DFRDFL Interview #1: Matty Bar

I did say in closing section of the Rucktion article that I'd be publishing the full unedited interviews if there was demand, however the demand I was thinking of presented itself in a way I hadn't anticipated. It came in the form of a message from Pierre not long ago just asking if he could read Matty's full unedited interview which in turn planted the seed in my brain that if the founder of this whole scene wants to read what fellow co-founder said in the same project then it must be of at least some interest to more than one person out there. Anyway, without picking favourites, Pierre's interest was well warranted as Matty's interview was one of the most eye-opening to read back for myself as it covers a time period completely alien to me that becoming better acquainted with has been one of the key motives in putting together the original master-text that I published last year. Waffling introduction check, let's get into the brains behind the brawn with Matty Bar's full interview...

To kick off, how did discover punk and hardcore and what was your key motivation for getting so involved? Did you come from a musical background and therefore motivated purely by wanting to play in a band; did you find other areas such as show booking, zine making and label running being the main reason for getting involved or was it all of the above/something else?

 

Vision were an insanely underrated
founding NJ hardcore band. I can't
quite put into words how good
 'In the Blink of an Eye' is. Definition of 
criminally underrated.

For me it was a natural progression from indie to grunge into punk into hardcore. The grunge thing, and later the punk revival in 1993, exposed a lot of underground bands.  Lots of the more mainstream alternative bands like the Beastie Boys, Helmet, Rollins Band, Dinosaur Jr and later Dog Eat Dog and Pennywise all had roots in punk and hardcore. Meanwhile most of us used to skate and skate videos put me onto stuff like Gorilla Biscuits, All and Vision.

I didn't really have a musical background but there was always a radio on somewhere and we had lots of records in the house. My mum had a guitar around the house and at around 15 I started trying to play along with Pixies basslines. A year later I ended up getting a bass and Ollie had drums at his place already. It wasn't until we saw Knuckledust four years  later that we thought about doing something other than getting mashed and jamming Beastie Boys covers (specifically Time For Livin' and Heart Attack Man).

Knuckledust was definitely the main inspiration for us to start the band. We had been checking out gigs by American bands like Sick of It all, Madball and Slapshot for a little while and got hold of Pierre's Time 4 Some Action newsletter. I didn't catch the first KD show but not long after I saw them support Warzone at the Underworld and they were already tight as fuck. That gig in particular is significant because a lot of people in attendance would later become friends and form bands together or start zines and labels. Anyway after that show it was just sort of mutually assumed that we were doing a band.

The UKHC History IG account
really is a godsend for sourcing
almost all the pictures for this
blog. Above is A page taken straight
 from Pierre's Time For Some Acton
Newsletter.

The zine thing came about as we were all quite artistically inclined and zines of all kinds were far more prevalent back then. I had been reading punk and indie zines like Bugs'n'Drugs and Dregs for ages so doing our own but basing it around hardcore was pretty easy especially with bands popping up everywhere. The label Black Up Records basically happened at the same time as the zine. The whole DIY aspect was really celebrated at the time and we wanted to do as much as possible. Heavy flyering and word of mouth brought in more people to the shows and eventually it started to gain momentum. When Pierre started up Rucktion, we put BUR to bed and joined forces.

Putting on shows came about as a necessity as we needed somewhere to play. We did a few more in Herne Hill but it was too far for some and numbers dwindled. We would book venues anywhere that would have us in Tottenham, Harrow, Stockwell, Camden until we eventually got involved with the 12Bar. So I wouldn't say any particular one factor was more important than the other – they were all different elements of one thing and it all sort of happened at once.

             

Your most notable act, Ninebar sits as the Rucktion band with arguably the highest cult status. You have a distinct musical style, very clear lyrical themes and not to mention, a pretty diehard following. Were you ever aware at the time of how important the records you were making would become; what they would mean lyrically and thematically to so many people and the influence they’d have on other bands? 

 

Well, firstly, thank you for the kind words. It's always been something we've done for fun and I don't think we had any idea we would still be doing this in or forties.  Any distinction in our musical style probably stems from the fact that we didn't really know how to play when we started! In hindsight, it doesn't seem unusual that Rucktion made such an impact as there weren't any other bands in the UK playing this sort of music with such a London vibe. The only band really close to what we were doing with Rucktion was Above All and they had fizzled out by then sadly.

 

Although not mentioned in these responses, when I
was discussing this interview with Matty,
Cold Front came up in conversation.
I'm sure their song 'Kings for the Night'
tells all regarding the hc/graff connection

When I listen to Ninebar, despite getting the obvious references of the tougher side of NYHC (such as Bulldoze, Neglect, Darkside NYC, Sheer Terror etc) I also hear other UK underground influences creeping through especially in the vocal delivery such as UK rap and grime to name a few. I also know culturally and aesthetically graffiti was a massive influence on the band with certain members having been writers at various times. Considering graff and hardcore share an inseparable history with each other, what were the main musical and cultural influences on Ninebar? What was always of prime importance to the band when writing Ninebar songs, musically and lyrically? How big of an influence was graff on the band and LBU as a whole?

I wouldn't say grime so much but definitely UK rap. There was a pretty decent scene in the UK just before grime started in the early 2000s. The Dark'n'Cold UK Hip Hop Untapped videos were definitely a big influence and we were listening to tons of Skinnyman & Mud Family, Rodney P, Skeme & Big P, Fallacy etc. There's a good amount of American hip hop in the recipe too though.

When we wrote back then it was more about just keeping the song together. We just wanted to write beatdowns! Lyrically we tend to vary between the serious and the not so serious which we cover later.

As far as graffiti goes, the writers in the band were more into graffiti for itself rather than anything to do with hip hop. The sort of rap that has influenced the lyrics (e.g. Big Pun) doesn't really explore that whole 'four elements' angle much. Between us, we had actually dabbled with graff as kids way back in the mid to late 80s and I remember seeing Subway Art when I was pretty young. When we first became aware of Madball and saw graffiti in the Set It Off inlay and the Down By Law video it definitely rekindled the love of graff so they have always been related for us.

The history between the two is well documented now and we've met writers from all over London, the UK and abroad through hardcore. The guy who designed the first Rucktion website knew, and had worked with, a few London writers who have moved into the the art world. The Rucktion logo itself was definitely influenced by getting the train past one of Zomby's characters everyday. One of our sadder memories was discovering a good friend of the band had died on the day of the release party for Urban Legends. RIP VIZO.            

 

I Can't lie, my UK Rap knowledge from this time period is highly lacking,

probably due to the fact by the time I was old enough to get into UK underground

music, Grime had already left this specific style in the dust (not to mention how much Grime DOMINATED my teens).

There is definitely a tongue-in-cheek element to Ninebar’s lyrical themes and artwork as well as more serious themes at play. What was the motivation in this “dancing on the line antics” between the humorous and the more serious, do you enjoy this kind of ironic approach or have I got it completely wrong?

 

Spot the difference between Lil Wayne's
first album and Raising the Bar, NOW!

We've never taken ourselves too seriously so that's pretty much bang on. I'm as much a fan of Murphy's Law and No Redeeming Social Value as I am the heavy shit. Fatty and Biz both have pretty distinctive styles so some of our lyrics are pretty dark in places and rowdy in others. 'Read These Boks' was intentionally the most ignorant thing we could come up with both musically and lyrically.  Interesting fact, that song was written before Urban Legends but it didn't have lyrics yet. We had got hold of some well aggressive sounding dancehall mixtape and decided to write a tune with a part with a dancehall tempo.

The art was very much inspired by the blinged out album covers of Cash Money Records and No Limit Records album covers. I'm more of an East Coast guy when it comes to hip hop but their albums just looked incredible and hilarious and way more interesting than any hardcore record. Plus we appreciated the DIY aspect of both those labels and it was pretty crude and cut'n'paste in a way.

 

What did you feel like you could offer to hardcore as a band and as a guitarist writing music that no one else could? Was it flying the flag for South London, an urge to compose songs with a distinct flavour or something else?

 

I don't think I've ever thought about it like that. We just wanted to play shows and create something but we were definitely repping South London right from the start. As a guitarist learning to play, I would have just tried to sound like whatever my favourite band was at that time. I have a pretty simple style because when I started playing it didn't need to be anything but simple. I'm definitely better at playing technically since I joined bands where I'm not writing the music so there's that!

 

Stories of this show have been delicately
passed down through the divine art
of older hardcore heads embellishing 
show stories until they become engrained
in the younger generation as the folklore
they deserve to be.

I know what bands come to my mind (as previously mentioned) when I listen to Ninebar but what bands helped to influence Ninebar that were more contemporary to the time in the mid-90s. In other words, what bands did you go and see that were either local, national or international that made the biggest impressions on you as an individual and the band as a whole?

 

For me personally, the more well known bands that pointed me in this direction I mentioned earlier. Then had the bigger hardcore bands who would play semi regularly like  Sick Of It All, Madball, Slapshot, Shelter, Dog Eat Dog, Downset, etc. Some standout shows I remember are: Denied at the Verge, Warzone at the Underworld, 108 at the Garage, Subzero at the Standard, 25 Ta Life upstairs at the Garage, Cold As Life upstairs at the Garage. 

 

 What is it about the city of London that contributes so heavily to the sound, aesthetic and values of Rucktion?

 

London can be a pretty bleak place but it's diverse. Hardcore is a pretty narrow-minded but also diverse genre; we can't help but be influenced by our surroundings and so the traditional sound evolved to reflect that. 

 

Ninebar lyrically points the finger at a lot of people and problems in society (too much internet usage for example). What were the biggest hardships you yourself, your bands or Rucktion records ever came up against that affected you personally, your reputation or maybe acted as barriers to greater success? Did you learn from these struggles and how do they still influence what you do?

 

We Don't Need was actually about the backlash of internet trolls we got when we first started up. You'd have think we were sacrificing babies the way some of the older crowd reacted. Rucktion hasn't had too much trouble really. Some guy threatened to sue me once for defamation of character but nothing ever came of it! We all have day jobs and families and this is something we try to fit in between. We're also pretty lazy which probably hinders our progress a bit.

 

 What is your proudest moment related to the label/movement/bands specifically?

 

Doesn't get anymore Ninebar than Skinny donning
a cheesecutter hat and playing almost entire set 
bottle-in-hand in a heinously smoky 12bar (bonus
points for night vision camera and opening with
'Fuck BTP').

I'm proud to have played show abroad with some incredible bands I never thought I would see. I haven't booked a show for years but I would feel proud when everything fell into place with the place packed, band guarantees paid, and money left over to chuck back into the label or have a beer.

I'm proud of what we had the 12Bar, that place really was a godsend.  One of the biggest obstacles was paying for the venue and backline and trying to find a good spot everyone could reach. With the 12Bar we had a tiny, lawless little venue right in the heart of central London; free to hire with an alley way the size of a small street for a smoking area. We will probably never experience anything like that again.

 

 If you were getting into hardcore for the first time again now, what would you do differently and what would you make clear to the younger generation getting into it in today’s climate?

 

I would buy a decent amp as early as possible and learn to drive. Of course when you're young and starting a band you're probably skint so don't quit your day job. Bottom line is if you want to get better you need to practise as much as possible.

 

Who are your favourite younger bands who either appeal to you musically or perhaps remind you of yourself/practice the same ethos you did when you started playing in bands?

 

Ok I am terrible at keeping track of new bands.

I think the most recent thing I've listened to is the Gouge Away album from last year.

This NEEDS to be printed on a shirt.