Recently, Keith Murray, from We Are Scientists [if you don't know this band you should sincerely check them out], chatted with me for a bit while waiting in a long European buffet line about his band’s emerging presence and much more.

E: You’re in the middle of a really big tour right now. Do you think that touring plays a bigger role these days in being a band than when you started the band?

K: Um, I mean, I think perhaps, proportionally, no. I don’t think anything’s really changed about touring for us and I’m not sure that the fruits of the touring labor are necessarily more substantive. It does seem like the selling of records has become definitionally less…of a factor in measuring how well you’re doing. I feel like touring is probably about as important as it ever was and the space that…the big gaping chasm that’s been left by diminishing album sales has sorta filtered itself into other things. Like, I feel like, weirdly, licensing now is playing a much bigger role than it used to. And online presence, in general, is sorta replacing sales. I feel like touring is a rock that is not changing.

E: Speaking of online presences, I’m interested in knowing what you think about Myspace since it started getting big in the middle of your career with We Are Scientists.

K: I feel like…and I’m sure there are examples that can contradict what I’m about to say…but in my experience, Myspace seems…..sort of like the free release thing that Radiohead did with In Rainbows…it works really well once people know what they’re looking for. But I’ve never experienced a situation where I was trolling around Myspace and discovered a band. That seems like a reach for me. Read More »

I have a really bad habit of singing along to songs I don’t know. I like to sing. It makes me happy. And if I feel so inspired, I don’t really mind if I’ve never heard the song before. I try and predict the next note, and sometimes I’m right….

This bad habit extends to songs I do know, but whose lyrics I’m slightly confused about. I get it in my head that the line should be one way—the first way I heard it—and despite the world being “itch,” and not “bitch,” I feel like it’s OK to give my own interpretation.

Then there’s the songs I just have no idea about. Do you remember that scene from Tommy Boy where Chris Farley and David Spade are trying to sing along to It’s the End of the World as We Know It? “Six o’clock, TV hour, hum-diddy-dum-dum, du….” Yeah. Does anyone know the words to that song? Or how about Bruce Springsteen’s Blinded by the Light—did he really just say “revved up like a douche?” Read More »