OSHAWA PUNK-ROCKERS PLZ RESPOND RELEASE SCORCHING NEW SINGLE “BUDGETS & BOOTSTRAPS”
Punk-rock four-piece Plz Respond release their new single “Budgets & Bootstraps” – a loud, fast, and furious gut-punch of a track aimed squarely at the billionaire class and the politicians who carry their water. Written by frontman and drummer Galen Crampsey, produced by Logan Treaty, and mastered by Johnny Ross, the song arrives as one of the most direct and unambiguous political rock tracks to come out of the Ontario punk scene in recent memory. It is, in the best tradition of the genre, exactly what it sounds like: a band that has had enough.
“Budgets & Bootstraps” opens with a snarl and doesn’t let up. The target is the tired, condescending advice handed down to working people whenever they dare point out that rent is too high, groceries cost too much, and a 60-hour work week doesn’t pay the bills anymore: just learn to budget. Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps. The chorus lands like a fist: “Budgets and bootstraps, budgets and bootstraps / I am so sick of your budgets and bootstraps.” By the bridge – “Billionaires are not your friends / billionaires are not your friends” – the song has become something closer to a chant, the kind of thing you scream along to at the back of a sweaty room and mean every word.
The band are characteristically direct about where the song comes from.
“There are people with yachts that have yachts to house the people who work on the yachts,” they write. “Here in Canada, we are seeing corporations make record profits, collect subsidies and handouts from our governments, and then shut down and jump ship. Those of us who work 40, 50, 60 hours a week have our taxes taken to bail corporations out and our social securities get cut.”
From housing being bought up by corporations to unions being shut down by government back-to-work legislation, the grievances in “Budgets & Bootstraps” are specific, real, and shared by a lot of people who aren’t going to hear them named this plainly anywhere else on the radio. “You can’t budget your way out of fixed bread prices,” they say. And this song doesn’t pretend otherwise.
Plz Respond – Galen Crampsey (drums, piano/keys, lead vocals), Bryan Crouch (rhythm guitar, backing vocals), Brandon Smith (lead guitar, backing vocals), and David Bunn (bass, backing vocals) – emerged from Oshawa’s growing rock scene with loud guitars, politically driven lyrics, and a live show that earns its reputation the hard way. Drawing on the raw energy of The Orwells, the anthemic working-class urgency of Sam Fender, and the grit of ’90s grunge, they play like a band with something to prove and something to say. They have shared stages at The Biltmore and the Bovine Sex Club, opening for Ill Scarlett, Lear Haven, and Excuses Excuses, and have put their music where their politics are – raising funds for the Durham Rape Crisis Centre and the AIDS Committee of Durham through benefit shows.
“Budgets & Bootstraps” is Plz Respond’s most focused and urgent statement yet – the fourth in a run of singles building toward something bigger, with several more on the way. For a band that believes rock music exists to say things the working class can relate to, this is the song that makes the case loudest.
Hi, Galen! Good to meet you! Care to introduce yourself to the readers for those not familiar with your music?
Hey gang! Thanks for reading! I’m Galen Crampsey. I sing, play drums, and write songs with the band Plz Respond along side my band mates David Bunn, Bryan Crouch, and Brandon Smith. I am a Union Electrician, a labour activist, I sit on the labour council in Durham. I like to sing songs that resonate with those fighting the struggle of the working class, and with those who fight for themselves, for their families, friends, for those near and dear, and for love in general.
“Budgets & Bootstraps” is a pretty direct title. Was there a specific moment or conversation that sparked the idea for the song?
It was a sort of snow balling feeling/opinion I had. Which was that as working class people, we are subjected to all sorts of platitudes and lies and manipulative tactics from the Elon Musk’s and the Galen Weston’s of the world. They say things like work harder and longer and you’ll be able to obtain some sense of stability and security when it comes to your basic needs. You know, like Housing and food and healthcare to start with. They’ve told us you have to be innovative, while they have people they pay to innovate for them. They tell us to be competitive, when they receive so much support from governments on every level to keep their monopolies in check and their fortunes secure. They tell us to learn financial literacy and to budget while most don’t get paid enough to survive the ever rising costs of food and housing, never mind working through and out maneuvering the bread scams and parasitic REITs or corporate landlords. It all culminated in an exhausted debate I was having with my friend Brad about the merits of financial literacy. He was saying its better to have financial literacy than not, and I said that’s like discussing the brand of life jacket you are wearing when you’re in the mechanical room of a sinking ship. It doesn’t matter how financially literate you are when the system is built to keep you without finances.
Punk has always been political, but this track feels especially pointed Did you set out to write a protest song, or did the frustration just naturally come out that way?
Most of my songs are about politics or love. Those things mean a lot to me. Because of that I think about those things a lot. They also intertwine. Those who have the power to change the material conditions around us make choices that affect people I love. And because our mechanisms of democracy do not reach executive board rooms and the offices of the CEOs who run multi-national corporations, their use of power often hurts people in my community. They often hurt the working class in general. And we have no way to influence them outside of politicians who often have said powerful peoples interests in mind first and foremost. So that frustrates me, to an extent I would say is unhealthy. So to answer your question the frustrations naturally come out that way because I choose to channel them that way.
A lot of artists try to stay away from politics. Why do you think punk is still one of the few genres where people expect artists to say exactly what they think?
That’s a good question. I guess I’ve never thought that there was any genre where people weren’t expected to do that. I get the nature of the business. That is to say I know if you want to be successful in any kind of media or art, you don’t wanna ruffle too many feathers, especially if you want longevity. But at this point, anyone can say anything in a song or whatever and find a place to upload it. I just hope people never forget that real punk punches up, always.
Your band has also done benefit shows for organizations like the Durham Rape Crisis Centre and the AIDS Committee of Durham. How important is it for your music to connect to real action in the community?
It’s very important. I once read a book called Mutual Aid by Petr Kropotkin. To summarize the point of the book I’ll just use this quote. “Competition/ survival of the fittest is the laws of the Jungle. Cooperation and collective action are the laws of civilization.” We are conditioned to think its a moral failure to depend on help from our community. But that’s how we as a species have progressed through history. We have built and developed things together, we’ve just never collectively and evenly benefitted from that work. The surplus value is always funneled to the top, which leaves people in desperate conditions, in poverty. And because we are taught to believe that’s a moral failing, social security has been ravaged. So communities coming together in the mean time to help with immediate issues is a good way to help I think.