Since forming in 1994, after what they call "a brief interlude on public transport", Regurgitator has cut four full-length albums and flirted with every music style except polka and yodelling. The band rates as a highlight of its career "a 5am performance in protest at the Jabiluka uranium mine Blockade". Resistance's NICOLE HOYE interviewed Regurgitator's QUAN YEOMANS.
After a string of early hit singles, such as "Kung fu sing" and "Blubber boy", Regurgitator changed tack, moving to the more electronic end of the spectrum with the album Unit. Shifting styles again more recently, on the albums Art and Felix and Rodriquez wage war on T-Rex and the singles "Fat Cop" and "Superstraight", the band has gained a huge following.
Songs like "Polyester Girl", which takes a stab at the beauty myth, and "Fat Cop", are quite anti-establishment. Is Regurgitator anti-establishment?
Anti-unchecked establishment. I have no problem with things being established. It's usually a good way of getting things done! Damage seems to occur when "establishments" operate without feedback from the people they are meant to serve, or suppress information about their inner-workings, making it impossible to discern the ethical soundness of what they're offering the community.
Are you anti-capitalist?
No, I just attempt to maintain some level of unbiased awareness of the system that surrounds me. I encourage others to do the same. No system's perfect. Capitalism, particularly the global variety of it, has certainly caused its fair share of suffering and enslavement. It's ability to camouflage accountability by exploiting large, completely displaced work forces through complicated global empires makes it increasingly harder to distinguish the perpetrators and the victims, and makes it a confusing and complex ideology/theology to criticise.
Regurgitator did a free "Drop the debt, not the bomb" gig in Brisbane last year. Was this a response to the US led "war on terrorism"?
As far as I've perceived, the US has always been at war with itself and everybody else. This has been it's travelling, angry-go-lucky cultural personality over the last century. In my view, its reaction is certainly in line with this habitual aggression.
I have been aware of Third World debt economics since about 1993. The idea of dropping this "debt" has always appealed to me as a compassionate act with complex and far reaching consequences. And one that is long overdue. It is slightly romantic, in the sense that economic rationalism and compassionate allowance seem to be diametrically opposed to each other, but it's certainly worth fighting for!
What is your opinion on the Australian government's treatment of asylum seekers and refugees?
The stigma of criminality is being applied to these people through the government's policies and media portrayal. That in itself constitutes a breach of human rights in my opinion. An asylum seeker and a criminal are two very different things.
Do you agree with mandatory sentencing?
No. Dealing with criminal behaviour in "experimentally humane" ways is never an easy thing to convince socially regressive governments to do. In my opinion, "punishment" rarely "fits" the crime on any useful healing level. I'm no expert on criminology or criminal rehabilitation, but I suspect that introducing people into the jail system at a younger age, which is all I see mandatory sentences achieving, can never be a socially beneficial thing.
Resistance has organised high school walkouts against the federal government's refugee policies. What do you think of young people protesting about these issues?
It can only be a healthy thing if young people are willing to curb their social compliance, in a sensitive unified way, when they disagree with the policies of a government. I do admit, however, that while protest serves to bring issues to the fore, it tends be a more intuitive act than developing practical solutions for community problems.
What message would you like to send to the youth of Australia?
You're only human, don't get cocky. Do good things in creative and thoughtful ways. In my opinion, which counts for an infinitesimally small amount of jack shit, being happy and making others happier is possibly the most intelligent thing that we as individuals are capable of. I don't expect myself, or anyone else to be "intelligent" all of or even half of the time, but for fuck's sake try ... and always remember that the universe gets the last laugh.
[Find out more about Regurgitator at .]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, February 27, 2002.
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