Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Many Hostage Calm songs have a very social/political vibe to them but a song like “Victory Lap” seems to be a much more personal song.
Why were the ideas presented in this song important for you to touch on?
Well, 6irstly our songs are always personal, and I don’t see being personal and socially conscious as mutually exclusive. In fact, social and political issues
are very personal for us. We may not write each song in the 6irst person, or 6ill it with trite, melodramatic stuff, but if you look at the song closely it’s
always about something deeper that means something important to us. As for “Victory Lap,” it’s basically about the struggle between being far away on
CAP
tour and being home. Touring has its winners and losers for any band. While we’re going around the world having a blast, we miss certain people at home.
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Those people have to go on without us and keep up with the daily grind as we’re away having the time of our life. I felt this was important to touch on
because this struggle between home and away has always played a big role in our lives, and it deserved some space on the record for sure.
Do you ever have trouble taking that leap of faith and opening up yourself and writing about very personal ideas?
No, and I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it’s because the music I’ve always listened to wasn’t afraid to reveal something about itself. I’m not a terribly public
person, and am rather quiet in most social situations. But when it comes to music, I’ve always felt all right saying anything that I feel, without any sort of
reservations.
Growing up in a smaller town like Wallingford, CT do 8ind that the experience you had with music, bands and now with growing up is simi
CHRIS MARTIN
HOSTAGE CALM
lar or different to the experiences of people from much different areas?
De6initely, I think where you grow up shapes you. Luckily I was close to a lot of shows when I was younger. Whether it was Wallingford, Meriden, Cromwell,
or any of a bunch of other central CT towns, shows were ALWAYS happening and they were always readily available. I wonder if I ever would have been
involved with punk music if I had been born somewhere where shows didn’t happen, or in a big city where there would have been other things for me to
get involved with that could have led me down a different path.
What is it that you are missing that “the days have been stealing”?
When I was up at college, I constantly felt like I never got my 6ill of anything. I did the band, and I did some things that I thought were meaningful, but I
never really felt happy. I always felt stressed. I felt like I was giving everything I had to give, and then when I would look for happiness where I expected it, When you sit down to write lyrics what do want to accomplish with your words?
I found something less. The days seemed to be taking everything from me, but not really giving me that much ful6illment. I was giving “the days” so much It’s not always the same. It usually depends on how I feel, how much time I have set aside, etc. But typi
energy and focus, but felt like I wasn’t really getting much in return.
cally, I want to articulate something that is otherwise dif6icult for me to express outside of music.
In “Gaslighting” you talk about “only under the shadow of our 8lag can you be human”. How do you look at being American in a country ripe
With the instrumentation, the lyrics, and the melodies all working together, we have a real oppor
with so much hypocricy? When you look at modern life in America do you feel hopeful or more pessimistic? tunity to express something that I simply cannot convey as powerfully or with such emotional depth
There’s de6initely a great deal of hope, because we will always have the ability to change whatever problems exist (note: there are MANY). I have never with words alone. I want our words to say something, but I want them to make the instrumental
felt unconditionally proud to be an American. The U.S. has had many proud moments (Civil Rights movement, the enormous creativity within the US, music itself say something more as well. Sometimes we write the lyrics 6irst, sometimes last, but we
etc.), but many shameful and often unspoken ones (genocide against the Native Americans, the always want the lyrics and the music to put forward something that articulates and releases
scapegoating of immigrants). I feel that in popular American culture, everyone is so afraid what we constantly feel is bottled up inside of us. And we don’t leave the lyrics as just the
to be ashamed of something America has done. They will “never apologize for America.” solo responsibility of the singer; we involve other members in the process of creating and
The hubris that drives someone to think that like is foreign to me. It’s the same sort revising the lyrics as well.
of pompous attitude we carried with the war in Iraq while we constantly discussed
AMERICAN interests and AMERICAN lives and AMERICAN dollars, instead of the
death toll and interests of the people who we were “liberating.” We get too caught
The song “Rebel Fatigues” seems to address the idea of “cliche revolution”
up with being American and not enough with being human. which disappears quickly while the problems persist. What does that
term “revolution” mean to you?
Hostage Calm as a band does not seem to slide into that hateful, narrow Revolution is de6initely a term that I think gets thrown around in
sighted mindset that can easily come with awareness of all the suffering and the punk scene quite a bit, with little regard for what a
pain in our world. How have you and the rest of the band been able to revolution actually entails. I think that a lot of people
do this? fall in love with the political account of revolutions
We know that we have an opportunity to speak and to change from leaders across the world: suchandsuch
minds, and that’s what drives us forward. We love playing music,
revolution was glorious or what have you. But of
and even though the outside world can be discouraging, we can’t
let that destroy what we can build together. No contribution
ten (if not usually) in a revolution, lots of people
has ever been made to anything of value by just packing it in die. And sadly, they often die for nothing because
and saying it’s not worth trying. We could give up and let the the revolution fails to take power or it just recre
world change us, but we’d rather change the world. ates the same problems as before. The song tried
to portray the revolution through the eyes of a
rural subsistence farmer who sees power change
THINKING CAP is: through multiple revolutions throughout her or
CRUCIAL JOHN his lifetime. This new revolution looks just like the
last, and this poor worker remains helpless as the
STEPHEN ST. GERMAIN country goes through turmoil and the people pay
EV WIVELL the high price of regime change. This is the untold
story of much of the world, and I wanted to tell this
story for millions of powerless people who’ve been
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exploited or died in vain throughout history. I’m
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not saying that all revolutions are bad; there is a
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time when revolution is the only way forward and
DUPLICATION IS ENCOURAGED sometimes it works out well. But so many people
use the term revolution in such a meaningless or
Rich Goenne misunderstood way that I feel overlooks...
...the tragic stories of people who forfeited everything they had for nothing. “Young Professionals” seems to almost be a warning against
Maybe it’s just that we welcome the idea of a revolution because it becomes the complacency that comes with a more comfortable situ
so comfortable to believe that things can just be successfully turned on their ation in life. Is this essentially what you were trying to get
head overnight and we don’t have to really change something about our‐ across?
selves. Warning is probably a good way of putting it. I was neither con
demning nor praising the “young professional” in the song, but just
What inspired the song “Af8idavit”? trying to paint the picture of some twentyfour yearold person des
My family’s separation, divorce and a decade of court battles that drove my perately trying to 6ind success, love and direction. You see people like
family into +inancial hardship and pitted everyone against everyone. I used this coming out of work wearing a suit that 6its on their body, but it
to think that I escaped those times unscathed, and that it only really scarred sort of wears them. They are troubled, just like myself. And I con
other people in my family. But while I was lucky to get through all that as stantly felt like that their reality was creeping up on me. Here I am
well as I did, I’ve recently come to realize how much the divorce distorted at twentytwo, and I’m watching my teenage anxieties collide with
my perception of love and love’s endurance through hard times. My Mom this new, unsure maturity and it’s dif6icult. There’s nothing wrong
and Dad both loved me, more than anything. But I watched them lose control with being a young professional, we just wanted to illustrate the tor
of love as if it were inevitable. They entered with all the best intentions, yet ment of entering your twenties and not knowing how you to feel.
found themselves everywhere they never wanted to be. The song just deals
with how the experience damaged my ability to understand, experience and Can you explain the choice of the title “Whither on the Vine?”
trust in love the way other people appear to. So much human potential—be it creative, economic, ideational,
whatever—lies dormant across the world due to mere circumstance,
When you look at the concept our society has of what it means to be a and this title referenced this enormous human potential that just
man, woman, black, white etc. do you feel there is some way to change withers on the vine, never fully ripening or seeing its full growth. I
this need to de8ine? Is it something on a personal/individual level or wrote that song about a village in Guatemala that had been evacu
more of a governmental/law based one? ated to build a military base. Following the seizure of these people’s
I think we get caught up in trying to narrowly categorize people and make lands, the government then carried out numerous raids and disap
them +it into certain rigid groups. Thankfully the punk/hardcore scene pearances across the countryside. A group I was with had been do
recognizes people as individuals, and through embracing individual creativ‐ ing some renovations to a public library/education center called the
ity, perhaps the punk scene is at work breaking down barriers. I de+initely Centro Explorativo, and it was there that I heard this story. I decided
agree that structural problems exist, and changing laws can potentially help to model this song off of the situation during the Guatemalan Civil
if we’re talking about somewhere where the law favors one “group” over an‐ War, while also keeping it broad so that people could see how it
Take Apart Your Head other (for example, heterosexual marriages over homosexual). But whether related to a lot of places across the world in parallel scenarios. Posi Osbourne
the problem is solved through government or elsewhere, the power starts
Carly Hoskins with you. Genna Howard
What do you want for Hostage Calm as a band?
I want us to write meaningful and innovative material that says all the things
about our lives that we might otherwise struggle to realize or articulate in
any other way outside of music.
In what ways do current events or past events effect or in8luence the
way you write about topics and the topics you address?
They always affect what we write, but rarely do we use one hot button issue
as the sole topic of a certain song. That practice gets very cheesy and worn
out in a hurry. We follow the news and study history in an effort to learn and
understand such a confusing world. Including our ideas on the past, present
and future in our lyrics just re+lects how we currently feel.
You write that the 8irst line of the chorus in “Ballot/Stones” came from
a sign protesting the California proposition to ban gay marriage. Can
you explain what you take away from that statement?
Proposition 8 allowed people the opportunity to vote in af6irmation on some
thing as hateful as the following lines: “Only marriage between a man and a
woman is valid or recognized in California.” That sentence makes me want to
throw up! But this passed the democratic process! I couldn’t believe it. I was
shocked. The movement that sprung up in opposition to gay marriage was so
vile, and took the form of every other notorious anticivil rights group who
now 6ind themselves on the dark pages of history. I think that voting on this
measure, and on other gay marriage bills, has targeted a group and made an
unequivocal statement that certain relationships are inferior and that ALL
people do not have the right to choose. These people voted on a matter that
they had no right to regulate in the 6irst place, and that is whether or not their
neighbors’ love is valid. The whole thing amounts to a stoning of a bunch of
people who should have the same rights as anyone else.