All of the stupid shit I made bands do

It's time for me to apologise for some really messed-up interviews.

• Hello! Here’s a post about the time I got bored doing band interviews in beige boardrooms over bad coffee and decided to switch things up, with mixed results. I feel regret about much of this. Enjoy!

I remember the looks on their faces. Their eyes darted around the room. They seemed confused, dumbfounded. They didn’t say it to my face, but they might as well have: “Dude, what the fuck are we doing here?”

I was asking myself that question too. Back in 2014, I persuaded awesome local rock agitators Die! Die! Die! to drive out to Auckland haunted house attraction Spookers for a Friday night interview. It didn’t go well.

We got there early, headed up to a room full of dusty couches and creepy clocks, and sat down to chat. In the background, demons bellowed, ghosts wailed, chains rattled, necromancers shrieked and freaks howled. Someone started a chainsaw.

The Spookers cast were warming up for their regular Friday fright night, and it made for a tense and eerie interview backdrop with a band. Later on, we entered the Spookers maze and got chased by a goblin brandishing that chainsaw.

Why did we do this? I think the only possible reason I had to convince them at the time was that the band’s name had the word “die” in it. It seemed fitting, I guess? The story was a stretch, but the blood-splattered photos of the band were awesome.

Guys, it’s about time I apologised for making you do that. I’m so sorry.

That’s not the only bunged-up idea that deserves an apology. A while back, while working for a newspaper insert called TimeOut at the NZ Herald, I got sick and tired of doing bog-standard band interviews in cookie cutter music label boardrooms.

I’d just done too many of them. Sitting around a beige table doesn’t inspire good chat. It doesn’t make for good stories. I didn’t like it. The bands didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t want to do them anymore.

So I decided to switch things up. Every time I landed an interview, I asked if we could do something new, something different, something fun, something else, something other than the norm, just to mix things up a bit.

One of the first that came off was with the local band Clap Clap Riot, who I persuaded to join me for a few beers and a spot of backyard cricket. I didn’t help myself, my story, or my relationship with the band, by hitting the winning six, and losing the ball over the fence in the process.

Again, sorry guys. I owe you a ball, and some beers, for that one.

Also, there’s the issue of this headline…

My list of lengthy apologies also includes the following:

• I made Shapeshifter eat snacks sent to our table through pneumatic tubes in a Christchurch cafe. They hated it.

• I made David Dallas play me at table tennis. He won - handsomely.

• I went boxing with Six60. That was brutal.

• I made Benee do a Mukbang challenge. That was her idea. It was yum.

  

• I got Jon Toogood to air guitar his way through a new Shihad album in a Melbourne studio. We went out for scones afterwards and I told them how I broke my nose in one of their moshpits when I was a student. They weren’t impressed. At all.

• I visited the childhood home of Onehunga rap crew SWIDT and ate too many pies with them. Love those guys.

• I made dozens of local rockers cry into their beers over the demolition of The Kings Arms. That one still hurts.

• I took a bunch of really terrible records to P-Money and made him make a beat out of one of them. I think he actually enjoyed that one.

Shit that’s a long list! It still surprises me that they all said yes. I rarely got a no. It’s only now, looking back, that I realise most of them were probably just humouring me. Or maybe they just wanted the croissants I always took along with me. Pastries are a great leveller.

The only one that I didn’t get across the line was taking supersonic rapper PNC to a shooting range. It sounded super ironic to me to try and make someone so shy and softly-spoken do something stupidly loud and American and completely against type.

I’m still open to doing that one. PNC, call me.