“So much of the dominant mainstream society at that point was so odious that it felt like a desperate need to find a place that was different and alternative.” —Josh MacPhee 

Greg Mihalko interviews Josh MacPhee, co-founder of Interference Archive, about his collection of hardcore punk flyers and ephemera.  

Music includes: "Guilty" by Spewing Cum and "While You're Waiting for the Revolution" by Action Will Be Taken, courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

Produced by Interference Archive.

Audio Interference 01: Josh MacPhee

if a song could be freedom mixtape 013 A Brave New World is a Post Punk, Industrial music, and youth movements in Europe, East and West, during the late 1970s and early 80s, curated by Jamie Chaoten. Jamie has been a supporter of Interference Archive since the beginning, and was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. He is an experimental filmmaker, teacher, and musician. Playing in the anarchist dark wave band Rosa Apátrida, he currently lives in Europe.

if a song could be freedom mixtape 014- A Brave New World

“I knew there was this punk rock stuff, I didn’t know anything about it, I just went to a show, and it was like, this is really weird and I kinda like it.” —Dread Scott

Dread Scott, artist and friend of Interference Archive, speaks with Vero Ordaz about his art, life, and connections to the Chicago punk scene--including memories prompted by his recent donation of posters to the archive.  Image: Burning the US Constitution, documentation of a 2011 performance by Dread Scott (www.dreadscott.net).  Music: "Sick of You" by the Britemores, performed live on WFMU's Three Chord Monte with Joe Belock.

Produced by Interference Archive.

Audio Interference 04: Dread Scott

Doom and Gloom: Prog-Metal Playlist, by Paul Messersmith-Glavin

I grew up in a working class neighborhood in Chicago, predominantly Catholic, with Irish, German, Polish, Puerto Rican and Asian folks. For us boys, our form of rebellion was growing our hair and listening to metal and progressive rock (prog rock).  Our embrace of metal expressed our anger, pain and defiance, while prog rock, bands like Yes and Genesis, captured our highest aspirations, representing the utopian amidst the decay and concrete grey of our existence.  I didn’t meet kids into punk or New Wave until I meet people from the suburbs, and got into punk and industrial after high school when I started working at the underground radio station WZRD, The Wizard.
This playlist includes both familiar, classic rock bands, like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, as well as newer bands like The Sword and Witchcraft.  An encouraging recent development is women fronting or playing key roles in metal bands, including bands like Windhand, Electric Citizen, and Eight Bells.  Chicago’s Mount Salem represents this here.
Metal and Prog rock continue to be my go to musical choices.  Metal is currently enjoying an innovative revival, with bands like YOB leading the way. Enjoy!

if a song could be freedom mixtape 015- Doom, Gloom and Hope

"We were still coming off the afterglow, in many ways, of May '68.  There's no question about that." - Greg Sholette.

In this episode, artist, writer, and activist Greg Sholette relates the history of the political art collective PAD/D, and how the collective used art to resist gentrification in 1980s New York.  Sholette was interviewed by Louise Barry and Eric Triantafillou in March.  

Produced by Interference Archive.

Music: "Bruises," "No One's Trophy," and "Asleep," by Christian Flanders, courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

Audio Interference 16: Greg Sholette

Donald Trump’s presidency is predicated nearly entirely on the negation of a black president. and the constituencies he has activated are not going away.

The First White President - The Atlantic - Ta-Nehisi Coates

Military Dissent - Mixtape 017 was put together and produced by Kevin Basl, a writer and musician living near Ithaca, NY. He is a member of About Face (formerly Iraq Veterans Against the War) and Veterans for Peace.

The music on this mixtape was inspired
by those antiwar dissenters who know the inner-workings of the U.S.
military best. Most of the songs were written and/or performed by
veterans or service members. Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Iraq
Veterans Against the War (now "About Face") and the G.I.
resistance movements of the past half-century produced the
countercultures from which this music emerged. Not surprisingly, most
can be categorized as punk, folk, blues or rap--the music of the
People--with lyrical content ranging from remorseful warnings to
potential enlistees, to
revolutionary convictions, to gallows humor. This mixtape also
includes clips from interviews, public testimonies, street actions
and other media, providing context for the songs. This is just a
sampling of a well-stocked, but under-appreciated, subgenre of
antiwar music.

if a song could be freedom 

Military Dissent

“I remember walking home from that huge protest and feeling this sense of huge hope in the air...And it was just really exciting and it felt like things actually could change.”  --Becca Shaw Glazer

In this episode, we speak with activists who participated in protests against the World Trade Organization in the 1990s and 2000s. The 1999 Seattle protest against the WTO is often seen as the beginning of a worldwide anti-globalization movement and the Indymedia movement.  About 40,000 people took to the streets to express their dissent, and protestors successfully blocked delegates from entering the convention center, delaying the meeting. The protests became known as “The Battle of Seattle” because of the police violence that ensued in response.  We focus on the protests that took place in Seattle, and then share an interview with someone who participated in WTO protests in Cancun, one of the protests that took place globally as a result.  

A huge thank you to our interviewees for speaking with us for this episode: Becca Shaw Glaser, Danielle Chynoweth, Mark Enslin, and Celeste.  Many of these people were involved in founding the Independent Media Center in Urbana, IL and the radio station WRFU, and became connected to Interference Archive when they began airing episodes of this podcast.  

Archival materials used in this episode include:
Democracy Now, 12.2.1999 Broadcast, Drum Circle from WTO Protest in Seattle and interviews with activists
Democracy Now, 12.3.1999 Broadcast, Activists chanting and interviews with activists
Democracy Now, 12.6.1999 Broadcast, WTO Talks Collapse

Courtesy of Celeste, who was working with pirate radio and independent media at the time, we have been able to include recordings of the 2003 WTO protest in Cancun, including an interview with the Beehive Collective and with Celeste herself.  You can also listen to these recordings at Interference Archive. 

To learn more about the Battle of Seattle, and international WTO protests:

60 Minute reporting of Seattle protests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i_4xEBCdys
Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/event/Seattle-WTO-protests-of-1999	
“Curfew in effect as Seattle struggles to control WTO protests,” http://www.cnn.com/US/9911/30/wto.04/
“State of Emergency in Seattle,” https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/dec/01/wto
“Seattle WTO Uprising Still a Force in World Events, 15 Years Later,” http://berkeleyjournal.org/2014/12/seattle-wto-uprising-still-a-force-in-world-events-15-years-later/
“WTO Meeting and Protests in Seattle (1999),” http://www.historylink.org/File/9183 & http://www.historylink.org/File/9213 
“20 Years of the WTO: A Story of Poverty and Protest,” https://www.telesurenglish.net//english/analysis/20-Years-of-the-WTO-A-Story-of-Poverty-and-Protest-20150415-0017.html 

You can also visit the archive for print materials related to these protests. 

To learn more about Lee Kyung Hae and his leadership among the activist and farming communities: 
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/sep/16/northkorea.wto
https://viacampesina.org/en/take-agriculture-out-of-the-wto-farmer-lee-kyung-hae-reproducing-his-letter-from-2003/
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/16/world/farming-is-korean-s-life-and-he-ends-it-in-despair.html

Produced by Interference Archive.

Audio Interference 56: WTO Protests, Seattle 1999

In this episode of Audio Interference, you'll hear a recording of an event held at the archive in October of 2018.  The event was called “Politics of Sound: Listening to the Archive,” and it was a discussion about the various ways archiving sound can be a political act, including how sound archives can support organizing work, and how sound collections can contribute to the creation of historical memory, broadening the range of stories that are part of our collective history.

Speakers included Natiba Guy-Clement, Special Collections Manager at the Brooklyn Public Library, home of the Civil Rights in Brooklyn Oral History Collection; Daniel Horowitz, oral historian and poet, currently working on a historical memory project based in Bay St Louis, Mississippi; Samara Smith, Associate Professor at SUNY, who documented the sounds of Occupy Wall Street; and Mario Alvarez, one of the creators of Columbia Life Histories, a series of oral history interviews with graduate students at Columbia University.

For more information, visit:
https://borrow.bklynlibrary.org/r1s/iii/encore/?lang=eng (search "civil rights in Brooklyn")
http://brooklynink.org/2011/12/26/39230-the-anarchivists-who-owns-the-occupy-wall-street-narrative/
https://columbialifehistories.com/

Music: "Telling Me Yes" by Ryan Anderson.

Produced by Interference Archive.

Audio Interference 59: Politics of Sound

LIFES is a band made up of two dads that are over-stretched and exhausted, but can’t imagine a life without music.  Solely comprised of bassist/vocalist Dave Rudnik and drummer/vocalist Zak Holochwost, the idea of a guitar-less duo may prompt some to wonder if LIFES are a novelty of sorts, but there are no gimmicks here. There are no weightroom-ready breakdowns. There are no attempts at melodicism. Remove all the bullshit and you’re left with what many lack-great songs and great performances, delivered with complete honesty and and extreme force. Or as the Empty Bottle says it: LIFES is the sound of spit nails and scorched earth. 

Dawn Ray'd / LIFES / Ozzuario at The Empty Bottle: https://www.facebook.com/events/396978847752950/

106 - LIFES [Hardcore/Punk]: June 5th at The Empty Bottle

Transmission: Hectic Mix (1999)

Brandon Bauer is a multi-disciplinary artist living and working in Wisconsin.

Transmission: Hectic Mix (1999)

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