Jeff Rosenstock Made His Late-Night TV Debut Look Like 'Chaos Hell'

On Monday night (September 28), punk icon Jeff Rosenstock made his late-night TV debut by roaring through "Scram!" On Late Night with Seth Meyers. Like his indefatigably sweaty live shows, it was an energetic affair. Backed by his masked-up musical group, Death Rosenstock, the kinetic front-person shouted, clapped, and perspired by means of the three-minute rager, with Black Lives Matter written on his face covering. Bassist John DeDomenici was green-screened in, giving the rendition presence a trippy and occasionally unsettling punch. There was even a lightly subliminal message to purchase his new album, No Dream. To hear Rosenstock describe it, the three-minute remote efficiency completely fit the hellish year 2020 has been.


"We reside in fucking chaos hell. I'd like to be sincere about us living in chaos hell," Rosenstock tells MTV News.


Rosenstock has spent the past five years steadily although forcefully emerging from the punk underground to be the voice for an anxious, exhausted crowd decided to not let them win. His 2016 and 2018 albums — Worry. and POST-, respectively — became life-affirming salves for expressing fury and weariness in the Trump era, irresistibly hooky and blistered with rage; mere days right after he surprise-released No Dream in May, nation (and and then the world) blown up into mass demonstrations against police brutality, vigilante violence, and racial injustice.


"Scram!" Soundtracks this year, even as it dates back to the POST- era, written about "leftist anarchist types basically fucking up Lindsey Graham's lunch." Any time Lindsey Graham was out to eat, people would go and be like, 'Fuck you, Lindsey Graham.' Then I was like, that's awesome! Because these folks are ruining thousands and thousands of lives with their bigotry, with their racism, with their tricks into keeping the revenue gap as wide as possible [and] taking advantage of the working class," Rosenstock says. "Then the other side is essentially just like, 'If you can't have a polite conversation with us, then we are not going to listen to you.' It's just like, what the fuck? Fuck you, man."


This year, Rosenstock raised thousands of dollars through Instagram-livestream performances benefitting The Bail Project, the First Nations Development Institute, and various other progressive activist companies across the United States. With the live-music industry shut off, Death Rosenstock's joyously deranged ceremonies had to be scaled down to cozier solo livestreams. Jeff yelled his voice hoarse and pounded acoustic guitars. The stave diving and communal moshing were replaced by jokes and emojis in a scrolling chat. "In all of these, the thing that resonated with me was just people goofing off in the chat and people who were happy to be able to see their companions, or people who were happy converse with their online companions in a way that doesn't feel permanent, like a comment on a Facebook post or a Instagram post or a Tweet or something that somebody could get back at you for," he says.


As live music keeps it up and continues to be experienced through screens, livestreams, and remote performances on Seth Meyers, Rosenstock talks to MTV News about that experience, releasing a set of more mellow material as 2020 Dump, and this chaos-hell year's potential extraterrestrial silver lining.





MTV News: This Late Night efficiency is going to be a way for people that don't know you to get to know you. What does it mean to get that distinction right now at this point in your career?


Jeff Rosenstock: I don't really know what any of it means, you know what I mean? It's just exhilarating. It's cool. I know that we're on it because Seth is a fan, which is a cool thing. It makes me feel like we got to this spot on our own, not because — this is how I picture it all works: Somebody gives Mr. NBC $50,000 and is like, "Hey, put my musical group, The Motorcycles, on there," or something like that. I don't really know how it works. It was a pleasant surprise that it wasn't because of anything like that, yet it's because they were just like, "Oh, no. We like your musical group. We like your music." That's a cool thing.


MTV News: It gives you a chance to introduce yourself in a certain way. How much are you thinking about that while you pick to wear a mask, first of all, and know that it's going to be a Black Lives Matter mask, and all those considerations?


Rosenstock: To me, that seemed like the bare minimum you can do, to show awareness of ... How required it is to hold police responsible for continuously murdering Black people. I feel like that's the very least I might do, if I'm there, is wear a mask that I wrote "Black Lives Matter" on. I was attempting to be really thoughtful of making it have energy, in a certain way. Just to feel alive and straightforward to the moment that we're in. I feel like I've seen people do things that either felt stiff or felt really solemn and reverent to the times that we are living in. I just was hoping that ours felt a little more chaotic and energetic.


Our bass player had to be green-screened in for it. He was like, "Well, do I have to wear a mask? Because I'm not going to be around anybody." Our keyboard player was like, "You think we fucking wore masks because we wish to wear masks? We have to wear masks. You need to wear a mask. Screw you!" I think that I just wanted to be trustworthy to what we're living in now. We all got tested beforehand. We all treated it in a really, really safe way, as safe as we possibly could. Then I visualize performances where people seem to defiantly not be doing that. I'm just like, Jesus fucking Christ, you people.


MTV News: 2020 has really given people so much time, and you've recorded more music. You've done a ton of livestreams and raised cash. Has staying busy made 2020 feel a little bit more bearable for you?


Rosenstock: I feel happy every time that I get to play a livestream and just get to feel like I'm communicating with people who I would typically visualize during the year. I feel very, very, very, very, very fortunate to be in a position where I can assist to raise cash for good causes like that. Nevertheless I don't know — I think I feel like a lot of people feel, where I wish I was getting more done. I wish I was taking all those online courses or whichever and becoming a higher end mix engineer. Or I wish I was learning about how to build things, since I finally am not living in an apartment. In theory, I may just get a saw and build shit. Nevertheless it feels really complicated to get it done because there's just five layers of, I don't know, neon red-level threat intrerruptions happening all of the time. That makes it sort of hard to do it, you know? It makes me happy also as soon as Craig of the Creek episodes air that I had worked on while in all of this. I've habitually felt lucky have the ability to channel negative energy into something that feels like, at the very least, it's creative.


MTV News: It's been about six months of you and other artists doing those livestreams in different capacities as an alternative opposed to playing normal shows. What's that experience been like?


Rosenstock: I think just because of my personality, five minutes before a livestream, I'm like, oh shit, what songs am I planning to play? Oh shit, I didn't practice any of these songs. Oh shit, I didn't heat up. Shit, I didn't realize it was already 6:00. Shit, shit, shit. I haven't altered to being able to do them better. I think of it as a good thing. It still feels like a similar nervous energy to the opening time I did it, where it was just, oh, how's this going to go? I think that's something that we embrace a lot in our musical group, as soon as we're playing a show: that we don't go into it expecting that it's going to go well.


MTV News: It's cool to hear the more mellow material you released as 2020 Dump songs as a counterpoint to No Dream. Were you nervous about sharing that stuff at all, knowing that they're more like demos?


Rosenstock: I attempted to not treat them demos As soon as I knew I was going to put them out because I don't know what's going to happen with these songs. I don't know if, at the end of the day, this is going to feel like, well, this was the most real representation of the song, although it was something that I recorded at house. I was just thinking a little bit more about Guided By Voices or old Mountain Goats tapes or Dear Nora, just stuff that. There was a mountain of material. It wasn't all necessarily beautifully recorded in a studio, all proposed out. The way the recordings are, that's them as they're being written.


Nervous to put them out? I guess so. However I'm nervous to put everything out. Two of the songs that are on there were songs I was thinking about for No Dream, although never really figured out. I knew No Dream was going to be a quick record. I couldn't find the heart in them nevertheless. I couldn't find where they wanted to go. It didn't make sense in context of that. Right now it's making sense. Nevertheless then it's also — I don't know if it feels also gloomy, or something. I don't know. I'm thinking way also much about all of it and I'm attempting to not overthink it as much, which is, I think, the point of attempting to put them out in this way.


MTV News: What's something you're feeling optimistic about right now?


Rosenstock: I wish I had a greater, quicker answer. Yet I think it's pretty exhilarating that while in 2020, because all of the shit that's been going on, they've just been quietly dropping all this stuff that I knew already: verifying that UFOs are real and that there's alien life and shit.


I think that a lot more folks are understanding that we've had the wool pulled over our eyes by the ruling class. I don't know if that is just the bubble that I exist in. I think that the other edge of that sword is that there's also a lot more hateful people who are just like, "Yeah, man. I don't give a fuck about anybody." Although I'm hoping that the things that we're learning, if we make it through, we're actually going have the ability to take stock of everything and try and treat people better. I think that the enormous show of support for protecting Black and brown lives from police officers, all over the nation, all over the world; who are literally being shot at with rubber bullets, literally being gassed, being kettled in, being beaten... I think that's a very good thing, to be able to see people stand up against all that force, at a time where it feels like everything is just devoid any order kind of hope.


Nevertheless, what if it's bad alien stuff? That could be the only suitable way for this year to end — that we noticed out all this alien shit and surprise, surprise: They hate us, because we've wasted our planet. Then they kill us, and then that's that.