Wednesday December 21, 2005

The other night I turned on the TV right before bed and caught this band playing a pretty catchy song on Letterman. Turns out I had met them before.

Many years ago when I was doing my first radio story about the writer Neal Pollack, I met a band of three eager young men. Not just a group of young men, but an actual band. They showed up at several of Neal’s readings and then later at a party in Santa Monica where they brought out acoustic guitars and bongos.

They said they were called We Are Scientists. According to the tape log I just pulled out my file cabinet, they explained that they were a “science fiction based rock group.” One of the members continued, “We Are Scientists, but we’re like the world’s greatest fighting team basically. We consistently save the world from various beasts and other catastrophes and then sing about it.”

I pressed record while they played. They didn’t end up in the final story, but we included a clip in the outtakes on transom.

It’s exciting to see how far they’ve come since then. The fickle and bitchy NME loves them, they’ve got a new record out soon on Virgin, and a couple of videos directed by one of the guys from the Lonely Island. You know, the team behind some of the funniest things on SNL in a long time that you’ve already read about on BoingBoing and Gawker.

More new radio soon. I promise.