Framework interviews started!
I've already gotten two great interviews from Mike Riccardi (FW,EC,Path, Another Victim), and Shane Durgee (FW, Gatekeeper, Farthest man). I am planning doing interviews with Ian, Scott, Ben Read(If I can find him), Pete(Gatekeeper/Beta minus) Spielman, Tom Ranger(Eternal Youth). Have any great framework memories? Did the framework records have an impact on you? Drop me a line I want to interview you!
Photos: Guav from the Framework "Reunion" Need pics of Mike!
For now here are some gems from the Mike and Shane interviews...
Shane: My memory of some of this is starting to fade, so whatever DJ and Karl can agree on is probably the truth.
Mike: Vegetarianism came shortly after that when my friend Mark went veg and I knew a couple of skate punks that were also veg. I read parts of Singer’s Animal Lib and that was it for me. At a practice of my band Forefront someone asked me if i thought it was ok to ride horses, something up until that point I had never thought about. I started thinking, implicitly, about speciesism and extended this logic to dairy products.
Shane: You know, Ben wrote all the lyrics and almost all the music. So it’s actually easy for me to pick one of his because I don’t claim any responsibility for how good it is. Tear me Down is my favorite. The “Your victory is my misery” part of the song was so good and so fun to sing.
Mike: only after practicing once or twice with Karl we played a garage show. I don’t even think Karl had all of the lyrics written at that point and we just had faith that he would show up and it would come together. Needless to say it did; Karl showed up, screamed his head off, and I remember everyone being kind of blown away by his vocals. At the time I wasn’t sure what all of the songs were about because we hadn’t talked about it before that day.
Shane: It was in garage behind a hardcore house off Westcott, near the SU campus. It was this crumbling little shack in the back yard where you could probably fit one car. Somehow we pulled off a full show. It was packed. It was also (the new) Earth Crisis’s first show. They opened for Framework haha.
Mike:I knew Karl in passing for a couple of years before we started EC. He was quiet and not trendy like other HC kids (myself included!) and I think that confused me! I remember thinking of him as a skate punk with blond-dyed dreads or long hair in a pony tail who was just really friendly. He wasn’t like other straight edge kids at the time that had something to prove and were acting tough. After a short while I came to see Karl as someone with alot of dedication and vision. He knew pretty much what he wanted. I would see him occasionally (we grew up n different parts of Syracuse) and he would ask me to jam with him.
Shane : It was entirely from skateboarding in the mid 80’s. The music on the skate videos sounded really cool to me because I was into Iron Maiden and Run DMC. So then my brother bought a Thrasher skate rock comp and I was blown away by McShred. Weird cosmic coincidence that my first real hardcore show (with the exception of Suicidal Tendencies) was Underdog with Chuck Treece playing bass. I also met some straight edge kids at the show and that led to meeting Karl, DJ and McKaig within that same year… like 1989?
Mike: I was playing with Karl in my basement, him on bass, and he had already written ecocide – this was before Ben and Scott played with us. I was messing around with some drum beats for the beginning and he said, pointing to the floor tom, “play something on that... like you’re in an indian tribe and going to war.”
