[HN Gopher] Nardwuar on His Best and Worst Interviews
___________________________________________________________________
Nardwuar on His Best and Worst Interviews
Author : herbertl
Score : 60 points
Date : 2024-09-26 17:03 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vulture.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vulture.com)
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| Interesting. Would have thought the worst interview was where the
| guys from Blur were going to beat him up.
|
| And finding a long lost VHS tape is the most on-brand thing for
| Kingsgate Mall.
| mikrl wrote:
| Sonic Youth were dicks to him too.
|
| Honestly whenever I've watched an interview with a musician I
| like they're mostly either matching his energy or just
| pleasantly surprised.
|
| Whenever I've heard of a bad interview it was never an artist I
| particularly enjoyed... or even heard of.
| hluska wrote:
| Henry Rollins is another good one - I still enjoy watching
| the expression change on his face when he realized that
| Nardwuar actually knew his stuff, but he had gone too far
| down the path of tough guy to save the interview.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Name checks out, reference to Kingsgate Mall checks out, are
| you a spy!?
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| While the research of this guy is certainly impressing, the
| shtick never failed to repulse me.
|
| It just seems so forced and over the top, and for me personally
| incredibly annoying.
|
| I get it that it is a love it or hate it kind of thing, so I
| would be curious to hear about the opinions on people from the
| other side ?
| mewse-hn wrote:
| His interview style is kind of like Sean Evans from Hot Ones
| crossed with the manic energy of Richard Simmons. It's
| mentioned in this article, but he tries to ask the questions
| that nobody else is asking, which can make for great
| interviews.
|
| But, yeah, his schtick can be incredibly annoying. Part of the
| fun is watching the interview subject react to it.
| mikrl wrote:
| If you think about it, he pioneered the style of completely
| annoying, insufferable yet somehow entertaining content that
| you see all over TikTok...
|
| But he had to commit to a full interview and release it on
| classic media, then later on, internet, then finally platforms.
| runjake wrote:
| He used to repulse me, but I've gotten used to him and find him
| endearing now. No, it doesn't make any sense.
|
| He is a genuinely kind person who does some seriously deep
| research and asks interesting questions.
| hluska wrote:
| If you're ever interested in going down an interesting rabbit
| hole, you can read a lot of Nardwuar's interviews transcribed
| on his website.
|
| Here is one with Drake in 2013:
|
| https://nardwuar.com/nardwuar-vs-drake/
|
| If you read the transcripts, you can cut through the schtick.
| All that's left is a very good interviewer with excellent
| research skills.
|
| If you're interested in an even deeper rabbit hole, compare
| some of his interviews to more mainstream interviews with the
| same artists. Nardwuar has a certain gift for breaking artists
| out of their perfectly crafted PR messages. I think his
| interviews tend to be a little more authentic (for good and for
| bad).
| nwsm wrote:
| I have the same reaction as you - his persona makes me
| physically uncomfortable and I feel bad for the artists unless
| they have the common wholesome reaction to well-done research.
|
| But how much of it is a "shtick"? I take it the guy is just
| weird. If that's the case, it's not forced or over the top.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _While the research of this guy is certainly impressing, the
| shtick never failed to repulse me._
|
| "Schtick" implies performance, but I don't think it is an act
| or performance, I think he's genuinely that high energy and
| enthusiastic. (Which can certainly be annoying as a personality
| trait.)
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| Well, he's been at it since the 1990s, and I distinctly
| remember people being way less stuffy and easy to annoy back
| then
| wk_end wrote:
| I dunno your age or background, but FWIW I feel like his shtick
| made a lot more sense in the context of early 90s Canadian
| media.
|
| The zeitgeist was unpretentious, goofy, "slack", earnest-but-
| also-ironically-detached. So Gen X, but also MuchMusic in 1993
| was a lot more like MTV in 1983, except as run by terminally
| uncool Midwesterners - it almost had the low-budget energy of
| public access. Weird Al (who has a similar shtick, now that I
| think about it) would take over the channel over the holidays,
| and they had an annual New Years tradition where they'd chuck a
| Christmas tree off the roof of their studio. One of their hosts
| was a foul-mouthed sock puppet. Growing up in Toronto, for a
| time it felt an awful lot like the biggest song in the world
| was "If I Had $1000000" by the Barenaked Ladies.
|
| Nardwuar fit right in, in that media environment - not to say
| he wasn't sui generis, even then! But I can understand that,
| divorced of that context, he might just seem like a weirdo.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Oh man, how'd I forget about the Christmas tree and Ed. You
| just hit me with the 90s so hard.
|
| I used to watch LOUD religiously and I imagine I thought that
| made me pretty hardcore. I knew about slipknot before they
| were cool (I probably thought)!
| brailsafe wrote:
| It did seem like the 90s were a bit more jovial of a time,
| and people who grew up during it identify nostalgically with
| the dolls and merch and sillyness of it all. I guess I never
| thought otherwise, Nardwuar's always been intuitively
| compelling to me, because I do think people tend to not let
| themselves feel vulnerable comedically, particularly in
| Vancouver, but I have heard of some locals not liking his
| thing.
| kiloshib wrote:
| His YouTube channel is a fun place to deep dive if you are into
| music at all. Is schtick can be a little bit grating, but some
| of the reactions from artists to the amount of research and
| understanding he has about their origins can be really fun to
| watch.
|
| Also, he has his very first interview up from when he was a kid
| which is kind of cool:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=002S7Bho3jE
| havefunbesafe wrote:
| I'd love to learn about Nardwuar's research process. He can
| uncover what your best friend from 4th grade's favorite flavor of
| soda was. It's truly amazing.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I think Nardwuar's approach is beautifully disarming in a way the
| reveals an artist's lack of awareness or humility. Surely that's
| not always the case, and a person can have their own reasons for
| not liking the vibe, such as maybe not getting the humour in it
| all, but that's the impression I get, particularly when they try
| to keep their front up.
| pentagrama wrote:
| > Whenever I scroll down, the spinning ball of death appears.
| It's like when you try to check someone's old Tumblr page out. It
| usually takes me 20 minutes to get to the bottom of a document.
|
| Yes, Tumblr profiles doesn't have pagination, is all progressive
| loading when scrolling down [1], but there is an archive page
| where you can pick the month/year of posts [2] ;)
|
| [1] https://www.tumblr.com/3000s
|
| [2] https://3000s.tumblr.com/archive
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-09-26 23:01 UTC)