Love Grenades Upcoming Interview With Rock NYC on Halloween…

This Saturday Bret Jensen and I are interviewing the LA electronic dance band Love Grenades before going to a loft in Brooklyn to catch em live.


I haven’t interviewed a band in decades and I always found it an uncomfortable experience. If you’re throwing soft balls you look like a punk and you’re getting quotes that have appeared in a thousand publications, so the only way to break through the facade is to ask the tough questions.


In an interview with Chris Difford of Squeeze, a band I worshipped, I told Chris Difford Squeeze’s new album Cosi Fan Tutti Fruitti, was a huge disappointment where one, maybe two, songs worked. Rough stuff but it lead to him revealing he wrote three or four different  lyrics  per song and Chris and Glenn decided together which words to use. The only decent quote I got in three seperate one hour interviews.


During a tustle with Banarama I called them overrated groupies which brough the conversation to a quick conclusion. Of course, a couple of years later Siobhan married Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics and left the business.


Sometimes it was my fault. Back when I was in my twenties mention free booze to me and watch my Smith Westerns impression. I got drunk at the Cure interview, I got drunk at the Samantha Fox interview, I got drunk at the Exene interview  and fought with her, got drunk at the  Siouxie Sioux interview and fought with her. The day after my Fabulous Thunderbirds interview I got a furious phone call from Chrysalis’ Rhonda Shore because Jimmy Ray Vaughn (Stevie Ray’s kid brother) was so drunk they had to cancel the rest of the afternoons interviews. But I did get Jimmy on the record about Elvis Presley and on the record growing up with his brother.


But it doesn’t matter how the interviews go, there is nothing worse in the world then transcribing the interview tape. It is sheer hell. Boring, difficult, it takes forever, and it is horrible to hear what a little twit I became in front of pop stars, if I wasn’t fawning over Marshall Crenshaw I was snapping at Lita Ford. And I wouldn’t shut up.


So there is my mea culpa. I am older now and much more relaxed plus I love Love Grenades so unless Bret has something on his mind it should be a pleasant encounter of the third kind. And here is my word to the wise for Elizabeth Wight. Two questions I’m clicking in my head: In two years why is there only five songs including remixes? and what is the nature of her relationship with  Sam Sparrow: mentor and intern? Please explain…


Hope Miss Wight  doesn’t walk out mid conversation.