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Bouncing Souls.
 Everything is political, right down to the shoes you're wearing right now, says Bouncing Souls' main-man Greg Attonito. And he should know, considering the eye-opener the band encountered at a show in Germany. "We met a few soldiers on weekend-leave who came to see us before they went back to Iraq the next morning, and from talking to them we realized they're just guys who joined the army on a certain pretext only to discover it wasn't what they thought it'd be. And here they were, just trying to figure out how to navigate it. Who can judge that?"
Not only did the band stay in touch with the soldiers, but soon became "official sponsors of their whole platoon," sending them T-shirts and other packaged treats. In return, the soldiers posted letters of reflection, often resembling extremely touching and emotion-fuelled diary entries.
"We were discussing hitting the subject of Iraq on this record, but we had no experience of it, it just wasn't real to us," Attonito explains. "There was one soldier who wrote most of the letters, Garret, and when he came back to do his counter-recruitment talk in high schools, he said he'd give us some of his poetry from his experience to help with our lyrics..."
Attonito pauses and gives a cynical chuckle before proceeding to explain the situation in American schools, "I don't know if it's the same in Australia right now, but in America it's pretty twisted. The marines come to our high schools and try to recruit the high school kids. It's just sick and creepy - and Garret got kicked out of so many schools for trying to talk them out of joining. Anyway, when he gave us his poetry, we were all... well, jaws were just dropping!" he laughs.
The soldier's writing was so powerful and honest, Attonito says, that in turn, the band was inspired to rekindle the old, true spirit of punk music, so criminally extinguished over the recent years. "Garret created some powerful moments on this record, gave it a real sense of honesty without telling you what to think or what's right or wrong. So some people aren't going to like this - but excellent! That's actually what the punk thing is all about! We're gonna piss people off, so we're doing something right!"
Of course, producer Ted Hutt also had a lot to do with extracting the passion and funky vibe of the Bouncing Souls. "He helped us to just take all the things we love and run with them. When you start out in a band you don't have all these foggy notions of what's good or what sells and all that bullshit. We wanted to go back to that uninhibited way of not paying attention to what's 'punk' - because, again, punk is not punk anymore, at all! We felt the attitude of honesty was missing in punk, doing things on your own terms. Some people are opinionated at a really young age, and our motivation has been to never let go of that, even as we moved on through our twenties."
Quite often, Attonito points out, even that which is valued doesn't turn out to be worthy of a pedestal.
"I've met a lot of people that influenced me, and a lot of the times they don't turn out to be how you thought they would be, up there on their pedestal. A lot of the times actually meeting them has been a detrimental experience. They have a shining moment and you define them by only that - but they just happened to have had a creative moment, and everybody has that ability! Everyone can write a song, everyone can tell a story, because everyone's experience is interesting. You just have to be really disciplined to become that successful."
That's something that took Attonito and the guys quite some time to learn.
"When I was twenty I didn't get a record deal straight away, but if I had I wouldn't have realised what that actually means. You just don't know until you've lived a little bit and seen how hard people work for small amounts of money or nothing at all.
"When someone pays me thousands and thousands of dollars to just scream into a microphone or whatever, I know that's an opportunity not many get. And I appreciate it more and more as I go."
Nina Bertok
 | Bouncing Souls play an all-ages show at the Adelaide UniBar on Mon 3 April. |
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