Stereoboard Speaks to Damian Abraham aka Pink Eyes of F*cked Up (Interview)
Friday, 15 October 2010
Written by Rob Sleigh
Since the 2008 release of their second album ‘The Chemistry of Common Life’, Toronto-based punkers F*cked Up have made quite a name for themselves within the alternative rock scene on both sides of the pond. However, this isn’t all down to their conspicuous name or even their recent success at Canada’s prestigious Polaris Music Prize – their equivalent of the Mercury, which F*cked Up walked away with last year. What may actually be to blame are their somewhat extraordinary live performances, as well as the bizarre stunts for which they have become known. These include a 12-hour-long gig in New York and a cover of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’
Most notable of all is the stage presence of the band’s bare-chested and madcap frontman Damian Abraham aka Pink Eyes. A classic example of this was at Glastonbury in 2009 when, during a rare appearance by a punk band at the Somerset festival, Damian led the John Peel Stage crowd in a conga.
Earlier this year, F*cked Up released a new singles collection entitled ‘Couple Tracks’ and they’ve just brought out ‘Year of the Ox’, the latest instalment in their Zodiac vinyl series. They are currently working on the follow-up to ‘The Chemistry of Common Life’, but Damian recently took some time out to speak to Stereoboard about the history and music of the band.
Compared to a lot of punk bands, F*cked Up’s songs are actually quite long. Why do you prefer to write punk songs in this way?
Part of it is for us to develop a bit more, be it lyrically or be it musically. The longer song structure helps with that. With less space you have less room to say what you want to say. In addition to being in a punk rock group, as a band we’re really into doom metal, prog rock and the heavier end of psychedelic rock. Some of the other people in the band are into electronic music with some of these long build-ups and things like that. That’s definitely trickling in there as well.
How would you describe F*cked Up’s sound to someone who hasn’t heard it?
Psychedelic punk. I would love to be considered for having a kind of psychedelic edge to what we’re doing. Prog punk works as well.
How have F*cked Up changed over the years, both musically and as a band?
If you were to ask some of the first people that got into us, like some of the punk and hardcore kids, they would have said we’d sold out or we’re a super pretentious band now, playing songs that are way too long for their own good. For us, it was just a natural development. I don’t really want to say “development” because that sort of implies that it’s better than it was, but it was a natural journey for us to go on. Being in a band and trying to write the same songs over and over again is very difficult and not very rewarding. We just try to do different things every time we go out there. In some cases it works and in some cases it doesn’t, but at least that way we’ve been on this journey as a band to hit the point we’re at now where we’re constantly striving to do different things to keep things interesting for ourselves. As a band, the inter-band relationships certainly have frazzled as time has gone on. I think we started out a lot closer as friends than we are now. The personal dynamics have definitely changed. We’re going to have our tenth anniversary next spring, so in ten years we’ve all changed so much as people that it’s bound to change the dynamic of the band.
How do you make that work?
Sometimes it doesn’t work. Right now, we’re at each other throats a little bit, but at other times, we know which way we can push each other in the band and how far we can try each other’s patience, so we try to respect that as much as possible. Sometimes we get so sick of each other that we naturally try and push the buttons and try each other’s patience as much as possible.
Did you think things would end up the way they are when you were starting out?
Absolutely not. Not in my wildest, wildest dreams. It really is living proof that anyone can be in a band and anyone can wind up waking up one day, living a rock dream. We’re certainly not megastars by any stretch of the imagination, but we can play a show and, most of the time, there’s a crowd of people there to see it, who sing along and generally show appreciation after we play. It’s been the shock of a lifetime. We’re going to be opening for Public Enemy in two days. Somewhere out there, there’s a band that’s trying to become this and we’re still in their spot, so I’d like to apologise to them.
You mentioned there that you’re going to be playing with Public Enemy. How did that come about?
We got asked by Chuck D if we’d be interested in doing some shows with them. Not to take it for granted, but when I find out that someone like Jello Biafra [of the Dead Kennedys] likes my band, that’s one thing that’s in the realm of possibility. But finding out that Chuck D even knew who we were was just so out of left field that it was one of the most bizarre days of my entire life. I don’t know how it’s going to go. If I bought a ticket to Public Enemy, I’d be pissed off if I saw F*cked Up come onstage [Laughs]. Who knows? I’m not going to make any assumptions about what the crowd is or isn’t going to be into, but if it goes any better than terrible, I’ll be stoked.
You guys have been around in the punk scene for nearly ten years. Why do you think the indie and alternative rock scene has taken to you so well in recent years?
Right place, right time. There were a lot of people ascending through various media channels to high-up positions or becoming writers that had grown up involved in punk and hardcore. Like out friend Andy Capper, who’s the editor of Vice in the UK. Pitchfork, Spin, NME. We were the beneficiary of all these people getting this power in the music industry. It worked out really well. We were offering something slightly different than people were seeing in the alternative/indie community. Something that is a lot more common outside of it, which is like a band trying to involve the crowd as much as possible in the live show. I think we brought that more to that world. That stuff is a little more common in the punk world.
A couple of years ago, you performed a 12-hour long gig in New York. What made you decide to do that?
It was around the time that we started doing the band full-time. We had the idea of doing a ten-hour show initially. Mike [Haliechuk, guitarist] came up with the idea of treating the band like a day at work. Check in at nine, check out at five and play on some sort of financial district, like we were actually going into work. Then we realised that no one wants to go and see a band play at nine in the morning, so we postponed it to two. Then, it became doing a show from two o’clock in the afternoon until two o’clock in the morning. We came up with getting a bunch of guests up there, so people don’t get bored of seeing our faces. Then we got some liquor companies to give us some money. It just kind of went from there. It became like this crazy party. It was like the craziest Tuesday afternoon party I think there’s ever been.
Have you got any more big stunts planned in the near future?
Who knows? The main thing we do with this band is to keep it interesting for ourselves. We try to make a band that we would be interested in watching from the sidelines, so we think of all these dumb ideas that would be really fun to try and do. We had the idea of doing a show on a boat, but then we realised that everyone does shows on boats. The problem with a show on a boat is that you can’t leave if you get bored, so we’re working on some other ideas. We decided to do a charity fundraising record last year. We were like: “Wouldn’t it be fun to get all of these celebrities to do a cover of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’”. We just kind of went with it and made it happen. If we can make it happen and we think it’s going to be fun or interesting, we’ll do it.
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How would you describe F*cked Up’s sound to someone who hasn’t heard it?
