''Baiting The Public''


IF ONE COULD TEACH THEM TO THINK IN A NEW WAY THEY WOULD ALSO LIVE DIFFERENTLY 
(Message on reverse of sleeve)

Sleeve - Front 


Sleeve - Back


Vinyl

Sleeve Folded Out - Front
Sleeve Folded Out - Back
Flyer: Some copies have a small flyer advertising Deranged Records Releases, the above picture shows 2 examples.


Stats:

General:
Tracks: Baiting The Public (Split over two sides)
Released: 2003
Label: Deranged Records DER-43
Matrix A: "DERANGED YOUTH-43-A RE-1  FHVMCIJSTCIBRVSORT
Matrix B: DERANGED YOUTH-43-B RE-1    12-R"

Pressing Info: 
If you're into accurate stats, than consider yourself baited... Basically there seem to be three sleeve variants (excluding the 'Fake' vinyl version). The 'Large Text Sleeve' is listed in various places as being 500 copies, but judging by availability, the 250 figure below is more likely...

Either
1000  (Comprising 500 with  'Small Text Sleeve' and 500 with  'Large Text Sleeve')
or
750 (Comprising 500 with 'Small Text Sleeve' and 250 with 'Large Text Sleeeve')

There is also a 3rd sleeve variant, which is the same as the 'Small Text Sleeve', but the Deranged logo does not have a border and the image is more cropped. This may be a repress, numbers issued of this one are unknown.

Inserts:
No regular insert. Some have small photocopy flyer advertising Deranged Records releases.
    Variants:
    1. Large Text Sleeve
    2. Small Text Sleeve (Deranged Logo With Border)
    3. Small Text Sleeve (Deranged Logo, No Border)
    4. 'Wrong Label' Version - See ''Fake Dangerous Fumes''

    Some have stamped dust cover, this applies mostly, possibly solely to Variants 1 & 2 and probably to pre-orders, or  those coming direct from the label.


    Sleeve Variations:

    Large-Text Sleeve - Front
    Small-Text Sleeve (Deranged Logo with Border)  - Front
    Small-Text Sleeve (Deranged Logo, no Border) - Front
    Back: All variants 
    (i.e. not all have stamped dust covers, see notes above)



    Notes: 


    Record has second part of coded message etched into vinyl (see matrix info above).

    Sleeve includes credits to Brus, Muehl, Nitsch and Schwarzkolger


    Extracts From MRR Interview:

    ...We kind of formed to put some ideas I’d had into practice. Me and Camp used to do a long winded zine…we quit that and sublimated those energies into this band, which has essentially become the 4th issue of Quick. All the ideas and concepts I’d saved for articles, became ideas for songs (most of which haven’t appeared yet). Baiting the Public was going to be an article on the history of derisive movements or thought-control experiments through history – Paracelcus and Alchemy - - "god did not choose to give us the medicines prepared. he wants us to cook them ourselves", to Pavlov and William Sargent, the the Actionists, to William Joyce – these are all people who were able to use frenzy, fear and admiration to beat people’s minds to the extent to which they become maleable and useful. That’s basically why we started the band – using music laced with subtle hints and a strong emphasis on symbols, sigils and logos – to get people to dig us to the extent that we could dig right back into them...

    ...One time my friend said that the problem with punk was that bands didn’t try and change peoples lives anymore, and he was coming from a mid-90s perspective, when there were bands like Born Against, trying to be really important for people. That’s what we want to do, but maybe with different motives.

    Is that what Baiting the Public was trying to do?

    Yeah, the lyrics were about whipping people into a frenzy, and the record itself was sort of trying to do the same thing – you can’t read the lyrics, you have to flip the record to hear the second half of the song, people were already pissed off about 2 song singles for some reason, the cover gets dog-eared really easily, the liner notes don’t make any sense. Originally, the plan was to make 1000 of side A as a one sided single on Deranged, and self-release 200 of the bside so that 800 people who be left without the whole song. It obviously won’t, but the record was designed as a tribute to art projects that were able to send people rioting out of the theatres or fainting in the gallery. “Now that you think like me, you can act like me”, that whole deal. We’re the big fish, trying to gobble up all the little fish.

    But do you think that’s an effective or even a responsible way at creating change in society? The point seems to be to wreck peoples lives to the point where they have the perspective of someone living in the gutter, which I get, but the control and coercion in getting there seems to have an underlying almost facsism to it.

    I think it more has to do with the perspective you already have. If you’re fearful or wary of having your life ruined, it means you've got some vested interested in maintaining society the way it is. Think of that movie Falling Down – its almost like in our culture your either a business man or a criminal. And its your position that dictates your perspective – life for most people is just trying not to get dragged down into the shit. The perspective of someone on the bottom is that the people at the top belong at the bottom as well. And I mean, this isn't just some dumb band shooting their mouths off, this is kind of a major thing in the world I think. Think of movies, religions, politics, school, all that shit, its culture’s attempt to bait people upwards by people at the top. Buy a car, buy a house, get along with your neighbours, don’t do drugs, be a little concerned about the environment, all the good you do in a wretched system just keeps reproducing that system. People at the bottom only have the choice of trying to move up, or to try and wreck the system as a whole. And so being timid or afraid of the sick movement at the bottom, is just the attempt to keep the world the way it is. That’s why there is such a taboo even in like activist circles against violence, or hard drugs, or aggression, and shit like that, because in a large way, violence is one of those precious things that has yet to be recuperated and swallowed up by the dominant culture.

    But isn't freedom one of those taboos too? That’s why to me it seems irresponsible to trade off freedom for participation in the “right” sort of culture.

    But the trade-off happened a long time ago. Having the freedom to earn money and buy things, doesn't mean you have the freedom to survive without going to work, or not complicity have people working in sweatshops, or the freedom not to destroy the environment, or act out in any substantial way. The real irresponsible force at work is the culture trying to convince people that freedom IS taboo and untouchable, and that people have long enjoyed it. The only reason we feel safe is because there's been sort of a brand loyalty created between fear and comfort. You look at like the Nazis, who created a Fear and Furore division in their society – on one hand people were made to fear and hate some arbitrary elements of society, and to love and admire others, and it was really effective in whipping people into the frenzy. I think most social movements use this same sort of tactic with varying degrees of intensity – vilify and scapegoat your enemy, and make your goal righteous. So then think about what happens when the brands people start to swoon over are like, organic foods, or (more) violence, and chaos, then what happens?

    Well how would you build a responsible way of life?

    I want to be a yeoman. Thomas Jefferson’s concept of agrarian democracy, where every family compact gets a large plot of land and grew their food and that was that. Like Wendell Berry wrote “you cannot loose your land and remain free; if you keep your land you cannot be enslaved”. (1)

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    Extract from Distort Zine Interview:

    10,000 Marbles: I guess punk doesn’t really put much value on the actual music, because in the end punk is only a vehicle for things like music. Rather than being wholly about it.

    I think that shit is just a cop out so people don’t have to actually express anything interesting with their music or their ideas.

    10,000 Marbles: Well yeah. One thing we joked about a lot while we were mixing the record is how we hoped that Hidden World would "destroy punk". And then the other day I read a review about how the LP could be the "death knell of punk music".

    10,000 Marbles: We always said "to truly become something you have to first destroy it". Like in The Matrix. And I mean, the way we idealized the record towards the end was like this massive atom bomb that we’d drop on punk as a whole and hope to destroy it completely, forever. I think going back to the first question, my revised answer is that I’d like to be remembered as the band that put an end to punk.

    Is this why No Pasaran led to Police led to Baiting? And the Baiting theme has been pretty consistent from then until HIDDEN WORLD?

    no pasaran = punk as fuck
    police = an iconic take on punk as fuck (almost a joke?)
    baiting = anti-punk as fuck

    10,000 Marbles: Baiting The Public was our ultimate punk statement. Baiting is supposed to describe our idealized version of what punk means. And yeah, the schedule of our releases sort of maps our cynicism.

    I mean, Baiting is basically about manipulating and fucking with people, controlling them, which is decidedly anti-punk to acknowledge.

    10,000 Marbles: Well I mean this politically correct conception of punk only materialized late in the game, I’d argue

    Yeah… good point.

    10,000 Marbles: I’d say if you could reconstruct it, "fucking with people" would be top of the list of what Punk is. I mean I’ve talked about this punk issue in a lot of interviews lately. My take is basically "punk" was created as a marketing ploy to sell abrasive records in the late 70s. And clothes. All this extra baggage got added way later. Like the politics, etc. None of that shit had anything to do with what it was meant to do in its inception. "Punk" I think was this label created to reel in this new and interesting subculture that had developed on its own. There were all these fucking crazy people, who existed within the history of crazy fucking wierdos, and all of a sudden they all became "punks", this unified mass instead of this fertile movement. And by giving it this name and this look, they were able to herd all these people towards whatever cultural symbols they wanted people to rally around.Which happened to be spiky clothes, being drunk, buying records and going to concerts. And I think it’s that simple. (2)

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    Extract from Jagged Visions Zine Interview with David Eliade (2007?)

    D:  Soon I think media will be presented more along the lines of size rather than style – instead of buying an LP’s worth of music from your favourite band, you’ll buy a gigabyte’s worth, so we’re trying to get with that. It’s the whole indie-vertical-integration American Apparel style that is really taking, now you've got record companies that are getting into publishing and management, it’s like this disaster style economics where everyone is sensing this foreboding doom and trying to scoop up as much as they can before the bottom falls out. But ultimately Fucked Up is just a band. We tried to reference surrealism with Baiting the Public, but none of that kind of art really matters any more, things are too reversed to be able to make any sort of meaningful impact. (3)


    Sleeve Notes:

    10K Blog Post 2010

    Probably my favourite sleeve that we've done. This was only our third 7" release, and we hadn't yet settled on the 7" layout template we use for all our singles now, with the titles on the top margin. Representing that, there are two different covers - one following the aforementioned template, and one with a bigger "Fucked Up" at the top in microgramma font (as opposed to Clarendon, which we use for everything now), and "Baiting the Public" on the bottom, representing maybe a last ditch attempt to go in a different direction. The front image is meant to be a metaphor for what we thought we were in punk, and what punk was in the world (we were really into punk at that point) - a pack of rats running over a proper looking young woman in bed. The inside was more to the heart of what this record was about, which was more or less a tribute to the Actionists, a radical art group in 1960s Austria. The inner picture depicts one of their "events" which is basically a naked man aiming a naked woman at a roomful of people. The Actionists, along with the Situationists, who were another big "influence" of ours at the time, were admired because of their blatant attempts to challenge and shock rather than pander to their audience. That's what Baiting the Public was meant to be - our small symbolic challenge to our listeners. The theme for the record went beyond just the art - we split the song into two so you had to flip the record over to hear the whole thing, and the lyrics were jumbled so you couldn't follow along. We were really into the idea of confrontation back then, and after the Police 7" was pretty well recieved, we sort of arrogantly already wanted to hit back with something a bit harder to digest. (4)


    Commodity Fetishism:

    One with small hole and dried wax run off.
    The theme for the record went beyond just the art... 



    (1) MRR Interview - on Looking For Gold Blog
    (2) Distort Zine 16 Interview with Fucked Up
    (3) Jagged Visions Zine Interview with  David Eliade
    (4)  Looking For Gold Blog Post