The interview was done before one of the shows at Slapshot's European in 1999. The interview's with both with Mike Bowser and Mark McKay, but who's saying what, I don't know.

Question: Can we talk to someone of Slapshot?

Yes, it's possible. Sit down. Well, we are Slapshot and I'm Mark, the drummer. Choke is over there relaxing, he's the singer. Dave who is relaxing as well plays bass. He's new and this guy here is Mike playing guitar. We started in October of 1985, nothing was really happening in Boston so we pulled Choke out of retirement and forced him to sing for our band.

Question: What about your split up?

We never like to say we split up. I left the band for a little while, creative differences, hmm, Choke is a very hard person to get along with. You see I wanted to do my own thing, I got tired of this and that, e.g. the scene, the bad attitude, the violence, the trouble and I did not like the Slapshot music for a while. Later it got better and I came back.

Question: Is there much violence in the American scene?

Unfortunately, yes.

Question: What about the "Unconsciousness" album, do you like that?

I was not on that. That was Mike.

Question: It is really different to your current style, isn't it?

You know, bands try different things and experience various phases but never the less when Mark returned it kind of sounded the way that it should be again.

Question: You have that song "108", do you have problems with their attitude or don't you just like them?

First of all we are not against Straight Edge, Choke wrote the song, so you should actually ask him because it's very personal to him but what I get from the song that it is not much against the band 108 but it's against introducing organized religion into Straight Edge and into a scene which is non restrictive, that's supposed to be free. And to introduce something as restrictive as religion in any form is just not right. They make it a standard, it's like if you're a Krishna, don't smoke, don't drink, don't eat meat, don't do this don't do that so you are Straight Edge. Too many restrictions...

Yeah, when did Straight Edge become rules? It's not supposed to be free, it's supposed to be doing what's best for you to live clean, if it involves Krishna, fine but it's not the rules, think for yourselves. To me Straight Edge just means don't drink abstain from drugs, that's it.

Question: Don't fuck?

That's kind of a respect issue, you know don't sleep around because it's not respectful to your fellow human beings, like trying to get along with each other, make it move smooth you know, we are all supposed to be in the same scene.

Question: Next question, what was exactly going on in your head when you formed the band Stars And Stripes?

That was fun.

Question: What about the lyrics, aren't they stupid? I like the music it's close to Slapshot but slower but I totally disagree with the lyrics. For example: We don't get the decent jobs you always give them to some foreign slob.

Half of the lyrics are jokes half of them are serious. You know we pulled out some old Oi records from England, that's the kind of music we listened to before we formed Slapshot and it was supposed to be a project under a different name because it had nothing to do with Slapshot, it was just fun. It was funny.

Question: Weren't you afraid of getting a Nazi reputation?

No, because in Boston being a Nazi did not mean that you are a fascist or white power it meant that you were Hardcore, like Hardcore wah, wah Nazi, nothing to do with what it means here. Remember Sid Vicious wearing a swastika, but no one ever accused him of being a Nazi. By the way were Americans, and from the American standpoint it's not meant seriously, from the European standpoint it might be serous. But see, it was never supposed to go anywhere.

Question: What kind of audience did you want to address with that album?

People that like Oi music, we don't care, everyone who thought it was good music. Basically it was music for everybody. Some lyrics were funny like "Doc Marten Army" or "Skinheads On The Rampage", we still play them at Slapshot gigs, other songs are about serious issues like homelessness for instance.

Question: Have you ever been in the Skinhead scene?

Choke has been Skinhead but never in the sense of a working class Skinhead and that stuff. You know we were Hardcore guys and large numbers of us were skins or at least looked like them, I had Doc Martens myself because those were shoes being available.

Question: Ok, talking about Boston and the scene there.

Hmm, we don't play in Boston any more. I personally don't know much what is going on there because we all have our own things, we got our own lives and we do Slapshot because we enjoy Slapshot even though we don't want to spread that so called Hardcore message anymore, you know it's still in our hearts, but when you get older things become different.

Question: That's all do you want to say something to our readers?

Do what you want, respect your scene, respect people and have a good time.