BEN WEASEL

photo: @walk.into.the.light

BEN WEASEL

How has the Twitch channel experience been so far, and what could prospective subscribers expect from a live broadcast? You don’t need to subscribe in order to watch and participate, although I appreciate it. It’s been good so far. The people in the chat room pretty much decide what we’re going to discuss. I start out with my own ideas but the viewers determine where it goes from there. Is recorded music worth doing anymore for you? Not really. We’ve finally reached the point that MaximumRockNRoll always dreamed about, where music is worth nothing. The result is that’s exactly the value people place on it, not just financially but in every other way, too. It just doesn’t seem to matter much anymore. Do you still feel a strong connection to the style of music that you pioneered, or has its relevance waned in your view? I don’t know if it was ever relevant, really. Its irrelevance was a big part of its charm. As a genre it was never great. It was always prone to generic takes, so even in the early 90s there were a lot more crappy pop-punk bands than good ones. It’s harder to do something compelling within limited parameters than most aspiring songwriters realize. That said, mainstream pop-punk has a lot going for it. The songwriting, arrangements and production tend to be much better than with the underground bands. But where the mainstream bands fall short is in the lack of spontaneity and sense of urgency, which is the price you pay for setting everything to a click track and looping instruments through computers on stage. So even the best examples in the genre don’t grab me in the way that the great rock and roll and punk bands of the past did. Do you get the same level of enjoyment from songwriting now that the prospects for recording and releasing music have become so restrictive? I don’t know if it’s the same but I get a kick out of it. I pat myself on the back and buy myself a drink when I come up with something good. I’m happy enough with my retarded little home demos. Do you sense that there’s still a place for punk rock with today’s generation of teenagers? Sure, but to me, punk was just rock and roll at a time when rock and roll had one foot in the grave. Teenagers will always get together in the garage with drums and guitars and make noise. It’s cyclical. It springs up seemingly out of nowhere, runs its course pretty quick, and leaves behind die-hards, losers and people like me who don’t have any other job prospects. Then it starts over again. That’s rock and roll. As a father, do you feel like you understand the experience of being young today through the lens of your children’s experiences? Absolutely not, nor do I wish to. Do your interactions on the Twitch channel provide you a sense of community among those who admire your work? I’m not sure. So far people are decent to each other and don’t act the fool. But it’s the Internet so it’s only a matter of time before war breaks out. For me it’s about connecting with the superfans, which right now is, as far as I can tell, the entire viewership. Those people are the ones that keep me in business so I want to know what they think and I want to give them something unique via the stream that other bands don’t offer. Are you largely unimpressed by the bands that have been directly and obviously influenced by your songwriting? That’s a fair assessment.