which went went

I read this a little while back, I didn't know Champion was back together.

This is Aram's frozen peas
Over there is Aram's Copy of Swank

Up Yours children

Victory Records has the biggest guns, and I'm holding all the bullets. Pull the trigger.

This. Is. Huge.

The stuff about Tony Brummel is hilarious. It's exactly how I imagined him to be (a douchebag).

awesomely named

Here's the rest of the quote in context, which honestly, makes it even better.

As a sidebar, Clint who works at Victory is a very good friend of Champion and is a very good friend to all of us. He does Organized Crime Records and is an awesome guy. It was him that really encouraged us to meet with Victory Records. We met with them kind of out of a courtesy to Clint and also to Victory because they were very nice, but it was never something that we were seriously considering. I definitely want to get that out there. Second thing, I was the guy in Champion that did all the business stuff, and I'd been in that band for a long time and I pretty much thought that I had everything wired… like I knew how to deal with people well and I could go into situations and manage myself. Tony Victory definitely took me and made me his bitch instantly. I have never walked into a room and had someone just steam roll me so fucking fast. We show up, he keeps us waiting for 20 minutes in a waiting room that has a treadmill and crazy press clippings of Victory Records all over the place. And then after 20 minutes we get ushered into his office which is all red brick. He's sitting behind this giant oak desk, wearing a pink Fred Perry with the collar open and the collar popped. And true to his logo, the guy looks like a little bull dog. He had a crushing hand shake and we all sat down and he just proceeded to yell at us for an hour and tell us exactly what was going to happen with our lives. He at one point asked what we all did, and when one of our members said he worked at a gas station, he said "that's just fucking depressing." Actually, he didn't swear, because Tony Victory refuses to swear. He doesn't call people assholes or anything, he refers to everyone as turkeys. He made a lot of comparisons to physical fitness and music and killing people. He talked a lot about killing people and in regards to records sales. At one point he actually said to me "you could have a guy, top physical shape, 2% body fat, he could run 6 hours straight if he wanted, this guy could be a machine, and you could give him a gun, ya know, you could give him a pretty good gun. But then you could have some fat guy, out of shape, ya know, he's just lazy… but ya know, if you give that fat guy the good gun… and you give the guy that's in really great shape the shitty gun… if you give the guy who's in really good shape 2 bullets, but you give the fat guy the best gun with endless bullets… than he's gonna kill the guy that's in good shape." And then he leaned back and said "Victory Records has the biggest guns, and I'm holding all the bullets. Pull the trigger." And that really happened… he paused and said "Pull the trigger." And I was so horrified at that moment. I was so horrified I didn't know what to say, and I looked over and everyone else in Champion was looking me like "please god help us." It was terrible but at the same time it was also an interesting experience. Tony was very gracious and very polite to us. And then they let us go into the warehouse and let us grab a bunch of t-shirts and records and cds. They were really cool. It was very nice, but it just wasn't right for Champion.

I don't know why hes talking about straight edge being the unpopular thing in the hardcore scene. Every hardcore show i go to 1/2 of the bands are loud mouthed straight edge and then every other song they sing is about not drinking. I'm not edge but even if i was i'd get so tired of every band having 5 songs about how their proud to not drink. i could see an edge band have 1 song or two but they need to add some depth to their music. that being said i don't know why he thinks hes being original and different by being in a 1 dimensional straight edge band.

i thought that interview would be cool until i found out he was canadian.

I like what he says about his experience as a counselor. I'm not edge but I do kind of balk at what he talked about with this culture of alchohol and drugs are the only things that can help you relax and have fun with they help but its dangerous territory to start to believe you can't live without it. He seems like a cool dude who can be strong with his ideas without being obnoxious.

Aram Arslanian IS an awesome name.
And hey, I like Betrayed and Champion.

I had a good chat with Aram b4 a Betrayed/Internal Affairs/Miles Away/Champion gig and he sounded like a cool grounded straight edge dude. I'm not edge but some of his gig banter was definately switched on and compelling