BCR: You don’t think that there is a questioning starting? Stuff like Outfoxed and The Corporation…
JD: It all completely confuses the hell out of me. That’s the only answer I can give nowadays. I just do not know. I remember when Bush went for re-election, I was like, wait until they see how this guy gets landslided, he’s gonna get run out of town on a pole. And then he got re-elected. He stole the election! But no one knows that. Did he steal the election? I know he did. But did he? I don’t know. I mean I know… But I don’t know for sure… The exit polls shows that Kerry had 74% of the vote but if it had been the Balkans or Latin America and the polls showed the person lost by 75% of the vote they would say it was a rigged election and take whoever it was out of office. Those things happen and America is always the one monitoring the elections when these people get taken out of office. And then in our home country they change the voting machines in two states, the only two lynch pin states that matter! I can’t suss out what’s going to happen next. It’s a very exciting time to be alive though. It’s like my song on the new album “There’s no justice, there’s just us.” And that’s what I think, it’s in our hands. I see a lot of apathy and laziness in North America and England. But it’s really hard because you can talk about the whole Bush getting re-elected when he didn’t get re-elected thing but nobody does anything. There seems to be no effective way to create change.
BCR: It’s not that there’s no effective way it’s that when we do try nothing happens. Just look at the anti war marches. Over a million people marched. And not only People Like Us, its old women who knitted their banners! But they say, oh, it there were only 70, 000. That says so much more to me, because it says it doesn’t matter how loud you shout, no one will listen.
JD: Exactly, exactly. I wrote this song called “Che Guevara Shirt” and it deals with exactly this topic.
BCR: Surely there must be a lot of politicized people in the States. I mean, there were a lot of people being turned away from the American borders just because they’re in a band that has some Anti-establishment lyrics. And the same things are starting to happen here. Music should be the voice of the rebellion and commentary…
JD: Yeah, totally, but you see the shit that gets pushed in the mainstream and it’s all 50 Cent and Chingy and all this stuff which is promoting the complete opposite. Rage Against The Machine – what does the billboard say? Come and play and forget about the movement. It’s all about, what clothes am I wearing? Who am I sleeping with? How many people am I sleeping with? What am I drinking? What am I smoking? Anything but what is actually important in life.
BCR: That’s what I find really strange, because there are so many fantastic American bands who are doing fantastic things and commentating. The same things that our parents were railing against and for all appearances it looks like no one does that anymore, but they do. They’re still there and they don’t get heard.
JD: I think the key is disobedience, we need to be disobedient. You know you were talking about the protests, you need to get this permit to walk here and this permit to walk here and we’ll block off the whole route and it’s like we’re obeying, we’re always obeying. We can’t do anything but obey. I mean Goddamnit, they’re selling Che Guevara shirts in every shop in London! They’ve incorporated everything into the mainstream so that there seems to be absolutely no way to step outside of it and actually protest it. That’s what our generation has to do, we have to figure out how to protest effectively, how to disobey and hopefully the internet will be that tool. But I’m very leery that it seems to be setting with Rupert Murdoch owning 75% of it.
We get interrupted by PR and generous Joe Driscoll is being called away…
BCR: OK, well, last thing then - what do you want to say to the readers of BCR who are just starting out in music?
JD: Nobody is going to give you anymore power than you already have. You have to take it. So disobey, disobey as much as you can and get up, get out and do something, for yourself. Build it and they will come as the corny Kevin Costner film doth say!
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