Be Your Own Pet: Banned in the U.S.A.

PHOTO by MICHAEL LAVINE

Be Your Own Pet are from Nashville, a town so infested with country-music-industry cutthroats that it rivals only Los Angeles on the entertainment-biz creativity-discouragement index. So it’s little surprise, maybe, that their music—unpredictable, rapid-fire tempo, 1980s-camp-movie meets rock-party—has fallen victim to industry censorship. Universal, the label releasing their new album Get Awkward, cut three songs from the U.S. release: the Heathers-esque “Becky,” the hoodlum party jam “Black Hole,” and the 45-second “Blow Your Mind,” which is anti-high school in a way America hasn’t heard since “Surfin’ USA” or the Boomtown Rats’ “I Don’t Like Mondays.”

Guitarist Jonas Stein spoke to us from Nashville about the band’s relationship to Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth and label Ecstatic Peace), farming, and the notorious forbidden three songs you’re likely to hear at the House of Blues Anaheim.

Do you do any work on the farm?
Sometimes in the summer I’ll cut the hay in the fields—that takes a really long time. But our neighbors have cows and so usually they’ll cut the hay if they can keep it for the cows. Sometimes I have to do a little job here or there like cut wood and lay it out by the fireplace. There are certain responsibilities that most people don’t think about that come with owning a lot of property.

How did your band get involved with Thurston Moore?
Thurston bought [our first three-song single] and at first he wanted to release something, but after he realized that we had been like kind of in the market with big labels, he thought that his releases would be too small. So Ecstatic Peace and Universal teamed up for this unique thing: We have Universal’s funds and financial support along with the creative and artistic support of Ecstatic Peace, too. It’s awesome that Thurston is a supporter and fan. The only bummer is that Universal read the lyrics to all of our songs and three of them are supposedly unacceptable for our “demographic” fan base. They’re scared of getting sued so they took off three songs on the North American version of the album. The album is incomplete now. It’s a lot less exciting. Two of the songs are personal favorites of mine. The fucking suits at the top didn’t even listen to the songs or understand that they’re campy and not that threatening sounding at all. It’s kind of racist and sexist of Universal to do that because they put out Marilyn Manson and Wu-Tang Clan, and they’re still allowed to release their vulgar lyrics because their demographic of fans are supposedly young black kids who are allowed to listen to that shit. Or they don’t think they’ll get sued because they’re supposedly poor. They’re taking off our three songs because they think some rich white kid is a threat! They think they might get sued by a rich family. And another thing to think about is how many suburban teenage white kids there are at the mall who listen to BYOP, and how many listen to popular rap songs that have crazy gangster lyrics in them. I guess it’s not a problem to listen to that. I guess the label is kind of grouping us into the wrong group. I don’t know. It’s frustrating. The only thing we can really take from this is to talk about it and let people know how fucked up it is. Also, our label in the UK—XL—is going to release an EP of the three songs over here. Universal is giving us our rights back to the songs so they have no ownership over them.

So 20 years from now they can reissue it like they did the Nick Lowe album that couldn’t come out right in America.
Yeah, that would be something to look forward to.

NYLON MAGAZINE PRESENTS BE YOUR OWN PET WITH THE VIRGINS, SHE WANTS REVENGE AND THE SWITCHES THE HOUSE OF BLUES | 1530 S DISNEYLAND DR | ANAHEIM 92802 | HOB.COM | THURS 7PM | $22.50-25 | ALL AGES

Tags: anaheim, be your own pet, house of blues, Music, thurston moore