Today we kick off the week with the conclusion of our two-part interview with Justin Sane from the political punk rock band Anti-Flag.  The final chapter delivers the sizzle with a deep-dive into the political topics of the day, the disappointments of the Obama administration and the scoop on a previously unannounced EP in reaction to Proposition 8 that will be coming out this summer on Fat Wreck Chords.

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Dream Not Of Today: Chris #2 also mentioned on the blog this week releasing The People or the Gun made him so nervous he was sick to his stomach.  Was that an anxiety you shared on this record?  Were you close to blowing chunks on Tuesday?

Justin Sane: No, no, no.  Not at all.

(d)N0t: Really?

JS: Number Two has really taken this to the heart, you know.  I have no idea why, I don’t get it.  I thought it was a great record; I was really excited about it.  I thought people would like it.  And if they didn’t, in the end pretty much the one kind of mantra is, “Just do what makes you happy.”  And I would’ve been happy with this record.

The one thing I’ve learned over the years is you can’t please everybody.  You just have to write what inspires you.  You have to put out there what inspires you and what comes from the heart.  It sounds cheesy, but it really is true.  So, I was excited about the record, and if people didn’t like it, of course it’s a bumout.  I mean, you hope that people will feel something from what you release and that they’ll connect to it in some way.  It’s always really exciting when you can connect to people in that way.

On the other hand, I was really excited about the record coming out.  I was kinda like, ready to go.  Like we’ve been playing some of the songs live and I love playing songs live.  So, I was more of the ilk of like, “Let’s get that fucker out there and let’s rock, man.  Let’s do it.”

(d)N0t: Were you anxious at your recent Hoodwink appearance where you guys did a set of Clash covers?

JS: Yeah!  I actually was more nervous about that, for sure.

(d)N0t: Really?

JS: For a lot of reasons.  I mean, one being anytime you do a really famous band’s songs it’s… I don’t know man, it’s a little spooky.  I mean, it’s a pretty hard billing to live up to.  It’s sort of like remaking a classic movie, you know?  Why mess with perfection you know? [laughs]

So that’s a little scary.  The other thing about it too is I figured that the Hoodwink audience would be kind of young and I wasn’t really sure that they were gonna know The Clash.  So, I wasn’t sure how the audience was gonna react to us doing those songs.

In the end, it turned out really great – it was a lot of fun.  Now we’ve kind of incorporated a lot of the songs from the Clash set into our set, so like towards the end of our set or in the middle of our set we’ll just kick in six straight Clash songs.  For us, it’s a lot of fun cause those are the songs we grew up listening to and songs that were really inspirational to us.  For me, they were inspirational as far as like, marrying politics and activism and music  together, but also just inspirational to me as music.  Music that just made me feel alive.

(d)N0t:  A couple question about the process of making The People or the Gun.  Would you consider this record your first post-Bush record?  Or do you feel it has one foot in the past administration and one foot in the current one?

JS: [laughs] That’s a great question.  Um, I would say it has half of a foot in the past administration and one and a half feet in the present.  Because there is kind of a send-off to the Bush White House and the Bush years.

(d)N0t: With “The Old Guard” as an obvious song for that.

JS: Right, right. [laughs]  For sure.  It was kind of… “Finally.  It’s finally here.  Thank God!  I’ve been waiting for this for a really long time.”  It felt so good writing that song.  I sang the chorus on that song  like four times; there’s like four of me on that chorus.  I think it was just because it felt so good to sing.  I was just like, “Alright!  I’m feeling this.  I’m gonna lay it down one more time.”

But of course with Anti-Flag we do quite often try to use the band to talk about relevant issues and what’s going on with our world and make a statement about what we’re seeing that reminds us we’re alive.  With songs like “The Economy Is Suffering,” I think as much as that is a stab at Wall Street and CEOs and corporate bankers, it’s also a dig at the current administration.

I think it’s funny, because I’ll listen to talk radio and all these right wing radio hosts are like, “Oh! Barack Obama! He’s gonna nationalize the banks!”

(d)N0t: “Socialism! zOMG!”

JS:  Yeah, right!  “Socialism! Ahhhhh!”  Well you know Barack Obama has been the best friend of the banks since before he was elected. He has supported the bailout of the banks and the insurance companies and the Wall Street firms.  I think that Barack Obama is a step in the right direction and I’m very thankful that Obama beat McCain, but Barack Obama is not the answer.

You know, that’s what the song “We Are The One” is about.  It’s funny, because it was inspired by June Jordan and this poem that was actually read during some of the celebrations of the Obama inaugural.  But what the song is actually saying is Barack Obama is not our savior.  It’s not going to be a pope or a president or a prime minister that’s gonna save us.  It’s the people who are gonna save themselves.

Barack Obama is in a position of power because the people actually put him there.  And that was our choice.  And now it’s up to us to pressure Barack Obama to do the right thing when it comes to health care and gay rights and the environment and the list goes on and on.  I think Obama’s a good start but certainly the record is… We’re not afraid to take shots at Obama, because there is reason to.

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To bookend your weekend we submit a two-part interview feature with Justin Sane from Pittsburgh’s own Anti-Flag.  The high energy, highly political quartet released their ninth studio full-length this week titled The People or the Gun. A political punk rocker for sixteen years on the scene, Sane logged on with (d)N0t in Part One to make some confessions about the major label experience at RCA, rap about the band’s new one-record-a-year clip and reveal Michael Moore’s role in Anti-Flag’s raid on the corporate machine.

Audio is available on The Gonzo Podcast and after the jump.

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(d)N0t: Alright, been a busy week for you guys, and yet you still squeezed in a collaboration last night with Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello and The Coup’s Boots Riley superduo Street Sweeper Social Club.  How did it go?

JS: It has been a real busy week, so busy in fact I was not involved in that.  But the other guys were; the rest of the guys were all out there and were able to make the show.  It went really great.  Apparently the band is really cool and they had a great time.  They said it was cool to be a part of that.

(d)N0t: Now you guys have been tight with Tom Morello for a while right?

JS: Mmm hmm.

(d)N0t: Did you guys first bond at the riots last year of the Republican National Convention?

JS: Oh no, we’ve known Tom for a lot of years.  We first bonded I think in 1999, during The Battle of Los Angeles tour.  Tom got a hold of an Anti-Flag record and they somehow tracked us down.  We ended up playing with Rage Against The Machine on that tour; we opened up for them for a couple weeks of that tour.  So it was really cool – that was our first encounter with Tom.

And we just stayed friends over the years.  We’ve had a lot of musical collaborations over the years.  And then we met Boots about a year or two ago.  Actually both Boots and Tom are in our “Bright Lights of America” video.  Tom puts in a cameo as the Teen USA Roller Derby coach.  And Boots Riley plays his assistant.  They both look really funny; it’s a funny video.

(d)N0t: Did Tom have to do a lot of research to accurately depict that role?

JS: Oh man. [laughs] Tom’s got plenty of spunk and fire.  He just laid it down, he just went for it.  It was very funny.

(d)N0t: Right on.  Let’s talk about the new record, The People or the Gun.  It’s released on SideOneDummy.  Certainly not a departure for the band musically, but definitely a departure in terms of the band’s business.  Are you stoked to be back at an indie label?

JS: Oh yeah, for sure.  I think at the time we found RCA, that was a really interesting time for us and I think for the world.  At that time there weren’t any bands in the mainstream that really were taking a direct stance against the George Bush White House.  We saw this incredible void in the mainstream as far as people who were willing to take on what the Bush administration was doing.

Green Day’s American Idiot record still hadn’t come out.  Bruce Springsteen  still hadn’t said anything.  Neil Young still hadn’t said anything.  We just had this opportunity all of the sudden to work with a label that we felt was a really big bold one and maybe to be that voice.  We felt like somebody needed to pick up the slack.

I think that was the number one driver in our minds to make that move.  Not long we signed with them, Green Day’s American Idiot record came out and it kind of stole our thunder.  And that said, it’s fine.  I’m really glad that Green Day were able to do that; I applaud them for stepping up.  But, when we did the deal, in our minds it was always a short term thing.  We fought and worked really hard to make sure it was only a two record deal.  We didn’t see ourselves being there for the rest of our lives.  That wasn’t a place we neceessarily wanted to call home forever.

The guys at SideOne we’ve known for years, probably ten years.  We’ve toured with a band on SideOneDummy now for probably our last five or six US tours, so our relationship with SideOneDummy has only grown and grown.  By the time came around that we were getting ready to record, we pretty much knew that’s where we wanted to go.  It didn’t take much discussion between us and the label.

(d)N0t: How do you look back on your major label experience?  You’re one of many bands from the punk rock scene that have taken the plunge to a major label.  A lot of people have conflicted feelings about it.  Obviously, Less Than Jake’s time on Warner Bros. was not spectacular.  Alkaline Trio recently announced  that they’re Epic so they can make punk rock records again.

JS: [laughs]

(d)N0t: Do you share that trepidation about that time?  Did you enjoy your time at RCA?

JS:  Well, amazingly enough, we actually had a really positive experience overall on RCA.  You know, we went into it with our eyes wide open; we knew what we were getting into.  I think in the end, we went into the devil’s den, we stole his pot of gold and we got the hell out of there. [laughs]  That was kind of the plan.

It was the plan in that we really believed in the idea that we would be able to use the resources of the major label to our advantage and to further the agenda that was important to us.  And one of the people who really highlighted that idea to me was Tom Morello.  Because of course we talk to Tom about all these things before we did them.  Another person I happened to talk to around the time we were thinking about working with a major was Michael Moore.

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