ARAM SPEAKS…

This interview was conducted on Friday July 18th, 2008 between myself and Aram Arslanian in Aram’s car leaving the Vancouver Airport, at the Bo Kong Vegetarian Restaurant, and walking down East Hastings. Aram is best known for playing guitar in Champion and The First Step, and for singing in Betrayed. In addition to this Aram recently got married to his beautiful wife Kim, played in Face Tomorrow and Burden, and works with people with addiction problems in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland.

 

Hoibak: Alright, Vancouver, British Columbia. I just stepped off a plane. Aram Arslanian has just picked me up at the airport where he has a freshly shaven head and an old Mouthpiece shirt on. Aram has played in such monumental bands as The First Step, Champion, Betrayed and a band we’re gonna talk a little bit about, his most famous band, Face Tomorrow. Aram, state your name and what you’re most proud of in life.

Aram: My name is Aram Arslanian and I am most proud of being friends with Erik Hoibak.

Hoibak: Excellent answer Aram. Face Tomorrow, I got that demo around 1999, that’s the first time I ever had contact with you. They weren’t a very good band, they came out of the Rain City of Vancouver, British Columbia. Since every other band you’ve joined, you either haven’t played guitar in or you’ve joined late… have you gotten better at playing guitar over the years? I haven’t been able to tell cause I don’t know who writes the songs.

Aram: I’ve gotten marginally better.

Hoibak: Did you take a lesson… or what happened there?

Aram: You just get better after playing and playing and playing. I still suck though.

Hoibak: 10-4. So The First Step recently broke up. What’s the story with that? Is there ever going to be a last show? What were the reasons behind it? There’s a lot of unanswered questions that I think a lot of people out there want to know.

Aram: Aaron, the other guitar player is a really serious practicing Buddhist and he is going on a three and a half year Buddhist retreat to basically meditate for three years and we were going to break up in August anyways, but then we went on our last European tour and when we were there… it was just hard for Aaron to be in a band because it’s just such different worlds. He’s got this one world that’s all meditating and all this… I don’t know whatever people do, right? … they meditate and they take their inner journeys I guess… and then the other side you’ve got sweaty hardcore kids flying over you and screaming along to your band and I think the contrast between the two was just too much for him and basically at the end of the tour we just felt that we couldn’t go on as a band for the next few months so we decided to call it a day. We’ve talked about playing a last show in August at some point but we don’t want to make a big deal out of it. We might just go and play some show and not really make some huge stink about it. But I also don’t necessarily think that The First Step is over for good. I think that Aaron is going to go on his retreat, and he’ll come back and I wouldn’t be surprised if in three years or four you saw The First Step go and play some shows or whatever. Not just out of nostalgia but because the band didn’t necessarily end because we wanted it to end. It ended because one of the key people is going away.

Hoibak: Interesting, interesting. Aram, you’re also playing in Betrayed right now. I’ve seen that Betrayed’s been playing a couple of shows, you’ve gone over to Japan. Kind of a strange break up when you did break up, no one really knew what was going on there, it was just kind of “oh, ps. this weekend is our last show”… and now it seems like you’re doing it again. What’s up? Is Betrayed back together? Are you just doing these one offs? What’s going on there?

Aram: When we broke up we kind of hit a breaking point between Todd and I. The band started because we really just wanted to be in a band together. We’re really old friends. But, as much as me and Todd can see eye to eye on things we can also see completely different sides of things and we’re both really, really stubborn. I am really into straight edge and being in a straight edge band that tackles issues and ideas. I think hardcore right now is so safe and so placating. I mean look at all these bands, I don’t know what the hell anybody is talking about, like “The World’s So Crazy, I’m Going Insane!” … ok, how many bands have that lyric? It’s just so vapid. So with Betrayed my whole thing was, I don’t just want to write meaningless songs that are just cookie cutter hardcore songs. I want to write real songs that are important to me topically. I think Todd felt kind of uncomfortable about a lot of that stuff. I think that a lot of the lyrics for him were kind of hard to digest. I was trying to get into some bigger stuff, whether or not I did a good job is a completely other thing, but I was definitely trying to capture a little bit more in my lyrics. It’s also really important to me to be in a straight edge band. I really believe in straight edge and what it’s about and also being very vocal about it. In hardcore right now it’s very uncool to be straight edge. It’s very uncool to stand your ground on those kinds of things. Hardcore has this total toe the line kind of attitude right now: don’t stick out, buy your stupid tank top t-shirt or just like buy your dunks or whatever the fuck people are wearing. It’s just so mediocre and just so placating. Nobody x’s up. So many people are straight edge but nobody has the nuts to stand by that or anything else. I just wanted to be in a band where it’s like, yo… I talk between songs, I x up, I talk about straight edge, I talk about topics. And some people loved it and some people hated it. It was hard for Todd because he’s definitely straight edge but he’s not really into that side of things. And that’s cool, I respect that, but we really had a breaking point where I didn’t want to be just some fucking band that did and said all the safe things that everyone did… and then write really good music… but I didn’t want to blend in with everyone just to be safe. So we hit this breaking point where we decided to call it a day. And you know, there was a bit of bad blood for a couple of months, but at same time he was also in my wedding party. Yeah, my wedding, where my good friend Erik Hoibak, the one he didn’t come to, by the way.

Hoibak: I’d like to note that I wasn’t not invited, I had to go home and help my dad move.

Aram: Jerk

Hoibak: Anyways…

Aram: Anyways, so he was still in my wedding party. So there wasn’t necessarily long standing bad blood. And then the idea of doing the band… we just one day we were talking on AIM and I said “hey, do you want to play the Rivalry showcase,” and he said “yeah, that’d be cool.” We did it and it was cool, it was really fun. And then I said “hey, do you want to play another show?”… and we did and it was cool. And then I said “hey, do you want to go and play Japan?” and we did it and that was cool too. So, I don’t know what’s going to happen, we may still do more shows, we might record another record, we might not. It’s kind of up in the air. And, I actually dig that. The last 10 years of my life has been all about bands and when we’re going on tour, and when we’re recording. It’s kind of neat to be in a band right now and just have no idea what’s happening. It’s interesting.

Hoibak: You spend a lot of time working with people with issues with drugs and alcohol. Can you tell us a little bit about that, for those that don’t know.

Aram: For five years I did drug and alcohol counselling in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. Basically I worked with teens, families and adults. I would work with people with their addictions, do some family counselling. I did a lot of prevention work so I’d go to schools and talk to students. I would work with communities and really try to change the idea of addiction and drug addiction. It’s weird because there’s this whole idea that… drugs and drug addiction are obviously horrible things… but there’s this idea, and this ties into the whole straight edge thing… you see, our culture really pushes drinking and doing drugs, and absolutely doing drugs. People might say that popular culture doesn’t push people to do drugs but it absolutely does. There’s this whole culture pushing you to party. When you’re an adult what you do is party… and in college… drinking is what you do to relax. The idea of drugs and alcohol and smoking being intimately tied to recreation and relaxation is absolutely what corporations have strived to do. But then there’s this other side of it where if someone becomes an addict, it’s like they’re weak for becoming addicted, people shy away from them. I think it’s so ridiculous, because it’s almost like “oh you couldn’t hold your drink” or “oh, you couldn’t walk the line.” This is so fucking stupid. The majority of this is all the agenda of corporations who we’re just fucking puppets to. And when I think of straight edge… I think, man, how can this not be any more obvious to people? Look at what’s going on, you are completely being sold the idea that recreation is all about getting wasted, and then I see all these hardcore kids who are saying “I mean I’m straight edge but, uhhh… I don’t think it’s a big deal.” What do you mean it’s not a big fucking deal? It’s a huge deal. It’s THE deal. Straight edge, vegetarianism, veganism are three of the most important ideas that anyone can get out of hardcore… and right now they are three of the most neglected ideas. Anyways, back to the counselling though… I would go out and do this education stuff, and it would be so fucking cool. I would be up in front of sometimes 10 people, and sometimes 800 people and do a lot of lectures and a lot of workshops about drugs and alcohol within the community; about the idea of addiction within the community; and really trying to break the idea of the addict as somebody who just could handle it, or “that guy couldn’t handle it, well he’s on the outskirts,” or it seems like it’s just another pity story like “oh, I hope that guy makes it through”. Fuck that, if someone is an addict, you work with them, you embrace them, you help them. And not unconditionally in a stupid way but in a very smart, well thought out way where you show people unconditional love in support and compassion. Not this fucking bullshit hard love, like you see on that stupid fucking tv show Intervention. After that… I did that for five years, and for the past year I have worked on a project that provides housing for people with concurrent disorders, which are people that have a mental illness and also a drug addiction. I have been doing that, I helped get this project up and running, and recently I left that because it just stopped being fulfilling to me. I am going to go back to counselling soon, I want to start doing counselling again. That’s what I’m doing. Drugs and alcohol suck.

Hoibak: Champion was probably your biggest band, arguably maybe even the biggest straight edge band of the last decade. Towards the end of Champion, you had a number of offers from a number of larger labels. I believe, did you actually sign with Equal Vision towards the end?

Aram: No, well… yes, we did, yes

Hoibak: Victory Records seemed quite interested. What was your experience in dealing with Victory Records? Do you have any interesting stories of your dealings with Tony Victory?

Aram: As a sidebar, Clint who works at Victory is a very good friend of Champion and is a very good friend to all of us. He does Organized Crime Records and is an awesome guy. It was him that really encouraged us to meet with Victory Records. We met with them kind of out of a courtesy to Clint and also to Victory because they were very nice, but it was never something that we were seriously considering. I definitely want to get that out there. Second thing, I was the guy in Champion that did all the business stuff, and I’d been in that band for a long time and I pretty much thought that I had everything wired… like I knew how to deal with people well and I could go into situations and manage myself. Tony Victory definitely took me and made me his bitch instantly. I have never walked into a room and had someone just steam roll me so fucking fast. We show up, he keeps us waiting for 20 minutes in a waiting room that has a treadmill and crazy press clippings of Victory Records all over the place. And then after 20 minutes we get ushered into his office which is all red brick. He’s sitting behind this giant oak desk, wearing a pink Fred Perry with the collar open and the collar popped. And true to his logo, the guy looks like a little bull dog. He had a crushing hand shake and we all sat down and he just proceeded to yell at us for an hour and tell us exactly what was going to happen with our lives. He at one point asked what we all did, and when one of our members said he worked at a gas station, he said “that’s just fucking depressing.” Actually, he didn’t swear, because Tony Victory refuses to swear. He doesn’t call people assholes or anything, he refers to everyone as turkeys. He made a lot of comparisons to physical fitness and music and killing people. He talked a lot about killing people and in regards to records sales. At one point he actually said to me “you could have a guy, top physical shape, 2% body fat, he could run 6 hours straight if he wanted, this guy could be a machine, and you could give him a gun, ya know, you could give him a pretty good gun. But then you could have some fat guy, out of shape, ya know, he’s just lazy… but ya know, if you give that fat guy the good gun… and you give the guy that’s in really great shape the shitty gun… if you give the guy who’s in really good shape 2 bullets, but you give the fat guy the best gun with endless bullets… than he’s gonna kill the guy that’s in good shape.” And then he leaned back and said “Victory Records has the biggest guns, and I’m holding all the bullets. Pull the trigger.” And that really happened… he paused and said “Pull the trigger.” And I was so horrified at that moment. I was so horrified I didn’t know what to say, and I looked over and everyone else in Champion was looking me like “please god help us.” It was terrible but at the same time it was also an interesting experience. Tony was very gracious and very polite to us. And then they let us go into the warehouse and let us grab a bunch of t-shirts and records and cds. They were really cool. It was very nice, but it just wasn’t right for Champion.

Hoibak: Betrayed had the opportunity to tour Europe with Fearless Vampire Killers, which was John Joseph of the Cro-Mags with a few other members playing Cro-Mags and a couple Bad Brains songs. What was that like? Did anything interesting happen on that tour?

Aram: The tour was really cool. When Betrayed went over there nobody had ever heard of us, but by the end of the tour there were 20 to 30 kids following us from show to show. It was crazy. One of the coolest tours I’ve ever been on. FVK were very cool specifically AJ and Scott. Scott that was in Biohazard, and AJ who was in Leeway. Those two guys are the best dudes. Mackie was very cool. Mackie is a straight adult, he’s a grown man, so he didn’t necessarily pal around all the time but he was definitely very cool. John Joseph was definitely cool. He’s a definite trip, alot of fun to be around. I have a lot of respect for John Joseph, especially his stance of Vegetarianism and how he’s really open about it. Again, I think the majority of people in hardcore are just towing the line and everyone wants to be safe because everyone wants their band to be popular, like “oh please, worship our band, and we want to play all the fests and we want everyone to buy our fucking records.” Nobody says anything anymore. And John Joseph at least has the nut sack to say stuff and I respect that. I also respect his ability to steal underwear. So there was this roadie on that tour and he went off and did everybody’s laundry, he was kind of John’s assistant I guess. He came back and he had done a bunch of my laundry, and he had done a bunch of our guitarist Sean Spear… he was filling in for Todd Jones, Sean used to play in a band of Burden… he had done a bunch of Sean’s laundry too. Sean’s laundry consisted of a pair of jeans, a pair of socks, and all of his underwear. So when the roadie came back, he brought the laundry, which came back sopping fucking wet. I was going through the bag, and I pulled out all of my stuff, and I pulled out all of Sean’s stuff and put it on the table of the bus. The rest of the stuff I was hanging up to dry. John Joseph comes on the bus and gets his laundry and starts yelling “What the fuck?! My laundry’s fucking soaking wet!? What the fuck happened?!” and then that proceeds to “What the fuck?! All my socks are gone! Motherfucker!? What the fuck?!” and he’s just screaming at this dude in front of me and I’m just mortified beyond belief. And that proceeds to “Where the fuck is all of my underwear?! You lost my fucking underwear!” And then there’s this really uncomfortable silence and he’s just standing face to face with this dude that he’s been screaming at. He then looks down and says “oh, there’s my underwear.” And the pile he was looking at was Sean Spears’ pile. He reaches down to grab all the underwear and I say “Wait a second, John, that’s Sean’s underwear.” He says, “Naw, that’s my underwear.” And I say, “No, John, I’m pretty sure that that’s Sean’s underwear.” “Naw, that’s my underwear.” “John, I know that’s Sean’s underwear.” And then John Joseph, singer of the Cro Mags, gigantic dude, says extremely firmly to me “NO, that’s my underwear,” re1aches past me with his gigantic man arms and just takes all of Sean’s sopping wet underwear. So, just as that happens and he walks away, Sean walks on the bus and says “Oh awesome! The laundry’s done!” I didn’t know what to say because, not only is Sean one of my best friends, and also the guitar player, Sean is also my boss at work. So Sean walks in, starts looking for his underwear and finally, after a minute or so says “Where’s my underwear?” And out I blurt “John Joseph stole all your underwear! I don’t think he’s giving it back!” So Sean, who’s gotten along quite well with John went over and said “Hey, John, uhh, I think you have my underwear.” “Naw, I got my underwear.” So Sean sees that he’s kind of getting a bulldog front so he tries to give him some reasoning. Sean’s a really skinny little guy, and John’s a really built big dude. So Sean says “Well John, this will settle it, obviously we wear different sizes of underwear, because I’m so much smaller than you. I wear small and you obviously wear mediums and those are smalls.” John thinks about it for all of 5 seconds, leans forward and says “I wear both small AND medium, and these are MY underwear.” John, obviously keeping the underwear… Sean comes back and says “I think I have to buy new underwear.” So the next day we’re all out, drinking espresso. We’re talking to Mackie and we tell him the story about how John took Sean’s underwear. Mackie looks at us, than looks away and gets this kind of faraway look in his eyes and looks back and the only thing he says is “That’s some jail shit right there.” And that was the end. Sean never got back his underwear and somewhere in Brooklyn John Joseph is probably walking around with some tight ass Calvin Klein underwear right now. I’d also like to point out that John Joseph was definitely very cool on the tour. He was a cool guy. He’s a lot of dude to get used to but he is a cool dude.

Hoibak: Towards the end of Champion, you had the opportunity to tour with Agnostic Front. How was that? Any interesting stories you’d like to tell us about that tour?

Aram: Agnostic Front and 7 Seconds were definitely the two coolest older bands that we ever toured with. They were so nice, so accommodating, so genuine. Agnostic Front were honestly the coolest people I’ve ever had the opportunity to tour with. The most legitimate hardcore dudes. There so many stories, because a tour with AF is everything you’d expect it to be. Just the sketchiest human beings that have ever existed crawled out from whatever rock they were under to come out to a lot of these shows and that made it so cool. There was one classic time when we were playing Toronto actually. We were back stage kind of before the show started and the late afternoon sun is kind of streaming through the windows and we were all sitting around and Roger Miret was drinking white wine out of a plastic glass and was just telling us stories about the old New York days. He told us this one story about this time where they got in this huge brawl and beat the hell out of these dudes, and just basically told us the most ill story and at the end of the story he said, with this far away look in his eyes after telling us that that they had basically beaten the shit out of dozens of people and threatened their lives, and he get this far away look in his eyes, and he’s looking out the window into the afternoon sun, holding his plastic glass full of white wine, and gets this really far away look, and then turns his head back and looks me right in the eye and goes “That’s when we ran the streets of New York City.” And every one of us was “Oh my god!” freaking out. Those dudes were so next level I can’t even put it. I’ve never seen so much crazy shit as I saw on that tour. And I’ve been on some crazy tours and I’ve done some crazy stuff, and I’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff on tour with Champion, but that was probably the Zenith of the most intense, crazy stuff I’ve ever seen. And of course my boy Erik Hoibak became Vinnie Stigma’s favourite Canadian in Cleveland.

Hoibak: Hey, that same night that that happened in Cleveland, weren’t you sleeping on a hardwood floor?

Aram: So, here’s one of those moments of regret. You hit a crossroads and sometimes you make the wrong choice. After the show in Cleveland Agnostic Front were like “Yo! We’re going to go to an 80’s dance club, do you guys wanna come?” Now years later, now that I’m in my right mind, I haven’t been on tour for months, if Agnostic Front asked me to go to an 80’s dance party, it’s not even a question that I would go. Back then, we’d been on tour for months and months and months, we were tired, and these people that we sort of knew were just like, “hey, why don’t you just come to our house and sleep?” So we’re getting ready to leave and our roadie Erik Hoibak is like “Are you crazy? We’re going to go to an 80s dance club with Agnostic Front.” And the rest of Champion were like “No… we gotta get up early, we gotta go back to this house and get a good night’s sleep”, that was our whole thing, we’ve gotta get a ‘good night’s sleep,’ we’re going to a house so there’s going to be lots of places to sleep. So Erik goes and is involved in one of the craziest, most hilarious stories ever. And we show up at this dude’s house who has one piece of furniture, a table. No chairs, no couches, nothing, not even carpet and all hardwood floors. And he’s like “AHH, WE’RE HOME, HERE YOU GUYS GO!” And we’re like “Dude, where are we gonna sleep?” and he’s like “ON THE FLOOR!” … As if the dude has just taken us into a house full of waterbeds or something, he’s so happy about it… “HERE YOU GO!” It was horrible and the whole time I’m trying to sleep this guy’s fir hardwood floor I’m thinking “What the hell is Hoibak up to?” … And of course he was involved in the craziest brawl that night with like AF and Death Before Dishonour and weird disco punks from Cleveland. So that was really uncool for us.

Hoibak: And I’d just like to not that I stayed in a hotel room that night

Aram: Do you think it’s funny to smash a bottle of iced tea and then to deny it later?

Hoibak: It was a jar of jam. I don’t see why a jar of jam makes me sound better or something. I mean, what the hell was I doing with a jar of jam. At least a bottle of iced tea is a normal thing to walk around with. You buy it in a store, you drink it, it’s in your hand. Who has a jar of jam that they walk around with?

Aram: A guy on tour. A guy on tour does.

Hoibak: Touche

Aram: I have a question of you. Do you remember coming on tour with us. So you’re like “yeah, I’m gonna come on tour with you for a month and a half,” and then you hurt yourself like two days in, moshing to the Eliminator and then couldn’t do anything for the rest of the tour but hang out and make observations? Couldn’t lift anything, couldn’t do anything, you were there solely to provide atmosphere… all for moshing… to the elimator.

Hoibak: The Eliminator is a hard song, umm… if you’ve ever heard the Eliminator played in Detroit, with H8 Inc opening the show… playing Cold As Life songs… the Jeff Gunnels H8 Inc line up I might add… I would say it was well worth it… well worth it. I did actually lift a bunch of stuff after that. It was very painful but I did it for the team.

Hoibak: If you could be in one hardcore band, based on what that band stood for, the band’s music, the era they were from, what they did, what they were all about… what band would you be in?

Aram: Minor Threat, hands down, not even a question. Minor Threat, and if I had a second choice it’d be Youth of Today… obviously I couldn’t be in Bad Brains… I’m not black.

Hoibak: Hey, Mackie and JJ were in Bad Brains

Aram: Yeah but those dudes are ill… I’m from Calgary!

Hoibak: Olympics are coming up in Vancouver. There’s definitely a lot of controversy about Native land claims in Vancouver and the rest of British Columbia. How do you feel about some Native groups saying that they are going to hold protests during the games and use the Olympics to get their message across?

Aram: I think that’s amazing. I mean, fuck the Olympics, I don’t give two shits about the Olympics. I mean, look at what’s happening in China right now. I’m so disgusted that our government, and the American government and all the other governments worldwide are saying “oh yeah, there’s a bunch of ill shit that’s going on but hey, it’s the Olympics.” You fucking idiots, it’s just like human rights are just a sidebar now, not just now but it always has been, it’s just more obvious now. Human rights and human interests, not even human, I’ll say all living beings on this planet, their interests are completely a sidebar to corporate needs. The Olympics has nothing to do with athleticism and people are like “oh, you gotta support our athletes.” They have nothing to do with it, they’re just the fucking entertainment for the commercials that go on in between, to keep you watching, and to keep you spending money. So fuck the Olympics, fuck organized sports, I don’t give a shit about any of that stuff. If any political group can use them to grab some attention then good for them.

Hoibak: Closing remarks

Aram: Straight edge, veganism, political action, hardcore.