FUCK NETFLIX, GET SWEATY 2.0 // MAY 31, 2013 AT BONO’S IN LISLE // FREE SHOW
agents of change
A motley crew of rabble rousers and political dissidents who are set to besiege the dance hall with a fury comparable to barbarians that burned Rome. From Chicago, IL circa 2005.
agents-of-change.com
twitter.com/agentsofchange4
agentsofchange.bandcamp.com
facebook.com/agentsofchange4
booking@agents-of-change.com
Picture from the show at the Fireside. Photo by Mike Null.
Spreading our profanity laced flyers for next Tuesday’s show at the Fireside!
The next Agents of Change show is Tuesday, May 14 at the Fireside Bowl! 5 bands, $7, +17, doors at 7:30, show at 8:00.
Free +21 show tonight at Grandbar (1600 W. Grand Ave.) w/ us and Killer Moon!
We are playing a free show tonight at Grandbar w/ psych doom rock band Killer Moon!
Listen to our latest track ‘Silent Spring’ here —> http://godirect.topspin.net/home/products/150528 #SilentSpring
Touring with indie rock faves Mars Volta was a typical rock-star journey for Ikey Owens. There were rabid fans, criminally boring van trips and nights of keyboard banging with a band he loved. The crowd reactions were typical, too: “Who the hell is that black guy onstage?” “What’s he doing in a rock band?”
“Kids thought it was strange. People thought I was Mars Volta’s bodyguard,” says the six-foot, 240-pound Owens. Rock fans weren’t the only ones hung-up about race. Many white musicians revealed their myopia in backhanded ways.
“They’d say what we were doing was just like the Beatles doing ‘Let It Be’ with Billy Preston,” Owens remembers. Were these delusions of grandeur on the part of white musicians? Did these guys have no context of black musicians outside of Preston’s famed keyboard session work with the Beatles?
Maybe it was both, yet Owens never let the racist slips of the tongue or the dirty looks overwhelm him—it was all just part of the hazard of being Ikey Owens. To many, he has always been “the black guy” playing in a host of bands in Orange County and Long Beach, some as well-known as Sublime, Reel Big Fish and the Aquabats.
But Owens’ rock & roll career tells the bigger story of his 28-year-old life. He was one of the few black kids raised in largely white Lakewood. Friends and neighbors couldn’t figure out how a black kid liked “white” music like Tom Petty. They thought it odd that a black kid was enrolled in the gifted classes and not special ed. Then there were the often unintended but cruel asides from the mouths of supposedly liberal, open-minded people: the familiar “I don’t like black people, but I like you” was a frequent conversation stopper. And their sting lingered long after for Owens—petty prejudices and affronts that sliced like thousands of paper cuts until he felt as if he was bleeding.
“If you want to talk to some of the angriest black people, talk to one from the suburbs,” says Owens. “You live among your enemies. If you open your eyes, you can see how much people hate you. You can’t win. If you have what they have, they’re jealous. You can’t figure out why they would dislike you because you’re supposed to be the ‘good example’ of your race.
“You have everything: you’re not committing crimes, you have high SAT scores, you’re going to college, your parents do well. And the bottom line is you still live next door to people who are, at their core, prejudiced. Directly or indirectly, they don’t want to live next to a lot of black people,” says Owens.
Nothing To Prove: Ikey Owens And The Sonic Politics Of Race (via blackrockandrollmusic)
Ikey Owens (of Free Moral Agents/Mars Volta) talks about his experiences w/ racism in the music world. Good read.
(via iolaella)
Agents of Change X OhNo!Doom coming soon
Footage of us performing live 10/26/12 at Multi Kulti for a benefit show supporting the Mental Health Movement here in Chicago.
The songs in this video are “Destroy” and “Agency”, which are going to be on our soon to be released EP, “How You Gon’ Wait?”.
Thanks to Mike Kalas for shooting and editing this clip!
On our first tour back in 2007, we went on the road to the east coast with our friends, the ska/punk band Trike (now defunct). Right around that time, Trike released an EP entitled “These Things Don’t Just Go Away”, which featured our vocalist, Buzzkill (aka Lantern etc.) on the track “Extinguish”. Give it a listen, it’s a lost gem that’s hard to find.
This album is way out of print, but you can download the Trike albums (including the one that features this song) at:
http://angry-ska.blogspot.com/2009/03/trike-usa.html
New geometric AOC logo by our MC, Buzzkill.
Peep the demo of our new track “Find a Way”! Punk + reggae + hip-hop thrown in the atom smasher
“We are the heroes we’ve been waiting for.” - ie, we can all be agents of change.
