224 pages
Softback
Published 2002
Codex
ISBN 1-899598-23-5
American Heretics: Rebel Voices In Music:
What price freedom?
Controversial, idiosyncratic and fiercely independent contemporary American musicians are brought together in this collection of in-depth interviews. Under attack from the authorities, Christian fundamentalists and the American Right, these artists speak out about:rock, rap, punk, straight edge, hardcore and hip hop, 9/11 and the Columbine High School massacre, films, art and books, politics, censorship, racism, religion, drugs and absinthe
From naked political protest to defecating on stage, via self-mutilation and rioting in Seattle, the American Heretics have seen and done it all...
Includes interviews with Ian MacKaye (Fugazi) * Marilyn Manson * Henry Rollins * Slipknot * Chuck D (Public Enemy) * Casey Chaos (Amen) * Rage Against the Machine * Jello Biafra * Fat Mike (NoFX) * At The Drive-In
'American Heretics...' is a cultural document of rock music and resistance from some of the scene's most out-spoken voices - and a wider study of life in the world's sole super power at the dawn of the twenty-first century
Says Ben: "I'd met a lot of interesting people in bands living lives as moral and ethical as people in more traditional walks of lives, but felt restricted by the magazines I was interviewing them for. They had so much to say and so little space within which to get it across, and I had many opinions to throw into the mix, that I thought a book was the way forward. I started writing it as 'Blame America' and was talking to publishers when September 11 2001 happened. I was in LA at the time, eating fillet mignon on Universal Records' expenses and watching Blink 182 (of all people) film a video, and saw a nation change overnight. It was an extremly paranoid time as LA went on red alert and I holed up in a hotel room, wondering whether I'd ever make it back to my sub-zero squat in London. It became immediately apparent that the book had a whole new meaning - a new purpose. Not least because I was advised that if I stuck with the title for publication in autumn 2002, then it was likely that it would not get distribution in America. Fuckers. So it became 'American Heretics', the excellent Codex books published it and suddenly I was an author. Who'd a thunk it? The reaction was great and people are stil contacting me about it today. At first I questioned a couple of my inclusions, but have to come to realise that this book is what it is - for better or for worse, an artefact of some heady times and an ode to music as a life-saving medium."
'American Heretics: Rebel Voices In Music' is all over the internet if you want to buy a copy - I'd recommend ordering it through AK Press.
Read a review here: www.nigelberman.co.uk
And here: www.drownedinsound.com
But not here: www.pulitzer.org