Over the past few months we have been posting interviews with women from across the country who have had a phenomenal impact on the underground Canadian punk scene, with hopes of putting it all into print by the end of 2010 ( the name “push mosh” was suggested) This is an interview with Sandy Miranda, bassist for the globe trotting, Polaris Prize winning punk 6- piece Fucked Up.
Who are you?
I am a thirty year old female, born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I am a sister to my two older siblings, Aida and Tony, and daughter to my mother, Valentina. I am caregiver of a white Persian-turkish van cat by the name of Buster. I am the bass player in a rock band called Fucked Up.
What do you do?
For employment and enjoyment, I play bass in a band. I started playing bass in 1996 when I was in grade 10. A couple of friends of mine wanted to form a band and needed a bass player, so I rented a bass for a month and taught myself how to play by listening to some of my favourite songs by the likes of Rancid and Green Day. A year later, I was kicked out of the band because I didn’t fit the skate-punk image that my band mates wanted to personify. Then four years after that, in 2001, I found myself playing again in a dingy rehearsal room in an industrial part of Toronto with Mike, Jonah, and Josh – all of whom I had known from going to shows in the latter part of my adolescent years.
Who are your influences?
Inspiration comes at me from all sides. My mom inspires me to be a better person; when I was young, bands like Bad Religion and Green Day inspired me to get into music; the world around me inspires me to capture pictures of it. It’s kind of hard to say what inspires me because I don’t really think about why I do the things I do: I just do them because they are fun and bring me some level of satisfaction.
When and how did you get involved with the punk scene? What originally attracted you to the music?
I got into punk when I was 16 through some friends of mine at school. I remember listening to “The Cause” by NOFX and thinking it was rippin. (To my amazement, that album still holds up to my aging ears.) Eventually I started playing in a band with these friends, and it was great fun. What attracted to me was the speed and energy of the music, because all my life I was a hyper-active child. I learned about zines through punk, so because of my hyper-energy and enthusiasm, I decided to do a zine for a couple years. Looking back, it was one of the best things I could have done as a teenager.
How has your relationship with the punk scene changed since you were a teenager?
Now that I’m 30, lots of things have changed. I’m not an angry kid trying to change the world. Unfortunately, I have become more apathetic. I feel like there’s nothing I can change, so I just focus on making my life the best it can be. I never really identified myself as a punk kid, ever. Never dressed the part, save for band tshirts. I was just an odd girl with a lot of energy and an insatiable curiosity. As an adult, I’m still odd and very curious, but with less energy and furvour. I might be in a punk band, as I was when I was 16, but I’m not doing it to rebel: I’m doing it to bring pleasure, for myself and the kids that like our band. That sounds lame, but it’s the truth.
Punk and hardcore are often labeled as male-dominated subcultures. Would you describe contemporary punk as gender-inclusive?
Punk and hardcore are male-dominated, but I don’t think it’s that big of an issue. There isn’t going to be a perfect balance of both men and women in all communities; certain things interest certain people for specific reasons that don’t relate to people’s sex. That said, I find that there are a ton of girls going to shows and performing nowadays, making punk and hardcore less male-dominated. I also find that I’m being asked the question of the male domination in punk and hardcore, so that’s a sign things are shifting.
For you, has punk subculture been about individualism, or a group and collective experience? Or a balance of both?
Punk subculture is about both individualism and the collective experience. To me, punk brings together the people that feel alienated by greater society, people that have no interest in following the great trends of the day. You can be a unique weirdo in a group of other weirdos that are unique in a way different from you. What I like about punk is that it embraces the nerds, and in my mind, nerds are way cooler than cool kids.
Has the internet and digital technology changed the way you produce the work you do?
Technology has always played a part in our music. The majority of our work has been recorded directly to computer and edited digitally simply because it is the cheapest and the easiest thing to do. Granted, recording to tape is a very romanticized notion, and it does good, too, but I can’t fault something that makes my life easier. Technology is not the devil.
Do you feel that making/doing creative work within a punk context has served as a springboard to larger projects that have reached a broader audience?
Well, evidently, it has! The first punk-related thing I did was help out a local punk label in the mid-90s called Raw Energy Records. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew that I wanted to do something, so I’d help the label at the office once in a while. Then I decided that I wanted to do radio, so I wrote an empassioned 5-page letter to Jeff Cohen, who hosted “Mods n Rockers” on CIUT, asking him to let me go on. I ended up doing that radio show for four years, while doing a zine as well. And now, I’ve been in this band for nine years that has taken me around the world. It’s kind of crazy, but I think all those steps I had taken as a teen, from the label, to the radio show, to the zine, has led me to be in this successful band. It makes me believe in manifestation: that with enough will and hard work and luck, you can create your own future.
Sound Pollution 2010
