Rewrite the Scene is honored to have done an interview, primarily about The Arrogant Sons of Bitches reunion with no other than the vocalist himself, Jeff Rosenstock. We talked about everything from the reunion, to Webster Hall’s ticket sales, to merch to even bands and artists that were suppose to play at the reunion show. Click ‘more’ to read the interview.

Can you tell us who you are, please?
JR: My name is Jeff Rosenstock.
RTS Nick: You recently did a tour in Australia where you broke your collar bone. Mind telling us that story?
JR: Well, I did a solo tour in Australia, and I had two days off. A friend of Matt [Kurz] works for an airline company. I was there to check out New Zealand and he was like, “You should check out places like Bali and Fiji”. I thought that it was going to be expensive, and it wasn’t. My friend and I bought a plane ticket to Bali for $300 round trip. We were both like, “Fuck, let’s do this”.

We were on a motorbike and we were driving around, trying to find a ferry that goes to this island close to Bali that’s really decorate and beautiful. We were biking around for hours, trying to find the ferry and I hit a patch of bad road as I was going 50 miles per hour. I flipped off it, bounced on my head, and I scraped up against some rocks. I got up and I thought I was fine, but then I was like, “ARGHHHH”. I looked at my arm and my arm was all ripped up bad. He had hand sanitizer on him and he poured it all over my arm. It hurt SO MUCH! I had a shirt tied to me. The place where we were staying had some napkins and some iodine that I could put on it. *laughs*

It was bad. I got back to Australia and went to the hospital there. They were like, “It looks like you kept it pretty clean, so that’s good.” I asked them about playing and they said, “You have to clean your wound and change your bandage after you are done playing, but you can keep playing”. Right afterwards, I continued to play more shows. When I played, it felt like acid was pouring down my arm. All of this shit burning and my shoulder doesn’t feel good as well. I had this orange, yellow and red shit coming out of my arm when I was playing. It was hurting so much. I couldn’t move around that well.

The tour happened and I took a 40 hour plane ride home. I went home to change the bandages and I had to change them backstage. Sometimes, the bandage would stick to my wounds and my sun burn would peal off. Flesh and pink stuff ripped off my arm. It was so fucked. I get home and I go to the doctor that I went to when I was a kid. He saw me for free which was very nice of him because I thought I was going to have to pay. I went to him and he was like “What happened to you?” I said, “Ohh I fell”. He asked, “What you were doing to it? Are you putting saline on it? Any kind of gel or cream?”… No. “Did they give you any antibiotics to take?”… No. “Did they give you a tetanus shot?”… No. “Well I have to give you the tetanus shot, and I have to put you on antibiotics because that’s infected and that’s infected.”

He told me to hold something as he was giving me the shot on my other arm and I was like, “I can’t… My shoulder hurts.” He asked if they gave me an X-ray. “No…”. He said that he was certain that I broke my collar bone and I needed an X-Ray, right now. I got the X-ray, it was broken and I had shows 3 days later. I had 3 and half week worth of shows, right away. I was going to doctors for the rest of the break, played a show in Philadelphia with Classics of Love, came back to Brooklyn that day, went to the doctor that morning and got checked out again. I told him I was leaving tomorrow and he was like “Well… you’re gonna leave!” It was painful, but once it got better, it was so much better. It was so fucking bad.

Did your broken collar bone lead to the cancellation of the surprise ASOB at The Shop?
JR: Yup… I don’t know why you knew about that surprise ASOB at The Shop.
RTS Nick: I’m amazing.
JR: I didn’t know about the surprise ASOB show at The Shop. I told the band after a practice we had, “If we don’t sound bad, we should put up on twitter an hour beforehand that we are going to play”. J.T. got really excited and started telling everyone about it. Then I texted him, “I just broke my collar bone, I don’t think I can do this”.
RTS Nick: I was about to go that day…
JR: How did you find out? Did J.T. tell you?
RTS Nick: No, someone else told me.
JR: It was funny because the bar gave up their liquor license the day before it was suppose to happen. He’s moving his bar into another place where it’s going to be a real venue, which is going to be awesome. J.T. is doing great stuff there.

For whatever reason, it didn’t make sense for the shop in Williamsburg to keep being a music venue and a bar. They decided it, right before that show. I don’t think it was going to happen anyway. I was not going to be able to do it because of my arm though.

RTS Nick: Would you you try it again?
JR: No, because that would have been the time to do it. Bove is flying up for it and Dave works every day, so that was the only time it could have happened. It could happen after the Warsaw show, but we aren’t going to play another show after the Warsaw show.
RTS Nick: Is that it for a while?
JR: That’s it forever…. for at least another 10 years.
RTS Nick: Unless someone gives you a shit load of money…
JR: If someone says, “Here’s $10,000″, we would say yes. We’re all friends and we can all use $10,000. This reunion is honestly all in the spirit of “Hey, we are all buddies again. This could be a fun thing to do and we can make some money doing this…” Why wouldn’t we do it?

Honestly, in the last 2-3 years of ASOB, we weren’t friends. We didn’t like each other. We were all at each other’s fucking throats. It seems that…. well, especially since Dave and I are such good friends again and J.T. and I are such good friends again, it doesn’t make sense not to play the last show as friends. Not to say that we weren’t like “I can’t wait to get off this stage”, because we weren’t, but it’s not going to be as stressful. I’m not going to be like, “Dave is doing that fucking thing again… fuck”, but now it’s like “Hey, Dave is doing that thing he does… it’s awesome”…. And not to single out Dave, he was the only name I could think of. I am probably the worst offender when it comes to guy doing annoying shit.

Since the ASOB reunion was announced, a lot of people on Facebook asked about a vinyl for ‘Three Cheers For Disappointment’. Will there be a vinyl release?
JR: Nah. Because of the accident, the time I spent at home in between Australia and the BTMI! tours, I was going to get all that shit together for the vinyl and get it finalized, but instead I was at a doctor, all the time. I didn’t have the time to do it. That’s fine because I don’t have the money to press it. We had it, it was out before. It would have been nice, but a lot of things would have been nice.

RTS Nick: Would a label like Asian Man Records be down to release it?
JR: I’m sure he would…
RTS Nick: He could make money off it as well.
JR: I have a label…
RTS Nick: I know, but wouldn’t Asian Man be a little quicker?
JR: Well, no one could do anything that quick with vinyl. That’s just how long vinyl takes. It’s a long process. We could have probably rushed it and paid way to much money for it and have to sell it for $20, but I don’t want to do that.
RTS Nick: You are going to have merch at the shows though, right?
JR: Yeah, we will have merch.

I wanted to talk about Bomb The Music Industry! really quick. What’s the future for Bomb?
JR: No one knows the future for Bomb. We want to go to Mexico and Japan and we are going to go to Australia and Russia with a full band. There are places we really want to go too.
RTS Nick: Are you writing/
JR: I just write songs. Sometimes when I write, it’s something, other it’s nothing. There’s no “this is the next thing”. I just write stuff. There is no plan for the next record. I’m pretty happy with Vacation.
RTS Nick: What is the state of Kurdow?
JR: I don’t know… *laughs*. Kurdow will always be a band that has six songs. Mike and Dave are really busy with Laura Stevenson and the Cans and I’m really busy with Bomb the Music Industry. We should play another soon. It’s been like a year.

Alright, last question. Totally off topic. I did an interview with Chris of Less Than Jake, did he really get you to print your t-shirts and not spray pain them?
JR: No. Chris did not get us to do it. They hassled us to do it, all the time. That made us think “No. Fuck you.
We really aren’t doing it.” He kept saying it to us. I remember we played Toad’s Place in New Haven, Connecticut with Titus Andronicus and they were selling one shirt and they sold 100 copies and they made thousands of dollars. Well fuck, they are not doing anything intrusive at all and they can easily make money that can go to pay rent. At that show we said, “let’s print one shirt and see how that goes”. The first show we had them at, we made like $800 and we decided to keep selling shirts.

Thank you for doing the interview man.
JR: Thank you dude.

If you are in the New York area, make sure you buy tickets to the Webster Hall show. This will be your last time to see ASOB in at least 10 years. You can purchase tickets: here.