The Swarm

November 14, 2007

NPR Sigur Ros interviewer quits

TDS Editors

NYT:

Just weeks after its Oct. 1 start, NPR’s alternative morning program, “The Bryant Park Project,” is losing its co-host, Luke Burbank, right. He said yesterday that he is returning to his hometown, Seattle, to be near his 13-year-old daughter, whose wistful voice-mail message he played in making the announcement. In an interview, Jay Kernis, NPR’s senior vice president for programming, said, “I think it was just too difficult a situation” for Mr. Burbank to be a long-distance dad.” While the show is sorry to lose Mr. Burbank, Mr. Kernis said, “if we thought we couldn’t do it without him, we wouldn’t have released him” from his contract.

NPR – Updated: When Good Interviews Go Bad:

Sigur Ros is four lads from Iceland, and recently, they were in New York to screen a new concert film Heima at the New Yorker Festival. Their P.R. folks called and asked if we wanted them on the show, to which we quickly replied, “hells yeah”.

Anyway, last Friday the band showed up promptly at 11am (EDT) and commenced to give what is possibly the worst interview in the history of electronic media.

Seriously.

It was that bad.


Post a comment

Previous comments include

#1 E$ says:

That was the most painful 5 minutes I've ever experienced. What a bunch of losers.

#2 Christy says:

why would an artist even bother doing an interview if they had ZERO interest in talking about their music??

this interview seriously pisses me off.

#3 J Kent says:

those are possibly the worst responses he could have possibly gotten from those questions...

#4 Journalist says:

Thank you for posting this. Everybody always puts down reporters for their stupid interviews and questions.

Now people can see that artists can be pretty stupid too...

#5 charlie says:

why get pissed off about it -- they're shy, they don't want to talk. It's only radio y'know!

#6 tubez says:

Okay, the band was lame at answering questions, but how many times do they need to be asked in various ways what it is like to be successful, and if they ever thought they would get this big, etc. I have to say that a lot of these questions weren't exactly inspiring the band to elaborate much. Yes, painful all around.

#7 Jeremy says:

Seriously, this is NOT the worst interview ever. I've seen (and done) far worse. Honestly though, what was this guy expecting? Almost every question he asked could be answered by a short answer. When they started answering everything with short one-word answered, he should have known to switch gears and start asking them questions that don't allow for one-word answers. Questions that ask them to expand or explain something in detail. Like seriously, don't ask something along the lines of "Do you guys just start playing and then somebody else starts playing too?" Instead, say "Explain to me the process of how you approach performance and the different elements that come into play when you interact as musicians" or some bullshit like that. Give them something to talk about so they can't cut the interview off. Honestly, if this is how he handled the situation, he shouldn't have become a rock music interviewer.

#8 Not Dick Cavett says:

Garbage questions in. Garbage non-answers out.

Seriously.


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