Ronen Kauffman is best known as the host of the increasingly popular podcast Issue Oriented and also fronts the occasionally-active hardcore band ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE. This summer Ronen has released his first book, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Goodbye, on Hopeless Records. Five percent of the suggested retail price of each book sold goes to the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation. Mister Holland's Opus donates new and refurbished musical instruments to underserved school and community music programs and individual students nationwide. Ronen is a true class act and his openness and honestly in talking about punk rock and the subculture surrounding it has proved to be a real asset to the community over the years. Jason Bergman caught up with Ronen recently to talk about New Brunswick, New Jersey, Goodbye and a healthy discussions ensued.
Pastepunk: Do you think it’s kind of weird going from being in bands to putting yourself out there in a memoir like this? Is it a different experience? Are your lyrics more personal or about politics usually?
Ronen: I usually take lyric writing very seriously, even though my bands were not, like ultra-well known bands, I still put everything I can into any project. It’s different than bands… it’s also different like it’s just me, just my name on the book, not some other name or thing it’s associated with. It’s a little strange writing these personal stories and offering them to people. Now anyone who reads the book is going to know a lot of personal details about my life.
Pastepunk: Well I’m sure you changed names and stuff like that?
Ronen: I changed some things, but there are some things in there about my mom, coming from Holocaust survivors. You know stuff like that is serious material, but I’m not nervous about it. It’s a really gratifying experience and everyone’s been extremely receptive, really nice. If I was nervous about anything it was about writing something that communicated an appropriate spirit and that was not too specific. That anyone could read it, anywhere at any time and you don’t have to care about New Jersey, or even care about punk rock, but you can just pick it up and read it no matter who you are. I’ve had a couple of older women read it, people who are as far from the hardcore scene as possible, so it’s a really great feeling for me because…
Pastepunk: So you’re going for the Oprah Book Club crowd I guess?
Ronen: Let me tell you something, I would totally love to get my book on the Oprah Book Club and I’ve even mentioned it before. Why not? It is a specific subject matter, but every book has a specific subject matter. I haven’t had many detractors, but one person who was trying to like, detract from the book, was like “It was a waste of the hour it took to read it.” It only took you an hour? Awesome! I must have written a really easy book. So, Oprah, if you’re out there, I’m not Steadman, and I’m not available, but I’d love the help if you picked the book.
Pastepunk: Back to what you said about people relating to it, I grew up in New Jersey and went to New Brunswick basement shows. I was reading this and thought “Wow, this is like a history lesson” regarding stuff I had heard about or different shows. Do you hope people relate to that or did you want to document that era?
Ronen: Well, it says in the beginning of the book that it is not a historical text. It is a historical document, but it’s not a historical text and the difference is that I don’t pretend that my book outlines any kind of complete picture of what was going on in that time at that place. That said, I always believe the best history that anyone can understand is the one they put together for themselves by gathering information from different sources and coming to their own conclusions. In that respect, what I wrote could be used to help paint a picture of what things were like with those bands and stuff like that. It’s not complete and I think that the only thing that would make it more complete would be if someone else wrote another memoir about their time in New Brunswick with a different point of view, because there are different points of view and takes on things…
Pastepunk: Like how you said you thought Carl [from NORA and Ferret Records] called out what you thought was your group of friends but it ended up being a different group of people… like everyone has their own take on things...
Ronen: Sure, there were pockets… I read on a message board recently that, someone who used to sing for a really popular New Jersey straight edge band, responding about the book saying, “I don’t even know half the bands this guy is talking about in here” and that’s kind of the point. If you’re the singer of a popular band and you don’t know the bands I’m talking about, that means you missed something. Because that stuff was definitely going on and that’s why I’m not trying to… when someone says, “Is this historical?” The first thing out of my mouth is, “This is incomplete, this is not the whole picture and this is exclusively the way I see it.” There’s lots of stuff that happened in the time the book takes place that I didn’t include, it wasn’t a part of the story I chose to tell.
Pastepunk: Did you think it would have added to or detracted from the book, or you just decided not to include things that were filler, like things you didn’t need?
Ronen: It was stuff that didn’t go with what I was talking about. I had a really serious girlfriend for two years at the time the book was taking place.
Pastepunk: Susanna? The raver?
Ronen: Yeah, yeah. Susanna The Raver. And I did change her name, and she was definitely a raver. But I did take a lot of stuff out and I have this file of other stories that didn’t make it in, that may make it somewhere else some day. Although I was talking about bands and shows and kids, what I was really talking about was growing up, finding options for yourself, and figuring out the kind of person you do want to be, and don’t want to be and taking whatever control that you can over that process. Because most people just kind of go about their life and whatever happens to them happens to them. Ironically, they are the first ones to complain when something goes the way they don’t want it to.
Pastepunk: Or they’re 45 and they’re like “Holy shit, where has my life gone?!”
Ronen: Right, right. So, I’m a big fan of substance and that’s what it’s about. It’s about seeking substance in your life and having a good time.
Pastepunk: Do you think New Brunswick is a special place where you were in the right place, right time, or was there something special about the people. Or you just tried to make something happen for yourself?
Ronen: I think any place is only as special as the people that are there. I believe that the things that happened there could have happened any place, any time, given the right confluence of things. I do think that there is a certain law of inertia that comes into play, where if you are a person who is inspired and creative and need that little push to start doing stuff, being around other people like that creates that push for you. In turn, you create that push for someone else and it becomes this thing that perpetuates itself and has to die out. It wasn’t like a club. New Brunswick was never a club and not everyone knew each other. There were bands from the same town that never knew each other existed or played the same shows. At the same time, there were clusters of 30, 40 people at a clip who were like family and it became much more than music. It was about the things we say in this space and the space we create and the time we reclaim for ourselves. Life is a pretty hairy thing for a lot of people and you know, when you’re 20 years old, you need that feeling of reclaiming space for yourself and setting your own ground rules. Whether you do it with your sorority sisters by going to Cozumel or whether you do it with the kids that live in your town by playing in bands and putting on shows. It’s similar. I just happened to think that the way we filled that need at that time was exceptional.
Pastepunk: Did the fact of being away at college, away from your parents, did that give you a whole new outlook on life or impact how you saw the world?
Ronen: I went to New Brunswick specifically be involved in the hardcore scene there. I didn’t really… college was the way that I got there, but Rutgers was the only college that I applied to. If I didn’t get into Rutgers I wasn’t going to go to college, I was just simply going to go there…
Pastepunk: Just go there no matter what and be a part of the scene?
Ronen: That was my idea. I do think that moving out, for anybody, kind of forces you… you gotta make your own day at that point. I think my head was already there. I was 16, 17 at that point… you have to remember that punk rock is really “cool” now. It used to be this thing for rejects and geeks and losers, and like nerdy people. Now… it’s very different. So, I think it was pretty early on that I realized I was on my own tip and that I wanted to find people who respected that and who were on their own tips. Punk rock is not “unity la-la land” by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s way better than any of the options I had at the time.
Pastepunk: It’s funny how you mention punk rock now and then, because I just graduated high school a year ago and I would see kids in the hallway who had band shirts on and claimed they were into punk, but you would never see them at the show that happened the past weekend or anything like that.
Ronen: Well the people are always going to change and I’d rather have people listen to bands that are featured on Pastepunk than the bands featured on the soundtrack to Dawson’s Creek. The internet changes a lot of the things; you don’t have to work as hard anymore. It used to be that you would walk into a show, you kind of had this understanding that the other people in the room knew were you were coming from, because you knew that they must have done a little bit of legwork to get there in the first place. Now it’s not like that. Now it’s much easier for a band to go out and try to be a band. And that’s really good and that’s really bad. The good part is obvious and the bad part should be obvious. I hope that all the kids out there understand that the more bands you have, the more terrible bands you have, you know? That’s just the way it is.
Pastepunk: In the book you mentioned how these people that you idolized are now your friends, like Dan Yemin of LIFETIME and other people. Do you think that kids today expect that kind of thing, like “Oh, why didn’t you respond to my MySpace message?!” Do you think kids still put bands up on a pedestal?
Ronen: I think young kids will always put pop stars on a pedestal. However, just because a band gets back to you on MySpace, doesn’t mean that they really care about getting back to you on MySpace. That’s a way to create brand loyalty. There is stuff out there from some bands that have gotten big on MySpace and a large part of that is due to the fact that they foster this feeling of one to one communication with the band. When you’re a young adolescent girl, or adolescent boy, and you’re cute, pop-star, whoever… when you have an opportunity to contact that person, it’s mind blowing. In a way, I think that some kids are being taken advantage of, because that’s not real communication. It’s not like you’re sending a message to a band and they’re writing back asking to talk about who you are, like telling you, “If you ever need a shoulder to cry on, send a message to CUTE IS WHAT WE AIM FOR.” I don’t think that they give a shit, I really don’t. [For the record, Pastepunk assures its readership that CUTE IS WHAT WE AIM FOR really does want you to cry on their shoulders - Ed.]
Pastepunk: It’s not like the band is saying, “Oh hey, if you need a ride to the CUTE IS WHAT WE AIM FOR show, we can bring you in the van!”
Ronen: Exactly, exactly. I also think, that from the band’s point of view, because so many more people are getting in to this and not having to do the work, and not having to absorb the rich history that allowed this to happen. A lot of people playing in these bands have really fucked up expectations and that’s always been the case. There have always been fakes, there have always been posers. That’s part and parcel of any culture. If a band calls themselves a punk rock band and all they talk about is their endorsements.
Pastepunk: And CD sales…
Ronen: And sales and… it makes me crazy. If you’re a metal band, that’s fine. You’re not sitting and talking about how you’re this rebellion. I don’t know… The emo thing is a whole other thing. The current definition of emo is not my definition of emo. I think that a lot of people perpetuating that thing are going to look foolish in ten years.
Pastepunk: I don’t know if you read Nothing Nice To Say, the comic by Mitch Clem.
Ronen: See the unfortunate thing is that lots of people who make up some those bands are really nice, genuine, sincere people with good intentions. It’s just that the things that come along with fame are not always so great. Yeah, that’s why I don’t have a Mohawk anymore. I used to have a Mohawk and a dog collar and dye my hair and shit like that. Punk rock and all that shit, for me, goes deeper than the way you look. I’m fond of saying that a lot of bands have made it unsafe. When THE LOCUST came out, I used to say how THE LOCUST made it unsafe for fat kids to like punk rock. I love THE LOCUST and I think they are a great band and have made a really powerful contribution. But, it was like this skinny, chic thing that popped up coincidentally around the same time as THE LOCUST. It kind of dove tailed into this thing… punk rockers used to be grimy, disgusting. It wasn’t the goal to be dirty, but if you weren’t put together it was almost like, “Oh, whatever.” Someone said that how the fashion element that came with the emo thing, is a lot like the fashion element that came with new-wave. With that, it’s a reduced, or dumb downed version of something that was really cool and you take the most obvious elements and put them to the front.
Pastepunk: And music takes a sidestep and it’s not even about that anymore.
Ronen: Oh, yeah. I don’t have any particular issue with any individual or anything like that. I just don’t see how PANIC! AT THE DISCO is a natural extension of ANTIOCH ARROW. I just don’t see it. I’ve seen that defended and I’ve seen that written and I think that’s incorrect. That’s cool, everyone has their opinion. I’ve got mine and everyone has got their own.
Pastepunk: I remember I was reading the book, you mentioned THE DEGENERICS and D.I.Y. and I was wondering if you see any bands doing that now?
Ronen: The definition of doing it yourself changes all the time, I guess. I don’t see anybody that’s doing it with Book Your Own Fucking Life... Bands have a lot more expectations in terms of management, booking, merchandise and all that stuff. I mean there is definitely a rub on having a publicist or a merchandise management company, but the options for these kinds of bands today to make a living off of being in a punk rock band wasn’t this way 10 years ago. I mean you did, but it wasn’t the same. Having someone book your tours might make sense. D.I.Y. is really cool, but I think it’s more of an exercise in understanding than it is in producing. Like, you might produce something doing it yourself and you might make a lot of money and be really successful, but I think that the real value in that experience is going through a process, understanding where you started, where you ended, and coming to an outcome. I always talk about doing the dishes. I have a thing for doing the dishes. I don’t always like doing the dishes, but most of the time I do. The reason is that, I’m a teacher and a writer, and the things I work on take time and don’t have a discrete start and finish. When I’m working with a student over nine months, there is no real clear start and end point for what I’ve accomplished. It’s like a continuum. You hope to influence and do your best. With the dishes, it’s different. You walk over and see a giant task before you. You do the task piece by piece, one at a time, and when you’re done, you have this beautifully empty sink and clean dishes, drying. You get to see the product of your labor. As a reformed Marxist, I really believe that people are sad in life, because they don’t see the result of their work.. Like, when you work in a factory and put the button on the T.V., you don’t get to take the T.V. home every day. I doubt people say, “I have a lot of pride, that’s the button I put on!” You’re disassociated from what you do. How many people take pride in… I’m trying to think of a really good example. But, if you can have pride in a job well done, [like] mopping the floor, and you should have pride in a job well done, that’s respected, I respect that an awful lot. What I don’t respect is people, who don’t have pride in anything and just do it for money, because they need to survive. I respect the need to survive, but I have a hard time respecting the laziness that goes into not going after better choices for oneself.
Pastepunk: Kind of like your situation in the book where you talk about working at the Kinko’s and how you just took it into your own hands and moved on to the email server job.
Ronen: Yeah… I mean that’s with anything. You’ve just got to know when it’s time to go. You have to know when it’s time to move on and do something new. I really believe change is good. Stocky people who don’t change amuse me, because they can’t be happy.
Pastepunk: Just like if you work a 9-5 job just to pay the bills, where do you go from there?
Ronen: Well, look, let’s be realistic. We live in a world where you have the ability to work a 9-5 just to pay the bills, you probably need to take it. As ugly Americans, we’re often forgetful that people kill to have our shittiest jobs. Our shittiest jobs are like executive level positions in other parts of the world. So, in that respect, you do what you gotta do since you’re a sack of meat, trying to stay alive. All the other stuff, the constructs… pride is a construct. On the other hand if you are too sedentary to explore them, you’re wasting the opportunity to make your life something fun, interesting, cool… at least learn something.
Pastepunk: In the book, you talk about how you grew up Jewish and members of your family were in the Holocaust. Were your parents really religious? Did they push that on you? Was punk a way to get away from that?
Ronen: No, not really. My mom teaches Judaica which is a study of Jewish culture…
Pastepunk: Yeah I’m Jewish, I went to Hebrew High School and all that...
Ronen: Ah, ok. Well she’s Israeli and most Israeli’s aren’t as Orthodox as most American Orthodox Jews. Well, maybe I shouldn’t generalize most Israelis, but that’s just been my sense. My parents are very forward thinking people. They definitely questioned lots of choices I was making, but they didn’t battle me on why my hair was blue or why my music was loud. They knew there were lots of bigger, other things to worry about. In other areas of my life, they knew that I was making good choices.
Pastepunk: They knew when to pick their battles?
Ronen: Yeah… Now it’s funny, because I have this book. It’s like the light at the end of the tunnel, because all this bullshit I was wasting my time on, well at least I got a book out of it. I’m always leery of how people reject religion when they get old and scared and then go back to it. My own specific, personal views on the creation of human life, the Earth, and universe and stuff are pretty out there and I don’t share them publicly, because if they turn out to be right, you know, everyone will know. I don’t really believe in God. I don’t really believe in Hell. I don’t really believe in Heaven. Well, I believe in Hell…if you’ve ever been to like North Elizabeth [Elizabeth, New Jersey]…
Pastepunk: Or like what's left of the 9th Ward of New Orleans…
Ronen: Yeah. I mean hell to me is having to listen to Jack White play his guitar for 20 minutes at Bowery Ballroom while Meg White goes “bahp, bahp, bahp, bahp”…I don’t know how you’re going to transcribe that...
Pastepunk: I’ll just write out the notes or something...
Note: we're doing the interview outside of Vintage Vinyl, one of the best record stores in the country, and there was an ad for the new WHITE STRIPES album. Ronen mentioned how he saw the group play at Bowery Ballroom in NYC a couple of years ago and Jack White did a self indulgent 20 minute guitar solo, while Meg White played the same drum beat over and over.
Ronen: …but the sheer number of interpretations of spiritual reality that exist on this planet point to the fact that if so many people have so many different explanations, it’s not very likely that any of them are right. That’s just highly unlikely. Plus, historically, religion has obviously been used to control people, ruin their lives, take their money, take their food, everything. Religion has exploited spirituality and those are two very different things.
Pastepunk: Um…
Ronen: You went to Hebrew High School, huh?
Pastepunk: (sigh) Yeah, it was either that or Marching Band [note: I'm sure most people would take two days of some good ol' extracurricular religious brainwashing over giving up 6 days a week to marching band practice for 3 hours a day].
Ronen: That’s alright. At least you’re not going to Yeshiva…
Pastepunk: There was one part in the book where you talk about The Boots and Roots Collective [a punk rock collective formed by Ronen and friends] where you say, “I like to think that, deeper down, I knew better” [after the disintegration of the group, which only put on a couple of benefit shows]. I was just wondering about that, because it seems to go against earlier things you said about idealism and working towards a goal. Do you feel that you should have known better that you could have changed the world, or that you could have made a difference?
Ronen: I think I said that in retrospect, that deep down inside, I now think… I would now like to think that I knew better then, but I didn’t. Let’s be real, most anarchist collectives are not changing the world. They are changing the daily world of the people who participate in that, but that’s an illusion. The rest of the world is a complex system of interlocking things and separating myself from that is not going to change it. I really don’t believe in the whole dropping out of society thing and the reason I don’t believe that, and the reason why I don’t believe that… and this is why I wrote it… I look at human civilization as a human organism. Organisms are composed of organs. Organs can be anything from organized religion to civic constructs, like government, to formal education system to knowledge systems. You depend on every one of those parts of the system. You as a human organism… you as a person… if you’re liver goes out, you don’t live anymore. It’s not the most important part of you, but if it goes out, you don’t live anymore. I think that when people react to things in the world and decide to pull away and like isolate themselves, I think what happens is, they’re quitting. They’re quitting on the people that are their brothers and sisters. So the reason I said I should have known better is that an anarchist collective, or punk rock collective, usually sets out to say, “We’re gonna smash something!” or “We’re gonna break something down!”. I’m not interested in that anymore, I’m interested in building things. Yes, you have to break things down to build them up again and blah blah blah, but I’m interested in being constructive.
Pastepunk: Or at least generally it’s something creative or even just putting on shows or something.
Ronen: Well I mean, it was a really constructive thing, The Boots and Roots Collective, and it was successful in a lot of ways, but those things are not meant to change the world. I just don’t believe that. They’re there for the people involved with them to go through a psychological exercise and to mark their boundaries of what’s OK in life and who they are going to associate with. There are very few people who live that kind of lifestyle and they miss out on some great things the world has to offer. I just don’t believe in treating any human being as if they aren’t as good as me or not as smart as me. That’s a really smug thing to say. “We’re now going to start this group of people and we just know better than everyone else.” To me, there are a lot of really bad people in the world who take that same kind of tact. Most people don’t even understand the real meanings of those words [anarchy, etc.]. Social anarchy is a belief system, it’s a social system. It’s not just like do whatever you want or “I don’t give a fuck!” and get drunk. I love that. I love seeing a 17 year old kid with an anarchy patch getting wasted. It’s like, you’re getting wasted and putting money into the hands of these giant corporations who are making malt liquor. It’s so far from anarchy. They’ve got you exactly where they want you. It’s perfect.
Pastepunk: They’re just going to stay in that cycle and not actually do anything.
Ronen: You can just say you’re rejecting the system, but the truth is, you’re just being a bitch about it and you’re still participating. You’re complaining, but when push comes to shove, but you’ve still got electricity in your house. What better example of the system is there than the electrical system in your house? I feel a little irresponsible answering this question in short form in this interview, because no matter what I say, I’m leaving out an important point or saying something that sounds silly.
Pastepunk: I don’t mean to put you into a corner or anything…
Ronen: No, you’re not putting me into a corner, but I feel like it’s dangerous to believe things. It’s better to have thoughts. It doesn’t always come out of my mouth that way. Like I frequently say, “I don’t like to call myself a teacher”. I say that I teach and that there is a difference but of course it comes out, like “I’m a teacher.”
Pastepunk: On a final note, how did the idea for the book come about?
Ronen: Well I think that anyone who writes thinks about writing a book one day. I’ve completed a lot of cool projects in my time, but I’ve also started lots of things that I haven’t finished. I was really determined that I wanted to write something of length and that I would complete it. So then I was like, “Well, what am I going to write?” Then I was like, “Well I have so many great stories that I can write about, all kinds of things that mattered to me, if I just wrote about me.” They always say write about what you know, so I know me. I just realized I had some great stories, no one had really talked about a lot of the stuff that happened in the ‘90s. I was fortunate to catch a lot of bands that became really well known. I mean, I see FALL OUT BOY promoting LIFETIME and I’m like “Awesome!”, but it blows my mind a little bit. They were just dudes banging around in a basement. I think people would be interested in knowing about that stuff. I had a lot of great inspiration. Books like "Salad Days;" "Fuck You, Heroes!"; "Get In the Van"… I was very careful to look at those books and say what I liked and didn’t like about them when I went to do my own. Punk rock literature is a great, little canon of literature and I really believe that punk rock is an extension of the Enlightenment. I believe it’s important literature. If we make it for a few more years, people will probably look back on it and say, “Hey, this is a really forward thinking, kind of community of people who have interesting priorities when you compare it to the people around them.”
Pastepunk: Well I mean you did some cool stuff…
Ronen: I just couldn’t go out and go to a club every Friday night and get wasted, because there is no point. Life may be absurd and ultimately pointless, but I like the illusion that at least in the interim, some things I do matter. They at least matter to the people around me. Who I am matters to the people around me. Who other people are, around me, matters to me. So I try to pursue that and make the most out of time and not be bored. Life’s delicious.
Ronen Kauffman is best known as the host of the increasingly popular podcast 
Pastepunk: In the book you mentioned how these people that you idolized are now your friends, like Dan Yemin of LIFETIME and other people. Do you think that kids today expect that kind of thing, like “Oh, why didn’t you respond to my MySpace message?!” Do you think kids still put bands up on a pedestal? 
