INTERVIEW
RONEN KAUFFMAN
by Christer Davidsson, July 2007

Hey Ronen! How are you doing?

Just fine. Enjoying the summer.

I just finished your new book "New Brunswick, New Jeresey , Goodbye" and I really enjoyed it. How has the over all response been?

So far really great. I’ve gotten a number of personal responses from people who read it and really connected in various ways. I’m not sure how many have been sold, but at least some of the ones that have sold have been enjoyed.

The book is more or less a memoir of your life in New Brunswick during the 90's. How come you decided to write this book in the first place?

I’ve had strong feelings about the power of music for a long time, and one day realized that I could write about that stuff by retelling stories of things I’d experienced. I was lucky enough to have some good stories to tell – ones I figured might interest people. So I just started jotting down some memories and before I knew it I was a few dozen pages deep.

You've done a lot of writing before but this is your first "full-length". Wasn't it scary to release a real book?

It’s definitely a little bit weird, especially since this particular book is full of specific stories about my personal life. There are a lot of things that go into putting a book together as I’m sure anyone can imagine – and keeping track of them all is definitely a marathon of sorts. Not to mention that size of the project overall. But it was a lot of fun and I learned an awful lot.

Do you think you will do it all again?

I would like to and have a couple of things in mind. It seems like it should be easier after the first time, right? I’ll tell you this, my next book probably won’t be a memoir. I’m not really that self-involved.

Do you look at it as a big step to go from being a Fanzine-dude to being a "real" authour?

No, I just write. I try to stay away from saying things like “I am a teacher” or “I am a writer” or “I am a musician.” I prefer to say that I teach, or that I write, or that I play music. There’s a devious subtext to saying you “are” something. It can preclude you form being other things. I like to be interdisciplinary. I’d rather just do stuff than be anything.

I'm really into a whole lot of New Jersey stuff at the moment so the timing of the release of this book couldn't have been better. What is it about the Jersey bands that make them so lovable? The more bands from NJ that I hear, the more I like it.

I’ve asked that question myself. Who knows? Believe me, there are plenty of horrendous bands in New Jersey. But there have been a number of great ones, too. Is it because Jersey is full of underdogs? Is it our proximity to New York and Philly? It could also be that there were, for many years, a lot of small music venues where people could play. Having that around for a while probably had a lot to do with how big a part of life music is here for so many people. Those venues are disappearing, of course, but music is pretty resilient.

In the first chapter of the book you describe how your friend Chad stopped by your house to play you a CD. And, you say "suddenly, all of my other records were irrelevant - and from that moment on, I knew that punk rock was for me". But, you never mention what record it was. Tell me.

Actually, I do! But it’s much later in the book and it’s subtle. But it is there! I have gotten this questions a couple of times now, which is really cool because it means at least someone is paying attention to what I wrote. I purposefully left the specific band and record out on purpose. I wanted it to be relatable and to be honest the specifics of the band or record don’t matter as much as the weight of that kind of personal experience with music. And people have those experiences with all kinds of bands other than the one that happened to flip a switch in my particular head. So I left it out.

Throughout the book it's quite obvious that your favorite bands from back then was The Degenerics and Lifetime, which I totally understand. What NJ bands are your favorites nowadays?

I’m a big fan of The Gaslight Anthem and Nora, both from New Brunswick. I also really like a band called For Science. The Ergs! Are great, too. And Mother Night.

A thing I really thought about when I read the book was that all the people from back then seemed really helpful to eachother when it came to putting up shows and benefits, lending out gear, putting out records etc. This is something that I think a lot of people within the punk rock movement can identify with. Do you think this something that is more common within punk than in other genres?

I’m not sure, but I do think that there are nice and helpful people just about everywhere you go. Do some people involved with punk and hardcore share community values that are often more pronounced than in other music scenes? In some cases, yes. Punk rock did have a lot to do with how I grew to understand relationships that exist between strangers, and how oftentimes those relationships are in desperate need of revision. Punk isn’t a magical land of unity. But pockets of cool stuff do occasionally pop up.

I love working with this website and everything else that is related to it. You used to have your own zine called "Aneurysm". Don't you miss doing fanzines?

I don’t, because I channel that creative energy into new projects. I am always up to something. Plus, my fanzine was from the era before webzines. It’s a relic!

So, what do you think about today's webzines?

Well, much like the paper zines of old, some are great and some are shit. I love the flexibility of the web and also both hate and love its non-material nature. Ones and zeroes aren’t a physical artifact, which print zines are. Then again, I think content is ultimately more important than format (even as content itself is very much defined by format) – so in that respect web zines are way more robust and flexible than most print ones ever were. They also have a number of weaknesses.

Apart from the release of your book you're also in a band called Zombie Apocalypse. Tell me about that.

Zombie plays when we can. The other dudes are busy with their ‘real’ bands – Shai Hulud, The Risk Taken, Shallow Water Grave. When we do play it’s loud, fast, and super pissed. We appear from time to time, play shows and put out some music, and then disappear. We should be reappearing not too long from now though. We have a myspace at myspace.com/zapocalypse.

You're also doing this radio show on the internet called "Issue Oriented" where you interview various people about music and play some cool hardocre and punk rock. You've been doing that for some time now, right?

Yup, about two years. It’s grown a lot since the beginning, and it’s a lot of fun, too. I’ve had a number of really interesting guests – Dallas Coyle from God Forbid, punk porn queen Joanna Angel, Dan Yemin from Lifetime/Paint It Black. The show has thousands of listeners. Good times.

So, this is something you will keep doing for a while?

I’ll do it as long as I can. I’d like to see the show grow more. Maybe the show gets picked up by NPR. Or maybe everyone stops listening and I run out of questions to ask. Either way, right now I’m just enjoying the show and trying to keep it as something I can be proud of.

If you could bring anyone on the show for an interview, dead or alive, who would it be and why?

I’ll pick someone living. How about Larry King? I’d totally run that dude through the ringer.

Well, that's it! Thanks a lot Ronen for taking the time to talk to me. I hope the book gets sold-out and I wish you all the best with the rest of your projects. Anything else, you'd like to say?

Thanks much for the interview, an I really encourage people to buy the book! I think it’s something a lot of people will enjoy.

Links:

http://www.myspace.com/hubcitybook

http://www.issueoriented.com

http://www.kamikazewords.com