Static Newsabout
herbertl | 29 comments

toomanyrichies|next|

https://archive.ph/iHxAh

havefunbesafe|prev|next|

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.

noman-land|parent|next|

My theory is that he tracks down the yearbooks of people and then finds and interviews classmates who reveal all sorts of specific and unusual memories.

_whiteCaps_|prev|next|

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|parent|next|

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|root|parent|next|

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.

aguaviva|root|parent|prev|next|

Sonic Youth were dicks to him too.

No they weren't. That's just a meme.


brailsafe|parent|prev|next|

Name checks out, reference to Kingsgate Mall checks out, are you a spy!?

_whiteCaps_|root|parent|next|

Been a fan of Nardwuar since his CiTR days :-)

pentagrama|prev|next|

> 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


brailsafe|prev|next|

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.

4gotunameagain|prev|

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 ?


wk_end|parent|next|

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.


brailsafe|root|parent|next|

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.

steve_adams_86|root|parent|prev|next|

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)!


nwsm|parent|prev|next|

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.


runjake|parent|prev|next|

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.


throw0101d|parent|prev|next|

> 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|parent|prev|next|

Well, he's been at it since the 1990s, and I distinctly remember people being way less stuffy and easy to annoy back then

mewse-hn|parent|prev|next|

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.


bag_boy|root|parent|next|

The Richard Simmons comparison is PERFECT

kiloshib|parent|prev|next|

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


a57721|parent|prev|next|

I'm on your side.

He has met lots of interesting artists, but most of his interviews are devoid of value, don't communicate anything, uncomfortable to watch, he often comes off disrespectful and patronizing. The bombardment with factoids is super random too, he picks stuff from old magazines and many answers to that are "what are you talking about, no idea where you got that from". Or "omg, no way, who told you that", but it's always some irrelevant trivia.

I understand that some people find his persona entertaining, he is an iconic interviewer in some sense, but not a good one.


a_dabbler|root|parent|next|

I disagree, a lot of the interviews are quite humanizing and entertaining to watch (entertainment has value) and plenty of them being up early musical influences and encounters which might not be covered as much elsewhere (sometimes even forgotten by the artist themselves)

hluska|parent|prev|next|

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).


mikrl|parent|prev|

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.


rnd0|root|parent|

>If you think about it, he pioneered the style of completely annoying, insufferable yet somehow entertaining content that you see all over TikTok…

That's a good thing?