The Roots Of Rebellion

New Updates, interviews and a whole lot more to come very shortly.

t-bo — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 08:00:00 EST

Oh yes, we have been inactive for some time, mostly because i decided to convert myself from PC to Mac. I finally got around, actually Sal Riley, got around to changing it... Just to say, we got a few interviews that we did over the last few months that i will soon upload.

Recently put up: Interviews with Hakim Bey, Dr. Leveque, and Noah Levine. Check them out in the interview section.

New ROR Radio Show Uploaded

t-bo — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 08:00:00 EST

The Roots of Rebellion show that aired on 12/13/2007 has been uploaded to the server. Find the details here.

Brad Warner comes to Montreal.

T-bo — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 08:00:00 EST

The Roots of Rebellion presents Brad Warner, with a talk entiteld "What is Zen?"

on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 in Montreal. At tMcGill University's Education & Counselling department (3700 Rue McTavish Room 233).

Brad Warner is an ordained Zen Master, in the Soto lineage founded in Japan by Master Dogen Zenji in the 13th century. He’s the bass player for the hardcore punk rock group 0DFx (aka Zero Defex) and the vice president of the Los Angeles office of Tsuburaya Productions, the company founded by Eiji Tsuburaya, the man who created Godzilla.

He is the author of "Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth About Reality" and "Sit Down and Shut up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, & Dogen’s Treasury of the Right. Dharma Eye."

You want to know more about Brad, go listen to an interview we did with him a few years back. (CLICK HERE)

MRR, Flipside, Heartattack, all on PDF!

Anonymous — Thu, 24 May 2007 08:00:00 EST

Here's something really cool that some dedicated punk rocker has done... The people from Operation Pheonix Records are archiving all the old punk zines in PDF format. This is an amazing source of information that they are giving us. Go check it out, and if you can't donate some cash, go thank them for their work.

(CLICK HERE)

Trent Reznor on Major Labels.

t-bo — Wed, 23 May 2007 08:00:00 EST

Here is an excerpt of an interview by Trent Reznor talking about major labels. You can read the whole interview here.

This interview was taken from Australia's Herald Sun's, which was published on May 17th, 2007.

It must be an odd time then to have a new album, Year Zero, out?

It's a very odd time to be a musician on a major label, because there's so much resentment towards the record industry that it's hard to position yourself in a place with the fans where you don't look like a greedy asshole. But at the same time, when our record came out I was disappointed at the number of people that actually bought it. If this had been 10 years ago

I would think "Well, not that many people are into it. OK, that kinda sucks. Yeah I could point fingers but the blame would be with me, maybe I'm not relevant". But on this record, I know people have it and I know it's on everybody's iPods, but the climate is such that people don't buy it because it's easier to steal it.

You're a bit of a computer geek. You must have been there, too?

Oh, I understand that -- I steal music too, I'm not gonna say I don't. But it's tough not to resent people for doing it when you're the guy making the music, that would like to reap a benefit from that. On the other hand, you got record labels that are doing everything they can to piss people off and rip them off. I created a little issue down here because the first thing I did when I got to Sydney is I walk into HMV, the week the record's out, and I see it on the rack with a bunch of other releases. And every release I see: $21.99, $22.99, $24.99. And ours doesn't have a sticker on it. I look close and 'Oh, it's $34.99'. So I walk over to see our live DVD Beside You in Time, and I see that it's also priced six, seven, eight dollars more than every other disc on there. And I can't figure out why that would be.

Did you have a word to anyone?

Well, in Brisbane I end up meeting and greeting some record label people, who are pleasant enough, and one of them is a sales guy, so I say "Why is this the case?" He goes "Because your packaging is a lot more expensive". I know how much the packaging costs -- it costs me, not them, it costs me 83 cents more to have a CD with the colour-changing ink on it. I'm taking the hit on that, not them. So I said "Well, it doesn't cost $10 more". "Ah, well, you're right, it doesn't. Basically it's because we know you've got a core audience that's gonna buy whatever we put out, so we can charge more for that. It's the pop stuff we have to discount to get people to buy it. True fans will pay whatever". And I just said "That's the most insulting thing I've heard. I've garnered a core audience that you feel it's OK to rip off? F--- you'. That's also why you don't see any label people here, 'cos I said 'F--- you people. Stay out of my f---ing show. If you wanna come, pay the ticket like anyone else. F--- you guys". They're thieves. I don't blame people for stealing music if this is the kind of s--- that they pull off.

Where does that extra $10 on your album go?

That money's not going into my pocket, I can promise you that. It's just these guys who have f---ed themselves out of a job essentially, that now take it out on ripping off the public. I've got a battle where I'm trying to put out quality material that matters and I've got fans that feel it's their right to steal it and I've got a company that's so bureaucratic and clumsy and ignorant and behind the times they don't know what to do, so they rip the people off.