Obey Convention is an annual outsider music/punk rock festivel in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It takes place in whatever venues are still open in Halifax. Last year’s festivel had great performances by a number of Divorce Records‘ artists including Vennt, and Be Bad, as well as the noise dinosaur Man is the Bastard.
Be Bad is one of my favourite Halifax bands. Influenced by a variety of hardcore, noise rock, and Sun Ra, they’ve got a sound like no one else active in the East Coast. Sometimes angular and frenetic, sometimes slow and lumbering. They paint a broad soundscape and their first and only album, Vision Correction (buy it), had samples of all of their sounds.
The band is to play it’s last show at this year’s Obey Convention, after a hiatus of some seven or eight months. Tobias Rochman, vocalist, bass player, and major songwriting contributor, is leaving for Montreal in June. Eben Hicks, one of two guitarists and long time bandmate of Tobias’ in other Halifax smart hardcore bands such as Oh God and This Message Will Self-Destruct, is also leaving for Montreal.
Tobias has also been contributing a generous portion of his time to Obey as a co-organizer.
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Tobias Rochman and Eben Hicks of Be Bad
I pull out my white sheet of printed out questions for Tobias.
Tobias: “That’s my favourite color.”
Neal: “White?”
T: “Rainbow – I don’t know.”
N: What are your feelings on potentially your last show with Be Bad?
T “Uh, it just feels -. I mean I’m, for the most part I’m just thankful that it’s happening and all. ’cause it. I don’t know. I felt like that show with Old Time Relijun and uh.”
(Note: Tobias is referring to a show at last year’s Halifax Pop Explosion, which also featured Divorce Records acts Vennt and Torso, as well as Montreal performance/noise artists Aids Wolf.)
Tobias’ roommate Caleb walks in.
T: Hey.
Caleb: Yeah. Hi. Caleb.
N: Howdy.
T: Neal [and I are] just doing that interview. Getting it recorded on the cell phone.
N: Eating delicious Taco Bell. Alright. So, what are your feelings on potentially your last show with Be Bad? Again.
T: I just think. I’m just happy that it’s happening. It feels like. Uh. Um. Sorry.
N: You can take a minute to breathe.
Tobias takes a long exaggerated breath.
T: Yeah. How do I feel. I don’t know. Organizing the festival is number one, and [the idea of] Be Bad playing happened a few months into organizing the festival. So it feels like a secondary thing. At the same time, like, I really like Shearing Pinx and I’m really glad that we have a chance to play with them. I think um…
Caleb sets a large to small audio jack adapter on the table.
T: What’s that for?
C: Uh, it sat on the table so I’m going to put it back on the table.
T: Probably Ian’s. Um. Sorry. I don’t mean to be spacey. I’m kind of bad at these things.
N: Don’t worry about it.
I am eating Taco Bell.
N: I’ll take this with me so nobody sees it in your trash.
T: Oh, um. We’re proud. Especially Caleb. He eats at KFC all the time.
Caleb mutters something about six legged chickens
N: I’m pretty stoked for when they can grow meat in vats. Did you hear um PETA, or P-E-T-A or whatever. They just put like 10 million or a million dollars or something. They said they’d pay like [1 million dollars] to the first company that can manages to grow meat in a vat with no animals involved.
T: It’s called Tofu. It’s delicious.
N: Yeah, I guess that researchers have managed to grow some kind of meat thing on this lattice, so it just spreads.
C: Makes sense. Cells grow in a lattice structure.
N: And they’ve done it. They just need to make the texture better. And I guess because of all this work with fake meat tofu stuff they have lots of experience in texturizing meat.
C: They grow skin grafts on lattices too. It’s so weird.
N: I love it. I’m so excited about biotechnology.
T: Sorry I just peaked at all of your questions.
N: That’s OK.
Caleb lets out a honk laugh.
N: Yeah, I would’ve grabbed it from you if I didn’t want you to.
T: Yeah, that would’ve been pretty macho. Yeah, that’s basically how I feel about that one. I’ve been jamming with Eben and Will for…since 2002. In our… We had another band before Be Bad.
N: Was that This Message [Will Self-Destruct]?
T: Yeah, so uh..
N: …Was Eben in Oh God?
T: Yeah, he was in Oh God too. But Oh God is like an… That was a flash in the pan sort of..we were just hired goons and…I don’t know. But I don’t know. That was fun but…
C: Hired goons for a hired goon.
T: You know he’s recording this.
Caleb mutters “I don’t care” under his breath.
T: Yeah. so I, it just feels like it’s been six years of …uh. In some ways the bands feel like very similar. Maybe not in the way they sound but in the way they operate. So it just feels, it feels like a long haul or something. Derrick (Hiltz, guitarist of Be Bad), he’s my second cousin actually. I’ve known him, from CKDU where I do a show, for a long time so I feel like somewhat sentimental about it. But at the same time…
(Note: Derrick Hiltz’s new band, Electro Chiac Thérapie, with Nicole Anaka, and Lindsay Allain of Le Coque et Les Phoques, are playing a show this Thursday at Gus’ Pub with the fantastic Nymphets of Montreal! Go see it!)
N: It’s not the biggest thing going on right now.
T: Well, I just. I mean. Look… [I just] try and look forward. Nothing really lasts forever. Yadda yadda yadda. I’d rather have a long life filled with many different projects rather than try and make Be Bad into something that it can’t be. Or force it to stay alive just so that - or just because - it’s comfortable and safe. It’s kind of scary to find new people and start again. When Be Bad started, like with this tape we’re putting out, it started out with just like really fast rock and roll. Then it kind of went in the direction it went in. And then toward the end - the last thing we’re putting on this tape - Derrick really re-envisioned one of our songs and made it this industrial, drum-machine & Theremin type stuff. I think our tastes have expanded quite a bit. I would get back together and make another album with Be Bad but it’s probably never going to happen. But I like those guys and I like the way they play, and I like what they bring to the table.
N: Do you want to move beyond avant-garde punk rock?
T: Not necessarily. Maybe. I just like - I like bands where any idea seems to be OK. I don’t really like genre bands. So in that sense, I don’t really want to ever [have it too planned out]- I just like the idea of getting a bunch of open-minded people together and everybody throwing out ideas and putting faith in those ideas and saying ‘Yeah, let’s go for it’ and seeing what happens. As far as making albums, I really like versatile albums. I don’t want to listen to ten noise rock songs. I’d rather listen to - I mean for instance with this album, there’s a few that are kind of in different directions.
N: This album - Vision Correction?
T: Yeah, that’s the only one we ever made. We had to rush that one. It was fun going out into the woods and recording it, and it was a nice place to rush an album. I think I’m getting to be more interested in home recording, and putting a little more time into it. I want to be in a fearless band, and it doesn’t have to be [stylistically] that hard. Be Bad can be pretty hard sometimes. But if I want to just let my guitar feedback a lot, I want that to be OK, too.
N: So if you wanted to put in a flute?
T: Exactly. I like a lot of different music. I’m not scared of ideas. I’m not saying that Be Bad is either. They’re totally awesome.
N: Maybe all of you have preconceptions about what you want to make as a Be Bad song.
T: I don’t even know. The reasons why we’re breaking up are… It’s just a couple of things. It’s easier for me to talk about what I want to do next than what I’ve just done. The situation is what it is and I just want to go forward. Because we still have a little bit more ahead of us and we still have a little bit of work to do this month I can’t really reflect upon it. I guess I’m just too busy and I’m kind of happy about that. I like being busy with projects, and I think I pushed that on Be Bad a little bit, too. Right now I’m 22 years old and I have a lot of energy, so [that can come with] being the youngest person in that band. I don’t have a lot else besides these projects and I put myself into them pretty heavily. I don’t want to tour once a year, I want to tour as much as possible. I want to put more of my time into it, because that’s what I like doing. I want to do it as much as I can.
N: So how have you been involved in Obey Convention?
T: I’ve been helping Darcy (Co-organizer and head of Divorce) a little bit for the last couple of years, but this year he asked me to come on as his partner and really help take it up a notch. We’ve been working on it every day. We got sponsors this year. We made festival guides. All the sponsors are people that we like and business that we’d go to. They’re not beer commercials. Like Lost and Found, who carries Darcy’s records (Divorce Distribution). Exclaim is the biggest one. They gave us some advertising and wrote some press. We’ve tried to take it up a notch and expand.
(Note: Also sponsoring Obey Convention are: Strange Adventures, CKDU, Music Nova Scotia, Crowd Control, Yo Rodeo, and:)
N: Who are Sewercide Records?
T: Sewercide Records are, it’s the Drummer of Career Suicide. They’re putting out Genetic Angry’s new 7″ (Note: Both are playing Obey, go see them!). They have a lot to do with the Career Suicide show. I don’t really know too much about it.
N: Which bands that are coming to Obey Convention did you push especially for, or are you the most excited about?
T: Probably Shearing Pinx. They’re one of my favourite bands in Canada right now. They basically booked their US and Canadian tour around coming here and putting out the 7″. They’re great. They have like 35 releases or something. They have a really fun attitude. They seem to put out two releases a month. I feel that they’re really fearless with how much they put out. They’re really prolific. They really seem unlike any other band.
N: I’ve never actually really listened to the Shearing Pinx, but I’ve heard nothing but good from a whole bunch of people who’s taste I respect, so I’m pretty excited.
T: I can put them on for you. I’ve got the record there. This is the full-length LP they put out recently.
Tobias hands me a copy of the “ULTRASNAKE” LP with a brightly silkscreened cover (released on their own vanity label Isolated Now Waves).
N: I’m really excited just for the merch for this. Nadja’s coming, and I really really like Nadja, and I don’t think I’m going to have the opportunity to buy anything from them except basically at this.
The record starts playing.
N: I’m going to assume from the cover with a saxophone that they’re pretty jazzy.
T: They’ve put out stuff with a saxophone, but I don’t think there’s any saxophone on this record.
N: But is it just a statement of them liking jazzy-noisy stuff or? This song that’s playing right now sounds like it’s starting kind of free jazz.
T: I think it’s implying that there’s a drag queen’s penis coming out of the dress turning into a saxophone.
N: Oh! Or is it playing the saxophone? Or is it a tail?
T: It’s either like a penis rammed into the mouth of a saxophone or I’m misinterpreting it.
C: Don’t you misinterpret everything as a penis?
N: It could be, poop though. It could be a tube, or pantyhose, that they put into their anus and like, pooping into the sax.
T: I just felt like, “Ultrasnake. What is the Ultrasnake?” The Ultrasnake is-
I laugh: Is that the name of the LP?
T: Yeah, so like. It says Ultrasnake. I know what the “Ultra Snake” is.
Neal: Oh OK. I didn’t notice the Ultrasnake. I noticed the letters, (Note: on the back of the sleeve) but I didn’t bother to try and make them into a word.
T: It’s pretty good. They don’t have a bass player. It’s just two guitars, and the vocals are clean. You don’t hear that in a lot of these types of bands. They do a weekly night in Vancouver called ‘Fake-Jazz weekends’. They’ve also started this women’s noise collective called the ‘Her Jazz Noise Collective‘. They have a really good DIY energy.
N: What do you think about the noise scene in Halifax?
T: I don’t know. I’m not really into harsh noise. I’m into people who have fearless ideas and if that happens to be in the context of noise music and they’re making exciting music [then great!], but I think there are tons of boring noise bands that I’d never want to see, just like there are tons of boring rock bands. Noise sets itself up for some exciting things to happen because it’s so free form, but that doesn’t mean that it is automatically exciting. With Divorce, we try and find only the exciting stuff.
N: What do you think of the label noise?
T: I’m more interested in the underground [scene as a whole].
N: Or outsider music?
T: Well I used to call everything punk, but punks don’t really like it when you use the word punk generously. So in my mind, first I say punk, but then I redefine before it leaves my mouth. I don’t really want to have the ‘Oh what’s [the meaning of] punk?’ conversation ever again in my life. Do-It-Yourself, Underground, Whatever. People know what you’re talking about.
N: So you’re moving to Montreal…
T: Yeah, these are quite the topics for me to rant about…Yeah, my dad’s from Montreal. People from Halifax have a hate-on for people who move to Montreal or whatever, but it’s a lot like…It’s like New York, or London, or Tokyo. It’s a major city- it’s the closest major hub. Also, the way Quebec run themselves. They have a lot of a good social programs and a lot of interesting interpretations of the law. More importantly there’s a lot of cheap raw space in Montreal. It’s kind of like Providence in 1995, or like New York in the late 70s or early 80s. If you can live for very cheap, and you have access to a lot of space and that’s enough for things to really start happening. Plus it’s enough of a hub that there’ll be a lot of people coming through with their own ideas.
N: I get the feel that it’s a big city, but it’s not too big of a city. You don’t get lost in a mass.
T: Yeah, it’s a neat place. There’s a good energy there. There’s a lot happening, and Halifax is great. But you have to really fight for your fun. You have to really make things happen, and that’s a good skill to develop. I feel like I’ve been having fun in Halifax and I’ve really worked for it. [But] now I’m excited to see bands without having to travel all the time. In the first month I move there I’m going to see Boris (Japan), Abe Vigoda, and Homostupids. I’m excited to try new stuff, and grow as a person. And uh… there’s better record stores.
Laughter.
T: Yeah, if all you care about is records [like me] you’re set. I’m a busy body. I want to go where I can be busy.
N: Would you recommend Shearing Pinx?
T: Yeah, they’re great. Career Suicide are too, and so is Nadja, but Shearing Pinx are the band that…I didn’t think they’d ever come here, but all we had to do was put out a 7″ for them and here they are.
N: So is that how that happened?
T: Well, if somebody on the other side of the country wants to put out your 7″, you’re going to want to see what’s going on over there.
N: Divorce Records. What do you think Divorce Records has in its future?
T: More vinyl, no more CDs. Finding cheaper ways to make vinyl. We found out with this release that getting it mastered and pressed and getting the artwork done in separate places saves a little bit of money. We’re learning how to do what we’re doing a little bit smarter.
We also have some big releases planned. I can’t really talk about them, but there’s a big one for 2009.
N: So Divorce is going to be putting out more vinyl? Personally I hate CDs, because they scratch and they get ruined so easily. Because I’ve been burning CDs mostly for years and years, when I see a CD I think of it as something I can throw on the floor. I regret it when I buy something on CD unless it’s a band I really like.
T: I don’t think people really buy CDs. They say they’re like the 8-Track of the Yuppie Generation (Tobias thinks it was Thurston Moore). We put out that Be Bad album on CD. We did it basically because in This Message and Be Bad we had only ever put out vinyl and we had so much grief like…
N: Trying to get rid of it.
T: Trying to get rid of it, and I think that things have changed in the last few years and it’s a lot easier to sell vinyl, and if people aren’t going to pay for music (trailing off)… the casual listeners are just going to download it anyway.
N: I know Derrick (guitarist from Be Bad) has mentioned that he’s pretty into the idea of a vinyl record and just a CD-R thrown in.
T: Yeah, I’m fine with that. A lot of places are putting out things with download codes. Hopefully Darcy will put out some more tapes, too. I mean, vinyl sales are going up. CD sales are going down. I’m not saying they’ll be equal, but…I’m sorry.
N: Nono, it’s great. I just randomly decided to do this at 10 PM last night. I’ve never done an interview before.
T: So (reading list of questions)…recommend a band?
N: Yeah, recommend a band.
T: I don’t know what band I’d recommend. Listen to the CKDU Smart Patrol. That’s where all the good bands hang out.
