On the other hand, your lyrics--with their no-holds-barred look at society, politics and the greed that feeds both--have been known to incite a few people in your audience. What happened with the person who clocked you upside the head while you were singing "Un-UK," and what is the story behind the subsequent apology letter?

Jon: That wasn't a very good day for me. It was one of the first times we'd played the song. "Un-UK" is supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek look at England. Everyone thinks that England is Byron and Keats and people punting down the river in Oxford, drinking tea in straw hats and all this: "Isn't it lovely we all love the Queen. God bless you!" And isn't life just fucking peachy and all that... You know, it's not like that! I think until I was fifteen I didn't actually see any grass. I grew up in an urban-city project hell in London, where people got stabbed and beaten up for money and where there was dog shit all over the concrete pavements. It wasn't like the beach-book story that they sell you on the news, ya know. There was a miners strike. During the miners strike the teachers decided that they were going to have a strike, so there was no school...

What year was this?

Jon: Umm... Must have been about 18 years ago. About 30,000 men lost their jobs, so basically there was no money. Then the teachers striked. So no one could learn anything and no one could buy anything. It was a fucking nightmare...like the American Depression. Just total despair. And that's what "Un-United Kingdom" is a contrast about. "This green and emerald isle / it's just 800 miles of bile." You know, it's like a joke.

So we played the tune in Eastbourne, which is like Florida. It's God's waiting room, it's where old people go to die. And I gave the crowd a little speech saying, "Hey, this song's for all you people out there who read poetry. 'This pleasant land England...' It's a crock of shit!" And this guy... Something must've clicked in his mass murderer mind. I think he was BNP--British National Party--which is our extreme right. They don't have skinheads, they just look like normal people but they front money to kill black people and that stuff...like the KKK [Ku Klux Klan]. We always let people stage dive, it's the club's problem to take care of it. I don't mind people stage diving and we do it at every gig. So security are letting people run onto the side of the stage and jump off and this guy runs on like everyone else but heads straight up to me and punches me in the face from behind.

I didn't see him at all. I didn't really even know I'd been hit. I was lying on the floor with the microphone, bleeding, when I realized what had happened. I got up and was really pissed off but the guy had run out of the club. It didn't hurt all that much, and we were five songs in so we went ahead and finished the show. And then...the thing was...all these parents were there and they were these hell bikers. And this older woman grabbed me and shouted, "It's your own fucking fault! You should love it or leave it!" And I'm like, "Who are you?" And she says, "I'm his mother!" And she started shouting at me and giving me this whole thing about how I couldn't slag England off. And I said, "I can slag England off, I pay my fucking taxes! I'm a citizen and this is a democracy. I can say what I like! This is what free speech is about!"

The police came and made it their issue. So I had to give a statement and I had to press charges. And I guess they're still looking for the guy. But some time later the guy goes on our website and says, "Oh, sorry for hitting you," and blah blah blah. Then we're playing at the Reading Festival in front of 50,000 people and this letter gets passed up to me from the crowd. I always tell security to pass along things people bring to us at shows. So this letter comes up and it says: "No hard feelings for the Eastbourne gig." And I look down and it's from this guy's parents--the hell bikers. I can seem 'em in the crowd and I'm thinking, "You're really pissing me off now." This is the biggest gig we'd every played. So I grabbed the guys from security and yelled, "Get those people!" But they saw security coming for them and worked their way back into the crowd and disappeared.

It's just an ongoing saga of this stalking family. What's more bizarre is I bumped into a girl at that gig who said she knew the guy who hit me. I said, "Find out his address and email it to me!" So it's funny, I've got Pitchshifter fans trying to find this guy. 'Cause you know, you need to learn that you can't go around punching people who say things that you don't like. I actually lost the vision in that eye for about three hours.

Jon: That was like coming home. The Reading Festival is the biggest festival in the UK. We played the mainstage with these two huge television screens and we had a good spot. We were sixth from bottom, so we were about halfway up the bill. And we played on the punk day, which is the biggest day. It was really good.

We never get any major music press. We only get into the alternative press, like Kerrang! and Metal Hammer, Terrorizor...those kind of magazines. NME and Melody Maker just never mention the band, because we're not Oasis-y enough or whatever. We're playing to 50,000 people, 10,000 of which are singing the words...hello!

Would you be comfortable being the cover boy for NME or Melody Maker?

Jon: I've been and I have no trouble being on the cover of Metal Hammer or Kerrang! or Terrorizor, because I think they're real mags. They don't fuck around, they write about music they like. They don't care if System of a Down aren't fashionable, they write about 'em 'cause they like 'em. I have no trouble with them, but it would be nice to just once be in NME, and not because they are the be-all end-all. The last show we played in London was sold out. We played to 3,000 people. That was a fucking big gig! A lot of bands that get tons of press in those magazines could never ever do that. Those bands that they list--those new wave bands that they keep writing about as being the next big thing--are only playing to like 200-300 people. We've been playing for 10 years, we've paid our dues, we sell albums, we sell out venues. We should be in that magazine.

I was watching the Rage thing on David Letterman the other day. They do the same thing as us, but because it's that rap-rock crossover it's accepted. Our music is maybe too tricky, I dunno. We do these bleepy, weird things and we're dismissed as some oddball shit from England.

But it's looking good for this album. John Stanier, Jello Biafra, Dave Jerden, MCA. This new album's got a much better chance of reaching more people than any other.

Is the mention of Guy Fawkes in "Un-United Kingdom" a result of the influence of Alan Moore and his illustrated book, V for Vendetta?

Jon: It has been a big influence on me, personally. V for Vendetta... Actually, there was a comic called Warrior Magazine put out the UK. It was like pre-2000 A.D. I'm talking years ago here. It went under, but it originally had V for Vendetta as a one bar strip every month. That's where I first read it when I was like seven or eight.

Things like Guy Fawkes... On Guy Fawkes night you're supposed to burn an effigy of him in celebration that he didn't kill the royal family or parliament, but I think if you did a survey 90% of the population would probably say, "Better luck next time." Heh heh. What a guy...he almost fucking did it. And that's the kind of thing about the line "We could all learn a thing or two from Guy Fawkes."

We still have hereditary peers! They just reviewed the law yesterday. Herditary fucking peers! In England we have Parliament and the House of Lords. Those who are democratically elected by the people is not proportional representation in England. Those people who are democratically elected decide new laws and that's farmed out the the House of Lords, which is part of the House of Commons, and they decide how that law's going to be adminstered. So we have hereditary peers in the House of Lords--people who are not democratically elected. These people get to be lords because their great-great-grandfather was Lord Montague of Buttfuck! It's insane that you can have hereditary peers in the year 2000! These right-wing lunatics...old eccentric guys who have pet giraffes and live in huge family mansions. It does my head in...

In our first interview it was brought up how Pitchshifter's politics and music were inseparable, but you mentioned that it was enough for someone to just like the music without having to sign on as a protester. As a fan, I'm curious about what politics you subscribe to and the social causes you support.

Jon: We're member of Amnesty International and Greenpeace, and I allow Earth First! to collect money at gigs, and we're all members of the Vegetarian Society. But it's really difficult because Amnesty do some things that I'm not pleased with. You know, some of the scandels with them I'm not 100% down with. But you've got to do what you can do to support the causes. There's no other way to do it. My money isn't going to do much good if I don't give it to Greenpeace and Amnesty. Who am I going to give it to? There are very few other well organized groups out there.

All of our politics are different. There's no one law in the band that says you have to subscribe to one particular ethos. When Jim joined the band he wasn't a vegetarian, but he's since decided to become one. And that was with no pressure from the band whatsoever. All our politics are personal; I don't believe in any kind of restrictive philosophy or religion. I've no trouble with religion or the concepts of spirituality, but I don't want it to be restrictive. I think Christianity is the worst offender of any religion.

Isn't your father a man of the cloth?

Jon: Yeah. He wasn't always, he used to be a construction worker. But I guess he met God...

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