When Politics Meets Metal | Guest: Phil Labonte | 2⧸27⧸26
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 9 minutes
Words per minute
197.16457
Harmful content
Misogyny
11
sentences flagged
Hate speech
16
sentences flagged
Summary
Phil Labonte is the lead singer of All That Remains, a metalcore band from the 80's and 90's. He is also the co-host of the Tim Poole's show, TimCast, as well as the lead vocalist of the band. In this episode, he talks about his musical and political journey, and how he got into metal and politics.
Transcript
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So, whatever you think is going to happen in the future,
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and I've had a great time speaking with the co-host
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as well as the lead singer of All That Remains,
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what you're doing now with politics and everything.
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Did you have a house full of other musical influences?
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My godmother decided that she wanted to get me a guitar,
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and then I started getting into the thrash bands
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I was into, like, Metallica and stuff like that.
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like, the deep kind of, you know, guttural stuff.
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Judas Priest is basically just Rob Halford now with guys who,
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the guys in the band have been there for like 15 years at this point.
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do you have any thoughts just on kind of the metal community?
00:34:02.240
your genre still feels like the new kid on the block at some way,
00:34:06.240
but has actually been around for a couple of decades at this point.
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the old generation passes the torch onto the younger generation and stuff.
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there are people that that'll say other bands did,
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it was black Sabbath kind of was like the first band like that.
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And anybody who tells you anything else is a liar.
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like there's always been that kind of pass the torch thing.
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Keith Richards outlived Ozzie and he's still heroin.
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doing the drugs like this is going to kill you.
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you're either going to 30 or you're going at 90.
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There's a lot of people that have died at the age 27.
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passing the torch that kind of hasn't happened,
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I don't think there's as many young bands that are coming up or have come up
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So I'm not out there exploring new music a lot.
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like she likes a lot of the younger kind of bands and,
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and we'll get into debates about like things like,
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I think that every band nowadays is trying to be bring me the horizon.
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And she swears up and down that they don't all sound like bring me the horizon.
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they all sound like bring me the horizon because,
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they had a couple of records that were so influential,
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They had a couple of records that were hugely influential and they,
00:37:27.180
they really solidified themselves as this massive band.
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And now there's a ton of bands like architects.
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now I'm an old guy with old guy ears listening to new music.
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I don't know that there's a ton of really fresh stuff.
00:38:10.920
you're going to have to be offering people more than just,
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like people are really looking for something that is,
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that engages them visually as well as engages them sonically.
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they're one of the few bands that's building a world around themselves,
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most guys just want to show up in a t-shirt and,
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when they started allowing their names to get out,
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I kind of wish that they kind of leaned into the whole,
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and everybody's always seen in the masks thing a little bit longer,
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and they're one of the biggest heavy bands possibly ever.
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They were all just numbers and you never saw their faces and stuff.
00:40:03.460
presentation I eat was something that was even,
00:40:13.640
Some say the bubbles in an arrow truffle piece can take 34 seconds to melt in your mouth.
00:40:19.300
Sometimes the very amount you're stuck at the same red light,
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So I want to talk to you a little bit about your political journey as well.
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Obviously you're one of your gigs now is as a co-host on Tim cast or your regular feet fixture over there.
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conservatives have this weird tension where they're like,
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celebrities just shut up and sing until they said something.
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you recognize that ultimately it's not that they don't want a celebrity's opinion,
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that they think that they're somehow not valid,
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that like a musician wouldn't have an interesting take on something.
00:41:09.280
They're just tired of it all being like really dumb leftist stuff.
00:41:14.620
maybe you can talk a little bit about how you got into politics,
00:41:17.100
how you ended up on Tim cast and how that's become such a big part of your public persona.
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like my dad was a business owner and like he owned a small business and,
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and so he would complain about all the bureaucracy and crap that he had to deal with.
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he was digging sewer pipes for the municipal government of Chicopee.
00:41:46.860
So it's not like he was dealing with the federal government,
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it was very early in my life when I heard about the bureaucrats and the,
00:41:54.280
the BS that you had to deal with when you're dealing with the,
00:41:59.080
And so that was something that was ingrained in me,
00:42:14.920
like owning your own business is part of owning your own life.
00:42:25.700
I do think that people are inclined to have a kind of political position based on
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I started paying attention to politics in the late nineties,
00:42:42.080
when impeachment for Bill Clinton was going on.
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And that was like the first time that I was kind of,
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just how bad government actually is and how there is not like the law doesn't
00:43:04.580
I was sure that he was going to step down because,
00:43:17.280
So of course he was going to step down or of course he was going to be removed
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he can stay in office and he's not going to go to jail or anything.
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The Democrats are the liars and the Republicans tell the truth.
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that's the impression that I had as a young guy.
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so they both kind of will lay it on to get what they want and stuff.
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you would do essentially what you do on Twitter,
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So I would go to like lamb goat.com or metal maniacs message board.
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And there were always people that were interested in,
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I always found there were people that were on the left that were very
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a little notoriety in the underground as the guy from all that remains,
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we had records out in there so that people would jump in there and they'd want to,
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I think I was debating some of the impeachment stuff in the,
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in the late nineties as well on like metal maniacs message board.
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like there was a lot of pressure on people to not have political takes.
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You don't let them tell you what you can say and can't say,
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and there were a lot of people that got very upset about that.
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that's kind of always been my take as I didn't understand why things were the way
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there's a reason why I named the fall of ideals,
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the record that came out in 2006 that kind of put us on the map.
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the reason I named it the fall of ideals is because I could smell it coming,
00:46:39.040
Like I knew that something had changed in the United States and like these,
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that kind of like made America what it was made America,
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people were starting to look at them as quaint and people were starting to look at them
00:47:03.540
And there hadn't been anything like there hadn't been a serious issue that made it a big
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there wasn't any kind of like inflection point.
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but you could kind of tell that like the things that,
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the things that made America what it is had become passe and,
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all these fights about whether or not the United States is a,
00:48:06.380
have now become the normal arguments from the left.
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Like those arguments weren't the arguments that Barack Obama made before he was
00:48:20.220
Those arguments weren't the arguments that Hillary Clinton was making before,
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the kinds of the kinds of things that you hear Kamala Harris saying,
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you heard Joe Biden say them when he was running in,
00:48:46.140
if you go back and listen to Joe Biden from the aughts,
00:48:48.580
like he was very much like a pro America kind of dude,
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even though he had what I'm were in my opinion,
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the infamous Alex Jones episode where Tim called me up.
00:50:01.960
come on down here and help me keep Alex Jones in check,
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there's the meme going around where I'm just like,
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this is why I'm here after Alex starts saying some crazy stuff.
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And I just sent him a super chat and I was like,
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And so then I went down and did a show and we talked a little bit about it.
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initially I was only on a couple of times a week,
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you trust me enough to have me host the show when he's not there.
00:51:05.280
he wasn't in last night and I did the show and it was great.
00:51:09.880
it's nice to have someone on staff that if an emergency comes up,
00:51:47.060
up and move myself from New Hampshire to West Virginia part-time was
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I really believe that it's a problem that would,
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And I'm going to take one second to tell people you have to go and
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the Democrats will literally destroy the country.
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They will end the filibuster to do whatever they want.
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nevermind the fact that they're going to impeach Donald Trump.
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if you gave me the power of like throw Donald Trump in jail forever,
00:52:32.880
but save the United States or don't throw Donald Trump in jail,
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the point is like the United States is like that shining city on the Hill.
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I don't know that we'll be able to reignite it without significant problems.
00:53:10.940
You have to go out and you have to fight the Democrats.
00:53:13.780
And the only way you can fight the Democrats is by voting.
00:53:22.720
Cause it always seems to have had a very strange tension at some level.
00:53:27.920
music tends to have this like rebellious nature.
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I think this is an appropriate time to say a right wing orientation.
00:53:43.380
It is reactionary because it is always talking about the more brutal parts of life.
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but I think of the fact that it is always dealing with evil,
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the directors or the people involved don't mean to,
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they often accidentally convey conservative or right wing or reactionary
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understandings of the world because they have to acknowledge evil.
00:54:23.000
They have to acknowledge this struggle and they have to,
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they're often pushing vitality or masculinity in otherwise,
00:54:34.500
So you have this weird dichotomy where I've been to some metal shows,
00:54:42.680
we're raging against Donald Trump by buying into literally everything that
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a lot of these guys maybe even started like in direct rebellion against
00:54:57.540
you look at it and there's a lot of older metal guys converting to
00:55:02.420
You see Bucky Lawless of wasp putting out gospel albums,
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you just see a lot of these guys kind of shift that direction and
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they still maintain like a politics that seemed to be right wing.
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how that's played itself out between the artists and the,
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the way that kind of metal presents its politics?
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in the aspect that like younger people tend to be more progressive or
00:55:44.540
and older people tend to be more right-leaning.
00:56:00.340
even though I would consider myself right wing in,
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gay marriage is fine because it was the nineties and everyone's like,
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and older people tend to be more right-leaning.
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and kind of just the realities that metal shows like,
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that is as much as people don't want to admit it,
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and including things like that cannibal corpse rights,
00:57:03.580
they've sung about some human somewhere has done that.
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there was this guy named Albert fish that they quoted.
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I think it was the butchered at birth record.
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when you say the name of some of these records,
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any horror that the mind can conceive of has happened and,
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and has been done any kind of horrible thing that you can think of a person doing someone,
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someone somewhere has done it at some point in time.
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there are people that are malicious and there are people that are,
00:58:16.140
And there are people that do take joy in hurting other people.
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that the left generally doesn't like to acknowledge,
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but that doesn't mean that the solution is putting them in jail.
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the cannibal corpse has written a song about the solution is to make sure that
00:59:26.040
but we're not live right now with this is prerecorded.
00:59:28.840
So we won't be able to take any of your questions today.
00:59:36.040
we're recording this right next to when this happened,
00:59:41.180
There's a debate right now over right-wing art.
00:59:44.160
the semi-annual we need more right-wing art debate.
00:59:46.840
And the thing I've noticed is that no one ever asks successful right-wing
00:59:59.320
asking a actual guy successfully producing art who is,
01:00:06.360
searchlight pictures presents in the blink of an eye on Hulu on Disney plus,
01:00:11.860
a sweeping science fiction drama spanning the stone age,
01:00:15.480
the present day and the distant future about the essence of what it means to be
01:00:21.800
The film is directed by Oscar winning filmmaker,
01:00:26.740
Kate McKinnon and Daveed digs stream in the blink of an eye.
01:00:30.360
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01:00:51.280
I don't think there's a problem with art on the,
01:00:56.700
There probably are fewer artists that are right-wing making art than there are
01:01:05.440
but that doesn't mean that they're not out there.
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to see things that are outside of what is normally considered right-wing as valid,
01:01:23.280
so it's easy to get a country singer to sing country songs about,
01:01:33.260
and it's easy to get right-leaning people to listen to country music,
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to get attention from right-leaning outlets is much harder because,
01:01:44.140
people don't associate heavy metal with the right.
01:01:46.700
I think that partially you've got a situation of,
01:01:50.960
If you hear something that isn't traditionally thought of as being created by someone on
01:02:01.260
David has had Alex Jones's politics before Alex Jones did.
01:02:07.020
you don't see him getting invited to the TP USA,
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if you're going to be welcome in right-leaning spaces,
01:02:40.720
And someone who's a little more subdued about their right-leaning perspective,
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it's almost like that's not enough for the right.
01:02:48.160
Like they really want you to feed them the right-wing sandwich.
01:02:59.580
and I think if they were a little more comfortable with,
01:03:27.240
could have called them up and they might've been able to do something with
01:03:39.320
like they play all the radio festivals and they don't come across to your
01:03:45.420
average music listener as preachy or as a right-leaning band,
01:03:54.320
those themes and those messages are in their stuff.
01:03:56.760
They really do kind of make it subtle when they're in the,
01:04:09.200
like right leaning outlets would do well to be like,
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they don't have to shove it down our throat to be something that's
01:04:23.580
war of ages is one of my favorite metal core bands.
01:04:27.940
their entire last album was about the book of revelation.
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a lot of people who are asking where is the right wing art?
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They're not looking where the right wing art is.
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And so rather than saying I'm there to support right wing artists,
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whatever that I already watch to become right way.
01:05:00.780
I'm not going out of my way to support these things.
01:05:02.440
I want them to appear in the things I'm already comfortable with.
01:05:09.620
you try not to be too preachy very frequently because there is,
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because there isn't a place where the right wing will say,
01:05:18.540
And we're going to make sure that you're successful.
01:05:23.120
And we're going to make sure that people go out and buy our product and
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You kind of have to keep your head down about it.
01:05:47.660
someone's going to notice and they're going to say,
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you're still doing it kind of quietly kind of keeping your head down
01:06:20.500
but there are streaming services and there are people,
01:06:22.580
people that for a little while wouldn't talk about all that remains
01:06:25.420
because of the fact that I'm such a right wing guy,
01:06:29.920
And that's kind of what people in the music industry,
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So if the right wing wants more right wing art and they,
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they have to find the right wingers and go out of there.
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but the right wing barely can get it together to boycott something.
01:06:55.500
They're everybody on the left boycotts the same kind of thing with,
01:07:01.840
then you should go ahead and do what you can to promote right wing art.
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Every time you can find it because you need a space for these people to make art
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where they can do it and make a living and actually,
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survive or else you're forcing them to kind of keep their head down and,
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and play in the left sandbox because that's the only way they can continue to
01:07:25.420
You have to know that if you step out there and you are explicit,
01:07:32.240
people are just going to default to the place where they can exist.
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We're going out with born of Osiris and dead eyes.
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You can get your tickets again at all that remains online.com.
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If for some reason you have not listened to all that remains,
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you absolutely should fall of ideals to me is like,
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it's up there with like painkiller and rust and peace.
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Cause when every time a single song from that album comes on,
01:08:48.500
you need to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.