surprise!

This morning I got to the office at 11 and the bottom of my (short) to-do list from my editor says, "Interested in interviewing Jenny Lewis at 1:45?" As in Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley.

WHAT?!!

I knew she was being covered in the fall issue, but I also knew someone was supposed to interview her in person in New York or Los Angeles. Apparently stuff fell through, it got changed to a phone interview, and the writer couldn't do it at that time. I'm a big Rilo Kiley fan and I have all of their albums, but I don't know a whole ton about them, and hadn't heard their new album that comes out in August. But thankfully, the writer already had a list of questions, so my job was pretty much to ask those questions. I was still freaking out a little bit (some nervousness, but mostly excitement).

So my editor sends me a link to stream "Under the Blacklight" (which is awesome, and lot different from their other albums), and I reword a couple of the questions.

Ten minutes before I'm supposed to do the interview, the publicist e-mails me and changes a bunch of things with how I'm supposed to call Jenny and Blake Sennett (Rilo Kiley guitarist, who played Ronnie Pinsky in Salute Your Shorts and Joseph "Joey the Rat" Epstein in Boy Meets World). And it wasn't even until that point that I knew I'd be talking to Blake too.

So I did the interview, asking the writer's questions, and it was the weirdest interview I've ever done. They're obviously doing a million interviews for the new album, and both of them were just so spacey and distracted. And I could tell they thought some of the questions were really dumb, but they knew I didn't write them so that made me feel a little better. Very, very strange/bizarre though. I think the original writer is still doing the story though, based on answers from this interview.

And less than an hour after that I interviewed Lindsay Powell (who performs as Cake Bake Betty). That went well, and her music is amazing. She's the same age as me, which seems so weird, not sure why.

But uh, yeah, busy day!

Oh yeah, and my Feist review from last week. Crazy, crazy.

It only took me until the sixth week of my internship …

… but the workaholic in me finally kicked in. (I can't believe it's already been six weeks.)

So basically, I have 248453 projects I'm working on, and I got pretty stressed out.

Tuesday night I saw Feist and Grizzly Bear, which was absolutely amazing. And sold out. And free. I went by myself (because I couldn't get a +1 and it was sold out), and was right in front against the barricade. With Grizzly Bear, I had listened to their most recent album, Yellow House, but didn't get that into it, but when I saw them live it all made sense. So when I went back to listen to the album again it was sooo much better. Can't wait to see them again at Pitchfork next month. And Feist just kicked a lot of ass, because she's Feist and that's what she does.

I went to Venus on Wednesday and didn't have time to work on my review of the show because I interviewed the third sister from Eisley and had a bunch of other stuff going on. Long story short, I sat at a café down the street from me for three hours last night working on my review and coming up with questions to ask Kathryn Calder from the New Pornographers, who I was supposed to interview at 10 a.m. today.

I was super stressed, and didn't finish my review like I was supposed to (but I was up until almost 2 a.m. working on stuff), and felt totally unprepared for my interview.

Got up early this morning to finish the review and make sure my questions were OK, and sacrificed my hygiene for my job (as in I didn't shower). And at 9:17 a.m. I was still stressed and feeling unprepared, about to get ready to go to work, but then Lauren (publishers' assistant) calls me to let me know that someone from the UK is calling about my interview to see if I can do it immediately. I frantically packed up my stuff and hauled my ass to the office (thank god it's only a six-minute walk), because I couldn't record the interview with my cell phone or our cordless house phone.

So I rushed around like a mad-woman, but did the interview (which went a lot better than I expected), and finished my review about an hour and a half later. Luckily, my editor asked me if I wanted the day just to write, which reeeeally helped me out.

But at the end of the day, I remember that I actually love what I'm doing, and I think it'd help if I told myself that during the times I'm really stressed.

And on a lighter note, I reviewed the new Polyphonic Spree album. Also, this weekend should be a lot of fun.

two posts in two days … really?

So today I learned the tedious art of transcribing interviews. I typed notes while I was interviewing the girls from Eisley, but I also recorded the conversation (first time I've ever done that!), so I had to go back to fill in the blanks in my notes.

The whole interview was about 40 minutes long, but it took me about 2 hours to transcribe it. Awesome, right? Haaa.

It was gorgeous outside today (gorgeous and really, really hot), and I walked a mile and a half to a farmers market, where I didn't even end up buying anything. It was pretty sweet though, and a nice walk. In the afternoon it randomly rained a couple of times, then at about 5:30 our power went out. Of course it was right after my roommate Max put clothes in the washing machine … and he desperately needed to do laundry because he's leaving tomorrow to go to Turkey for study abroad … and it just kind of sucked. Apparently a lot (or maybe all) of our part of the street was out, so we went to a café down the street, which had power, and hung out there for a while.

This is what happens when the power goes out on Sheffield:



Miraculously, the ComEd people weren't lying when they said it'd be fixed by 7:30, so we came home to our apartment and everything was OK. This is kind of random, but when we were at the café I read a really interesting story in WIRED magazine, about some crazy fan that stalked the singer for Linkin Park. She broke into all of his online accounts and changed passwords and stuff like that … it was really creepy. There are some crazy, crazy people in this world.

i think it's time for an update

I'm really bad at this whole blog-that's-not-a-livejournal thing, but I really am trying to update this more … except that I'm not sure anyone even reads it (anyone out there? no? didn't think so)

Anyway …

Chicago is still awesome, minus a little bit of stupid drama (which may or may not include me not getting along with one of my roommates), and the fact that I still don't have a paying job (don't ask, I don't want to talk about it).

Venus is great. I'm learning a lot, and taking advantage of the fact that I have people available to me who can help me with my writing — especially my review writing, which needs a bit of work (can you say understatement?).

I have a ton of stories coming up, and I love that I have a lot of freedom when it comes to pitching ideas. As far as the fall issue goes, though, I only have a CD review or two so far, which is better than nothing, but it could end up being more.

Today I pretty much just had a free day to work on my stuff because Amy is in New York, so I spent a long time researching Eisley, then interviewed two of the girls in the band, which I think went really well. I was a little nervous, partially because I love the band but mostly because last time I interviewed a band of people near my age (the girls I talked to from Eisley are 18 and 25), it wasn't as easy as I expected and I had to pry answers out of them (Meg & Dia). They were really nice people, just not as talkative as I had hoped. Today, on the other hand, left me with five typed pages of notes from the interview. I'm excited to write the story.

Last weekend I saw and reviewed the Noisettes, a GREAT band from the UK. A band called The Maccabees opened from them and they were great — also from the UK, and both definitely worth checking out.

Monday I saw Architecture in Helsinki, one of the best shows I've been to recently. They're an Australian indie pop band with really upbeat, fun, danceable music. They were great to watch because everyone in the band changed instruments a bunch of times, and the band as a whole is adorable. All four of the Venus editorial interns were there, so that made it a lot of fun. Architecture has an album coming out in August, Places Like This, and I highly recommend picking it up. If you go to their MySpace, listen to "Heart it Races." Fun(ky) song, it'll be stuck in your head and you'll want to listen to it 24/7.

Then last night I saw Matt & Kim at Subterranean, a tiny venue in Wicker Park. Not a good experience. The guys letting people in were douchebags, and the two opening bands were horrendous. I was expecting cute indie pop or something and got like, thrash punk shit. Lesson learned: always check out bands online before going to see them. Matt & Kim were good, except that I couldn't see because half of the fans were onstage. Highlight of the night: the guy and girl who were DJing in between bands. I had never seen people DJ up close like that and it was so fascinating, mostly because of the way they moved while doing it, but it was really sweet to watch.

Tomorrow I think I'm going to see the Walkmen at a free festival downtown, and then Feist/Grizzly Bear on Tuesday (so excited!).

Hmm I guess maybe I'll use this blog for music stuff? Meh, who knows.