narrow worldview (in a scene that was supposedly all about ‘non-conformity’).

This was especially true when I left Melbourne to work with the poor and homeless in Chicago. There I encountered destitute people so busy trying to survive, that what they could eat for their next meal was of far greater concern than whether or not it was vegan or produced by a transnational corporation. In their simple lives, I saw the triviality of all that a scene supposedly stood for. Ever notice how scenes are more often than not made up of privileged middle/upper class kids armed with the luxury of being able to start their private little ‘revolutions’?

It wasn’t all a negative experience though. From hardcore as a whole, I walked away with a lot of values that I still embrace, values that I hopefully will continue to apply regardless of what music I am making.

(CLICK HERE FOR PART 2)

Can you tell us who is in the band, how old they are, and how it started?
My name is Ben. I play guitar and sing. Nic plays bass. Ephraim plays the other guitar. Suhail plays drums. Nic and I were born in the late 70s and Ephraim and Suhail were born in the early 80s (I think). The band started as simple songs that I wrote sometime in 1999, which later became a 3-piece band, and then back to just me again. All along, I had an idea of a certain sound that I wanted to hear in the music. Over the years, we were all in different countries at different times doing different musical projects, so it wasn’t until October 2005 that we decided to play together as a band again (even though it was the first time playing together in many ways).

Let’s get the simpler questions out of the way…as a band, what foreign bands are your main influences? And why?

Ben: Musically a lot of bands have influenced the way that I listen to, write, and play music. It would be quite difficult to actually list all the bands that have influenced the music we play. I’ll try and list a few bands:

THE LAPSE – as far as I am concerned, they wrote the book on the whole spoken word style delivery. All the other bands that the singer Chris Leo was previously in (NATIVE NOD, VAN PELT) were amazing as well.

HAL AL SHEDAD – a great band that were more on the experimental and art side of noisy indie rock. The way they blended the melodies, shouts and screams totally did (and still do) it for me.

JULIA – emo from the mid 90s. The voice is probably my favorite thing about the band. Just the way the singer was able to use his voice to totally change the mood and feeling of the music is really nice.

There are so many more, such as UNWOUND, 90 DAY MEN, KARATE, HOT SNAKES, SHOTMAKER etc. but basically all these bands were making sounds and textures which I could relate to and really liked.

What local bands have influenced you? And why?

Ben: CITYBEAT was probably the first local rock show that me and Nic went to. I think we were around 11 or 12 then? We were very young. It was just so cool to see good musicians rock out and still remain positive and speak messages of life to the kids. I knew I wanted to play in a rock band one day after seeing these guys.

BEYOND was one of the more well-known local bands that really got me into playing guitar. As a young boy learning to play guitar and seeing Chinese rockers play good tunes, it definitely inspired me to want to start a band.

Nic: I still enjoy listening to their songs now and again, especially the four-piece BEYOND. To this day I still hold the highest regards to them, for managing to achieve so much success in an environment that allowed no breathing space for bands to function in. I also admire them because their songs accurately reflected the voice of the grass roots population of Hong Kong at the time, and carried with it a distinct regional sound that no band has been able to capture since.

PREGNANT MEN were probably the first pop punk band to exist in Hong Kong. Even though all the kids in the band were expats, seeing them totally blew me away. I must have been 13 or so. I never heard punk rock before I saw them, and after seeing them it totally changed the way I listened to music. The (pop) punk rock sound in the early 90s was amazing to my ears.

Nic: Yeah, we really looked up to PREGNANT MEN. They were covering BAD RELIGION songs when other school bands were still busy trying to figure out how to play Smell Likes Teen Spirit or Enter Sandman. Ben and I used to play their first demo tape over and over again.

     As a drummer, what bands or musicians have influenced you?

Ben: The drummer for BRAID (on the album “frame and canvas”) and the drummer for KEROSENE 454 (on the album “at zero”) make me not want to play drums anymore.

Nic: And I realized that I had no chance of a career in drumming after watching TORTOISE and PRETTY GIRLS MAKE GRAVES.

As a guitar player, bass player what bands or musicians have influenced you?

Ben: In my younger days I would have listed all the people from metal / hard rock bands. These days, I get blown away watching guitarists like Pat Metheney. You know how your tastes change? I mean, I used to think Les Claypool with all his tapping from the band PRIMUS was cool.

Nic: Trying to squeeze in a thousand notes across 3-4 chords may be cool when you’re 15, but it gets old pretty quick. Unfortunately it seems too many local musicians still get caught up with techniques and arpeggios/modes, and lose all sense of emotions in the process. It’s important to make the most with what skills you have. A song with only three chords can still sound amazing if played from the heart. As a guitarist, I think there are some very tasteful guitarists out there who play great without sounding like show-offs. Check out GHOSTS & VODKA, DON CABALLERO, PROPAGANDHI, MARS VOLTA. I think it’s safe to say we are collectively anti-G3!

As a vocalist, what vocalists have influenced you?

Ben: Probably most of the “emo” bands from the mid 80’s to mid 90’s such as RITES OF SPRING, MOSS ICON, THE HATED, CURRENT, JULIA, NATIVE NOD, INDIAN SUMMER etc. Anything with that awkward but sincere spoken yelp / shout before it all became cool. But I sing the way I do partly because I can’t sing (normally) at all. I have a really ugly voice.

Nic: Same for me. If I could sing I would perhaps cite Freddie Mercury and Jeff Buckley as influences, but alas I can’t, so I would have to go with Milo of THE DESCENDENTS or Black Francis of PIXIES.

I know that you’ll probably hate this question – but if you REALLY had to define the type of music that you guys play…what would you use?

Ben: Spoken word indie rock?

Nic: As long as people don’t think we sound like Bloc Party, we’ll be happy to go along with being defined within any genre of music.

Now the more interesting questions (for me at least!), can you remember back to your first show in Hong Kong and tell us about the entire experience (who was playing, your background (as expat kids) at the time, which school, where you guys went from that first show (like watching more int’l school shows, etc.)?

Ben: It’s been a while, but back then me and Nic were in a punk band called PUNKTURE. We never played any school shows because we’d gone to Australia to study around the same time and the fact we were never able to find drummers who could play punk rock (let alone listen to it). We played random shows here and there, but they weren’t really shows. More like “play 2 songs and let’s move on to the next act” type shows. We also played in a band back then called MUSTARD SEED which later became a band known as MICAH 68. Once again, we played random shows but usually with other dancing groups or pop singers rather than bands.

Nic: You have no idea how difficult it was to find a drummer into the Fat Wreck/Epitaph stuff in 1993. We tried a couple of our youth group friends but they came from a completely different background and just couldn’t nail the standard punk beat. So we resorted to doing crappy four-track demos with drum machines, a tradition that I guess we’re continuing on to this day with THE LOVESONG.

Ben: The only shows that we went to were the HKIS COFFEE HOUSE shows which were super cool. I was convinced back then that HKIS had all the coolest kids. But to be honest, there were hardly any band shows around when we were growing up in Hong Kong. It wasn’t until we graduated from university around 1998 to 1999 that more and more bands were playing real shows (or so we thought).

Nic: Yeah, the frequency of band shows definitely weren’t as often back then. The Warehouse still hadn’t been built, so at least for the kind of music we were into there wasn’t a permanent venue where shows could be put on consistently. Shows were held at Ko Shan Theatre now and again but that was a predominantly local metal scene, which we had no connection to.

Imagine being a 16-year-old kid trying to put on a show for two North American punk bands. Here I was, clueless about all the logistics involved with putting on a show, walking to different bars in Hong Kong and trying to get the owners interested in PROPAGANDHI and ALL YOU CAN EAT. And this was back in 94, without the luxury of emails and mobile phones. In the end I managed to get something at The Wanch and Fringe Club, but unfortunately PROPAGANDHI cancelled their HK leg of the tour. I think the show promoters of today have it a lot easier.