title: Interview 3

URL: http://www.tsunamimag.com/interviews/int3.html

magazine: Tsunami (Queensland street press)

date: July 2004

writer: Brad Larter

When Bondi progressive rock heavyweights COG take their show on the road this month, they will be screening John Pilger's documentary Breaking The Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror. John Pilger's documentary is set in Iraq, Afghanistan and Washington and traces the unreliable history of events leading up to the 'war on terror' and last year's invasion of Iraq.

COG frontman Flynn Gower explains, "We've sort of been showing it (Breaking The Silence) a couple of different places where we've played. But we wanted to try to do it nationally. So we've done it in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Albury and we're going to do it up there as well in Brissy. A friend of mine gave me a ring and said John Pilger and Andrew Wilky were speaking at the University of New South Wales. We didn't even realise it, but John showed the film that was one of his releases. We were so impressed with it that we thought this would be sensational if we could get this to an audience where we weren't preaching to the converted. So that's how that came about. We got in contact with John Pilger and said 'look, we want to take this around the country and show it at some of our shows' and he agreed. It's just nice to have an idea like that and follow through with it."

Pilger's documentary won the gold award in the political category at the prestigious 2004 WorldMedia Festival, which is the only global competition for all media. Screening such a contentious political documentary may well provoke some very strong reactions from an audience that has come to see a live rock band.

"Yeah the reactions have been interesting," agrees Gower. "There have been people from both sides of the fence. People who have sat there completely transfixed, having no idea that it was even going to be there. Then there are others who have gone completely off the rocker and started yelling and screaming and throwing a bit of a tantrum. They obviously don't agree with his [John Pilger's] viewpoint, or any other viewpoint that differs from the mainstream one. And they were pretty fuckin' angry about it! I suppose all that stuff is quite divisive. You've got people who are passionate about both sides of the argument and I guess we've been seeing that since we've been taking it around the country with us," Gower muses.

As COG's second EP Just Visiting: Part 2 was released towards the end of 2002, it has been quite a lengthy period of time between releases for the Bondi trio.

"We've got quite a bit of new material. Basically for the last year we've been writing and working on the pre-production for the album. It's ready to record, but we've had a lot of trouble getting someone to come to the party to help us record it properly. So we've been doing everything we can, but unfortunately it still hasn't eventuated. We've been wanting to record this album for the last four of five months. There's some conceptual ideas on the album that people are really going to latch on to I think. We think there is some fantastic material there," Gower says.

COG performs at The Zoo w/ FORT (Jul9) and the Troccadero w/ MOTORMOTH (Jul10).

BRAD LARTER