- Deal With It

- Anchor

- Bitter End

- Awaken Demons

- Restraint

- Self Torture

- The Guilt Show

- Countdown Records

- Concrete Block

- The Secret

- At Half Mast

- Angelica Mariner

- Justice

- Run With The Hunted

- Ritual

- Killing The Dream

- L.e.a.r.n.

- Linha De Frente

- Outbreak

- Panic

- Death Is Not Glamorous VS Stolen Bikes Ride Faster

- Underdog

- Betrayed

- Doomriders

- Black Friday '29

- No Innocent Victim

- Dead Stop

- To Kill VS Slowmotion Apocalypse

- Justice

- Trial

- Another Breath

- Gonna Fall Hard VS Ed

- The Secret VS The Setup

- Good Clean Fun

- Converge

- Bones Brigade

- Donny Brook

- Strength Approach

- Purification

- The Difference VS The Miracle

- Terror

- Cataract

- Over My Dead Body

- Internal Affairs

- Inked In Blood

- Some Kind Of Hate

- New Found Glory

- Die!

- Agnostic Front

- Coalesce

- No Warning

- Shai Hulud

- Death Threat

- Champion

- Hatebreed

- Subzero

- The Promise

- The Beautiful Mistake

- Beloved

- Nodes Of Ranvier

- Comeback Kid

- Bleeding Through

- Sick Of It All

- Every Time I Die

- Give Up The Ghost

- The Dillinger Escape Plan

- Strike Anywhere

- The Hope Conspiracy

- Coheed & Cambria

- Thursday

- Stretch Arm Strong

- Himsa

Leo: So guys, tell us something about….

Issa: Guys….there’s only me here! *Laughing

Leo: Yeah, true. Gotta be patient. Haven’t slept in a long time...So, tell us something about why you’re here: Why you’re playing this show? And what about your band? Is this a reunion show or what? I’m asking, cause if I’m not wrong you guys haven’t played a show in a while

Issa: Well, we actually played a show last week...Anyway, if we don’t consider that one, our last show goes back to almost a year ago. So yeah, it has been a little while. We ended up playing this show because Suzanne from Reflections, who’s setting up this fest and also put out our records, called us to play and here we are. Yesterday we played Iceland and today we’re here.

Leo: What have you been up to in this long period of hiatus? Last time I’ve heard about you was when you released that sort of “Greatest Hits” for Equalvision.

Issa: Well, we’ve been working on a new album which will come out later this year, and that’s it. All of us do different thing: Mike is a tour manager. He works for the band Internation Noise Conspiracy. He does management for few other bands too. I own a recording studio and the other guys all do different things. So, we’re busy yes.

Leo: You guys have been around for quite a long time by now.

Issa: 8 years now.

Leo: And that means you’ve seen many different periods of hc and of the hc scene. What I’m curios to hear from you is your opinion about the current status of the scene. Straight and simple, what do you think about it?

Issa: Well, I’m a little sad because I feel like vegetarianism and veganism have kinda disappeared. And that’s too bad, cause I think that was really cool, obviously. So, that’s kinda sad. But I mean, it’s really hard to say, cause I’m old now. I’m 33!

Leo: Well, you’re not that old.

Issa: Yeah but you know, If I was like 15 and just get into hc now, it would still be really exciting. But I wish the veganism/vegetarianism thing was more common.

Leo: It’s your fault, of you Americans! ;) Pretty much all the sXe band hailing from the U.S are meateaters!

Issa: I know, I know!

Leo: Recently spoke with the Embrace Today guitar player and asked him if there was any connection between sXe and vegetarianism. And he surprised me, telling me: “To be sincere, I go hunting, I’m a hunter”. !!

Issa: *Laugh. No….that’s sad…. I mean, it was such a cool thing that set hc apart. It wasn’t just a bunch of kids that are actually doing something cool. Hopefully that will come back a little more. Me and the guys in the band, we’ve been vegan for 12 years now. 12 years ago, there were a lot of people who were vegan. And then it just kinda disappeared, you know. But Italy still has a lot of vegan bands, right?

Leo: Well, there are some left maybe. Fumbles in Life, Purification, for example

Issa: See, that’s cool.

Leo: And what do you think about this old school hc revival? All these bands like Champion, Righteous Jams, picking back up the sonorities of the early days of hc. Do you like them? What do you think about it?

Issa: I think it’s pretty cool. Actually, I’ve just recorded a band called The First Step from Washington D.C.

Leo: Good band!

Issa: Yeah. They’re straight up from Washington. Actually, Walter(Schreifeld) produced their record, which was kinda cool. So he helped them write some stuff and the record sounds very Gorilla Biscuits. Pretty Cool. I like old school, it’s my favourite kind of hc.

Leo: It’s the better than the tough guy sounding one.

Issa: Yeah, much better. It’s more fun!

Leo: Good Clean Fun has always been a band that set positive attitude as its priority. What was the reason for that? Do you think that this, in a scene full of tough guy bands, penalised you?

Issa: I don’t think it did. Cause I think we stood out as a band and I think that was how we kinda just very quickly became popular. We put out one 7' and by the time we played our second show we already were a kinda popular band. Which is great, it made life really easy for us. But I think the reason is that no other band was doing it. Everything else was just tough. And people didn’t want that necessarily, so we were like an alternative and so it just worked out very well. The bands I grew up on, my favorite bands were 7 Seconds, Dag Nasty, Youth of Today. They’re all very positive.

Leo: And look like this is the reunion’s year: Insted, Bold, maybe Gorilla Biscuits. What do you think about these reunions? Do you think they’re sincere? Are you gonna attend any of them?

Issa: I would love to see a Gorilla Biscuits reunion. I’ve been to almost every Youth of Today reunions and they were great.

Leo: I’m sure they were. It’s just that Ray Cappo...I mean, when I saw them in Italy like 2 years ago, he wasn’t even singing the edge related parts of the choruses…. Many weren’t so enthusiastic of it, including myself I guess. I mean, Youth of Today was a sXe band, right?

Issa: *Laugh. He’s a good guy. I’ve known him for a long time by then. Yeah, he’s not sXe anymore, but he definitely still has those core values that Youth of Today was all about. Except for straight edge, that’s true… But honestly, he is older than I am. He’s like 37 now, so older than I, for sure. If you’ve been straight edge till you get 30, good enough. I’ll be straight edge forever, but I don’t blame other people for that. Anyway, those YOT shows were so much fun. I’ve had so much fun. It wasn’t the same thing of seeing them originally, but still great. I gotta say BOLD was one of the best live bands I ever saw. Their records were very good, but live, they played DC twice, and those were 2 of the best shows I’ve ever seen. I’ll probably go check them out live.

Leo: Are they still young? I was just wondering...

Issa: They’re not that young, no. They’re older than I am! They were one generation of hc older than me. They make me feel young, that’s nice.

Leo: You guys hail from Washington DC. How’s the scene there lately?

Issa: It’s cool. Me, I’m just very very out of touch. I don’t know all the new bands, just some of them. I own a recording studio and we record hc bands for really cheap, just cause I do it with Ken Holden who was in Battery, Damnation. The two of us both love hc. We mostly do other kinds of music but when there’s a hc band that wants to record, we do it for really cheap. The bands I record, I keep up with but I don’t know all the others. But yeah there are some good ones. The First Step’s new record is going to be really good when it comes out. Many bands there. In D.C. there has always been a great scene.

Leo: Looking back when you were a teenager, what were the bands that made you want to play hc and form Good Clean Fun?

Issa: 7 Seconds, Gorilla Biscuits, Youth of Today, Dag Nasty. 7 Seconds in particular, they were the most inspirational band in my life, definitely. I remember the first time I heard their record. I was just getting into hc and I used to go to a store with my best friend and we each would buy records and then we would have listened to it. We didn’t know any of the bands, we just picked records that looked cool and buy it. We bought lot of really bad records! And then, one day I bought “The Crew”. I think he had bought an Exploited album, while I had bought “The Crew”. We came back to my house and listened to Exploited first. I was like ewww, whatever. Funny, but not very good. And then we put on “The Crew” and after 2 seconds it played, I was like: “This is great”. And I loved it, I think that record stood in my record player for like six months or something. Probably my all time favorite record, it inspired me to do anything in my life.

Leo: What do you think about all these tough guys bands? Hatebreed, Sworn Enemy, just to quote 2 names. Like them, don’t like them…?

Issa: It’s not really my thing but…I mean, Hatebreed is awesome. They put on a great show, they’re fun to see. I wouldn’t say they’re one of my favourite bands, but they’re real good. I think it’s important to remember that different bands are trying to do different things. It’s one thing to play tough music and it’s another thing to be like stupid, dumb tough guys. Unfortunately both things often go together, but just cause a band play tough music, doesn’t mean they’re stupid tough guys. I think that some of these bands are really good and some of them are bad and just sound like the other bands. Same with old school. Some are good, some others just rip off other bands. *Laughing

Leo: What about future plans? Planning to tour? Are you going to release new material anytime soon?

Issa: We’re working on the new record. It’s not finised yet, we have a couple more songs to polish up. I guess we’ll talk to Equalvision and see if they can do it. If they don’t, then we’ll put it out ourselves.

Leo: Equal Vision changed roster lately. Jake from Converge was telling me the same thing before.

Issa: It’s funny cause we used to put out our records, and it was so much better than being on a label. We thought that being on a label made our life easier but it didn’t really. So we’ll see, I don’t know what we’ll do, we haven’t decided yet. But, in case, I sorta have a record label with Mike (Bassplayer) so we can do it ourselves if we want to. We’ll see what happens.

Leo: Does Victory Records still suck?

Issa: Ahah. It’s funny because I think they definitely do their thing and they’re very good at what they do. There’s no other label like Victory. They sell tons of records, have lots of bands. Some good ones too. I just don’t think of them like a hc label. For instance, Dischord. That will be a hc label forever. Even if their bands aren’t hc, even if their bands aren’t good, even if I never liked a single band on there again, they will always be a hc label because I feel they really have the smart decisions and they sell tons of records. That’s what they want to do and they do it perfectly. Victory is the exact opposite. They wanna be a big record label, in other 20 years Victory might be Sony. And that’s what they want. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just not hc. As long as you remember the difference, it’s fine. I have tremendous respect for the Dischord guys. I don’t know them very well, not as well as I know Tony from Victory. He’s not a bad guy, Victory is a fine label. They have their roots into hc, so you kinda would expect higher standards from them, but they’re not trying to meet them.

Leo: Anything you wanna say to the readers of Saveyourscene.com?

Issa: Always be good, always stay clean, always have fun!

Leonardo