12:30 – 1:30 Monday, November 20th in the courtyard of the AC building at College of Marin. Punk rock, philosophy, and free food! Sacripolitical takes the audience on a musical tour of nihilism and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. An open conversation follows the performance. Sponsored by Funky Jams and the Philosophy Club. Free and open to the public.
Tri Subversion is a UK-based, three-piece, punk band that began life with the name Try Subversion. I first encountered them by way of their 2019 release Weaponize Your Curiosity, an outstanding collection of original, raw, and intelligent punk rock songs commenting on the stupidy of our contemporary world. This was followed up by a name change for the band and the release of the equally outstanding albums Project Fear, in 2021, and You Are the Carbon, in 2023.
Tri Subversion’s music has become part of my life’s soundtrack. They are as deliberatly aggressive as a charging rhino, with lyrics as defiant as an anarchist at a Trump rally. Their songs exude working-class spirit, carrying a message that is critical of the hate and fear-filled rhetoric coming from both the right and left. The band’s emotional intensity is balanced by intelligence and compassion for everyone who suffers at the hands of the powerful. Tri Subversion questions social expectations, challenges common wisdom, and encourages listeners to think at the same time that they dance.
In 2021 I began corresponding with Tri Subversion’s guitarist, Clive Wojcik-Hale, as his band was working on Project Fear. I quickly discovered that while we don’t agree about everything, we do share some uncanny points of personal connection, making me wonder if this universe might have some sort of plan after all. What follows is an interview that I recently conducted with Clive in which he reflects on his band, his beliefs, and life in Leicester, UK.
The band Try Subversion was created by our good friend Stefen Seniuk AKA Stefan Alan. Stef was fanatical about the Sex Pistols and the fashion that surrounded them. “Try Subversion” was a phrase that was emblazoned on a hand painted Vivien Westwood shirt. Stef was taken with the seditious idea and wanted to put together an original styled punk outfit that was authentic to the 70s punk ethic using “Try Subversion” as its name, which he thought operated on many levels. After his death in 2019, we (the current line up) decided to keep the name going, not only as a nod to Stefan and his creativity but also the hard work we had all contributed to the band and its promotion, with artwork, song writing, music, and production. Stef’s death was a terrible loss to us all personally, as he was a great friend and an inspiration. The changing of the “Try” to “Tri” was in main because we were no longer a brick holding 4 corners of our brotherhood, but a triangle holding 3. We fell back to this battle position and continued the fight without him.
Tri Subversion are Clive Standish on drums, Julian Palmer on bass and vocals, and myself, Clive Wojcik-Hale, on guitar and vocals. We all have varied influences but in the main, Clive (drums) is a big Crass fan as well as music from the 70’s and 80’s punk era. Julian was bought up on his brother’s hard rock and metal collection, including AC/DC, Motorhead, Hawkwind, though he is also a big electro and techno fan. I’ve always followed the poetical path of rebellion in music no matter the genre. If its intelligent and or quirky/funny I’ll listen to it. I do have regular favorites, including Radiohead, The Grifters, BRMC, Jello Biafra, JAMC, blah blah…
The message is, question everything that is legislated in your name to keep you “safe.” Governments and big business go hand in hand. Freedoms that were once hard-won are eroded with strokes of a pen because of the apathy that blinked, head-down living has conditioned each generation to endure. We are constantly informed by state and private controlled media of how bad everything is and how much more we must work to pay bills and live. Easy debt has become the chains of slavery from which there is no true emancipation. We hear constantly from our elected officials that we are consumers and never referred to as citizens. The democratic systems that we believed kept us free have turned into a two-horse race that panders to the establishment. Outside, unelected influences such as The World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization shape and control domestic policy. Insane foreign policies feed billions of $$/££s into the industrial military complex to destroy ordinary working people’s lives in unwinnable foreign conflicts. Ideology is dead, oligarchs and billionaires buy influence and power. It is our duty to resist on an individual level in whatever way we are capable.
After Stef’s death we were working on a new album. As a tribute to him some of the songs were released on an 8up download in their raw form. Once we took stock and agreed on what direction we wanted to travel we reworked some of the songs and nailed them hard to the Tri Subversion flagpole; after all we were all involved in their creation so they were part of our journey. Stef and I spent many a late hour half-cut bouncing ideas and lyrics off each other with Julian and Clive forming the structures to hold them up. The rough groundwork had been done and it only seemed right that we completed the task and take full ownership.
I hope love will always prevail and common sense seeds all decisions made on every level. Fearfully I accept that this simplistic utopia isn’t achievable and fully understand that suffering and fear are the sticks that drive us on. The masses are asleep; they know only what they are told and buy only what they are sold. They are the reason why psychopaths and sociopaths will always be in control. They have been conditioned well.
“No Soul” is a song about brotherhood and betrayal. We were let down by someone who we thought was a good friend, and it all got a bit personal. Stef was pissed off by their antics saying they had no soul and penned a few words. We decided to keep it all simple, keeping it to a repetitive riff that only increased and decreased in ferocity. It was how we felt at the time and anger and disappointment still drives the song. Stef later dedicated this song to one of his close friends after an altercation in a pub that got a bit tasty, finding himself at the centre of the fracas. Pretty standard stuff for him, he was awesome at finding aggravation.
Julian and I are both skeptical about many things that start in the media with the phrase “scientists say…”. Let’s be frank; scientists don’t generally work for the government, they work for who pays them, and there lies the conflict. Every 10 years or so the world is frightened to death with the next apocalypse, be it a nuclear war, new ice age, oil running out, ozone depletion, asteroid impacts, bees dying, cancer, covid, and climate change. All these things matter nothing for the super rich who just carry on flying around the world driving fast cars and living on private yachts. But the rest of us, hey another new tax or increase in tax will make it all go away. C02 is plant food, it’s not a pollutant. We breath out C02. They want to recapture C02 then replant the rain forests. Simplistic solutions on a green and blue world that is a living machine.
It is a song about the fear-mongering tactics that the tabloid press use to sell more papers or get more clicks and likes and gain approval from their political paymasters. Originally called “No13 Uneasy Street” with a nod to the British Poet John Cooper Clarke. It’s a song about the pitfalls of living in a poor urban landscape, though the reality of these communities – even though they have their problems – is never the “Snake Pliskin” Escape from New York it’s made out to be. The end line is “I found my street I live at number 13”.
I like all of Julian’s songs more than mine. He has a great voice and vocal style. “Hedonic,” “Freedom is war,” “Ignorant bliss,” and “Eat data,” are songs I like to play. It’s hard to choose really but I’m enjoying the direction changes with songs like, “Nothing is forever” and “You are the carbon”. We are currently writing a load of new stuff as well reworking some other songs I’ve got from earlier projects to fit our dynamic. Moving forward is a heathy part of being in a band. We change the set every gig.
I live in a rural area, so it was hard to get hooked up with like-minded musicians to form an original band. Everyone I met locally just wanted to do covers, which I despised. I threw myself into the deep end of music production and online collaborations, learning new skills, recording sketches and sharing ideas with complete strangers through the medium of Soundcloud. It was a fertile period for me and it’s where I met BoBoNomad (Ubertroll supremo). We collaborated on many projects together. It also allowed me to experiment with electronic music. It’s a huge body of work that I have accumulated working with artists from around the world that love making music. New Dinosaur Extinction is the vehicle of my personal creativity in music, art, and poetry. Its like a musical diary. It had its moments and some of it was shit, but mostly a photo of my soul.
All life experiences influence the journey of the heart and being a soldier was part of that. It’s where I learned how to play the guitar sitting on a bunk late at night with no money for going out on the town and chatting with friends. I had a good mate at the time that taught me everything he knew about the electric guitar. He was a pretty cool guy, hailing from the Wirral near Liverpool. He was a bit of a rocker; it was a style I was able to adapt to relatively quickly. As a young soldier I was pretty keen and green, but my life really started going down the road of musical influence when I left the fold and found my own path. The army to me is now a distant blurred dream framed in glorious rose-tinted hindsight.
All of us live out of town now but still in the greater district. Leicester is a decent city. It has plenty going on in the arts department. The music scene in Leicester is huge with many different factions, including the punk scene. There are numerous venues and healthy turn outs for events. Leicester is a little bit overlooked by the UK music scene in general. It has a huge motorway running up the side of it so is easily by-passed. The establishment (i.e. the BBC) only really focus on cities such as Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, London, so it’s hard for Leicester bands to break out of town. But let’s face it, the underground is where it’s at, and we have no illusions that we will be nothing more than a noise in the dark.
The shadows are our refuge and our battle ground, subversion isn’t mainstream, true subversion is word of mouth.
Try Subversion’s Weaponize Your Curiosity on Bandcamp.
Tri Subversion’s Project Fear and You Are the Carbon on Bandcamp.
The Nihilist Void 