Ian Svenonius

Ian Svenonius was born in Chicago in 1968, grew up in front of a church with a gospel choir and cut his teeth with his first band on the punk-rock scene in 1980s Washington DC. It was almost inevitable that he would become a stage giant, combining the charisma of an earnest priest, the rhythm of rock and roll and the rigorous ethics of genuine activism. Wild on stage, but lucid and rigorous in his ideology and artistic ideas, his “gospel yeh-yeh” with its Marxist antiauthoritarian rhetoric shines out in successive musical projects, from The Nation of Ulysses to The Make-Up, and even in the talk show he hosted on VBS.tv. This vital figure in the independent music world in recent decades currently combines his cries and proclamations in the band Chain and The Gang with his essay-writing work. His latest book, Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock’n’Roll Group, a tongue-in-cheek guide for budding stars, is published in Spanish by Blackie Books (May 2014).