| 15 FAVOURITE INTERVIEWS OF 2011! |
| Written by Shahlin Graves | ||
| Saturday, 31 December 2011 12:34 | ||
 #1. KATE NASH - click HERE to read. Her headlining show in an intimate Sydney theatre was the best thing I've seen all year - and then a couple of nights later we managed to secure some time with Kate in Melbourne. Despite being on vocal rest and already late for soundcheck, she delayed her soundcheck for another half hour to talk about hugs in song-form, why "you don't have to suck dick to succeed", and Buffy. Her tour manager - also an ideal human being - then invited me to stay and watch her soundcheck. Everything was perfect.  #2. LIGHTS - click HERE to read. Lights talks so quickly that I'm still not sure how we managed to figure out what she said afterwards while transcribing. Not to mention, her phone connection kept cutting out, so all in all it was fairly hard work - but 500% worth it. 'Siberia' is her first album to be released in New Zealand, so it felt like the culmination of a million years wait, but with the best possible kind of happy ending.  #3. BRIAN OBLIVION of CULTS - click HERE to read. Everyone knows that I have a girl-crush on Cults' MADELINE FOLLIN, so after the initial disappointment of not finding her on the other end of the phone-line as promised, I was very much won over by Brian who was happy to talk about everything and anything. This was the first of two phone interviews with him this year - click HERE to read the second/latest.  #4. MARK FOSTER of FOSTER THE PEOPLE - click HERE to read. Another one of those magical phone calls where porcupines, backflips and childhood rock collections are discussed. Happy days!  #5. FLORENCE + THE MACHINE - click HERE to read. I wish that you could give hugs through phone-lines :( Florence was in Sydney on a promo trip and sounded faint from exhaustion. As usual she was a total sweetheart, but the experience was sadly incomparable to our previous two face-to-face interviews. This was my fourth time interviewing her... fourth! I don't think I've ever interviewed anyone four times before... and for it be her of all people - pretty much the ultimate girl-crush - is a bit unbelievable.  #6. MILES KANE - click HERE to read. Mr. Kane serenaded me over the phone and happily chatted to me about his love for Haribo candy. If I wind up marrying Alex Turner, I think that me and Miles shall be great friends.  #7. NICK HARMER of DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE - click HERE to read. This was a little bit like one of those dreams which begins a nightmare and ends up very nice indeed. I think the phone interview was scheduled for 6am NZ time, and of course after having waited thirty minutes feeling rather stood out at 6:30am, I was informed that the band's interview schedules were running two hours late. I crawled back into bed... eventually, I think around 10:30am, the call finally came.  #8. BREANNE DÜREN - click HERE to read. I'm afraid we must've weirded out Breanne's tour manager something frightful with our indoor picnic set-up at the Auckland Town Hall - but that's the price you pay, for not being stock-standard. Breanne was a total BABE though - and she let us take polaroid photos, even though we'd been told "no photos" allowed.  #9. THE SWELLERS - click HERE to read. I could tell you about the great fruit-kebab pilfering expedition of 2011, but it may be one of those things that you just well... needed to have been there. Every member of the band was highly accommodating and super nice about the fact that I was also trying to interview This Providence at exactly the same time, separately. It was one of those days that I really could have done with a clone, or to just not have been in Sydney.  #10. JOE JONAS - click HERE to read. A bucket-list must y'know. Another person I really wanted to give a hug to :( and ended up feeling so guilty about him sounding dead-tired that I sort of didn't really know what to talk to him about. He ended up laughing a few times though, so everything worked out a-okay.  #11. ADAM YOUNG of OWL CITY - click HERE to read. I was a bit worried, as the word going round was that he was either stupendously shy or hated HATED interviews. Maybe a combination of both. I also only found out about this literally an hour before it happened so had to drop everything in a panic... and had forgotten to eat anything when I woke up. Luckily, I didn't faint. Even better, Adam was super enthusiastic and delighted to take polaroids. "No photo" strictures, what?  #12. ALEX GASKARTH and RIAN DAWSON of ALL TIME LOW - click HERE to read. Oh my... I think I'm still blushing. I was expecting the 'talk' though, so was somewhat prepared. The four that hung out with me - two band members accompanied by a tour manager and an assistant tour manager - were in every other regard though, extremely courteous. We Are The In Crowd had told them about my time with them earlier that day - and Alex had spotted me shooting Hellogoodbye outside their hotel - so they themselves were also prepared, and let me carry on into double-time.  #13. ANDREW VANWYNGARDEN and WILL BERMAN of MGMT - click HERE to read. I'm really surprised that MGMT's record label don't hate me. Andrew and Will spent I-don't-even-wanna-know-how-long filling out their commandments tablet that I'm sure I blew their interview schedule to running-late redundancy. MY BAD. Totally, my bad. I now know that it takes a really long time to write on a block of wood. Lesson learnt. VanWyngarden was super sweet, though. He giggles adorably.  #14. JIMMY EAT WORLD - click HERE to read. This was a dream-come-true of Sarah's! It's nice when stuff like this happens to your best friends. As for me, who can deny Jim Adkins' babeliness? I have this weird idea stuck in my head that he's sort of what Ezra Koenig is going to look like when he's older. All of Jimmy Eat World posed for polaroid photos - and a quick hotel restaurant photoshoot - and were great sports. Our photographer Michael, was also feeling kingly throughout this.
#15. ANDREW W.K. - click HERE to read. This was the day that I met the HAPPIEST MAN IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD. Also, I think that the polaroid photo I took of him as a party popper popped out confetti at him - which resulted in a Spiderman-ish action shot - is quite possibly the bestest polaroid photo that I have ever taken.  |
