Here’s a nightmare situation almost every writer will encounter at one point or another during their professional career:
After much effort and patience, you’re finally given the opportunity to complete an interview you have dreamed of conducting. You prepare, doing research and developing strong questions, then double check to make sure all your recording equipment is ready to go. When the day comes for your interview, you do your best to remain calm and work through your material as rehearsed. The conversation goes well, and for a few moments you feel like you’ve just captured something truly unique, but by the time you sit down to work on your article you realize the opposite has occurred. For one reason or another, be it human errors or a glitch in technology, your interview has been corrupted. Maybe the sound is bad, or perhaps your recorder died in the middle of the chat without anyone noticing, but whatever the case you have, at best, a small chunk of what should have been a complete feature.
This is how my morning began, and I’m sad to admit it is not the first time such a problem has occurred during my time in music writing. No matter how often it occurs, however, the sense of immediate panic and stupidity is always the same. After all, this is something that was entirely my responsibility. I set it up, I developed the questions, I took time out of the artist’s day to chat about things that were important me, and then I bumbled the most important aspect of all: Ensuring the feature was captured in a manner that would allow it to be shared, or at least transcribed, for others to enjoy.
I wish so much I could tell you that with proper preparation and attentiveness you can avoid from facing such horrors of journalism in your professional life, but to do so would be to convey a lie. Every writer I know has encounter some kind of problem between the time an interview is conducted and the time that writer sits down to create content out of the material, and the sources of these problems are far too numerous too count. It will no doubt happen to you too, and when it does you will feel-at least for a moment-as if you’re the laughing stock of writing. That’s all in your head, of course, but I still wouldn’t boast about such errors (like I am doing today).
As much as it sucks to admit, there is very little you can do to salvage interviews when problems arise with the recording. There are some cases where editing tools can help improve questionable audio, but when the content in question is a generally quiet conversation in a loud/noisy area you’d be wise to not hold your breath when waiting for such solutions to provide relief. The best thing you can do is be honest and admit that an error occurred, not just to yourself, but the people representing the artists as well. You will never be able to capture the same conversation twice, but most publicists and artists are willing to schedule make up interviews if time/scheduling allows. If not, perhaps you can use your memory to draft an editorial about the experience, using the comments you remember to help flush out your story. Don’t use quotes you can’t back up with a recording, but if someone expressed excitement over something it’s fine to convey that to readers. Just don’t claim anything was said, promoted, or hated on without having proof. People will call you out and you will be in hot water. Just don’t do it.
My latest mistake took me over an hour to understand. I interviewed Nick Thompson, vocalist for Hit The Lights, on January 22. We had a twenty-minute phone conversation, which touched on everything from touring, to the band’s new album, growing up in the world of pop punk, and the reason behind the band’s sometimes long periods of silence. At the risk of overstating my adoration for this feature, I hung up on that conversation thinking I had just completed one of the best interviews I had done with any member of the group in nearly ten years of writing. We covered A LOT of ground, and as far as I knew much of it had never been explored in prior interviews. It was, for lack of a better description, exactly what you hope to create when conducting an interview.
As I sat down to transcribe my interview, I knew something was wrong. The file, which should have been in one piece, was mysteriously split into three parts. The first recording sounded great, and I made a point to transcribe while it played. The second clip was shorter, running about a minute, and the quality was equally good. The third part, which of course contained the bulk of the conversation, was another story altogether. For seemingly no reason, the quality of Nick’s end of the conversation bottomed out. I was clear as day, but Nick can’t be heard. At all.
Roughly two hours passed between recognizing the issue with my recording and me abandoning all hope it could be fixed. I eventually swallowed my pride, emailed the band’s publicist, and changed my content plan for the day to include this post instead of the planned interview. I thought if my day had to go to crap because of something like this, it could at least be improved a bit by encouraging others to double check their gear and, should something bad happen, be mature enough to admit when things go awry. Publicists would rather hear that you had a problem than never hear from you again. It’s when you never run the content agreed upon and never offer a reason why that labels, PR, and artists begin to get upset.
Mistakes happen. Admit when things go wrong and people will be willing to not only listen, but also to help make things better. Being open about your faults is scary, but keeping them to yourself will only result in isolation. Chock it up to lessons learned and move forward.
All that said, I still want to share the portion of my interview I was able to transcribe. If you get a chance, please support Hit The Light. This band changed my life more times than I can remember, and I think their new album will be their best yet.
H: Hey Nick, thanks for talking to us today. How are you?
N: I’m good man. Watching ‘Galaxy Quest’ and chilling right now. We’ve got one more date with Motion City Soundtrack this weekend, but I don’t have to leave until tomorrow.
H: That’s a good place to start. How has that gone for you?
N: It has been a lot of fun, man. We’re not on every date though. They are taking out a bunch of bands. I think Hawthorne Heights is with them right now, but we hop back on this weekend for a show in Pennsylvania. It’s been a fucking honor though, honestly. They’re such great guys and that is such a great record.
H: How are kids reacting to the new material? Have you been playing anything more than “Fucked Up Kids”?
N: We actually haven’t played “Fucked Up Kids” yet. We might bring it out in Pennsylvania this weekend, as long as another song we hope to shoot a video for next month, but we will see how it goes. We try to ease into the new stuff.
H: So are you play material more fitting for the anniversary Motion City are celebrating?
N: I guess, haha. It’s not intentional. We just wanted to come up with a set list that had a lot of energy and fun. Most kids probably aren’t there to see us, so they might not care either way. We just try to have a lot of fun and put on the best set we can, then we sit back and watch Motion City do their thing.
H: Well “Fucked Up Kids” has been available online for over a week now. From your perspective, what have reactions been?
N: It’s actually way better than I expected. I try to keep my expectations low so that we’re never disappointed, but it’s been good. It’s also funny. I knew there would be reactions from all sides, especially about the style of the song and the lyrics. I saw people saying “How are they singing about ‘Fucked Up Kids’ while pushing 30?’ In reality, that is kind of the basis for the song. It’s us coming to grasp with the reality that we don’t know what kids are into these day, and then realizing that the generation before us probably felt the same about the things we enjoyed.
Through it all though, everyone has been very excited. It’s an easier one, as it’s really poppy, but I’m also excited to see what people think of the rest of the album.
H: That’s a good way to transition to more album talk. The single is clearly influenced by the earlier records, but is there a component of ‘Invicta’ in there as well?
N: There are elements of ‘Invicta’ and other stuff in there as well. We weren’t trying to get away from that sound, but with this record I think we made our poppiest, heaviest, and riffiest record to date. We tried new things, just like we did with ‘Invicta,’ and we pushed ourselves. So yes, there is a component of that, but I think this record is one that stands on its own as well.
H: That’s good to hear. I think it’s funny how people immediately jump to ‘Skip School, Start Fights’ for comparison. I get it enough, as this song feels a bit like a continuation of that sound, but at the same time it has been seven years since that record came out.
N: Right. I understand that as well. Honestly, we wouldn’t have this record if we didn’t do ‘Invicta.’ Without it, we wouldn’t be here. This record is different though, and it has a sound all its own.
