WordsWithGrace, a major contributor to a super-secret NFZ project and very much a friend of the blog, sends in this contribution about a radio report she heard this morning:
Woke up this morning to hear Fresh Air’s Terry Gross talking with singer Colin Meloy of the Decemberists on her NPR radio interview program. As she’s a big Colbert fan, it doesn’t take too long (around 15 minutes in) for her to bring up the Guitar Solo Challenge; she even plays a clip of Stephen issuing the challenge. Colin says:
- it “came out of nowhere”; they had no idea in advance that Stephen was going to issue the challenge; there were no behind-the-scenes negotiations beforehand
- they didn’t know about Stephen’s original Green Screen Challenge [official NFZ frown> — they had shot this footage for an animated video but the animation hadn’t worked out, so they offered it to their fans to finish
- they found out about the challenge when guitarist Chris Funk was watching TCR while they were flying back from New York on JetBlue
- they had no idea, before the Shred-Off, that the entire show was going to be devoted to it, or that people like Kissinger would be involved (the only person they knew about was Peter Frampton, but they were sworn to secrecy). They thought it would be a little segment at the end of the show.
They also discuss a Decemberists song inspired by an aspect of the Catholic
struggles in Ireland, so there’s that Irish Catholic connection again.The link:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7061028
(audio not available until this afternoon)
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