Possibly redefining a term that was

never supposed to be definable, my guest today challenges every

thing people think when they hear the term "Punk Rocker". His out going,

passionate and sincere approach to music and conversation has allowed him to do

some astounding things in media. His humble beginnings at the culture defining radio show Mods & Rockers laid the ground

work that led him to host The Wedge on Much Music, various projects with vice

and his recently launched Podcast called TOAP

( turned out a punk).

..Damian AbrahAM of FUCKED UP!

His more known musical side allows him to tour successfully, has landed him much acclaim and gained the attention of international publications such as NME, Spin and at one point a reoccurring correspondents roll on Fox News. His outspoken stage show is at first glance a rampage of blood, sweat, flesh and tears but when reexamined an artistic expression of what a kind heart with a valuable point of view can accomplish. I take great pleasure introducing...

By Ben Rispin

thanks for having me!

I've read you grew up in Toronto and you were an

unlikely candidate for this lifestyle. Do you mind sharing how

you discovered punk, hardcore or the catalysts that set you on this

path?

I don’t know how

unconventional a path it was, but I was a privileged kid from a

middle class neighbourhood in the east part of downtown called Riverdale.

Growing up, like many other people that turn to punk, I never really felt that I

fit in. I had some issues with anxiety and the like but nothing major

by that point...

In grade 7, I met some kids that were early adopters of the teenage party lifestyle and had begun to drink, smoke a little pot and the like by the time I was in grade 8.

The night of junior high graduation, I was arrested by the police for shoulder-tapping (getting someone to buy beer for you when you are underage). My parents freaked out and cut me off from hanging with those kids.

who's the beer for

kid??

take it easy smitty, damian's

our friend, ain't ya damian?

they're going kind of hard on

him eh sarge?

well we can't have

folks going around tapping shoulders can

we jimmy?

Alone again, I became a Counsellor-In-Training at a sports day camp…. not really a natural fit for me.

While there I met a kid named Nick. Nick was a couple years older, skateboarded, smoked pot, did graffiti and listened to bands that I had barely heard of.

I thought we were going to teach

wrestling?

Every lunch hour we would go to the HMV and Nick would suggest CDs for me to listen at the Listening Bar….. it sounds so archaic now. On one of these trips I had brought some money with me to buy a CD. While helping me select the precious CD that I was to spend my $25 on (no wonder the music industry died)

Nick spotted the VHS release of 1991: The Year Punk Broke. He insisted that I buy it and, even though I had my heart set on one of these CDs we had been looking at, because I trusted the sage advice of my older cooler friend I did.

I watched that thing a million times and became obsessed with Sonic Youth...

Around the same time my friend from school Simon

Ennis had gotten into punk just before me and had already started a band. He and I started going to shows together and I even helped

"roadie" for his band.

A combination of

watching young kids in the band dbs playing on

Much Music and seeing his band playing shows

prompted me to start my first band Urine Trouble, but by then I was going to shows every chance

I coulD.How did all of the pieces

of Fucked Up's puzzle come together?

In 2001, Mike and I were

roommates and it was like a hardcore/punk think tank. We would just sit, talk and

theorize about punk. One of the things we had talked about was

what it would be like to put together the most deliberately

dysfunctional band of all-time and call it Fucked Up

(based on an NOTA song).

Mike had just left Ruination and wanted to do a band that

just played locally, played every show they got offered and never recorded; so it seemed natural

that it would work for a dysfunctional band

Around this time Mike and Josh were also

engaged in the same sort of salon-like theorizing but, instead

of debating how different the world may have been if certain aborted hardcore records had

actually been released, the were talking about

politics.

mike haliechuk

The two started working on a zine together called Quick

and they decided to turn it into the band. Mike merged the ideas and called this band Fucked Up.

Soon Chris left and Jonah joined and the band played

two shows.

Following the second show,

Josh left for a trip and Mike asked me to fill in on

vocals for a few shows. We did two shows, recorded a demo and Deranged asked us to do a 7” for

them. When Josh returned, with the shows having gone well, he was

asked to shift to guitar and gratefully for me in

retrospect, he said yes and thus this Fucked

Up was born

JOSH ZUCKER

We went on like that till 2007 when, while on tour in the UK, we met up with our friend Ben who was over traveling following the end of his post No Warning band Surplus Sons. Ben jumped on the tour for a few days and when we got back to Toronto he began playing third guitar with us.

Before the Internet, CIUT's Mods & Rockers show was a

huge source of new music for many young punks across Ontario including myself. Can you explain

how you got involved with the show?

FUCKED UP FROM LEFT TO RIGHT ARE: Ben Cook, Sandy Miranda, Jonah Falco, Damian abraham, mike haliechuk, josh zucker

I was a huge fan of the show and met and

became friends with the show's street reporter Ed

Fox. I went in to Mods N Rockers with him a few times and met the host,

the legendary JC.

At some point Ed had to leave the show and JC asked me to start coming in to help out. He also extended the same offer to Sandy. For the next 5 years I was a street reporter on Mods and Rockers….

actually JC stopped doing it for the last 6 months or so of the show on internet radio so maybe I had graduated to host by that point.

Jeff "JC" Cohen of Collective Concerts and former host of Mods N Rockers on ciut

You recently became a medicinal

marijuana user to combat your personal issues with

anxiety, which lead to a documentary with Vice TV. You

also credit this to some recent weight loss. How and what were

you using to deal with your anxiety prior to your

prescription? How did that lead into the project with Vice? Do you champion the

legalization of marijuana?

Before I discovered cannabis, I used to take Paxil,

Wellbutrin and Ativan to deal with anxiety. I was

straight edge and at around age 20 I started experiencing

more intense feelings of depression and anxiety.

Looking back now, I realize I had these feelings all my life, but not like this. My

doctor put me on medication and over the years we had settled on the three drugs

I mentioned.

There were a lot of side effects and I really

didn’t like having to take them, but did so because they worked well enough

that I could put up with the other stuff. 4 years ago, in a moment of panic, I tried pot

which led to me getting off the pills and never looking back. I immediately became an advocate for it so when Vice Canada went to make a doc

about medical marijuana they asked me to host. I actually just finished doing

another one with Vice about legalization from the perspective

of economic and fiscal issues.

I am very much in favour of legalization and decriminalization of all non-violent drug offences and I have always felt that way since way before I started smoking pot. It is crazy to think that in America right now there are people getting life sentences for making pot brownies and, a few states over, people are becoming legal millionaires by doing the same thing all because of a plant.

TOAP or Turned Out A Punk is a new podcast you've recently

launched. I'm assuming named after the Big Audio Dynamite Song, It's a well

thought out and seemingly well prepared show with guests ranging from Shadowy Men's

Don Pyle, Dead Tired/AOF front man George Pettit and Chris Murphy of Sloan, yet you still modestly and somewhat comedically refer to

yourself as "another asshole with a pod cast". Is this a true reflection of your feelings towards the medium? Do you

feel it's over saturated? What are some podcasts you admire?

Yep it is kinda named after the B.A.D. song but it also meant to a play on the

definition of punk as a term for a prostitute and the idea that we all

find a way to see ourselves in the end… like the pop group song. Thank you for

the kind words about it! I think the "Asshole with a podcast” thing is just

poking fun at how many of them there are. I don’t think it is over-

saturated anymore than any other medium out there.

To me a podcast is a like a zine, sure there are millions of

them but as long as you think you have something unique or at least a unique way to

say it then do it. I thought about doing a podcast for so long and when I finally

did it I just can’t believe I waited so long.

The type of podcasts I’m drawn to

are wrestling podcasts. I have said it on the show a few

times, TOAP is a response on Colt Cabana’s Art Of Wrestling podcast. I

knew that I had the insider-yet-still-a-fan perspective with music, that Colt has with

wrestling. I loved the way that Colt got his guests to reminisce about being a fan and how that led them to start wrestling and the way

that no matter how different the subject’s story is the passion for wrestling is what links them

all. I knew that same sort of passion runs through-out people that love punk music and I also knew how many people I’ve met, heard and read about that had grown-up listening to punk and wound up doing something different. They had stories that I wanted to hear about, like how they went from a punk to whatever they were doing now. The podcasts that I enjoy

are mainly wrestling podcasts like Colt’s, MLW Radio, Live Audio

Wrestling, and while not wrestling I am HEAVILY influenced by the Best

Show.

What's next for Fucked Up or your personal projects?

Who knows what’s up for Fucked Up at this point. We are releasing Year Of The Hare on

Deathwish and going out on tour this summer doing a set of the "Year Of...” records that we’ve been releasing for

the last 10 years or so. We are going to have other people playing with us and it will be a different live show then we

normally play. I’m stoked on it but at this point, no LPs coming.I’m doing that new Vice weed doc I mentioned and I have a

new show on Food Network Canada called Super Snack Brothers and

am still trying to figure the rest of it out hahaha

Thanks so much for

talking to me!

HUGE THANKS TO DAMIAN for taking the time to answer our questions. Be sure to visit his web page www.damianabraham.com to learn more about all of his incredible projects.

Punkomix by written & illustrated by @benjaminrispin