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Interview
 
Drawn into the void as it were: I have no choice but to add my two cents worth: Call it what you will I have a taste for the pop candy no one else likes. Call me Mister Black Chuckle Man, but in a world clamoring for a rainbow of fruity colors, I like the pariah.
 
Does anyone out there remember Interview? I was into them in the biggest way back in the late 70's early 80's. I know exactly one fact about them since their demise (when?) Their drummer Manny Elias went on to play with Tears for Fears.
 
Album #1 big oceans (all lower case) 1979 Virgin Records I bought it because WXRT in Chicago played a song that I initially thought was a new Elvis Costello Song called (again all lower case) here come the cavalry. Very poppy. The singer, Jeff Starrs had this very strangled, nasal voice. Catchy happy guitars, completely indecipherable lyrics which for me at 17 was a sure way of getting me hooked on repeat listenings. Add to the mystery an album cover done in four colors light greenish blue, red, white and pale yellow. Rectangles on the cover front and back and an inner sleeve with the stylized image of a fountain pen launched like a rocket over an ocean horizon and on the flip side four sharp cut lines fading into the horizon like the wake of some long gone ocean liner. design by ansel sadgrove (again all lower caps). However, the coup de grace is the absence of any photographs. Who were these guys. The complete mystery of them made them all the more sublime. The perfect cap to any day from high school through college was to play this and their second album with headphones preferable in the waning light of the day. The music evoked this sense of nostalgia for a time and place that certainly were outside my experience. This always felt like it was rock and roll written by someone who grew up in the 1920s or 1930s.
 
But, I'm just getting started. When I return, I'll go through each song in turn. If you post this out there, I'd be curious to find out who shows up. This is just the first of my many lingering curiousities about defunct bands.
Sign me up.
Hugh Musick
a.k.a. wilmo@interaccess.com  
[HM 7/27/96]