Message over music

"Doing what you love to do is revolution." Ask the guys from the local "political.vegan.straightedge.pop.punk" (as they call themselves) group Rise Over Run. A student, a recent grad and two B-towners put their heads together three years ago to call for a revolution through music. They are anti-capitalist, pro-choice, anti-homophobia and pro-work for yourself, not for the job. These punkers are choosing their own high road -- putting what they have to say before the energy from their amps.\nAs guitarist and lead vocalist senior Ian Phillips says, he and his friends (they are all friends first, bandmates second, he says) are using the band as a tool, not just having fun and rocking out. Rocking is only part of it. \nPhillips (a self-described metalhead) says the band started as an idea, and it was a long process to find people to play with. He joined up with some friends and now the group includes Greg Chadwick on drums, Shane Becker on bass and Austin Edge on guitar (replacing Ryan Davis). \nThe members share a like charisma and many similar views on the world. Phillips, who has always been leftist and started a pro-choice group at his school in sixth grade, says they form a political band because they all see things much the same way. But the members still have four different personalities and don't participate in "groupthink."\nAs the band's Web site (www.tofuequalslove.com/riseoverrun) and CD liner notes say, Rise Over Run wants to influence people to think and analyze the world they live in. Learning to analyze the world and think about his actions was a life decision for Phillips. Now, when fans mention at a show or drop an e-mail saying how the lyrics made them think twice about a subject, Phillips finds it inspiring. Here he breaks down the message behind some of the music, as a tutorial for the band's show at Rhino's this weekend. \nRise Over Run = Message Over Music\n"We have other songs just about stepping back and thinking and actually evaluating ourselves within the consumer culture, and start asking ourselves do we really have to work a 40-hour work week to be happy. Is buying a cell phone or a pager or a beeper or a new TV, is that really going to bring happiness, and is looking like this person or acting like this person, is that going to make me happy -- is that really what I want to do? Is that really what I desire? \nI guess our main purpose as a band is to just to have people look at these things and look at themselves and not only how they interact with people, but how they interact on the larger scale -- on the larger social scale -- and see if that's what they really want to do, and if that's how they really want to live life. For all of the guys in Rise Over Run, we've looked at ourselves and how we work within this culture and said, 'You know what? This isn't what we want to do…' We don't want to be defined by what we consume." \n"Bert and Ernie are Dead" (A song from the band's first independent album)\n"The way we like to write our songs is sort of through a personal perspective. We're not just going to get up there and be like 'sexism sucks...' For example, one song that comes to my mind when we're talking about this is called "Bert and Ernie are Dead." It takes a look at the way males are socialized to be macho, to be homophobic and to be distant from other men. \nWe sing about how this thing, this outside concept, this outside idea of male generals is manifest within ourselves. And we all get screwed by it, because we don't actually experience what it actually means to be alive because we're so busy being 'a man.' We never get to experience real emotional ties with other men because we're afraid that we're going to be gay or whatever. Even though we're all definitely pro-gay, pro-sexual freedom, it's so weird because we are all so socialized to be very distant from one another -- like 'men don't cry,' stuff like that. It still feels really strange to cry in front of a man -- just little things like that that I feel like have been kind of stolen from me." \n"Desert Storm New York City" (A new tune written in reaction to Sept. 11)\n"We've written a new song about Sept. 11, called 'Desert Storm New York City.' I remember when I was a kid I was watching Desert Storm on TV and you saw buildings blow up, and we celebrated it. I remember seeing bombs, they had it on CNN -- bombs blowing up buildings, and everyone was celebrating it. Ten years later, when it happens in America, it's a tragedy… I'm not going to say that it's not a tragedy and that the people who died on Sept. 11 are stupid… I'm not going to value Iraqi lives more than I value American lives. But at the same time, I'm not going to value American lives more than I value Iraqi lives. \nTo me, it seems that any type of human tragedy, whether it's perpetrated by the United States, whether it's perpetrated by somebody else, it's human tragedy, especially with the United States' involvement in setting up brutal terrorist regimes not only in the Middle East but in Central America and Africa, that it's kind of, as Malcolm X said, 'Chickens coming home to roost.' If you set up all of these destructive policies abroad, if we work at setting up all these dictators and all these crazy Islamic regimes all around the world while at the same time completely supporting racist, zionist ideologies, then of course people are going to start to take offense to that and they're going to act on it. If we give them no other choice, if we don't listen to them, if we continue to kill Islamic people around the world, we're going to get what's coming to us eventually. \nAlthough I'm not trying to justify the Sept. 11 attacks, I'm just saying that that's part of the grander picture… If the United States media said, 'Well actually, yes, these people are somewhat justified in killing us because we've been killing them and we've been making all kinds of money profiting off of their destruction,' then the American public, I don't think, would be as quick to follow suit and join in on the bombing of Afghanistan or whatever terrorist it is now." \nRise Over Run will be performing at 8 p.m. on Saturday at Rhino's with Goner and Nakatomi Plaza. The band is also practicing and planning for its second album.