Thursday's Geoff Rickly

I remember that! What's the name of your band?

I totally remember that. You gave me some stickers! We totally had Rocket stickers up.

[laughs] Alright! Can I tell you something kind of funny?

To tell you the truth, I was sort of wondering about this interview because the last time I did an interview with SuicideGirls was at Warped Tour in LA, and there were three women who interviewed me. I didn't know what SuicideGirls was yet. This was maybe in 2002 or 2003. After the interview they were like, "It's a really bad neighborhood, can you walk us to the bathroom?" And I was like, "Yeah, sure."

And then they were like, "Can you come inside with us actually?"

I was like, "Uh, no, I don't think I can do that, that's not appropriate, there are probably other girls in there." And they were saying, "No, we'll check-there's no other girls in there." So I just said, "No, I'm not going to do that." I really didn't know what was going on. *Then later it just hit me and I realized that they were trying to get me to go in the bathroom and make out with them. So...I seriously didn't know what was going on. I couldn't figure out why they were trying to make me go in the bathroom with them!

I was worried that this interview was going to be with one of those girls and that they were going to be like, "Man, you had no idea what was the fuck going on."

[No previous interview with Geoff has been featured on SG -- we therefore must surmise that some imposters tried to lead him astray -- Ed.]

I don't know. Truth be told, if I had known what they wanted to do I might have been into it. I was a lot younger then, and it was before I was attached or anything.

If anything, a lot of realizing that I was a grown up happened as soon as I felt very out of touch with a lot of things that I felt very in touch with when we started the band. We've been a band for almost eleven years now. I've done all my gowning up in this band. Eleven years later, the Geoff that sings for Thursday is a different Geoff. I'm not hanging with a bunch of punk rock kids throwing shows in my basement anymore. I'm not trying to make rent in a shitty small apartment, you know? It's just very strange to realize that I'm about to turn thirty and my whole twenties will have been spent in a band.

It is. I don't feel any connection to a lot of the culture that's going on now with young people. But at the same time I think there are a bunch of kids who like bands now who all grew up on Thursday. So I can see, sometimes, where they're coming from musically. If anything, it's more of a lyrical standpoint where I feel a major disconnect [with younger bands]. I don't sing about girls, I don't sing about a lot of the things that today's bands are singing about. I don't know if it's good or bad, it's just one of those interesting things that developed over time.

[laughs] That's funny! You know I've heard that some of the other bands are psyched to tour with us. I really like the Cancer Bats, so I'm looking forward to seeing them.

[laughs]

I do get that rep. But I feel so lucky that my job gives me so much free time. And I write, so why would I not read everything that I can possibly get my hands on?

Almost every song on the record is connected to a different writer. The first song, "Resuscitation of a Dead Man" is influenced by Denis Johnson's Resuscitation of a Hanged Man. Another song is based on a book [Martin Amis'] Time's Arrow. The whole record also has a lot of themes from Roberto Bolano, a poet who wrote The Savage Detectives and a few other things. The song "Circuits of Fever" is very influenced by [writer] David Foster Wallace.

Oh, that's interesting.

There are a lot of postmodern cues on this record, one of them being medical, or scientific, so there are a lot of those references on the record. One of the recurring themes of Thursday records is transportation and the idea of moving through the world very quickly. Transportation has always been kind of a postmodern tenant of literature, too. That's something that I've always grabbed on too. Someone told me today that our records are like Planes, Trains & Automobiles because they all get mentioned in lyrics...

Absolutely.

I mean, everyone kind of loves [Albert ] Camus, I guess. What really interests me about existentialism is that nothing was ever the same after it. All modern literature has tinges of existentialism in it, whether it is [Charles] Bukowski or [William S.] Burroughs. It all has the theme of overarching loneliness creeping into everything. Existentialism is a door that once it's opened, you can't close. As soon as you think to yourself, "Ooh shit, maybe God doesn't exist," then if you think, "Oh no, maybe he does" -- it doesn't matter, that door is opened. You know what I mean? It's the possibility that will haunt you no matter what. It makes itself more and more obvious to you in different ways.

It can do that, and it can do the opposite, too. I think that if the feeling has never occurred to you before it can make you seriously depressed [laughs], versus reassuring. I guess that's what a lot of Common Existence is about. Not only is it "common" in the sense that it's not meaningful, that is to say it's cheap, everybody feels this, it's common, but "common" is also "shared" with everyone. I like that duality, you know? That in the end, all of our little petty concerns mean nothing, they're just common. But the big stuff, we all share. We all get old, we all die. At the very least the stranger that you see on the subway is sharing the same crisis that you are, at heart. We're all staring into the same void. [laughs]

Haha. Yeah, it is. But it's like the United Nations. I remember this quote from [Radiohead's] Thom Yorke where he said, "Radiohead's writing is like the U.N., only Thom Yorke is the United States of America." So basically he does whatever he wants and everyone else can deal with it. I think that we're more like the rest of the U.N., where sometimes some countries have more power than others, it's always changing. In Thursday sometimes you get your voice heard and sometimes you don't. Sometimes you get to tell everyone, "Fuck you! I'm going to bomb you if you don't listen to me!" It's a struggle, it's a fight, but this time it turned out great.

You know, I think it is too. And a lot of my friends have been calling me and saying the same thing. That feels really good. It's interesting because we were so big in 2003 when the [post-hardcore] genre just exploded. We were at the forefront, we were the leaders of it, and now it's a totally dead genre. Nobody wants to have anything to do with it, for the most part. Everybody's moved on. But we're making our best music now, so it's kind of funny.

Yeah! [laughs] It's true.

People are asking, "Oh is this record going to appeal to the indie rock scene kids?" And I'm like,"No, it's not." I don't think there's a ton of indie rock kids out there that are dying to get into a band they liked in high school. I just don't really think so. But I do think that if we keep on doing what we're doing and do it well and do it for years, then maybe we won't be a genre band, we'll be a band that's just a fact of life. When you think of NOFX or Bad Religion, you don't think, "Well those are just punk bands." You think, "Those bands have been around forever." And those bands would not have stuck around if they hadn't been good bands.

Totally different. When we started we just wanted to play basement shows with our friends, do it for a year and then go off, finish school and be teachers and artists, shit like that. Then we surprisingly had a career that just blew up out of nowhere. Once we were given that career we felt like we were given such an opportunity and a platform to just make some beautiful art. We decided to just roll with it and try to accomplish something really great. Not only did none of us think it was going to happen, but it wasn't even a dream. We were like, "Let's just be a punk band." We just wanted to do it and have fun. It had nothing do with having a career.

So true.

Oh, wow. I wonder how old I was when I said that. I'm sure I did say it, I used to say crazy shit like that all the time. I've always felt like music isn't worth anything if it's not making life better for everyone -- not just you and your group of friends. Music should be focused on bringing compassion and freedom to everyone. So gay rights and women's rights and transgender rights have always been a huge part of what we do with Thursday. I've just always felt like it's really hard to express yourself when you're not engaged in trying to help people be free.


Thursday's Common Existence is out now. You can also catch them on tour through April 19. Go to their MySpace page for further details.