Personal Evolution Revolution
Personal Evolution Revolution
5 Things The Suicide Machines’ Jason Navarro Would Like You To Know.
Ifyou’re struggling to make something positive out of your time, Jason Navarro might be a good guy to pay attention to.
Skating a sonic Stormfront of ska and punk out of Detroit and onto an international stage, The Suicide Machines, fronted by Navarro, were a staple of the glory days of The Warped Tour in the ’90s, often compared to seminal Berkeley foursome Operation Ivy, the band that spawned Rancid.
Navarro, a man of boundless energy and fierce loyalty possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of, and genuine love for music. He demands to give full credit to his musical progenitors.
“People think Operation Ivy was a big influence on The Suicide Machines which they are, but Gangster Fun, The Specials, Negative Approach, Bad Brains, and Fishbone were probably more influential.”
Active from 1991, in 2006 The Suicide Machines hit a wall they couldn’t kickflip over and packed it in, seemingly permanently.
The endlessly energetic Navarro, however, was certainly not done with music, fronting blistering thrash outfit Hellmouth, grabbing a guitar and some serious melodies and harmonies for Break Anchor as well as forming Two-Tone/Reggae ensemble J. Navarro and the Traitors ( sue me, if it’s more than four musicians I’m calling it an ensemble) with longtime friend and music scholar Eric Abbey.
One would think that with those amplified obligations he’d be locked in a studio somewhere with only a Shure 58 and a Marshall stack to keep him company, but he’s a husband, father, holds down a blue-collar job and (during non-pandemic times) is occasionally spotted in the crew trenches at music venues like Detroit’s Fillmore.
The last anyone looked, there were still only 24 hours in a day, but Navarro can also be found at Detroit’s Rosa Parks Transit Center and other city locations serving free meals with anarchist collective Food Not Class.
His energy not completed depleted (are you effing kidding me?) he wrote and recorded the first Suicide Machines record in 15 years, Revolution Spring, (alongside Ryan Vandeberghe, Rich Tschirhart, and Justin Malek, his fellow Machinists since a 2009 resurrection), released on stalwart punk label Fat Wreck Chords.
Iasked Navarro for life hints and suggestions that are important to him and the world in general. Below are his responses-veritable exhortations for you to make the most of your time on this planet.
1. You have the time and it’s not as hard as you think to help someone, volunteer, or even donate something to help out another human.
2. You don’t stop learning and changing unless you let yourself stop.
3. Take some time to just breathe in the day or night.
4. Skateboarding taught me to make friends with anyone who rides a skateboard. Rich, poor, white, black, brown, man, woman, gay, straight, trans, punk, hip hop, metal, country, blues, jazz, etc.
5. This applies to anything writing a song, doing a sport, writing a book, etc. Anything in life: Take a step back and ask yourself is this as effective as it could be? Effective as I can be?
“Bill Stevenson (of the iconic yet grossly underrated SoCal band The Descendents)taught me that lesson.”
Here’s a track from The Suicide Machines Revolution Spring., handpicked by Navarro himself.
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