The Observers, part 2
(continued from last issue of Lowcut)

LC: Is there any pre-Observers musical doodling you'd like to share with us? What's your background in terms of picking up an instrument and how did you get into punk rock?

Doug: Uhm… Colin - do you wanna answer a question?

Colin: My friend Adrian taught me how to play Nirvana songs on bass, when I was in about the 8th grade and I was really bad at them and his dad would make fun of me.
I never really played, but slowly but surely I just bought one and I told Doug I could play it, but I couldn't really and he said I could be in his band.

LC: In the Observers?

Doug: The Speds was the name of the band. It was a band we did before the Observers.

LC: OK, so that was how you got into punk rock? You weren't in any other bands before that one?

Doug: No, that's pretty much it really.

LC: So what's the easiest Nirvana song to play?

Colin: Smells Like Teen Spirit!

LC: OK… Having a religious president, has that turned any of you on to religion?

Mike: Do you mean as in we found it or pursued it?

LC: In any way you wish to interpret the question.

Mike: I absolutely abhore the notion of organized religion, but we need to be attentive to it because it surrounds us. But I absolutely want nothing to do with it.

Doug: Ian (Kashani) and I definitely grew up with religious backgrounds but I think most Christians just don't understand what the religion is about and I think a lot of times people get really down on religion as a whole. I try not to say that religion is bad, but whatever is right for that person. I think a lot of people don't understand their religion and I would say the same thing about punk. You go to a show and you feel like 90% of the crowd just doesn't really get what's going on. You know, it's like anything. I definitely have friends who are very religious who are really amazing people. But, definitely, over the years, I have come to MY own conclusion that I really don't like organized religion. I think it's done a lot of bad in the world and kind of continues to, so that's sort of my take on religion. I don't think it's bad to be religious or be spiritual, but, to me, organized religion is NOT a good thing.

Mike: It does serve the individual but it does more harm than good. I think it's up to the individual to remove him or herself from that and it's everyone's personal choice.

Kashani: I feel like nobody knows what religion is really about. Everybody is kind of lost and chained to their own desires, chained to their own wants, whether it's women or money or whatever. Too many people forget the legacy of the Indian, the whole spirit guide quest, where you kind of look inward, a spiritual thing, which is individual to every single person. But it's not organized in any way because you take responsibility for your own actions. Which is something I really like, because I really destroyed my life when I was religious. I'll never forgive myself for something like that. Constant praying, constant religious services… But also it's the whole acceptance thing with the Indians, accepting the past, kind of moving on.

Doug: You can do whatever you want, but don't try to force your ideas and your beliefs on other people and I think it's one of those basic things people should live their lives by.

LC: The next question is also about obsessions. Are any of you cursed with collecting something? Music, baseball cards, whatever?

Mike: I do a bit of record collecting. Not as much now as in the past because I don't have the money anymore. It's expensive… It hurts… You can never have everything you want. You can never have all the records you want. But that's also part of the fun.
I still search for records everywhere I go, but it's not as all consuming as it once was.

Kashani: I have an obsession with trying to collect all the brain cells that I've lost.

LC: Where do you look for them?

Kashani: They're everywhere… I don't know, I don't have much left, so…

LC: OK, here's a very serious question - if you were a boy band what trademarks would each of you be famous for?

(It's quiet for a couple of seconds, while the Observers are thinking)

Kashani: Big dick!

Rest of the band: Ohhh….

LC: OK, the guitarist is famous for his big dick... Maybe that speaks for the whole band, I don't know?

Kashani: Mike is the smart older brother.

Doug: He might be the youngest in the band, but he's the smart older brother, that's for sure.

LC: That's a new one, I haven't heard that one before.

Doug: Yeah, New Kids On the Block, I think… It's the creepy old guy really, that's what it comes down to. Why is he 35 when everybody else is 18?
It's a positive message that we're trying to send…

Mike: At 22 I'll be the 35 year old…

Doug: I think every boy band needs a good excentric one. That's easily Ian…

Mike: So are you saying we're not a boy band?

Doug: Yeah, actually that's a little bit insulting.

LC: OK, I guess you are a boy band…

Doug: - and Colin is the pretty boy!

Colin: I'm not that pretty…

LC: The band name - whose idea was it and what kind of connotations do you connect with it?

Doug: The Observers was something that I came up with, just something that…When I was in school somebody sort of mentioned something about me being an observer and I really liked that. Since when they said that it really stuck in my head. I really like that idea. The observer - somebody who stands back and watches everything, tries to stay unbiased or something like that. And also being sort of a social outcast. But being a social outcast kind of fades into that and I think that a lot of people, when they sort of dress you into being that social outcast, you kind of become that observer. Seeing all the clicks and fads and all these thing that you just never quite understand. When you're able to stand back and see the bullshit about it.
Behind the Observes is that hope that we, the four of us, can be in a place where we're able to just stay back and see the bullshit and stay away from that and then be able to make ourselves known when it's appropriate for us, when we have things more figured out than we do now. Or something like that.

Mike: I wasn't in the band when they came up with the name, but I think it is named after a newspaper in Portland called The Portland Observer… Because you can just take a pen and add an "s" at every newspaper stand in town and it'll have a little bit of us on it

Doug: Yeah, free stickers all over town…

LC: Alright. Touring - Europe - local scene… Is this your first time touring in Europe?

Doug: With this band - yeah. Colin and Mike toured Europe with other bands.

LC: What other bands?

Mike: I came overhere in December with another band called the Minds. We were only here for three weeks and I've never been to Denmark, I've never been anywhere in Scandinavia and I've never been to Eastern Germany, so I'm really excited about this tour.
(Colin toured europe with The Clorox Girls - Ed.)

Doug: Like Ian and I, it's our first time touring with a band overhere, but Ian lived in the Czech Republic for 5 years when he was in junior high or high school and I lived in Germany for most of 2001. But I've never been to any of the Scandinavian countries, so I'm really excited about that.

LC: What strikes about this continent, compared to where you come from? I know you've been here before, but how would you describe your European experience this time?

Kashani: The beer is a lot better…

Colin: There's no Mountain Dew…

Mike: Touring is totally different. Bands are treated a million times better. On any circuit, the underground diy punk scene, the club scene. There's higher expectations for the way bands get treated and, an observation - maybe I shouldn't say it, but I feel like, in general, people I've encountered have a lot more common sense about their politics and their lifestyle, compared to what Americans ever could have. I spent a lot of time in Holland on the Minds tour and I was really, really struck by the amount of seeming common sense that is involved in their political system. The way that everything sort of makes sense for the people and everyone benefits. That's not wholly true, not in every facet of their life, but it struck me more than the US.

Doug: I definitely agree with Mike. That's something I've always felt being overhere is that things are just more practical, you know, and I sort of attribute some of that, in my own little theory, to Europe being a lot older than the United States. I always feel like United States is a country that has a whole lot of growing up to do, you know.
Definitely Europeans, if you look at the political history. It wasn't build on common sense. There's been a lot of wars, there's been a lot of horrible things overhere, but now is has come to, like after WW2, everything makes more sense and in the US, there's still a long way to go, before anything politically makes any sort of sense.

Mike: - and we might just well end the world before we get there…

LC: There's a chance…

Doug: We're working on it…

To be continued… (the third and last part is on the way)