MOA
Monsters Of Art – Grundlagt i 1991
Magic Moments proudly presents...
Denmark's most wanted: Monsters Of Art
Three letters. MOA. Denmark’s best known and most notorious graffiti crew. An integral part of Copenhagen’s looks through the nineties. Namedropping favourites of Lennort Faust, journalists and other people working on demonizing graffiti. But only a few people really know anything about MOA. You have probably heard the rumours and lies.
Here is, exclusive for Magic Moments, the first in-depth interview with the living legends that call themselves Monsters of Art.
Over the years the members have come and gone. Mins, Fusk, Game, Fire, Mach, Che, Cen, Jake, Les, Moes, Trick, Sabe, Kegr, Sme, Hel, Tower, Keb, Viq,,and Raw have all put up the magic combination of letters. The line up for MOA for the summer 2000 is Mins, Les, Game, Mach, Kegr, Keb and Trick.
For this interview Mins, Les and Trick shows up. Dinner is served and the meal goes down quick. The graffiti talk has already begun. The beer and the joints quickly gets consumed. Where do we start? Of course at..
The beginning
Mins: Myself, Fusk, Game and Fire R.I.P, formed the MOA crew in March 1991.
It all began one drunken night, we were tagging with our fingers on some windows MOA just looked good and that was it. First it was called Mennesker Og Alkohol (Humans and Alcohol) but that didn’t really sound cool, so we changed it to Monsters Of Art and that’s it. Before we formed MOA we had always been told to fuck off back to west Copenhagen where we were from. We had one goal with the crew and that was to try and batHe CS crew (Can’t Stop) who were all-out kings at the time. Back then. they were on top. We just wanted to see how far we could take it and today I must say that we did it.
Les: I just started painting because there were some kids at my school doing it. I knew Mach from way back in 1986; we were at the same school for a brief period. He got kicked out for smoking joints on us. But that’s what he says. Actually it was us that were smoking joints on him, haha! We kept hanging out, meeting a lot of different half-writers and then all of a sudden I knew the rest of the crew through Mach. I think I got to know the rest around 1991 and then I joined the crew at Mins’ birthday party in 1993,
I was in the SRG crew before that. I have been in so many crews; I can’t even remember them all. To this day I’m still responsible for the SRG’s first and only wholecar, they can’t deny that. I put a lot of energy into SRG and got them going, but still it was a little to slow for me. SRG was more a chill crew, MOA was just right for me; it’s definitely a fun crew.
Mins: Rezen influenced me to the fullest. I wasn’t even into graffiti, but I got to know him through the Toys crew and at that time I was doing burglaries and stupid shit. I talked to him, he was doing a lot of sketches, and I just started showing an interest. One day Rens and Rezen did a piece at Taastrup station with a dedication to me, a Basekids piece. I wanted to learn this graffiti stuff so I started hanging out with Rezen and we went piecing.
The first 100 pieces I did was just filling in for him and saw how it all worked. All that started around 1988. One day we were out painting and Rezen was tired of doing all the stuff himself. So even though it was his letters he gave me the outline colour and I just had to do the outline. It was stressed, but if you look at the photo today you can’t even see it. Rezen basically meant everything for my graffiti career, without him I wouldn’t be painting today. I just think he is a supercool writer, that’s not a secret.
Trick: I started because there was a kid writing Sean in my building who was painting with Smurf, Fuse and Comic Crew, that was around 1985. I was hanging out with Joker and Twin too. We were always going around Copenhagen to see Smurf’s stuff. But at that time I was around 10 years old. I wasn’t painting; I just had my marker with me. Then I got into skateboarding for a few years until 1988. I was sketching on paper the whole time, but around then I got into graffiti again. I was in school with Cever and together we formed DBP (Doped Brothers Posse). We ran that crew for some years and then I met Tabu R.I.P. and all the other guys.
Me and Tabu came up with AOD around 1992. We where all hanging out in an apartment in Valby: me, Mesh, Mins, Les, Game, Tabu and a bunch of others, like 20 guys. Just smoking, watching video, going out to bomb, hitting stations, piecing, you know. And Tabu was always down; he was one of the boys. In 1995 l joined the MOA crew and that’s it, really
Fire
Mins: Fire, he was one of the four original members, one of the founders. Him and me grew up together and did all kinds of stupid shit that, looking back now, we probably shouldn’t have done. He got into the wrong hands and started hanging out with immigrant gangs. That wasn’t really my style, so our lives went in different directions.
Then he was lucky, he got into a school on the island of Fyn. But when he went there he got hooked up with some gangs in that area, Black Panthers, a Pakistani gang that was into fighting and stuff. That ruined everything for him; he started freebasing and developed a heroin addiction. That was really tragic; he had a talent for painting, our ways just split because he was more into that gang thing. He changed in a way; said to some of my friends that he wished that I would get hit by a train when I was out painting. That way I would end up in a wheelchair and he would know where he got me.
That shit made me kick his ass. But after that we still said hello. I met him in Istedgade, the redlight dis-trict, where he was all fucked up. I said, “Are you all right?” and he was like, “No I’m a fucking junkie”. I told him to get his life together and he said that we were doing some fresh piece and that he was still checking out graffiti. He was strong though, got totally out of these addictions, got a job on a ship and got an education there.
After that he got his first job after the education. On this, his first trip, he got into some trouble with another guy over a lady in the bar on the ship. They went onto the deck and fought. Fire kicked his ass and got sent to his cabin by a guard to cool down and sleep away his drunkenness. Fire went to bed, but in the meantime the guy he was fighting with finds his friend and tells him that he is scared of Fire. So, cold and cynical, they go down to Fire’s cabin, kicks the door open and tries to break Fire’s neck. He fights back so instead they choke him with a pillow until he is unconscious.
Then they throw him overboard, in open sea in the middle of the night. After that they empty his cabin and throw everything over-board. Fire is not reported missing until Sunday afternoon. They threw him overboard Friday night. That way we lost a guy who started the crew and that’s fucked up, even though he did all that other stuff. I didn’t talk to him that much the last couple of years, it’s still fucked up, and he was only 24 years old.
The killers got 6 and 7 years in jail. That makes you think: “Is it really worth getting into fights over little things like that?”. A month before he went on that ship, we went bombing together. So maybe he was making a comeback, we’ll never know. He was important, because without him we wouldn’t be here.
Competition
Mins: If people don’t talk shit about us or go over our pieces we don’t have any problems with anyone. Back in the days it was different. We had some competition. Who was the most up? Back then the AlS crew, Cave and them guys, got up just as much as we did. The difference between them and us were that we always pushed the crew, they just did their individual names.
Today, if you look back, they did better pieces than us. They have not reached the same fame because they didn’t write AlS all the time. We have always done MOA and pushed the crew 100%, that’s why we have this fame. If they had put everything into the crew they would have been just as famous as MOA, maybe even more. Back then we had them as competition.
Now there is nothing left to prove or to look at, we will always be here. I regret some of the stuff I did in the past. The same rumours about violence and bullshit keeps going around and you hear them again and again. All you can do is sit back and laugh ’cause you know they are straight up lies. I just don’t understand why do people keep talking all this bullshit.
Les: Back in the days we really cared what people were saying about us. We got pissed off when we heard all kinds of bullshit. But when you get older you learn that you can’t be bothered with all this shit people keep talking, you’re going to get stressed and drop dead. Just like Mins said, the competition is gone, its not like it used to be.
Mins: The situation today is totally different. Back then Cave would go out and spend a lot of time on one piece and it would come out nice. We would just go in and do four pieces instead; they were ugly while his was burning. There is nothing to compete with crew-wise today. A lot of wholecars gets done, but how nice are they? I’m not even into stuff like that. I don’t think chrome and black wholecars are cool, I don’t give a fuck. It’s too easy; it takes 5 people 10 minutes to do a chrome and black wholecar, no problemo.
The hard thing is to do a nice colour panel, stand in the yard for a long time and get the panel to burn with fades in the 3D and everything. We have gotten that one step further; you have to be happier each time for that photo in your blackbook instead of being happy for the quantities. We have been here for 10 years, we know the yards, and for us it’s the same as doing a legal wall, because we know the shit that well. That is also why we do so many trains. I want to do walls too, but it is just as easy for me to do trains.
Les: No matter how many guards they put in the yards, we will always be able to paint the trains. We have all tried to paint after the guards have been there, so we know how much time we got. We can do our pieces together in no time. That’s the advantage of being a crew; everybody got their own role to fill out. Mins: If I go piecing with Trick, I still think Trick is one step ahead of me. You always need somebody to look at and learn from, never think that you are the king. If Trick does the outline I think the piece will be better and I will get a better photo. I don’t care, I can do the fill in and the fades, I have been just as much part of piece as he has. The good thing is to do it together, to be a crew, to walk away and know you burned.
All these years we have kept it up with individual competition. If one of the other guys have been out you have to get yourself together and go out too, not let him get ahead. I never imagined that I could spend 2 and a half hours in a yard, but I succeeded doing that this year. That is fucking unbelievable, to stand there that long and just burn. We did three panels, Trick, Les and me. And a lot of throwups…
The NEW Generation
Trick: I feel that it is up to them, ’cause you know yourself and your own history. Their history is so short. But if they intend to leave a mark, then you can see their names in three years and you can deal with them. If you try to keep track of what everybody is writing then you’re going to go insane.
You can’t do that. I can feel if people are into it or not. A couple of years ago I was at the party in Falledparken and I saw some kids bombing. I went over there and borrowed the can for a tag. I put up TRICK MOA and then they said ” You’re not Trick, Trick doesn’t wear glasses, get out of here!” Haha! I was like “What?” “Yeah, you just copied that tag…’
” People like that I don’t even want to talk to. At the Roskilde Festival this year I met this other young kid with the right attitude and he was cool, I could feel he was into it and then I talk to him and use my time on him.
Mins: You know the toys they don’t think. In some yards you just know where they are scooping the places out. There are testouts all over the places, there is shit and toilet paper, and they don’t use their brain. They are sitting there, getting paranoid and shitting in their pants.
Les: They act like fucking rats. They are so stupid, everybody can see that they paint that area. It’s so stupid. Fuck them; tagging everywhere, the world knows that they use the area.
Mins: And it’s not a little testout, it’s a half can of chrome emptied over a bush. If you go there you have to watch your step ’cause there is literately shit everywhere.
Les: When we were kids, it wasn’t normal to be into hip hop. Back then it was more heavy metal or something. Today hip hop and therefore graffiti is the trend among the kids.
Mins: It’s pointless to talk about something you don’t know anything about. It could be a myth or a lie, don’t spend your time on it. That way you will never learn anything. People shouldn’t talk about MOA because they don’t know anything about us. They should spend time on themselves and their crew. If nobody bothers us, then we don’t bother anyone.
The worst case scenario is that it all ends up in this gang thing where everybody are running around with weapons. That’s one thing I really want to distance myself and my crew from. I’m not down with that in any way.
Other Writers
Mins: It is always nice to paint with Nema, he paints the same way as us.
The VIM guys are cool too. They always listen to what you say, no questions asked.
A guy like Sento was different. We went to a yard and told him he could paint the for 15 minutes, Sabe said ten minutes. He just said “Fuck that I’m going to take half an hour”.
When we started painting he was so slow that we had to do his fill in and his background In the end we got spotted by the cops and the cops where coming after us. Mach waited for Sento because Mach is a nice guy, but when the cops were 10 meters from him he had to run too. Sento just disappeared in the yard and escaped himself. Nobody got caught but it was fucked up because it could have been avoided. He was just on his American thing: “Here I am, I’m going to paint”
On another mission with Blue, Sabe, me, Sento started doing the outline first and when I had done my first outline and filled it all in Sento was only just finished with his first out-line. I was like what’s going on? Me and Sabe were painting so we could catch the last train home and after we waited 45 minutes for him we had to go. Mach waited for him for another hour and a half and the piece wasn’t even panel-size, it was like a small canvas.
But I guess that’s what the Americans are doing these days. As Chintz wrote next to a top to bot-tom: “Fuck New York!” | also say “Fuck New York” because there is no doubt that Europe is so much more hardcore when it comes to trains and graffiti. New York is sleeping! If they wanted to and were really hardcore they just painted the trains. But they are living on the old days and much respect for that because without them we wouldn’t be here. Still you have to keep it up to keep the respect. There are many trainsystems in Europe that are harder to hit than New York and they still get painted more than the New York subway.
Look at Chintz, he goes over there, does a oneman wholecar and gets photos of it in traf-fic! He knows more about their system than they do. They always act hard and when they come to Europe they always want to do trains. They aren’t doing shit at home. I have the biggest respect for them because they brought this whole thing to life but now it’s all a fame thing. I don’t know if it’s wrong to say that in an interview but that’s how I feel. I want to go there and paint the subway, that’s where it all began and that’s what I have respect for, not for what it is today. I mean, who’s left in New York? Ces and Seen and those guys do some nice shit when they take their time. Seen is the godfather of graffiti.
Dream
Mins: The dream is of course New York; we have to go sometime, when the
money is there. Les: For us the whole New York thing has never been that important. There has always been people inside the culture that has been more fanatic about that. We always just wanted to paint, but of course we want to do New York. Out is good but home is best.
You first have to do your homebase and then you can go out and see what happens in other places. The wholetrain has always been a bigger dream for me than New York. Les: I want to paint with my son. I’m saying that more for fun though. If he doesn’t want to that’s cool. It’s just to make the point that I love graffiti so much that nothing is going to come in between. I’m proud to have painted so much graffiti for so many years – graffiti is such a big part of who I am and ‘m not embarrassed about that. ‘m only going to stop if one day I don’t feel like doing it anymore.
My family knows about it. I’s not something that we talk about. I’m an adult and I do what I want to do. My wife thinks it’s great that I have a hobby. Trick: It’s good to have a hobby like this, otherwise you would just be another 9-5 person that goes home and beats the wife every night. Mins: I still want to get better. Les: Just do a couple of thousand more pieces.
Memories
Trick: The wildest experience was when we did those eight wholecars, the first time, remember that Les? It was insane. I remember when we had done the first seven cars, I just thought, “This is impossible, it can’t be true!” I looked down and there was just this chrome train. When we walked away we had chrome everywhere, all over the face, we just walked away like four robots, totally braindead and high on sprayfumes.
Les: Remember we went back there because there was some background missing under one of the doors. We had a leftover can in the car and we went and got it. Went into the yard again and walked all the way down the train. We filled in the last spot and I just remember when we ran out, we were jumping, singing and screaming like madmen, haha!!! Trick: That wholetrain took an hour and a half… Les: Yeah, but this new one had much more outline, so it took around two hours. Trick: The first one we did was smart, the cans were split up, first we did four and then we cleaned the place. Checked it out again and then the next four. Mins: On this new one we did that mistake, we just brought everything in and started out. All the stuff was in one end and then we had to get more all the time. Every time we had to get a new can we had to go all the way down… I stood halfway and took what people brought me, haha! I couldn’t be fucked to go down there all the time. Give me that chrome; it was just a long way to the new cans. It’s a long ass painting, 113 meters.
Les: That’s why I don’t like people calling four cars a wholetrain. There is such a big difference between doing four cars and doing eight cars, a big difference! It’s a whole other mission, there will always be some sketchy cars, no matter what yard you hit, one end of the train will be sketchy. Mins: Doing four wholecars here and four wholecars there is easy. The hard thing is doing eight wholecars and get a nice photo. That is fucking hard. Les: Maybe we should have that as the next goal, to do a wholetrain in every yard. Trick: I remember that I had to take my glasses off and wipe them three times because they were totally covered with chrome. “What the hell are you doing?” “‘m wiping my glasses!” Les: For the first one we had 56 cans of Hot Paint, payed for and everything.
Mins: It’s a big thing when you are doing it. When you reach the first four you just stand there, look and go “Damn! Four cars, that’s beautiful boys, but we have four more to go”. Mins: I had the most insane mission with Trick. Remember that? Trick: Oh yeah, we were going to paint on this electricity-box and there was barbwire on the fence and big spikes on the gate. I had already crawled over the gate and Mins was crawling over after me. Suddenly he slipped and landed on one of those big spikes with his stomach.
I thought to myself “shit, he is going to die, what do I do?” But we wanted to paint so we went to a station instead to do this wall. Suddenly a workercar shows up and Mins is standing there bleeding. We jumped into some bushes to hide and then Mins twisted his ankle. So he couldn’t walk either. Mins: Yeah, I just crawled down on the road and lay in this bus stop and told Trick “You have to outline this piece so we can finish and get out of here”. It was a MinsTrick-piece, I was laying in the bus stop bleeding out through my t-shirt and people walked by and starred at me. Trick finished and we grabbed a cap home.
S-Trains
Mins: The S-trains are our subway until now. Traingraffiti was the best thing coming from the New York back in the days. When I met Rezen, the most hardcore you could do was to paint S-trains, even though he didn’t do that many. Back then you could bomb hardcore for one week and then you were up.
That was cool; everybody respected you even though you just had some small stuff here and there. Now you have to do 100 wholecars or 100 panels. In the old days you did 100 tags and then you were up. You also had a writers’ bench. Everybody knew each other within the culture. You had to, in order to be in the culture. The people that were assholes you got rid off back then.
Now you got thousands of writers, they all know who I am but I don’t know who they are…
Normal Life
Les: When we are not painting we always been big sport fans. Mins: And we fuck our ladies.
Les: We are men aren’t we? We watch football. Graffiti doesn’t take up all our time. When you get a car and know where to go the distance between the yards is not that big, maybe a half hour. You just use a night where you do a bunch of panels and then you use a couple of days during the week. You don’t have to spend all your time on it. Just spend maybe three days a week. That will do it.
And on those days it’s just a couple of hours. It’s not an extraordinary thing that ! have to take time off to do; it’s just a part of daily life and routines. Mins: We are football supporters all the way. The heart lies at AB, right Les?
Les: We used to play a little but it has been a couple of years now. We are still good in a sprint; you know the first 100 meters, haha! Soccer is like riding a bike or painting a train, you never forget it. Mins: I’ve been out a couple of times painting in an AB shirt and everything. If they take the championship they are going to get a wholecar, I don’t give a fuck. Or a giant Brian Steen, he is such a psycho on the field. Can’t play for shit, only fucking up the opponents. Les: The type that says in an interview: “Before soccer I was a bit of a bully, if I hadn’t started playing, I would have been a violent criminal!” Mins: He is the man.
Fame
Mins: I don’t really take it as being famous; I do it for the fun of it. I think it’s fun. We didn’t start painting for everybody to know us, we started to try and burn another crew that were more up than us. Les: Everybody has heard of MOA and when we first realised how all the newspapers wanted to write about that, we thought it was fun. We were into that. We got the double spreads with interviews, colour photos and everything. That was before the graffiti magazines really blew up. We were proud of that – the biggest newspapers in the country.
But when we got older we realised that we couldn’t use that fame for anything and then we stopped chasing it. Mins: You know it’s like this: one day, one piece, one photo, into the book, forget it, new piece, new photo, into the book… Then you look at the pictures and yet you can remember that exact day.
I forget it, sometimes I do 20 trains in one week, you know. Les: We have photos of almost all our stuff. It’s nine big books, you know, 640 photos each. Mins: We had a joke back in the days that one day we would have a book for every member in the MOA. Now I think it will be a reality. Then everybody can have a book and they can rotate around within the crew.
Rumors
Mins: The worst rumour ever is that Kegr was beaten into MOA. That’s a classic you hear now and then, but that is absolutely 100 percent not true. The story is that we did a nice windowdown that said Sugarhill Gang and suddenly we saw it running with a paintbomb splattered all over. So I wanted to know who threw that paintbomb, because I wanted some cans for that and end that story. It took some time but I got closer and closer to who did it, because people are rats. In the end I found out who had been out throwing those paintbombs and Kegr was the one who had hit the piece.
So Kegr had tried to bribe one of the other guys by saying that he would rack a backpack for him, if he didn’t tell on him. Instead of just coming clean with it and get it out of this world. So we knew it was him and we were looking for him but he ran every time we saw him. I don’t know how many times we ran after him but he always escaped. I just got more and more pissed about wasting time on such a little thing, but then one day we caught him at a station. Then we took him up in a park and slapped him and told him that this was the end of that story. No more, now it’s over, believe that.
Some time went by and then Dels brought him out to our house and we talked about everything and squashed everything We went out painting in the following weeks and chilled out together. And then we asked Kegr if he wanted to be in MOA. You know, think about it. So he thought about it for two weeks before he said yes, he had to think it over. But I hate hearing that story over and over about how he was beaten into MOA. He had the choice himself, I didn’t beat anyone into this crew, he is a supercool person.
Another rumour I heard was that the ritual for joining the crew, the initiation, was that we beat up the new guy. That would be the most ridiculous thing, then there is no friendship if you beat each other: Les: Of course we also had our little internal thing going when we have been drunk and stuff. But we have been friends for 10 years I mean you’re bound to have some problems.
Come on, we are not the most calm and quiet guys when we are drunk, but that doesn’t ruin a friendship. You are friends enough to straighten it out when you get sober again. We have never cared about problems that started in drunkenness. Everybody’s got their ass kicked when they have been drunk.
Yards
Les: I think that when it comes to yards the fence around them is a big advantage for the writers. It’s strange that the security chooses to put up a fence in a place where you want to patrol with dogs. That in itself is really stupid, the fence is the only thing that saves you from the dog. Barbwire is not going to stop you getting over. The only thing about the fence is that it takes a little more time, like a couple minutes more to get in. But when you are inside you feel safe again ’cause you know there are only certain places where the security can come from. If there wasn’t any fence it could come from anywhere.
Les: If we get chased before we finish a piece, then we always finish it sooner or later, that is a speciality. If it is filled in we will finish it, for sure, if it’s only the first it. Even if we get busted for it we will finish it if it’s running. If it’s the cops then we always break out, no question. Mins: Sometimes when I have been chased I just stayed in the area and hide. You know, just scope the whole hunt out. Or I been the guard and just stood there and watched how the cops act and what they do. As for security, none of the sensors work, either the cable is cut or the box is smashed open and destroyed. They worked the first month or so, but now they are all fucked up. But I tried it when they worked. The whole place just lights up and that’s it, nothing else happens.
The worst is when the security is waiting inside the train and you didn’t see them when you scoped the yard. Then they call the cops and they surround the place with dogs and then you’re fucked. The dogs are the worst, definitely the dogs. The whole idea of using dogs on graffitiwriters that are painting trains is sick. You’re not hurting anybody, but the dog will hurt you so you have to go to the hospital, who are you hurting? Nobody! The trains can still run, there is nothing wrong with it, it’s not like graffiti is a terrorist act. Imagine if we put real bombs in the yards instead of graffiti, then they would be fucked up. All over the world there are real hardcore train systems totally protected from terrorists and shit, but graffitiwriters still lurk out from the bushes and paints the trains. A kid with a bag of spraypaint fools the systems.
The Media
Mins: The papers always writes all this shit and lies so we go out and give them our version from time to time. They can never stop it. If I go to jail, somebody else will go out and paint; there are too many writers these days. It can never be stopped. If MOA stopped, some other crew will take over, it will always be here. Writers are younger and younger; they take a big interest in graffiti. More than what we did when we started out. The papers are always writing that MOA is a gang or some shit like that. That is not true in any way. We are just a bunch of friends, that loves to paint and that’s it. That has nothing to do with a gang. That’s the rumours we want to kill. Rumours like we are violent.
If you look at the people in MOA, they haven’t got any convictions for violence. Or they have criminal records because they did some stupid shit before they started paint-ing. You haven’t got time for anything except graffiti if you are into it. Take photos, getting cans, go out and paint, sketch and plan out. Les: That’s what the media is putting out these days, nothing but lies. That’s only because Lennart Faust (the self-proclaimed “graffitiexpert”) wants to make some money. It’s as simple as that. He is the only one that gets something out of graffiti being in the media.
Trick: But how much of what he says is true? Mins: And where does he get his information from? I can only say one thing and that is that it’s a waste of time from his side, because he doesn’t know anything about graffiti or MOA. Sometimes he is so busy that he can’t show up at all his lectures and meetings, so he just sends out other people to substitute for him that have absolutely no knowledge of graffiti what so ever. They get payed for that! 650 kroner an hour, for talking shit about graffiti. That is too easy.
Les: Lennart Faust will talk shit about anything or anyone for 650 kroner an hour. Mins: The only thing Lennart Faust has done is making more people write graffiti because it has been so much up in the media. Les: These days they go out to schools and tell little kids what graffiti is and that they shouldn’t do it because it is illegal:
Mins: That just makes graffiti more interesting for the kids. When you are a kid the things that’s forbidden are exciting; they tell you not to smoke cigarettes and kids start smoking cigarettes. If it is interesting and not that dangerous, kids will try it and that’s the way it is with today’s youth. So that’s a very bad idea. Mins: The worst-case scenario for vandalism is the maximum penalty of four years in jail. That means you do three years. Les: But we are all aware of that so there is no way that it can happen. They have to prove that it is organised. They can’t and we will never admit it. Mins: Lets say that we have reached a certain age and we get busted hardcore. We could just turn around and be a media stars, write a book in jail, make a movie, play all the TV station. It would be insane. Its just graffiti. Yeah, of course we have done a lot, but to us it’s still only graffiti. If I wanted to be Lennart Faust I could just quit writing a couple of years and then go out, talk to the media and make a lot of money. But that’s never going to happen because I paint with my heart.
Stop Graffiti
Mins: Søren Pind (the mayor of Copenhagen) just pays up a lot of money to get rid of graffiti so he will always fight it. And that is politics, you know, he’s a politician and he has to play by those rules. Lennart Faust is just a man who makes money on something he doesn’t know shit about. Taxpayer’s money! What is there to learn? If you are not one of us, a writer, you will never learn anything about us. You will never stand a chance; you can never get into a subculture like that, never. The more he pisses people off, the more people will hate him and the more pressure he will have on his own person.
That’s got to be uncomfortable for him. Les: He wants to keep graffiti in the media all the time so he can get more money. He doesn’t know anything about graffiti. He has done that shits for several years now and he still claims, in the year 2000, that MOA is one crew existing of many subcrews that battles each other. It just shows that he knows nothing, absolutely nothing.
Trick: He wants to sell his story to the media so they keep coming back for more. Les: He knows just what buttons to press to get more money. Mins: After he started all his bullshit, the only result is that there are more people painting now than ever before.
Legal vs. illegal
Trick: It would never be the same it was legal. Then I would find something else to paint, busses or whatever. It would be fun to stand in the sun with a boombox and do a panel, but then again we can almost do that now anyway. I think the strangest thing was when the TMS crew painted those legal S-trains, which were really strange.
Les: It wouldn’t be fun to do something everybody could do. Mins: How come all the ugly graffiti runs longer than the good graffiti? They always let unfinished stuff roll around for weeks and bombing too. This year I started to empty all cans before I leave the yard, just do throwups. That way you don’t have any cans on you afterwards and then they have more to clean. Why walk out of a yard with a bag full of leftovers? What are you going to do with leftovers? Bomb that shit up, now when you are there anyway. When you take off your gloves and dump your cans, they can’t do shit to bust you. Then they have to prove you were in there.
Les: It’s just the cans that’s holding us back, if we had unlimited cans… shit, man. Then it would explode. We spend a lot of money on cans, that’s the only thing holding us back Mins: If we had unlimited cans then DSB would have a problem, a serious problem. We just use Montana, the new Molotows and then a few Quicks.
The Quicks today are not the same, they have gotten more watery. Back in the days you only had a few Quicks to work with, now it is a whole different situation. Today you definitely have better tools to work with. In the old days you had to cut the caps in the bottom with a scalpel and then it was only fat on one side. It was hell. You didn’t know you could put white in the orange to make it cover better, to give it more pigment. You just stood there with a shitty Quick orange with a standard cap and it didn’t cover at all.
Records
Trick: We were the first to do a real wholetrain. Eight cars, top to bottom, end to end Les: We were probably also some of the first to do over 100 wholecars each, several of us has done that. And over 1000 trainpieces individually.
Mins: So now it’s not the numbers that count anymore, now it’s just the love of it. There is no goal left, except paint with good people and learn from them. Les: We have cooled down a lot; we are more relaxed about everything these days. It’s also because we reached a point where we are so experienced that it takes much less effort to paint trains. I doesn’t take that much time or work to do the same thing we had to work full time on back in the days. I’m doing more today but l’m spending less time.
Mins: It’s also easier now that we have cars; you don’t have to wait up all night, waiting for the trains, none of that shit. Les: Now it’s just out three or four guys, do three or four panels, quick shit, one night. Les: I have done wholecars in every yard in Copenhagen.
Mins: I have even done it on the old Frederiksberg Station, that’s gone and forgotten.
Strange things: Les: We went out to do a wholecar and we stood at the yard scouting it out. All of a sudden we see this guy walking alone down the road. He stops under the lamppost in the middle of the night and just starts doing these karate moves. For like two minutes. We are just standing there 7 guys in the bush laughing our asses off. This guy is fighting himself with sound effects and everything. Mins: All the rangers and workers are doing is slacking off and collecting empty bottles. Sit in their houses and drink coffee. Some of them don’t care about graffiti, it’s not their job, and some of them are a little more aware.
Trick: Les and me have always had this thing when we are out to paint, we always sing. I don’t know, like the last song you heard in the car or something, maybe Gasolin. Mins: One of the funniest things I remember was a time when Trick and me were out painting. That was also about a song. Trick was sitting in the yard all concentrated. I went into the other train, turned on the microphone and started singing the Danish Eurovision Song Contest song “Fly on the wings of Love…” And Trick got the biggest scare, haha! Next to the panel we wrote “A little song!”
Unity
Mins: You have to look at people and see if they fit in the group before you let them join. Fuck how many pieces they do. Friendship comes first, that’s it. The reason that we have had so many members is that we want to be number one and not slow down. To do that you need new blood from time to time to give the older members room to breathe.
That’s the main thing is friendship, but painting is also important. It would be easy to have Run join the crew because he is painting a lot and he would probably say yes and it would be an advantage for the crew. But then again he is going around acting like a bad guy toward certain people. We spend the first five years of the crew doing that and even though it payed of in some ways – like people don’t go over us and shit like that. In the end it’s fucked up because you know that people have respect for you, not for the your graffiti but because you might fuck them up.
Trick: Well, I always left all the fighting stuff to you guys. Mins: That’s right and that’s cool. But you can also say that in a way you are not paying the price for it either. Trick: All this is a brilliant example of how different we are as individuals. Even though we are not the same, we still manage to stay together and write. That’s the whole point about this crew. You pick some people you can hang out with and get some feedback from.
Les: To be totally honest, I was really surprised when I first learned about the mentality of the crew. It is without a doubt the strongest friendship I have ever met in my entire life. It was the proudest day of my whole life the day I joined MOA. I thought to myself: “now I’m going to prove to everybody that I deserve to be a part of this crew”. It is more than the graffiti and more than the fame; it’s to be a part of something so strong. Of course we have our little internal fights, but when if it all comes down to it, we will be there for each other and stick together. There is just too much love in this crew.
Trick: And we also have a life apart from the crew. I’s not all the time you can be down for the crew, but everybody knows that, that doesn’t ruin anything. Les: The people who joined all did a lot of trains without us, before they joined. it wasn’t somebody we painted with and that was what we needed, people who do their own shit without us.
But when you start hanging out it ends up with you going together instead of the way it was before they joined and then you don’t get the name up more. But then again you don’t get nothing if you don’t risk anything. Mins: This doesn’t go for every new member. Kegr for example, he is going out on his own all the time, totally undercover, maybe even too much. He is even undercover towards us and nobody else in the crew is like that; in the crew we don’t have any secrets between each other. He doesn’t tell us about his missions. When he is travelling he says he is MOA ’cause then he gets a place to stay. Then its cool and he is doing a lot of MOA stuff. Plus he is doing MOA stuff on the S-trains.
All the other stuff he is doing is just his own thing. In a way that is wack towards the other members. We almost never talk to Kegr anymore, he is totally secret. He is the one we have the least contact with. Of course he is a great advantage for the crew and I would never dream about throwing him out. I would say he is the one that sticks out from the crew the most. Les: When it comes to graffiti he fits in perfectly, but when it comes to socializing and friendship he is the opposite. It like there is a lack of honesty from his side. Mins: He goes to France, comes home and does French style.
That’s not a diss to him. Some of us other guys have been here for many years, he doesn’t even know the rules of the game. I’s hard to even say stuff about him because he is so undercover. He is a supercool person, he is just different. Like in the feature in Magic Moments #2, “Kegr – the one man army”. I don’t think he is. He hasn’t done that much. I have all his photos; I know exactly what he has done. Lets say he does 300 MOA pieces; then he does 300 Kegr pieces on the side and he doesn’t show them to anybody. That is just his style; there is nothing that can change that.
But, big props to him for what he has done, we couldn’t do without him. He is 100% wild, all this is not a diss – its just to show how he is different from the rest of us. Les: I think that deep down inside, he doesn’t belong in the number one crew, he is more the number one guy. He is more a loner, than a crewperson. Mins: Kegr has been travelling a lot. He is really into that thing; he is a great advantage for the crew. He has been to the strangest places all over Europe, like Bulgaria, Greece, everywhere.
He likes that; he uses all his money on that. Trick: He doesn’t smoke and he is the only one who racks his cans. Les: We have some other bases, like Stockholm and Rotterdam, you know the rest of the crew. Mins: Yeah, but it has been a long time since we where in Stockholm. That’s another newspaper rumour we can kill. We don’t spend that much time together. Last time was 1992, that was cool and we painted some stuff. I think it’s different there now; it’s fucked up, fast pieces. If you want to hit trains its only stress up there. Holland is what I prefer, cool friends, and lots of hash, smooth trains. Nice, easy to hit bananatrains. Down there it’s all secret and nobody is united They say there is a cop in every bush but we checked it out ourselves and found nice spots with ramps where you can just hit shit. The spots we hit there the last time, the locals didn’t even know about them.
Mins: MOA has had some cool members, take Moes. He has always been a good friend, we used to live in the same area. At that time he was in the KDV crew. When KDV slowed down and he was the last one painting trains, so we just asked him. In the beginning he held back a little, but he could see it was the right thing. So after a week or so, he joined at a Christmas-party. He was doing a lot of stuff alone. He was a one-man army, just doing his thing, sometimes with Rema.
Les: Just the type we needed, he was perfect for the crew. A perfect example of unity and friend-ship. He is definitely one of the unknown kings of Copenhagen. He has done so much stuff and he always did the crewname, every time, no bullshit. Fantastic. He was in the crew for a long time, but some internal things made us split up. He was a good friend; you could always call him if you wanted to go painting. It was a sad day when he left.
RespeCT Mins: I have big respect for Chintz, for what he has done for traingraffiti and the style he does. He doesn’t care what he is doing; his life is graffiti full time. He is the one I respect the most. Trick: The one I respect most for style is Sabe. When he paints, it’s like his brain is splattered out on the wall. He is bad and really skilled.
Mins: That’s right, you never know what he is doing. But he will shape it up in the end. He doesn’t even know himself. He is bad. I give respect to Rens and Cave too. I got to paint with Secher two times before he got busted and stopped. We where supposed to paint a train after he got busted, but he didn’t show up. Next morning he called and said that I should go down on the sta-tion. I went there and he had done three fresh panels. Respect to him. He was the king back then.
Respect
Mins: I have big respect for Chintz, for what he has done for traingraffiti and the style he does. He doesn’t care what he is doing; his life is graffiti full time. He is the one I respect the most.
Trick: The one I respect most for style is Sabe. When he paints, it’s like his brain is splattered out on the wall. He is bad and really skilled. Mins: That’s right, you never know what he is doing. But he will shape it up in the end. He doesn’t even know himself. He is bad. I give respect to Rens and Cave too.
I got to paint with Secher two times before he got busted and stopped. We where supposed to paint a train after he got busted, but he didn’t show up. Next morning he called and said that I should go down on the sta-tion. I went there and he had done three fresh panels. Respect to him. He was the king back then.
The Future
Mins: I’m not planing a break or a vacation, that’s for sure. To me, graffiti is a job. I’s as simple as that. If I don’t paint nobody can stand me. I’s a need for me. I get restless and hyperactive. At the moment I think walls are more exciting than trains; it’s more like a mission. We know the trains too well now, if you do throwups in the city you never know, there is more action in doing hardcore spots. On the wall you also learn more, you get a better at spraying, pick up some techniques from wallpainters. I’s very hard to get better and develop your style when you do trains
Les: I tried to set some stop-points in my life before, like when I get this old I’m going to… That never holds up. I’m in it for life, that’s all I can say know. I can’t see why I should stop going out and painting trains, it just gets easier and easier. The older you get, the less chance there is of you getting stopped
Mins. Me too, l’m in it for life. Les: I’s your own life, what counts are what makes you happy. Why should you stop doing what you love? Trick: If a person stops, then what is left of their life, what is he going to do? Mins: You know that you have broken out of the system and you are still somebody. A rich man, a fucking businessman that just lives his life to make money, he lives and dies and nobody will remember him or know that he has been alive. We exist. Les: We are definitely a part of Denmark’s history, when we cross the ten-year line we have been here for a decade, that’s history for you. When the old S-trains are gone, people will remember us when they think of them. As long as we are painting nobody will be bigger than us.
Mins: Imagine how much money we have spend on graffiti, I could be a very rich man now if I had saved up my money instead of buying cans. I don’t understand the authorities. How many other crimes do people do where they spend their own hard earned money to commit the crime? They should open their eyes and realize that it’s a gift to them. We just make things beautiful. In Denmark authorities act like graffiti is a big problem, hey wake up, look at Germany and see what it’s been like down there for years.
Look at Holland, how it was for years. Look at the states, how it was there for decades. Look at Italy today on how it is there. Denmark is nothing. Authorities have it easy here. In Italy everything is covered with paint. Mins: We also have a video coming out. The plan is to make a little something, be part of that game and make some money. The video will be a lot of action and it’s hopefully coming out this year.
Mins: We have been here for so many years now. A lot of the new guys coming out wants to do 100 trains. Just remember how much time and effort we have put into this shit. That’s what you have to give us respect and credit for, not just what you have seen or heard in the period where you painted. Think of the big picture. Without MOA on the trains, how much train graffiti would there ever have been in Denmark? We have represented things and shown how to cut the cake and paved the way. The plan has always been to have shit running, just like New York. Don’t talk, get out there and paint, I don’t want to see my own shit all the time. There are room for many more on this scene.
I personally would love to see Cave back on the trains, ’cause he did dope shit very often. And Ango and old Jazz, I wish they would come back. If they hit it now, it’s more to represent and show the flag, it’s not because the flame is still alive.
A guy like Tower should do his throwups on the trains too, he would blast the system. He was MOA too, we did some dope stuff with him, but he just wanted to hang out with Carn and his other homies, take care of his education. Every time we called him he said no before I even asked if he wanted to hit a yard. He wanted to do his own thing and that’s cool. What he did after MOA, with all his throwups, is unbelievable. He is the ultimate. He did an insane amount of throwups with Carn all over Denmark. If you turn back the
clock, all that throwup stuff dates back to Rens, now Kegr and everybody else are doing it. There will always be somebody who paves the way. If you take guys like Rens, Bates, Kyle, Freez and all the other old guys. You can never talk shit about them, because you just have to have respect for writers like that.
They were there before you and the new generation should give respect for the fact that they have kept on painting and done their thing. Concentrated on graffiti, just painted to get better and develop styles. Not to have fame.
Shoutouts
Trick: Just shoutouts! Shoutouts to the people who knows us! That’s it instead of all that shit…
Mins: To Magic Moments and to Colourblind. And to our crews VIM and MSN.