Guerilla's in the Midst
[Originally published in BMA Magazine, July 2012]
It’s not every day that your city’s largest cocktail lounge gets slammed by a trumpet-playing, multilingual, hip hop and poetry freestyling ‘guerilla MC’. Never one to pass up a novel opportunity, I caught up with PATAPHYSICS’ main man Pat Marks, who’s touring his Melbourne-based band’s latest album,Subversive.
Recently touted as an MTV Top Ten Breakout Band and having worked alongside internationally renowned artists such as Lotek, I was somewhat surprised to find myself chatting to Pat like a mate from uni; a reflection, I soon realised, of the deeply engrained philanthropic and compassionate spirit which underlies Pat’s musical and lyrical ethos. “The music I write is about the things which I have an interest in and feel strongly about: politics and society, both international and domestic. It’s my opinions about them, which I consider to be important. They’re always developing; I mean, I don’t know everything, I’m just like everyone else who’s always learning, watching the news and trying to decipher it.”
Pat’s interest in civil affairs was sparked at an early age by the music produced by his favourite bands, some of whose influences are resonant in his gutsy lyrics and soulful bass lines. “Public Enemy were massive influences on me in my younger years, I was like, ‘Yeh, I won’t believe the hype!’ They were one of the ones who influenced me really early in that way. Also, Bob Marley – artists like that really inspired me and made me think about the world differently. Public Enemy rapping about America and Rage [Against The Machine] rapping about their world in Mexico made me really interested in those issues, but also really spawned an interest in what was happening over here. Some bands can just light that fire in you and wake you up.”
Pat’s socio-political stance is not limited to its expression within the music industry. Alongside producing, composing and mixing, Pat is the Music & Arts coordinator of RISE (Refugees, Survivors, and Ex-Detainees), where he runs music, beat-making, poetry, and recording workshops for young refugee artists and runs the music and hip hop programs for juvenile justice detainees in Melbourne. My admiration was clearly audible when I questioned him about this, but he merely chuckled, “Yeh, it’s kind of intense at times. I really think it’s good though. It’s a hard one sometimes, I gotta say, but I also teach at a community high school one day a week and that’s more intense because that’s before they’ve gone to juvy…” Remaining steadfast in his humility, he added, “I really enjoy working with them though ‘cos it’s a good opportunity to work on my drumming or power chords again. Hip hop is the one that got me, but for others there it’s other genres – death metal, punk or whatever. Music is just as powerful whether it’s hip hop or rock. It has that same effect depending on the person. It becomes your life… everything in that genre is your life.”
It’s not every day that your city’s largest cocktail lounge gets slammed by a trumpet-playing, multilingual, hip hop and poetry freestyling ‘guerilla MC’. Never one to pass up a novel opportunity, I caught up with PATAPHYSICS’ main man Pat Marks, who’s touring his Melbourne-based band’s latest album,Subversive.
Recently touted as an MTV Top Ten Breakout Band and having worked alongside internationally renowned artists such as Lotek, I was somewhat surprised to find myself chatting to Pat like a mate from uni; a reflection, I soon realised, of the deeply engrained philanthropic and compassionate spirit which underlies Pat’s musical and lyrical ethos. “The music I write is about the things which I have an interest in and feel strongly about: politics and society, both international and domestic. It’s my opinions about them, which I consider to be important. They’re always developing; I mean, I don’t know everything, I’m just like everyone else who’s always learning, watching the news and trying to decipher it.”
Pat’s interest in civil affairs was sparked at an early age by the music produced by his favourite bands, some of whose influences are resonant in his gutsy lyrics and soulful bass lines. “Public Enemy were massive influences on me in my younger years, I was like, ‘Yeh, I won’t believe the hype!’ They were one of the ones who influenced me really early in that way. Also, Bob Marley – artists like that really inspired me and made me think about the world differently. Public Enemy rapping about America and Rage [Against The Machine] rapping about their world in Mexico made me really interested in those issues, but also really spawned an interest in what was happening over here. Some bands can just light that fire in you and wake you up.”
Pat’s socio-political stance is not limited to its expression within the music industry. Alongside producing, composing and mixing, Pat is the Music & Arts coordinator of RISE (Refugees, Survivors, and Ex-Detainees), where he runs music, beat-making, poetry, and recording workshops for young refugee artists and runs the music and hip hop programs for juvenile justice detainees in Melbourne. My admiration was clearly audible when I questioned him about this, but he merely chuckled, “Yeh, it’s kind of intense at times. I really think it’s good though. It’s a hard one sometimes, I gotta say, but I also teach at a community high school one day a week and that’s more intense because that’s before they’ve gone to juvy…” Remaining steadfast in his humility, he added, “I really enjoy working with them though ‘cos it’s a good opportunity to work on my drumming or power chords again. Hip hop is the one that got me, but for others there it’s other genres – death metal, punk or whatever. Music is just as powerful whether it’s hip hop or rock. It has that same effect depending on the person. It becomes your life… everything in that genre is your life.”