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"The future is media that exists everywhere”—Dillinger Escape Plan’s Ben Weinman on Party Smasher

Last month, the Dillinger Escape Plan wrapped up a support slot on the Nine Inch Nails and Soundgarden tour. Although the band are taking some time off, DEP founder/guitarist Ben Weinman is making sure he stays in perpetual motion, both musically and digitally. He’s currently in the studio with producer Ross Robinson, recording the debut album by the Giraffe Tongue Orchestra, a summit meeting featuring the combined forces of guitarist Brent Hinds (Mastodon), bassist Eric Avery (Jane’s Addiction) and drummer Jon Theodore (the Mars Volta).

The other major project consuming his life is Party Smasher, a website dedicated to act as a conduit to explore the processes and mindsets of creative people in various fields. The mission statement for the site is to “support and produce independent creation, with an obsession for DIY and revulsion for expectedness.” Weinman has done video interviews with personalities as diverse as his GTO bandmate Hinds and Paul Banks of Interpol, as well as penning an editorial about depression following the death of beloved actor/comedian Robin Williams.

He hopes that the site (which started as an outgrowth of his record label of the same name) will help foster a sense of community without frontiers. Kerin Rose, the founder of internationally acclaimed high-fashion eyewear line A-Morir, penned an essay (“What Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Rhianna And Party Smasher Inc Have In Common”) that essentially explains the site raison d’etre—there’s no defined route to get to where you want to go. But you will need a destination.

During a break in GTO recording, Weinman spoke with Jason Pettigrew to share the motives and objectives of Party Smasher, discuss the early stages of Giraffe-Tongued rock and revel over the joy of owning a golf cart.

Did you feel there was a need for a web portal where discussion of creativity—regardless of a specific focus—was key? You have commentaries from fashion maven figures and a guitarist with a face tattoo.
BEN WEINMAN: I’ve come to realize there’s something to learn from everybody. The one thing I learned from growing up in the underground hardcore and punk scene was that people don’t have to [make] the same similar-sounding music in order to have to have the same ethic or spirit. When I used to go to shows, you’d see bands like Deadguy, Lifetime, Texas Is The Reason and Earth Crisis at one show—and you didn’t blink an eye. The bands were drastically different and it really wasn’t discussed. That culture has become kind of homogenized. And that’s what I missed the most. The ethic and the spirit of bands are more important than what they sounded like. There were no guidelines or rulebooks—it was about doing things your own way.

Through the years, I’ve been trying to do a lot of things on my own, struggling with the ideas of being successful and wanting to make money but not compromise my art. I realized there were a lot of people along the way that I met that have been massively successful, but without compromising. And every single one of them has done it differently. There was never a right or wrong way; it was doing it their own way. The new idea of DIY is not “do it yourself.” It’s “do it your way.” I wanted to be able to inspire people into creating paradigm shifts in the way things are done. In deciding how we are going to release our music, I’ve realized things are changing so drastically, it’s almost impossible to make a decision how the business should be run and how things work. All you can do is try and follow your heart and ethics as to how you present yourself. The business doesn’t matter; that is always going to keep changing.

The big picture is to create an environment like the labels from back in the day, the labels that had a real culture to them. But unlike those days, selling music is kind of irrelevant. What I realized was that it was all about bringing cultural influences together and branding them with one kind of logo under one umbrella to say “we’re not just putting out music, we’re promoting influencers.” The idea for Party Smasher is to create a new generation for the label—which isn’t a record label, but a cultural influencer.

There was a DEP album titled Option Paralysis, which pretty much describes surfing the internet. Millions of sites, but no one really knows where to go or what to look for. What will PS do differently?
The thing about the internet now is that there’s a lot of noise. Everyone talks about how do we know what’s important, how do we know what we should be looking at, what’s spam, what’s not. The way I see it, the internet is now going into a direction where it’s kind of fixing itself. The flood of information has come, and there’s only going to be certain people who are allowed to get on that ark. And it’s those people who have something really important to say that create quality curated content people trust. Party Smasher as it stands now is where people can read interviews and find inspiration. The big picture is to create an environment that exists not only on the web, but exists everywhere, curating content by people you know who are doing things for the right reasons and doing them their own way. That can be music, that could be art, that could be anything.

The future is not TV stations; the future is media that exists everywhere. The future plans are to continue to find people worthy of the Party Smasher gold stamp of approval.

So you’re trying to foster a sense of community and a sense of discovery across as many creative platforms as possible, with PS as a—rather thee—portal.
A sense of discovery is a good way to put it. The overall theme of the content is to figure out not just what people do, but why they do it and how they do it. That’s really the philosophy around everything. If you don’t know why you do it, it doesn’t matter what you do. The theme is why the people we look up to that create the art we love feel the need to exist and how it brought them to where they are. The only way you influence culture is to actually be believable and have a purpose. I want to know why people do what they do: If they can’t answer that question, they’re not party smashers. If they say, “Well, I wanna make money,” that’s a result, that’s not a “why.” People creating art for the wrong reasons is just as bad as having a child with somebody you don’t love. When you are an artist and you have a real passion, it’s your job and your duty to create. When you put that into the world for the right reasons, it’ll influence the world in a good way.

Are you looking to raise consciousness in unlikely areas? Say you met Chad Kroeger at a bar, and he has starts telling you all of these strident, passionate views on art that could be perceived as revolutionary, possibly radical. But what he’s known for creating is the complete antithesis of that. Would you sit down with him in front of a camera and discuss those things?
No. Not unless I was going to expose the fact he was contradicting himself. Part of what I hope to get from some of these people when asking them why they do what they do, I hope a lot of them can’t answer it and leave having to think about it. Obviously, there will be bands and artists [on the site] I don’t particularly like, but as long as I feel they have an honest answer to that question, then I think there is room for them on Party Smasher.

Who is going to be on the site in the near future?
In the queue, we have interviews with Eugene Robinson from Oxbow and Keith Morris [Off, Flag]. I’m working on a small documentary piece on founders and investors that think like bands and artists and how they create businesses. Interviews with people who have achieved massive success through DIY ethics.

We’re curating a lot of stuff with a club in Brooklyn called St. Vitus. To me, it’s like the new CBGB’s: It’s a small 150-capacity room, but someone like Björk will come DJ there on her own merit; Nirvana chose to play there after their Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction. St. Vitus and Party Smasher are doing a lot of things together. We’re going to delve into comedy and cover the same kinds of things. I also think a big part of the site is to address misconceptions about bands and musicians that they are any different than anybody else. I felt that was really relevant.

What’s the biggest misconception about Ben Weinman?
It’s funny: When I meet people who find out I’m in a band, they have no idea about the reality of finances for a band like the Dillinger Escape Plan. There’s no concept that we are regular, working-class people who have to work really hard to make a living. We can do okay, but we’re neither loaded nor poverty-stricken. [imitates Pollyanna optimist.] “Keep trying! Don’t give up your job at Starbucks!”[Laughs.] Nobody ever just gets it, you know?

Dillinger are on break now after finishing a set of dates with Nine Inch Nails and Soundgarden. You’re currently recording a Giraffe Tongue Orchestra album. Given the participants, what’s that going to sound like?
Ross Robinson is producing. [NIN synth-op] Alessandro Cortini is going to do some things with us. We have a few people lined up to sing, but I’m not ready to talk about that yet. What’s so great about it is that there are so many seasoned guys—much more than myself—and I think we’ve all been in bands that were extremely… traumatic. [Laughs.] There’s been a lot of trauma in all of our bands and we’ve come out of those situations more mature. Working together is extremely rewarding, and we’re mature enough to enjoy the process. You hear every one of our styles in this band, but it doesn’t sound like any one of our bands.

Tell me your favorite story about Dillinger’s stint on the Nine Inch Nails/Soundgarden tour.
I had a really good conversation with Trent [Reznor], which was the most memorable part of the tour. It sounded like he really believed in Party Smasher. He had read through the whole site, watched every video, and it was really humbling that this person I’ve looked up to is digging what I’m doing and really believes in it. He made a really cool observation that after years and years of trying everything—being on labels, doing things completely independent and then being back on a label again—he realized the Party Smasher philosophy is what it is all about. There really is no right or wrong way about doing it—it’s doing it your way and maintaining your integrity. Hearing him say that made me feel like I was on the right track.

I was kind of expecting stories of madness and rampant destruction.
I bought a golf cart on tour. That was fun.

Really?
I always wanted one my whole life. I’m spray painting it and turning it into the Party Smasher convertible. I drive around my neighborhood on it and give kids rides.

Do people say, “That’s the weird guy from the neighborhood, don’t ever get in that golf cart”?
Absolutely. [Laughs.] alt