One Minute Silence
(Yap)

Interviewing One Minute Silence is a journalists gift from heaven. Whereas most rock stars have trouble remembering their own name, in OMS we have band that truly do have a real message behind the music. Appropriately named frontman Yap took time to talk about the anger and the politics behind the music.

Q: Do you worry about the future when you see all these kids getting more excited over mobile phone rings tones than rock & roll?
A: Yeah!!! It's a sad state of affairs. Isn't it ironic that the idea of rebellion is being sold to the kids, they don't rebel against shit. Rock & Roll was sort of the last bastion of bullshit that Joe Public had. You know most of it was sloganeering, but the spirit was there.

"Fuck You to the government"  - we didn't understand it as kids, we just instinctively knew it was right. We know they're all full of shit but you've then got to try and enlighten yourself, educate yourself and find out why.

It is scary because there's more emphasis on looking cool than actually being able to contact somebody. You don't need a fucking phone to be able phone your friend who lives 2 minutes away - call around to your friend and hang out with them. Phones are sold as an accessory that's cool. Its like the right boots, the right jacket, the right hairstyle and the right mobile phone. That's being sold to us and to rebel against the system that's selling us what's cool is. Were rebelling now by wearing Coca Cola T-shirts with "Revolution" on it because we just don't get it.
 

Q: If Rock music was the last place of Outsider-dom and rebellion. What do you think of acts like Limp Bizkit?
A: Don't get me wrong, I don't want to piss off the kids. Limp Bizkit are a good band and apparently they are a mega live band but they ain't selling shit, they're selling you products to get as much money as they can. Let's face it we all laugh at the fucking Britney Spears of the world and the Boyzones, who we all go "they're just in it to sell us toothpaste or to sell us cornflakes" or whatever product they're selling. What's the difference in Limp Bizkit? They're selling you the same shit. Sticking their fucking name on every single thing.

Britney Spears and Limp Bizkit. What's the difference? One has a tattoo on his shoulder and shouts "muthafucker" the other shouts "I love You, Jesus Christ". Its the same fucking package that's marketed to you and sold to you. Fred Durst, whether he's a good frontman or what, he's making $15 million dollars of everybody's back and doesn't give a shit.

They're all saying recently that he's a brilliant businessman. No, he's not - What company is going to turn his name down? All he's got to do is get his manager to phone Coca Cola and say he wants a sponsorship deal. It's a smart move if you want to make money, it doesn't mean you're a bright guy. He's obviously not a bright guy because he doesn't understand corporations and what they're about - if he did he wouldn't be associated with corporations, its stands to fucking reason.
 

Q: Do you think there is a media white wash? For example Prince William being the pretty boy of the Royal Family.
A: Its just regression as far as I can see. Stagnancy leads to regression not progression. How dare these so called investigative journalists sell out the people of East Timor, sell out the people of Indonesia, the people of Columbia.

The people of the Ewa tribe in the Colombian rain forest have been fighting 9 years against an American oil company called Oxidental who are sponsored by one of the biggest financial companies in the world called Fidelity. Investment companies who Al Gore is part of incidentally and stand to make millions out of it. They're trying to dig in this site that people have inhabited for centuries; co-habited with nature, proper equilibrium; and they're going to get oil from their land which enough to run the American economy for 3 months.

Amnesty International have said, that these people have said if this dig goes ahead they will commit collective suicide. That's ethnic cleansing as an absolute. That is the whole tribe of that particular race of people dead and were covering Princess fucking Fergie and her fucking stuck up little kids and what dresses they're wearing tomorrow. Prince William, fuck him!! How dare they sell him. They've all sold out on humanity for a bigger mortgage.
 

Q: Do you ever think that you're not doing enough by just being a rock star?
A: I don't worry because I'm in a band or being a rockstar. I worry because I'm a human being and I'm not doing enough, there's a big difference. This is a medium I use to address people but I'm political because I have friends and family that I love - if this band breaks up tomorrow I will still be political, my heart doesn't change.

This is not some flavour of the month thing or some bandwagon "the sex, drugs and rock & roll thing has been done so I'll be the political one" - fuck that, fuck cynicism, not a chance. Every fibre of my body fights for what's right, I'm an anarchist and will be political until the day I die.

People have asked me for so many years "What Can I do?". For a start you've got to educate yourself. You can't just start the revolution because some leader says "come with me and lets fight the king", you've got to understand what you're fighting and what you're fighting for.

Revolution starts with you. Martin Luther King was a great revolutionary, but he was kid in his bedroom one time who went "I don't like this shit and I ain't waiting round for everybody else to do it. I'm going to educate myself and enlighten other people". He didn't set out to make a movement, its just happened that he was the one who came out on top.
 

Q: So if you weren't in a band. Would you still be educating yourself and trying to change the world?
A: Obviously I have the luxury of time on my hand because I'm in a band. I play on hour a night on stage and the rest of the time I can read, sit around and think about things. There's a lot of good people out there who do 9-5 jobs and they come and are just tired in the evening and have to look after kids. All there energies are focused on family and trying to get by, any time they have left over is for leisure time and who wants to read a press of political material when you're tired.

When were up on stage each night, 5 minutes of that will be some cliched fucking driven point of view. When I say "Hey!! Bring down the government" its always in the hope that people will click and want to know more. Were such an intelligent species and at the same time we seem to be such a bunch of fucking idiots.

We all know our planet is going to die in 50 years, its not some biblical prophecy like the 1999 bullshit. Its inevitable -  all our resources will be used up, our ozone layers being depleted and the forestation at an unprecedented amount over the last 5-10 years. We've lost our oxygen supply and unless these so called intelligentsia are going to these world summits and compromising on our oxygen supply. 2 questions spring to mind A) Why compromise on our fucking oxygen supply? B) Who the fuck are they compromising with?. I thought our so called leaders of the free world were the most powerful men in the world. Am I wrong about that and if you're the most powerful men in the world do you need to compromise with somebody. Who are you compromising with? Perhaps somebody more powerful. They're compromising with corporations who are destroying our planet.

People can't see how enslaved they are because they don't see the shackles. You can't just assume were free. You go and challenge the status quo and you'll find out how free you are - your arse will be in jail in 2 fucking minutes. The law is there to protect the rich man and we've got to change that.
 

Q: And last but not least onto the music. What can we expect from the new material?
A: Its going to have a big anti corporate message and also even though we need to break America I'm going to be seriously anti American government. Its hard to sum up who I am within a 3 minute song and how you even capture your politics.

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The single "Fish Out Of Water" is Out Now on V2
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