Last Friday, Steve had an interview with this band at around 6 pm. I went out with Claudia to do my homework, which involved field work. We left at around 5 and I came back in at 6:45ish with Claudia's extra key (Claudia went out on a not-actually-date date). You should have seen the look on Steve's face. He was just so frustrated and stressed out. You see, after much fumbling about, they finally decided to reschedule for later. From what I gather, the conversation went a little like this: Steve did catch this singer on the phone, and the singer asked how long this would take. This reminded me a lot of my own experience with the singer dude. That's why he had to call me back, because I said I might take as much as half an hour. Anyway, the singer dude told Steve he had about 10 minutes. Steve told him he was planning on writing a full feature on this band and that he needed more than 10 minutes. Understandable. Which is why they rescheduled for 9 pm.
I asked him 9 in what time zone.
Steve hadn't thought of that. He was like, "Oh shit..."
Well, no matter. I left the apartment late, after it was 9 pm in the singer's time zone. He still hadn't called. Steve told me later that he rescheduled for Sunday.
Now, I don't doubt that Steve is a good reporter, partly because of how determined he was to get this interview. But I did think this was overkill, and I was like, "Give up, give up," but he told me there was a reason why he was being so hard-headed about doing this interview. (He did tell me the reason, but I'd rather not tell because we never know who's reading these things.)
So yeah, Sunday came along. The interview was supposed to be at 4, but by 6 nothing had happened, expect for Steve making several phone calls, including to the tour manager who said he'd run over to the singer's apartment to see what the fuck was up. Steve told me laters that the singer guy called back at around 11 muthafuckin' o'clock, with a half-assed apology. What was his excuse? HE FORGOT ABOUT THE INTERVIEW.
Let us rewind a second and analyze what the fuck went wrong.
(1) Does this guy realize how inconsiderate he is? Steve pursued this interview for a long time. When Steve should have given up, he tried one more time. And the singer reschedules over and over, only to FORGET about the fucking interview?
(2) Steve and I are not lazy interviewers.
Yes, I'm bringing myself into this situation, and I'm very much upset about what happened to Steve, because I didn't want anyone to suffer through this situation. I actually didn't think it would happen again, but Steve's experience was even worse, much worse, than mine.
We try to research all our subjects as well as possible. We don't fuck around and we want to do an honest, good, and even FUN job. We don't have little certificates from the state saying, "Certified to Interview Bands," but you know what? We try to do a good, professional job. We don't need to be BFF with the artists we cover, but common courtesy is always nice.
(3) This singer has got to be kidding me. He's NOT in a band that is truly well-known. Pete Wentz's penis is more famous than this singer. Hey, Morrissey, you wanna hang up on me? Yeah, dude, go ahead! Madonna, you wanna reschedule on my ass? Damn girl, that's aight. This guy is not in any position to be a fucktard about press--the two publications Steve and I write for are a lot more well-known and respected than his band is. Does he think bigger publications will be better and THEN he should be respectful? If he really doesn't want to bother with stupid press obligations, he should just not agree to it. He doesn't have to do press. Jandek hardly agrees to press and plenty of people know about him.
This guy's band is doing all right in the blogs, but the blogs, my man, are fickle and it's like, how long will they adore you? You say there's a "scene" where you live. Well it's nice they're taking care of your band and making you feel like you're the greatest, because I don't feel that way about you.
(4) This brings another thing. He's in a band with four other people. What a bad representation of the band to have their singer and main songwriter be so careless about this stuff! Not only that, he's got a tour manager, a real manager, and a publicist (who, by the way, does not seem to communicate that much with the singer, defeating the purpose of having a publicist, but I spoke to her and she was cute, so I sorta forgive her). Now, all these people are trying to work with this band to get them to be big, but the singer is just sabotaging his chances.
(5) The biggest insult of all, and the one that hurts me most: it's sort of tainted the music for me. You don't understand how much it pains me. I mean, I'm still listening to the songs, because they're really that fun and good, but I start listening and I'm like, "I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS DUDE MADE ME CRY." I really thought that having cried over my own not-so-stellar interview was a sign of MY weakness, but I feel so justified now. Steve has been nothing but a muthafuckin' trooper.
Steve emailed his editor saying something like (and I quote), "i don't want to do an interview with someone this unprofessional. you can give it to someone else, but i'm not dealing with this bullshit."
my editor e-mailed me back and told me that he's not going to re-assign it, because he doesn't want to run a feature on someone who has rock star fever off of 2 demi-successful e.p.'s. today, i e-mailed their publicist and told them to just forget it. she was all like "i'm confused, i thought you interviewed him, should i talk to your editor?" so i was like "he forgot about the interview after cancelling twice. feel free to contact my editor."
I didn't have as many balls dealing with this the way Steve did. And for this, I give him props. I also give props to the editor. It was exactly why I decided not to write up anything about this band (other than the answers to the questions weren't that hot, anyway). Even if this is being published online, I don't want to give the band the space. That singer dude, he can stay far away from me in his liberal college town and think he's fucking God.
I know I must sound totally completely immature for griping about this one dude for so long. Maybe as time goes by and I get dicked over more often in this interviewing business, I won't have the time and patience to write a post about every stupid band that hurts my feelings. I know I need to suck it up. But this one time, I'm letting it all out... except for the band's name.
One important edit: I cannot emphasize how different this interview was to the Art Brut one I did with Rachel. The Art Brut was great. I mean, Mikey, Ian and Jasper were all so ridiculously friendly and actually seemed interested in talking to us. Art Brut are so much more popular than that dumb band, and even though they had no idea what publication we were from, Art Brut were happy to give us the time. Plus, they were quite funny and charming and started quoting Spinal Tap, which is never a bad thing. Not only that, if there's any reason to give Karen Plus One props for, it's that she was actually quite professional when dealing with us Tiny Mix Tapes scum. That stupid singer could take some lessons. Steve did finally interview the bastard and found him quite boring. Sad.
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