Interview with Timmy Pain, of Pain!
By Jeff Orrence
Last Friday I got an interview with Timmy Pain, to talk about the local music scene, performing, and the future of punk rock. Here’s what he had to say:
J: Tell me about the local music scene.
TP: It’s got too many cliques. Too many people are cliquey. I do believe there’s a lot of good people, and a lot of bands trying to help each other. The problem is, it’s too cliquey. We need to expand
We need to accept people that aren’t necessarily our style, or our type of music, this that and the other where we are sandboxing ourselves by playing with just the same bands, and doing just the same things, when we can go out and play with other rock bands or hardcore bands or metal bands. Or metal bands playing with rock bands.
Like I said, two years ago we played with Black Veil Brides and it was a packed place. We got shit for doing it because we are a punk band and they’re not. I’ll be honest we played with a band before that was supposed to be one of the biggest old school punk bands ever, and they were more assholes. Actually, Black Veil Brides was appreciative, and nice to us.
They were like, ‘Dude it’s so cool to have a real punk band on the bill’, and their fans freakin’ loved us. It grew our fanbase. So, unless punk rock goes out, and goes to other bands and plays in different places and places we don’t normally play, we are killing our own genre. We aren’t spreading punk rock, and people don’t get to hear it.
There are a lot of boys and girls, kids that don’t know what Bad Religion is, Face to Face, or Alkaline Trio, because they’ve never had anyone stick it in their face. When you play with a band like Black Veil Brides or Mushroom head (etc) you are putting it in their face. If you’re good, and you’re fun, the kids will grasp onto it and then they’ll start looking. I had the parents of the kids who came out write me saying things like, ‘Oh this is so cool, now my kids are checking out the misfits’, and old stuff like that.
Imagine how many kids saw a horror punk band like PAIN, and we aren’t 100% punk rock, we do have a lot of metal in us, some of the new style to us, but at our core we are a punk rock band. We’re just fun, and that’s what you want to be. There’s a lot of good (local) punk rock bands out there, Sonic Creeps, Last Call Hooligans, that are willing to play with bands other than punk rock. That’s what is going to keep punk rock alive, not playing with your little clique because you’re too cool to play for, you know, Three Doors Down or some shit like that, you know? I don’t give a crap. There’s a lot of rock and roll bands on the radio, and their fans just don’t know what good music is. When you show it to them, like we played with Sevendust, 9 Point and Taproot, those kinds of bands. Their fans loved us because we were different.
And that’s the thing, a lot of these bands should go and do that. Play with these other radio rock bands to get the exposure, but also to get punk rock out there. Anybody who says that’s a sellout is fucking stupid, because Rancid is on the radio right now, I guarantee you, and every punk rocker in the area has got a Rancid patch on their butt, so, I’m just saying, we need to get it out there, and we need to stop being worried about what someone is going to say about how cool or uncool it looks. In the end, it’s not about how cool or uncool you are.
It’s about how much fun you’re having!-
Glory In Sound 