The RadioActivist

When I first started getting heavily into punk around 9th grade, Operation Ivy was one of the first bands to really resonate with me. Their simple message of individualism, unity, and nonconformity was uncompromising, but never without a glimmer of hope hidden beneath. Years later I heard my first taste of Common Rider and was blown away to find out it was the same singer as Operation Ivy, Jesse Michaels. Since then, I have collected every piece of music he has done, from Operation Ivy bootlegs to the four-song Big Rig EP, to Common Rider and beyond. When I heard Jesse Michaels and his new band Classics of Love was coming to Minneapolis, I jumped at the chance to interview him and could not be happier with meeting him and finding out more about his life and projects. In a 2003 interview, Michaels said of the late Joe Strummer, “I was lucky enough to meet him and he was everything one would hope for in somebody they looked up to.” Now I can say the same of Jesse Michaels. You can click ...

Classics of love make a dark day light If you don’t believe the words then just look into their eyes" - Common Rider, 1999 Like a crystal-clear prophecy, self-fulfilled by a resolute thrust of momentum and passion, Jesse Michaels has returned to making music. After five years without a band, Classics of Love has found the former Operation Ivy, Common Rider and Big Rig frontman joining the entire cast of Hard Girls to rip forth a new set of urgently delivered punk, nascent and sprightly, but with 20 years of substantive seasoning underpinning its foundation. As each project Michaels has unveiled throughout the years has sounded considerably different than what preceded it, it should come as no surprise that Classics of Love is no “part two” of any earlier bands. Sure, there are elements of past work in the sound of the present -- the burning exigency of “Don’t Stand Down” smacks slightly of Big Rig while “Slow Car Crash” invokes memories of This is Unity Music outtakes -- but t...