Bloc Party Hate VICE

Photo by Roman Barrett

As you have probably already read in every sycophantic pop magazine in the world, Bloc Party are an "unpigeonholeable" band with tortured vocals urgently calling over methodically strummed guitars and a jerkily pounding backbeat. VICE Records signed them on October 25th (the same day the commies took over Russia), so it would make sense that when VICE magazine does on article on them it stands apart from the countless thousands of generic ass licks everyone else is going to publish.

VICE: So how'd the interview go? Did they talk about how they hate VICE? This piece has to be different from all the other magazines. [Staff writer] Ryan Duffy: [Vocalist] Kele didn't want to get into it. But you have to keep pushing… I did. It got so bad the drummer goes to him, "You don't really want to be here do you?" and he goes, "No, I don't. I'm just going to sit this one out." I think he's sensitive and isn't into confrontation. Fuck. Well, that makes sense. At a party in London last week [UK editor] Andy heard Kele was looking for him so Andy went up to him expecting this big thing but all Kele said was "VICE is crass." What did Andy do? He said, "Vice is heavily influenced by Crass actually." Then what? Kele goes, "Who?" And Andy explains how they're a bunch of lefty anarchist punks that squatted a farm in Essex and so on and so on all about the history of Crass. Apparently they were the best of buds after that. Well, that's weird that things are still weird because it was pretty uncomfortable doing the interview. Fuck it then. I'm sorry but if it's just a straight music interview we can't run it. Every magazine on earth is going to be running the same thing. It's fine, believe me. I don't want to transcribe it. It's just more of the same. What about Suroosh? Can't he get them to talk? Nope. He talked to the manager and it seemed like everyone was into it but when Suroosh asked Kele he said, "I'm not comfortable doing this because it doesn't matter what I say. If it's in VICE people will just think I'm being ironic." But I just saw him talking to Suroosh. What were they going into the hallway about? Kele wanted to play Street Fighter, but it's broken. I thought it was just unplugged. Wait, didn't he just go to their photo shoot? Yeah, Kele was still not into talking about it. He said Bloc Party already did their VICE interview and we should all move on. Fine.