Chris even went as far as to offer to travel to our hometown of Brampton to do the interview, which I thought was very humble of him considering most interactions like this would typically take place down in the city. We decided to meet at one of the local parks we used to hang out at in the wee hours of the night when we partook in our smoking sessions, only this time it would be in broad daylight.
Chris showed up in shades and a smile, looking like someone you might see at a Nine Inch Nails concert. Mike had long been a fan of goth and industrial music, so the two of them hit it off right from the get go, chatting about their favourite bands and what not. Despite looking like someone who'd be a snobby introvert, he was actually very cool and laid back, even sharing some ganja with us as he rolled the tape.
Instead of writing things down, Chris just hit record on a pocket tape recorder and we were rolling. It was a very personal experience, just four guys sitting around talking rock. It ended up being a fairly humorous experience and we were all full of laughs and smiles. We got into some pretty funny conversations, but Sesame Street seemed to be a reoccurring subject matter throughout the interview. Chris did write a few notes down, just to ensure he had the proper spelling of our names and whatnot.
Once he had all the material he needed, he reached into his black bag and pulled out a nice high quality camera to snap some band photos. Since we were at the playground we decided to take some light hearted photos of us on the swings, see saws, monkey bars, and other apparatuses. The money shot ended up being a picture of the three of us going down a slide together, which would end up being the photo he used in the finished article. We exchanged our final pleasantries and called it a day. It was a wrap.
As the sonic summer was preparing to transition into fall, the issue of Eye was finally published and hit the streets. I clearly remember having breakfast at the village by the grange with Derek early one morning when we saw the newspapers being dropped off by the delivery guy. We quickly rushed the piles of still bundled papers, broke the plastic seals, and grabbed one each. Sure enough after leafing through a few pages we came upon our article. It was practically half of a page and even had a colour photo, we were totally stoked. It was even more of an honour to be in an issue that had Sonic Youth on the cover as well as a large article on them in the pages within.
After we each read the article to ourselves, we headed back over to the piles of newspapers and grabbed a few more copies each. To this present day I still have one pristine copy safely packed away in my art portfolio as a keepsake. It was one thing having a demo review in Eye, but having an actual article on us was simply mind blowing to three young men. Chris came to our next show and of course we had to hang out with him, share some herb, and give him mass amounts of props on a job well done.
The article definitely garnered us some more attention, which was apparent by the growing number of people coming to see us perform live. We had grown accustomed to seeing the same faces at most of our shows, but now we were seeing a lot of new faces, even very important ones, such as band members from Canadian acts like Blue Rodeo and Bare Naked Ladies. It was apparent that the ball was continuing to roll for us in a positive direction.
We had been in Eye magazine twice now, and it gave us a taste in our mouths that made them water for more. Our next goal was to make big enough waves in hopes of getting to the next level of news...NOW magazine, the big brother of Eye mag. Our hard work and perseverance was definitely paying off and we couldn't of been happier, but Derek still had a bigger picture painted in his mind for us.
He had decided to goto the CMJ music festival in New York that fall to try and help make Grasshopper an internationally known name, so we had a lot of work ahead of us to help him prepare for his upcoming venturing vacation...
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