by John Malkin | excerpted from PP73
“When did punk rock become so safe?” asks Chris Hannah in “Rock For Sustainable Capitalism,” a song from the latest musical offering by Canadian punks Propagandhi. Potemkin City Limits is the high-energy 2005 record featuring Hannah on guitar and vocals, Jordy Samolesky on drums, and Todd Kowalski on bass. The band is in rare form on this album, reminding us of the roots of punk rock by shattering illusion, creating community, and blasting high-energy music. For over 10 years, Propagandhi have consistently pointed to the importance of social change through personal responsibility and action. They seem as surprised as anyone that they have developed a wide audience for their unique style of music and words that advocate animal rights, a vegan diet, and the bedrock anarchist qualities of self-reliance, political awareness, and discovering what is true for yourself.
The idea of changing a small system and thereby affecting larger systems is a philosophy that Gandhi spoke about and lived. It seems to me that self-transformation is a part of social transformation, and clearly punk rock is not compatible with institutionalized anything. I wonder if you can tell me about the importance of self-transformation in the context of social change?
For me personally, it is very important. Especially where I came from as a kid. I spent fourteen years being a very, very stupid person. Or a very sequestered person. I think I was sequestered from the realities of the world outside of living on military bases and outside of reading statistics about different countries and how many tanks each country had. It was a very childish worldview. I think I was being weaned to be some sort of robot in the military. ¶ The initial transformation I spoke of earlier, through finding bands like MDC, was pivotal in my life. I wouldn’t credit punk rock from then on too much, because I have found a lot of punk rock since then, especially in the past ten years, to be vacuous. It is meaningless to me, aesthetically, and often even when I feel that the politics are right on, it doesn’t transform me! I would credit more interpersonal relationships as transforming me. ¶ A guy like me is going to be trying to evolve and get a little smarter until I am dead. I have met people who are about 18 years old who blow me away! I think, “Well, this kid doesn’t need to transform much anymore!” It makes me feel kind of bad. But, for myself, it has got to happen. From year to year, I have to feel something more, I have to enhance what I know. I feel it every so often.
Lately, some writers have been drawing comparisons between Buddhism and punk rock.
Well, I plead ignorance on Buddhism and punk rock. I don’t know too much about it. Where we are from (Winnipeg, Canada), as far as I know, there has been a connection between a sort of conservative Christian element and hardcore punk rock. But I haven’t really heard of any other couplings since the mid-‘80s in the New York hardcore scene. There was a Hare Krishna movement that fizzled out and died in the early ‘90s. But looking back there were some decent ideas in those records put out by bands that were otherwise considered thugs. It was interesting.
Bands like Shelter?
I was thinking of Cro-Mags, but yeah, Shelter as well. Cro-Mags especially. If you think about those boys, they were singing about street justice and all of this stuff, but they had some ideas about nonviolence and vegetarianism on their records. It’s interesting to give that to a crowd of skinheads!
And you are doing that in a way, too, in terms of offering ideas about animal rights, activism, and veganism.
Yeah, I suppose so. Those ideas came because we were transformed at certain times in our lives, and then you feel compelled to share that transformation with others. Especially when you’re younger, you suspect that what compelled you to make a change will immediately compel the rest of the world, once they hear your logic. Of course it never pans out that way! But, that is how, specifically, issue-oriented songs came about, especially concerning animal rights. I am still bewildered and horrified by how people, especially in Western-industrialized societies, treat animals en masse. Lyrics still pop up in songs all of the time about it.
