TV On The Radio: Looking For The Union Label
‘s unfortunate appearance on Saturday Night Live seems like it was forever ago in blog years, but it hasn’t even been two weeks yet! Anyway, singer/guitarist Kyp Malone talked to the Canadian Press about what exactly went down in studio 8H on that fateful night, and why he was really happy that his people had booked TVOTR a Colbert Report appearance a few days later.
“In the room, it sounded fine to us,” Malone says. “We had a really good time, and it felt really good. Then we came offstage and immediately started getting texts about how (terrible) the sound was.”
Malone says their sound engineer couldn’t work at the show because he’s non-union, so they put their faith in the SNL crew.
“I want to tell strangers on the street who keep talking to me about it that I’ll go back in time and be a union-working sound engineer, and also go into the future so I can duplicate myself and come back as two people and work the sound and do the performance,” he says.
The band performed on “The Colbert Report” the following week – host Stephen Colbert delighted in stroking Malone’s ample beard, comparing it to taking “a vacation in a faraway forest” – and the sound was much improved.
“Colbert seems to have saved us some humiliation,” Malone says.
Indeed, Colbert did. But what of those sound engineers at SNL? Given that week-in and week-out, the sound has been pretty much atrocious, can’t some move toward at least teaching them to mix better be made? Or should the show just start booking super-simple bands who the sound engineers can competently handle instead?
Thanks to Canadian tour manager, TV on the Radio seeing more of the country [Canadian Press]
