Pitchfork: I interviewed Thomas Mars from Phoenix when they won a Grammy last year, and he talked about how your 1997 Grammy performance of "Where It's At" had a big effect on him because it was so off-center.
B: That's interesting. So much felt like it was going into a black space at that time-- there was no way to register what it was doing or if it was just being ignored. Like, there was one time we were on the American Music Awards, and when we got there they told us that we had to play to a recording. I thought, "This is going to be really good because now I can just have the band do other things."
So the band stopped pretending to play within the first 30 seconds-- some people were doing calisthenics while others had gone in the audience and were just hanging out. My drummer was wearing a ski mask and playing with his hands. It might have been a little bit obnoxious or bratty, but it was so liberating-- just having Garth Brooks and Whitney Houston in the front row, not sure what was happening. It was one of those moments when the machine shudders for a second.
I saw the telecast later that night, and after about the first 30 seconds, they cut to the horns, and they were gone-- it was just empty microphones. And then you see somebody doing sit ups, and then they just cut to my face so you couldn't see anything. The rest of it was just on my face and shots of confused audience members. I do remember seeing a few little things, like a fist fight or somebody knocking down an amp, near my ear lobe in the frame. [laughs] That's the kind of thing you do in your 20s. But a few moments like that one felt like this last blast of something random.
Full interview here at Pitchfork.
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