Dwindling record sales of artists big and small doesn’t elicit a lot of sympathy from consumers these days. In an age when typing in your favorite artist into your favorite Bit Torrent engine is the de facto response to having to pay actual money for music, being in a band is more of a gamble [...]
Entries Tagged as 'interview'
Murder By Death: Staying Alive
April 30th, 2008 · No Comments
MTV debuts The Loder Files with a rare Prince interview
March 27th, 2008 · No Comments
Having whisked its only credible source off to the doldrums of online movie reviews, MTV lost its last semblance of legitimacy in hiding Kurt Loder from the camera. His caustic wit and unflappable charm made MTV palatable throughout its awkward teen years, but with the channel hell-bent on erasing the music video from its [...]
Tweedy Talks Migraines with The Times
March 6th, 2008 · No Comments
Jeff Tweedy entered a Chicago rehabilitation clinic in 2004 to treat his chronic migraine headaches and subsequent addiction to painkillers. The New York Times‘ Migraine blog recently spoke with the Wilco frontman about his condition and how it has affected his personal and professional life.
He told The Times he’s never missed a show because [...]
Perceptive Travel - An Interview with Jens Lekman
February 27th, 2008 · No Comments
It is a cold Swedish winter and I find myself flying into Stockholm on a £0.01 flight from London with Ryanair. I’ve emailed Jens to say I’d like to interview him for a new web site called Perceptive Travel. I’m honest enough to tell him that I’ve never interviewed anyone before and that I’m not [...]
The National’s Matt Berninger talks touring, sounding like "chocolate and wool"
February 26th, 2008 · No Comments
New York magazine has a brief but excellent interview with The National’s Matt Berninger, wherein the soft-spoken vocalist comments on his band’s willingness to eschew staying an underground secret in favor of reaching more fans. But the best part is his reaction to the characterization of his unique vocal style by various journalists:
Critics get [...]
Tags: interview · link · touring
Strange, clueless interview with Interscope head Jimmy Iovine
February 21st, 2008 · No Comments
When climbing the American corporate ladder, it goes without saying that the more you make the less you actually have to do. But does it also hold true that the more you make the further your head is crammed up your own ass to the point where you have no idea what on earth is [...]
Ian McCulloch interview
January 8th, 2008 · No Comments
The Guardian conducts an all-too-brief interview with Echo & The Bunnymen frontman Ian McCulloch, who has only slightly tamed his once-notoriously bloated ego. His quotations have always been golden, bordering on parody:
Are you fashionable?I am fashion.
Right. But I am with him 100% here:
What’s the greatest threat to music today?People thinking that songs are [...]
Led Zeppelin talk reunion with Yahoo! Music
December 5th, 2007 · No Comments
The remaining members of Led Zeppelin sat down with Yahoo Music to discuss the upcoming tribute concert at London’s O2 Arena in honor of Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun. Guitarist Jimmy Page sounds rather confident in the band’s ability to bring it live after all these years, although looking at him hardly instills much [...]
Tags: interview · link · video
Graham Coxon’s guitar techniques
October 31st, 2007 · No Comments
Guitar TV Online recently conducted an interview with Graham Coxon, wherein the erstwhile Blur guitarist delves into chord structure, tunings, and which guitars he prefers to play with live. Coxon is a severely underrated guitarist, who has never been given his proper due. Despite a respectable solo career since leaving Blur in 2002, rumors of [...]
NPR’s excruciating Sigur Ros interview
October 12th, 2007 · 1 Comment
This interview with Iceland’s Sigur Ros is so painful to watch, but I highly recommend it. The interviewer is admittedly a little daft or maybe just nervous, but even some of his simplest, most straightforward questions are met with nine-months-pregnant pauses followed by three muttered words at best. NPR posted the interview purely as an [...]
Song licensing "tips" from Iron and Wine
September 28th, 2007 · 1 Comment
Sammy Beam of Iron and Wine offers up one of the most uninformative and inane interviews I’ve ever read with The Onion’s AV Club. Dude sounds like Alberto Gonzales. In response to the films he’s allowed his music to be featured in, Beam either doesn’t know or hasn’t seen anything the interviewer brings up. Does [...]
Punk as fuck: Sex Pistols shill for video game
September 25th, 2007 · No Comments
Those who suck at Guitar Hero may have cause to rejoice with the news that the Sex Pistols have re-recorded their quintessential hit “Anarchy in the UK” for inclusion in the third installment of the video game series. Sloppy punk should be a bit easier than the typical metal fare. Evidently, the band’s record company [...]
Paul Westerberg soldiers through injured hand
September 25th, 2007 · No Comments
Replacements legend Paul Westerberg is healing slowly after gouging his hand with a screwdriver while attempting to remove wax from a candle. It’s kind of a random way to mess up your hand but fitting for a man whose whole career has been on the unpredictable side. Westerberg recently appeared on The Craft , which [...]
The rumors were true: Led Zeppelin to reunite
September 12th, 2007 · No Comments
This is the reason the now official Led Zeppelin reunion is a very bad idea. This performance was left off the official Live Aid DVD set for a reason. And this was 22 years ago. How bad are things going to be now?
Spike Jonze interviews M.I.A.
August 21st, 2007 · 1 Comment
Spike Jonze interviews M.I.A. for Vice TV in the first bit of a 6-part series. It’s a very laid-back piece in which they ride around in a car, discussing trivialities like how M.I.A.’s hairdresser, Shemkee, cut her hair while on Ketamine. Jonze and M.I.A. are obviously friends and comfortable around each other, [...]
David Yow is awesome at interviews
August 15th, 2007 · No Comments
Vice just had the pleasure of interviewing David Yow, the Jesus Lizard legend. His most recent/awkward on-stage antic occurred when he showed up late and drunk (obviously) to this year’s SXSW with his new band Qui and looking out into a sea of white faces shouted, “Where are the niggers at?”, which, uhh, didn’t go [...]
M.I.A. shows her ass in interview
August 3rd, 2007 · 5 Comments
M.I.A. kind of loses it in an interview with Pitchfork. Immediately after exchanging pleasantries and ordering pancakes she gets pretty confrontational with the interviewer, who is obviously caught off guard. She’s extremely defensive about credit for her records going to her producers, particularly Diplo, which she blames Pitchfork for insinuating. The interviewer holds his own, [...]
Karen O talks up new Yeah Yeah Yeahs EP with AP
July 26th, 2007 · No Comments
Yeah Yeah Yeahs have released a stop-gap EP entitled Is Is, partly to tide fans over between records and partly to re-ignite some excitement in the band after the lukewarm reception to Show Your Bones, the band’s slick follow-up to its raucous debut, Fever to Tell. Karen O does the obligatory chat with the Associated [...]
Tags: interview · new release
Beastie Boy Adrock talks to Seattle’s The Stranger
May 21st, 2007 · No Comments
With a new, all-instrumental album, The Mix-Up, due out June 26, the Beastie Boys are returning a little more low-key than usual. King Adrock has an amusing back and forth with The Stranger’s Jonathan Zwickel.
Adrock on selling out:
“I don’t think that people buying records or whatever really give a shit if you make money or [...]
Tags: commentary · interview
Vice TV interviews Malcolm McLaren
May 21st, 2007 · No Comments
The folks behind the label that Bloc Party frontman, Kele Okereke, called a “nasty vortex” speaks with the puppet master of the Sex Pistols, Malcolm McLaren. When asked what he’s listening to these days he mutters something about how it’s all good and it’s all bad and then inexplicably compares pop culture to an old [...]