Recently I went to North Hollywood to meet up with Pat of Youth Of Togay to talk about the bands forthcoming album. After ordering the best damned philly cheese steaks in LA we sat at a booth and talked of the band, their album, the Bridge 9 incident, and the queercore ’scene’ as a whole.

So tell me about the new album coming out.

Durus Compleo is a parody album with about six songs. Last spring we went into the studio and recorded six tracks that were supposed to come out on a single. But the guy we sent the plates to to press the albums won’t give us the songs back. Usually it costs about three hundred to go through the process of making plates, but this guy wants five-fifty! So those plates are kind of sitting in limbo and we’ve gotta redo all those tracks.

Not long ago though we went in and recorded like eleven tracks in three days. It was great. We went in and I told the band what ideas I had for the songs, like a hardcore mosh type song or something, and we went at it. We practically lived in the studio for three days and came out with some amazing tracks!

Those eleven tracks were going to be three 7 inches, but then it came out to two 7 inches and a CD comp. Each of the records is going to have an exclusive track, which won’t be on the CD. A lot of bands when they put something on vinyl and CD it’s just the same thing on both, so why bother getting the vinyl? But if you give them some incentive, like an exclusive track, then there you go.

Tell me about the band.

Youth Of Togay is originally from Boston, which is known for having a musical history, especially hardcore. I had the idea of putting together a gaycore band and I asked a few friends if they’d want to play. I was looking for people that believe the same thing as I do, whether they were gay straight or bisexual. When it came together I couldn’t have asked for a better group of guys. There’s this whole group dynamic. They’re just as interesting, opening minded, and as funny as I am.

Recently I moved to LA though and the other guys couldn’t come out here with me. One of them goes to Berkley college, another works for [a big music company]. So I want to sort of reform the band out here. I’m not looking for a full time band, just practice once or twice a month. Play some shows.

I’ve actually been wanting to do a benefit show with a bunch of queercore bands, since there are a lot out there. When gay rights had a big boom it was amazing, but in the past eight years there’s been a blow back. I would love to have my hand in anything that would expand our musical genre, but I can’t do that without an active band.

There needs to be a band, like Pansy Division, that goes ‘Okay, we’re gonna do a US tour and take these bands with us to go around and spread the music’ so that there are people out there who know that there are bands like us. I wish some of these bands would step up and do something like that. Like, my band can’t do that because no one knows us. But a more established band, like Pansy Division or Gayrilla Biscuits, would be great for that. I would only ask of that from those bands because that’s what I would do if I were in their position.

What’s your opinion of the queercore scene?

It’s becoming more of a scene, it’s got a lot of potential. These people are artists; they’re creative. But this sort of thing amplifies insecurities, they don’t feel comfortable. They got to a show and some guy they think is really cute says ’stop being such a fag!’ It makes people want to hide and be solitary. It has a lot to do with how bands interact with each other too.

Look at Black Fag, they’re going to Europe. I think that if other bands did something like that there would be more of a blow up in the scene. I think it’s gonna take a lot of work and I hope it happens. I want to help it happen.

But then again, look at Black Fag. We were gonna do a split record with them but we found out that one, they’re not gay. And two, they’re really not that interesting. I don’t see how long they can last. Yeah, they may be playing art shows now and get into LA Weekly, but it’s all cover songs. How long can that last? Don’t get me wrong, they’re talented musicians and great people. But for a band to just be a cover band with a lisp doesn’t seem to be the most interesting thing in the world.

Not too long ago there was a big deal of drama that happened between your band’s myspace and purevolume page and the record company Bridge 9. What happened there?

Here’s the thing. I interned at Bridge 9 for a year. I know the owner. The band: we take a few things into consideration before we parody a song. Do we like the song? That’s really important. Do we love that song, and do we like it enough to cover it? Another thing taken into account, are other people going to like it?

I think we only made the myspace page right before we went into the recording studio. We posted one of the songs, a Have Heart parody, and within a couple of days we had, like, three thousand friend requests and five thousand listens on the song. Next thing we know, Bridge 9 sends a fax to myspace about copyright infringement and they close down the page without even looking into it.

I remember the second day we had the song up I got a call from the singer of Have Heart. I’m a pretty common sense guy, I’m pretty open. I approached the conversation like an open forum. I listened to what he had to say, and he listened to me. I wanted to try and find a compromise with him. But the attitude he took to the conversation was just ‘take it down altogether.’ There was no compromise or discussion about it. I didn’t get mad or tell him to fuck off or anything. I tried to reason with him, tell him there was nothing negative in the song. I even e-mailed him the lyrics and everything.

I think the big deal was because of the gay themes.

A lot of people saw this as, and I saw this as, the reason that I started the band. There are really homophobic feelings in hardcore. I was really shocked that they took this approach. The singer said he had gay friends that really took offense to the song. But I got all kinds of emails and calls from people telling me how much they liked the song. I tried explaining that to him.

If I was in their position and I didn’t like what someone did with my song I would call them and say ‘I really don’t like it, and I can’t make it stop. But what can we do to make this better?’ I hope that somewhere somebody listened to the music and created some kind of informed opinion.

I know there are a lot of people who don’t like us. But the only negative thing I’ve gotten in an email was from some guy in, like, South Carolina that said he hated the ‘fag stuff.’ I like to try and take the high road, and I know it makes me seem like a pussy or whatever but I sleep better at night knowing I did the right thing.

Preorder the album Durus Compleo through FNS Records!

FNS Records
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Youth Of Togay Pure Volume
Youth Of Togay Myspace

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