MIDTOWN

Animals Have Rights Too

(Tyler Rann Interview - Taken From Black Velvet 33 - Aug 2002)

By Shari Black Velvet

Let's travel back to June… It's the Jubilee weekend in England but almost more importantly for rock and punk fans it's Deconstruction - a young punk rocker's paradise. This year's tour stopped by London's Finsbury Park and then went up to Glasgow Barrowlands before and after a trip around Europe. On the bill that saw Lagwagon and Lostprophets headline, were the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Mad Caddies, H2O, All, Randy, The Movielife, Turbo ACs, Flogging Molly, Fletcher - and most importantly, at least in the eyes of Black Velvet, MIDTOWN.

Above: Midtown (L-R: Gabe, Heath, Rob & Tyler)

If you check out the sleeve of Midtown's current album, 'Living Well Is The Best Revenge', on Drive Thru/MCA, not only are the usual lyrics, thanks and album production info on there, but a plug for the PETA organisation. PETA stands for 'People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals'. Above that is the quote 'Midtown fully supports the animal rights movement'. The fact that this album is awesome was one very good reason to interview the band, but the fact that these guys are so into animal rights was probably an even better one.
Regular readers to Black Velvet will know that we're hotly into animal rights ourselves. So far though, we've not actually interviewed a band about the subject. Not in great depth anyway. So here we go… a little history in the making. Tyler Rann, Midtown's guitarist/vocalist, from New Jersey, USA, is on the phone to do the honours.

Tyler's the only vegan in the band - Gabe Saporta (vocals, bass), Heath Saraceno (vocals, guitar) and Rob Hitt (drums, backing vocals), his fellow members, are vegetarians but not quite fully-fledged vegans. What is very interesting though, is that the band make their tour crew become veggies when they're out on the road. How's that for conviction?
Tyler explains "The way I look at is when we're on tour and someone's working with us or for us, we need to pay them for what they do. It seems that everyone gets paid but me now! If I'm paying them and they're going to buy meat or something like that, it's kinda like me indirectly purchasing something like that. So we say, if you want to come on tour, that's part of the agreement. I don't want to be around when someone's eating it as well. I just feel like that's our rule and there are enough people that want to come on tour and they understand that so… Obviously I can't stand over their shoulder all the time, but most of the people, most of our friends, are vegetarian anyway. I think a lot of people in the underground music scene understand those things. That's where I got it from.
"Usually even after tours end and maybe they don't come out on tour with us again they still remain vegetarian which is kinda cool."

Tyler's been vegan for almost four years now.
"The entire time we've been touring I've been vegan. On our first tour I had no idea what to eat. I did months of touring just like that, y'know. But now I've found the best vegan restaurants that exist in every city and we kind of route our tours around that which is pretty nice."
He originally became vegetarian when living with a friend who was one.
"I didn't understand why he was vegetarian and I don't think he understood why he was vegetarian either. I think it was the influence of his girlfriend. I used to bust on him and make fun of him and eat meat in front of him and what not. Then once I started to actually read and understand… I saw some videos, read some information about really what it's all about, I realised I wasn't acting, in my opinion, like a moral person, and that certain things have a right to life, they're alive. I have a pet dog. It's the same way I look at that, and at any animal. It's just cruel. So I became vegetarian. I was vegetarian for a while. Then I realised I wasn't thinking about what I was doing. If I want to make a commitment to something then I want to make a full commitment to it. I didn't feel like I was going out of my way enough, thinking about my cause, and I wanted to take it a step further. I can never imagine… people say 'never' and I think it's a terrible word, and I'm so young that I can never say never, but I can never imagine myself now not being vegan. It's something that I don't even think about any more. It's just the way that I am."
It must be hard reading all the ingredients on everything though…
"Yeah but I'm totally a pro at it now! It's great - and I can do it in all different languages as well! Of course, the first few months when I was eating there were certain things that I didn't know weren't vegan, like in certain breads there are certain chemicals. But I got this little book that has a list of things that I could not eat, so I carried that around with me for a while when I went grocery shopping and on tour and after a while it just becomes second nature.

I tell Tyler I've been vegetarian for 13 years but haven't managed to stop eating cheese yet because I like it too much (I'm a fussy eater - there's not much I like but cheese is one of them). I do eat vegetarian cheese at home though…
"I like doing a lot of things but I'm sure some of them I could do without. I've never killed anyone but maybe I'd enjoy doing that! But I don't do it. I know that's a terrible example and really extreme but… in the same sense, it depends how much you really care about something and how much you love eating it. If you love eating cheese then eat cheese. If you don't eat meat then you're doing more than most people and you're still making a difference.
"That's the other thing; I don't want to sound like a preachy person because I'm really not at all and I respect everyone's right to make a decision more than anything else. I'm not going to force myself on anyone else because they won't get it for the right reason."

The vegetarian movement is slowly but surely expanding. If you look back at history there are a lot more vegetarians than there were a while back. Tyler has noticed this too. "I see a lot of people who are. Times have changed. In the three years I've been on tour and vegan, during the first tour it was very difficult to find things, but now almost all the fast food chains have a vegeburger - it might not be vegan but it's vegetarian. That's just happened in the last few years and the awareness is starting to grow. I don't know how many years it's going to be but it keeps growing and growing and growing and within certain areas of America, like the Midwest, it's a little more difficult, but on the coast, people are definitely… there are great vegan restaurants I could tell you about all over. In New Jersey as well!"
Go on then - name a good one!
"Back To Earth… or Down To Earth. It's either Back To Earth or Down To Earth and it's in Red Bank, NJ. It's like a nice restaurant. Everything is vegan and the food is amazing. Every time I'm home I like to go eat there just to support the place and make sure it stays in business. There's another place called Zafra, in the town that I actually live in and went to college, that just opened. It's so unfortunate. It's a vegan restaurant and nobody ever goes there. I'll eat there all the time. I'm the only person eating there. I have to go every time. Every single day that I'm home I have to go and get something there just to try and help and keep it in business. That's in New Brunswick, NJ."

Of course the main reason Tyler, and most people, become vegan - or vegetarian - is to stand up against cruelty to animals.
"There's cruelty to everything and of course that makes me upset. To animals and people."
One thing Tyler really can't tolerate are people who wear fur.
He says "I can't understand why people would wear fur. I think that's just really barbaric and ridiculous.
"I like clothing a lot and I'm a big fashion person. All those magazines I know about and the different designers and it's terrible when you see these people bringing fur into a collection or you see people wearing fur. There's no need for that. I equate that to living in a cave. It's really terrible".
I remind Tyler that one of the Deconstruction shows is in a bullring. The Madrid show was taking place at Bullring La Cubierta a couple of days after this interview.
"Yes I know. I didn't know about that until just a few days ago when I looked at the tour book. No-one told us that. That's very ridiculous. I don't like that at all. I'm sure we're going to say something. Our bass player Gabe was born in Uruguay so he speaks fluent Spanish and I'll make sure he says something. You can watch the news and see if any bulls escape. If they're there that day we'll find out. That's cruelty to animals. It's like having dog fights or something. It's so ridiculous. It's the year 2002 and they're doing something like that?"
I tell Tyler how a member of The Vandals is into bullfighting and asks what he thinks of other musicians such as Ted Nugent, James Hetfield and 3 Doors Down who claim to be into hunting.
"In my opinion someone who listens to 3 Doors Down and Ted Nugent have no business listening to music that I make, or even music that's good, if I can be so bold as to say that. It's a very different mentality and I'm not interested in Ted Nugent's fan base and the people that like that and I think that's a terrible example. We're a band and I realised one day that we're more than that. When I'm up there on a stage and I have all these people's attention, that's really a responsibility. You have to give forth something more than music, some sort of message that's positive. I don't think these people have done that. They've failed in that sense. Maybe Ted Nugent and all those bands have sold records and people know their songs better than they'd know mine but I feel like I'm making more of a difference than they are because I'm taking on that responsibility and doing something good with it, something worthwhile.
So you don't think a band can just entertain?
"They can but that's not the kind of band that I want to be. Britney Spears - she's a better dancer than I am. I'm not a bad dancer or anything, but she is, and somebody writes great songs for her and it's very pleasing to the ear but I equate that to something like candy. There's no nutrition to it. There's no value to it. I'd rather be some sort of nutritious vegan meal. That sounds so corny, I can't believe I just said that! But you know what I mean. I couldn't be satisfied at the end of the day knowing that that's what I do. I need something more. Unfortunately we don't write songs about animal rights - I wish we could. That's something that we've tried time and time again but it's hard to not be preachy and say the right thing, but we certainly talk about it and have our PETA information there and every interview we mention something about it. What we do is definitely something deeper and something more real. That's the goal of being in a band for me."
There are a lot of animal rights organisations around. One wonders why Midtown chose to promote that particular one.
"Well that's the biggest one, I would assume, in the United States. They have just so much information. They're everywhere. You can't ignore their presence. So that seemed like a good one for us to start with. We support all animal rights organisations but they really do help out. If we need to talk about something, then people will listen but they need to see it and they need to read it and they need to take it home and PETA have been very nice to us and given us lots of pamplets and information and all kinds of things."
In England we have a lot of other organisations as well as PETA. The one that has been sending Black Velvet a lot of information longer than any other is the BUAV - the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection. Vivisection for anyone who doesn't know is testing upon animals. Something else that is extremely sickening. Tyler hasn't heard of the BUAV but is of course against animal testing as well.
He says "That in a way is the same thing to me. I can't understand the mentality behind it. I'm not saying that I'm a superior person or have superior intellect but as a human being I have certain rights and I think that animals are alive as much as I am and they have certain rights as well. It's really terrible and you can obviously do without it. There are enough groups and companies that don't test on animals so it can be done, and that's just a responsibility and I would love to find out more about this and when we come back and do our tour I would love to be able to support that."
Tyler takes a marker and piece of paper from the desk he's sat at and asks about the BUAV again. I repeat the name.
"I'm going to find out about that!" he says when he's written it down. "Just to get heads up on something that's great. It's so difficult because we've been on tour for so long and you kind of miss out on all these things and it's good to know about more things. Especially in England when you had that Mad Cow's Disease, I guess a lot of people turned to vegetarian options and I was hoping it was going to catch on. I just had dinner with some people in a British style pub where I could eat vegan there and the rest of my band could eat vegetarian so I thought that was pretty cool.
He asks how things have been since Mad Cow's Disease. I tell him that I personally haven't noticed that much difference. I also mention how some people sympathised more with the farmers when foot and mouth broke out. Not me of course.
"And not with the animals that are being slaughtered," Tyler adds. "Yeah, that's ridiculous. Once again I can't even begin to understand that mentality at all. I agree with you. I remember seeing it on television and seeing thousands and thousands of animals being killed. So terrible… so terrible.
"And I have a cow now as well. Every year for my birthday my brother adopts an animal for me that was to be rescued from a slaughterhouse or something. I look at that as the same as like having a dog. You can put human characteristics to something. You can do that to any animal. I don't understand how people can have pets at home but can then go out and eat animals. Terrible."

One of the good things about being in a band and having fans is that sometimes the message you want to get across does actually do that. It's nice to hear that some Midtown fans have actually become vegetarian thanks to the band.
"Absolutely, and that is the best feeling. It's the same as when someone goes "Oh your song helped me through this time" or something like that. I've met so many people that go "Oh I didn't understand what vegetarianism was all about but I came to your show and I read something about it in the booklet of your CD and I checked it out and I've been vegetarian for this long". It really feels like you've made a difference to someone's life. That's an amazing feeling to even think that even if I haven't, y'know. It's great. Once again it shows you how you have to be responsible when you get up there because you have everyone's attention and they're really listening to you. You can't abuse that."
He also knows what it's like from a fan's point of view.
"There was a band called Propagandhi, I think they're still together. They were a crazy political band and every time that they would put out a new record, half the fun was listening to the record but the other half was just reading the booklet. They would go off about their animal rights and about anti-Capitalist whatever and this and that, and of course I'm talking to you on a phone from a Universal office right now so I don't know if I can agree with that! Just joking! But bands like that. Bands like Fugazi. They opened you up to so many different things and different kinds of people. And growing up in New Jersey as well we had such a strong underground scene. There would be a show in someone's basement and there would be local bands; all of my friends playing in bands and there would be 400 people in a basement in someone's house while their parents were eating dinner upstairs. There'd be bands playing and talking about this and talking about that, and booths set up by people from Anti Racist Action to PETA to this animal rights group to this. It was more than just music, it was a community. I'm very fortunate to have experienced that and grown up where I did and done the things that I've done. It's almost like my responsibility because I was touched by those bands. I learned from those bands that I should do the same and try and bring it to the next generation of people."

You can learn too! If you're interested in animal rights or becoming vegetarian or vegan, visit www.peta.com, www.peta2.com (PETA's music/entertainment based site), www.buav.org and www.vegsoc.org for starters. Midtown play Reading and Leeds on August 24th and 25th. Let's hope that they also return to these shores for a full UK tour soon. In the meantime, buy 'Living Well Is The Best Revenge' and visit www.midtownrock.com for more info.

** NB. A few months after this interview... October 5th to be exact (yes, I remember the date)... I gave up cheese, dairy and animal by-products and became vegan. One of the best things I ever did.