Grab your s'mores, your bug spray and pack your bags as Riot Squad Media is about to take over Northeast Pennsylvania with Camp Punksylvania! The 3-day festival with multiple stages and amazing national and local acts like The Suicide Machines, War On Women and A Wilhelm Scream, will take place from 1 September until 3 September, tickets are available here. West coast punks Pity Party joined TGEFM to discuss their upcoming appearances at Camp Punksylvania for the latest installment of our Camp-centric Roll Of The Dice interview series. Check it out below and I'll see you at the campfire!
Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview! Congratulations on the new record, “Sick Sad World Survival Party.” What can you tell us about Pity Party, your sound and what you stand for?
Thanks so much for interviewing us! We're a punk band from the San Francisco Bay Area! Our sound pulls from a lot of influences musically, especially a lot of our early 2000s nostalgia. We try to walk the line between upbeat fun pop-punk and incredibly depressing, hopeless and trauma-drenched lyricism. We stand strong politically as a band. We believe in community care and our responsibility to keep others safe. We believe that everyone should have access to safe housing, nutritious foods, effective health care, hygiene products and mental health support systems. We believe that these systems can be built at a community level, to circumvent the absolute abysmal failure and lack of productive structure that our government provides, to ensure not just equal access to a decent quality of life, but the downright survival of so many folks in our country. We are all each other have. Email us at pityxparty@gmail.com if you want to learn further how to run food distributions in your communities, create a structure to provide quality healthcare to those who go without, and to discuss how we can work together to create pockets of support and safety in your communities against sexual, domestic, gender-based, sexuality-based and racist violence to try to keep eachother here persisting in a fucked up world.
You are gearing up for Camp Punksylvania in the coming months, what does the festival circuit mean to individual artists like yourself?
It means getting to see your friends and making new friends! It means developing community and chosen family across the states and beyond!
What's the state of the live scene from your point of view? We are living in a “just deal with COVID” world and everything about this timeline is some level of completely fucked. What impact, if any, do the current cultural and political landscapes have on your music?
It is completely fucked, but it sets a precedent to fall in line with our collective morals and keep eachother safe, giving increased consciousness to health and wellness of disabled or immunely-compromised folks We learned that we can all be more conscious about accessibility and livestream shows! Now all our best friends rockin wheelchairs can safely attend basement shows 🙂 It's so weird because everyone says we're “out of covid” but folks still get sick and we still need to be careful. Not for us, but think about someone who relies on home care to fulfill their basic needs, getting covid severely hinders the accessibility to in-home care 🙁 be safe! wash your hands friends! we love you alllllllll and we want you all to be safe!
Any summer camp worth its salt knows there needs to be a lot of different activities to participate in. What activity would the members of Pity Party be in charge of if Camp Punksylvania was an actual sleepaway camp? What song are you performing at the end of the season Campfire?
We would lead a zine making workshop! Making zines is both fun and hella relaxing 🙂
“Books About Miles Davis” by The Ergs!
Camp Punksylvania is a smorgasbord of fantastic acts. Which bands are you most excited to see on each stage?
Homeless Gospel Choir, War on Women, Linh Le, Mikey Erg, Fat Chance, The Barstool Preachers, Froggy and so many more bands!
Was there anything I missed that you'd like to share or dive deeper into with our readers?
Our new EP just came out on SBÄM records! On our webstore (therealpityparty.bandcamp.com) the profits from the blue and maroon/red variant will benefit two organizations (A Safe Place and PAAR) fighting against sexual and domestic violence. A Safe Place in Oakland provides emergency housing, support, counseling and many more essential services to people experiencing domestic violence. Pittsburgh Action Against Rape provides crisis services, health care, advocacy, legal aid, therapy, support services and more to survivors of sexual assault. They also extend their efforts to the community by integrating into the educational system! We are grateful to be able to use our music to support organizations doing essential work in our communities and beyond! We all have a responsibility to keep each other safe, and it doesn't have to stop with fiscal resources. Talk to your friends about consent! Learn intervention tactics! Check in with those around you! You are powerful and you have the ability to affect change!
Roll of the Dice is a short interview format with a variable amount of questions. A pair of dice is rolled and the total, between 2 and 12, is the amount of questions we can ask. All questions are given to the interviewee(s) at once, and no follow-ups are allowed. The interview may be lightly edited for content and clarity.
Bad Dad (occasionally called Ed) has been on the periphery of the punk and punk-adjacent scene for over twenty years. While many contributors to this site have musical experience and talent, Ed's musical claim to fame comes from his time in arguably the most punk rock Blockbuster Video district in NJ where he worked alongside members of Blanks 77, Best Hit TV and Brian Fallon. He is more than just an awful father to his 2 daughters, he is also a dreadful husband, a subpar writer, a terrible dresser and has a severe deficiency in all things talent… but hey, at least he's self-aware, amirite?
Check out the pathetic attempts at photography on his insta at https://www.instagram.com/bad_dad_photography/