Editor's Note: The following telephone conversation with Portland, Oregon-based Poison Idea (a quartet) took place in late December, 1989. Their album Ian McKinye, due to the nature of the cover was subsequently censored in England. I found Poison Idea straight-forward and cool. As opposed to my main publication, Cops Hate Poetry, This conversation focuses on the album cover and covers specific details. This conversation was originally done for Variety when I was an intern there, but remained unpublished until now. Interview copyrighted 1989/2005 ©
CB-Charles Bernstein
PC-Pig Champion (Tom Roberts)
CB: How and when was the band formed?
PC: The band was formed in late 1980.
CB: What was the logic behind Ian McKinye (album cover)?
PC: The album cover was to sum up our feelings of hardcore, which has gotten to be straight-edge. The guy who started the movement, a guy by the name of Ian McKinye. Basically his message is don't drink, don't smoke, don't have illicit sex, be a vegetarian, do as I say and how I do. We don't think that's the best way for rock and roll to be. It's too 80s, it's too Reaganish. It's rather convenient that this Ian McKinye guy's conservative philosophy came on line just as Reagan came in. Ian McKinye is a guy who started a hardcore band in Washington, D.C. called Minor Threat. He still lives in Washington, D.C. We don't have anything personally against him; it's more against his ideology. He doesn't like the album, he's upset. It hurt his feelings.
CB: What kind of response has the album received?
PC: Critically, it's gotten rave reviews all over the world; it's considered a real good record for what it is.
CB: Yes, but what about the black tape covering certain parts of the cover?
PC: Oh yeah, it was going to be fully uncensored. It was going to be just as it appears, no black spots, but all the record manufactures in England where the record was made, they wouldn't touch it, they wouldn't print it as it was. I automatically assumed we couldn't do it over here.
CB: What about other instances of censorship?
PC: Our "Kings Of Punk" album band's logo carved in the singer's stomach, that I heard of having cardboard ribbon being wrapped around it...covered up the middle part. On this same album, the lyric sheet on that, the manufacturer over in England didn't like some of the questionable language on there about different people's sex preferences, they censored that. We couldn't have the sheet in there, that was left-wing censorship, as a matter of fact, very left-wing censorship! They didn't want to offend anybody of any sex persuasion, although I don't know why. We took some pornography catalogues and diced up some of the lettering to look like across Jerry's chest (the front man) it said anal shafting, I had a picture of me and across my face it said dog-fucker and we had one across the old bass player and it said these boys are really hung, one of them can even suck his own dick. I mean, these were quotes taken out of a pornography catalogue and they were pasted over us, but the people in England seemed sensitized by all of that and thought we were going to offend gays and lesbians.
http://homepages.nyu.edu/~cch223/usa/poisonidea_main.html
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