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Most Precious Blood rose from the ashes of the mighty Indecision, stepping in to fill the void of straight-up Brooklyn hardcore the scene needed at that point in 1999. The band's first album was 2001's Nothing In Vain (Trustkill Records), and the newest, Our Lady of Annihilation, is being talked about as one of the best of 2003. Guitarist and New Jersey transplant Rachel Rosen was in Indecision and now wields a guitar for Most Precious Blood, and here she is, on a warm summer night in downtown Ottawa to discuss girls in the scene, the Canadian border, and sundry other topics. This interview is months old, like before Annihilation came out with new vocalist Rob Fusco replacing Tom Sheehan, but hey. Better late than never...hey, I saw you roll your eyes at me!!
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sd: How long's Most Precious Blood been around now?
Rachel: Three years. Justin and I co-founded the band.
sd: You're from Brooklyn; name your top three New York City bands.
Rachel: Now or ever?
sd: Ever!
Rachel: Sick Of It All, Madball, and, uh....there's so many New York bands that I like though! I'm having a hard time here...I'm gonna say Sheer Terror.
sd: How'd you get into the hardcore scene? Why didn't you become a pop princess?
Rachel: I started listening to bands like the Butthole Surfers and Nirvana, and Sonic Youth, and I started playing bass when I was like thirteen. I met some kids near me in town who played in a band called IDK, so I'd go see them play, and saw other bands like Prong and Scatterbrain, so I started getting into slowly. Then I went out with this guy who introduced me to a lot more bands, and met some kids from my school who were into hardcore too.
sd: Did you go through college? What'd you go for?
Rachel: My major was in urban design, city planning.
sd: Like, planning things like this? *indicating intersection*
Rachel: A little different, things like bridges and stuff. I ended up doing premed stuff. Urban design was just my major.
sd: Premed? Isn't that kinda what Tom does? Forensics or something?
Rachel: He's a forensic psychologist.
sd: Why'd he leave? Decided he could make more money on the outside? *laughter*
Rachel: No, it was more of a mutual decision; we just weren't getting along. It didn't seem like his heart was in it anymore.
sd: And you stole Rob from One King Down? He's something else, that guy. He's got a lot more energy than Tom ever did. For a little guy like that, he's all over the place.
Rachel: We've known him a long time; we used to listen to OKD a lot, and they broke up at Hellfest two years ago, so...
sd: Who's your guitar idol? If there is one?
Rachel: I don't think I have one...I like Joan Jett! And Lita Ford! *laughter* They were revolutionaries. What is this stuff? *indicates fuzzy poof-balls softly floating through the air*
sd: I think it's something to do with the Central Experimental Farm south of here. It happens every year.
Rachel: Oh. Okay.
sd: Do you take a lot of junk for being a girl in a band? The only others I can think of offhand are the girl from Figure Four and the singer from Undying.
Rachel: Not anymore. I even have an all-girl band called The Wages of Sin.
sd: What kinda car do you drive?
Rachel: I have a 1990 Toyota Corolla.
sd: Do you love your car? Or do you wanna trade it in?
Rachel: I love it as long as it works, as long as it gets me to where I need to go.
sd: And what is this beast? *indicates tour van*
Rachel: This is a Dodge Ram with a hundred fifty thousand miles on it. We've put on ninety thousand.
sd: Have you had a chance to tour outside of this continent?
Rachel: Not with this band, no. We're actually going over in two weeks, with Madball for a month.
sd: How do you like Canada to tour in?
Rachel: It's cool, as long as you don't try to cross the border in Quebec. Montreal is our favourite Canadian city to play, with Ottawa a close second. We were supposed to play Quebec City like two days ago and tried to cross back from Vermont, and they were telling us we needed all these permits and, like, a thousand dollars to get our merch over.
sd: Their rationale, I think, is that they think you're 'taking jobs' away from Canadians.
Rachel: This was just about the t-shirts though! We had working papers for everything else; that was fine, but they had to go through all our shirts to find out what countries they were made in. And then get different imports for every t-shirt! And if they found a shirt that's from someplace you didn't say it was, they could seize it! And we have a lot of shirts, so this was going to cost us like two thousand dollars. We were at the border for eight hours and missed the show that night, and the promoter there said we didn't make it across the border and weren't coming to any of the shows, so a lot of people think we're 'not here'.
sd: Is that why no one was here tonight? Because they'd heard this?
Rachel: That's what happened in Montreal last night, why there weren't as many people as we thought, because this guy was posting on all the message boards saying 'don't go!' It happened to all three bands. [Terror and Bane were accompanying MPB - ed]
sd: It's supposed to have gotten easier to cross the border lately.
Rachel: Well, we crossed by Cornwall, and theirs was easy.
sd: *guffaws* Cornwall! That place is repulsive.
Rachel: But there was the nicest woman who was like, 'You're gonna bring your equipment back with you?' And we said yeah, and she said, 'Okay!' We didn't have to get out of the van or anything. Weird.
sd: To wrap this up, what's the main thrust of Most Precious Blood? What idea are you trying to get across here?
Rachel: There's a lot of stuff...there are songs about death, illness, keeping your friends. Read the lyrics! Maybe some of the songs are about cliche things, but they don't come across that way.
sd: What's your favourite Michael Jackson song?
Rachel: *deep thought* Probably 'Thriller'.
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