I Take It All Back, Rostam Batmanglij is Still the Best

Despite some minor production misjudgments in the recent past, Rostam Batmanglij is still the best. I’m so excited for him, receiving this very prestigious title that I just gave him and all! Now some explanation as to why we’ve turned into VampireWeekendOctopus.com recently and more importantly why Rostam is so great…The New Yorker (a magazine you probably haven’t heard of) has a story about Vampire Weekend this week that ends with the band having a visit with Blink-182′s popular counter-culture rising star Tom Delonge. Throughout the visit, Tom apparently pitches the idea of Vampire Weekend joining his recently founded music social networking site (basically an even less cool version of Myspace) Modlife in a pretty over the top manner. So much so that Rostam did something pretty great right in the middle of it. Here’s some excerpts from the article via Vulture…

After the interview, he led the band into a conference room with a flat-screen TV and launched into a long pitch for an Internet project he was working on — “a prepackaged Web site” for bands, called Modlife. “I term it an ‘operating system,’” DeLonge said. “You could sell music, you could sell movies, you could sell advance tickets, you could do advertising, you could do automated V.I.P. parties. We’re gonna be putting in live auctions, e-commerce.” He continued, “We’re doing it with the White Stripes.” He said Vampire Weekend could do all of its business through Modlife, with the Web site taking 25 percent of the profits. He demonstrated a video chat-room function by talking to a group of his fans: “Hey, everybody, I’m doing a demonstration with Vampire Weekend. If you want Vampire Weekend to be on Modlife, say ‘Yes!’” The chat-room users started responding: “Yes!” “Yes!” “Yes!” One wrote, “No!”

Pretty good start, but it gets better…much better….

DeLonge ignored it, and talked about video blogging: “Do you want to do normal blogs — or do you want to do it in the dark and have lasers going and make it look like you’re from space? And not call it a blog, call it a space cam?” He asked, “What have you guys been doing for a Web site?”

“Three out of four of us are on Twitter,” [keyboard player Rostam] Batmanglij said.

DeLonge shook his head. “I don’t want to be freaking on the money part,” he said. “But you guys know and I know that you’re trying to live in an industry that’s dying. And so Modlife is trying to give you the chance to survive.” Then he screened a trailer for a movie that his new band, Angels & Airwaves, had produced, called “Love” — images of an astronaut in a space station over swelling music. Batanglij started giggling, and DeLonge turned and looked at him.

“Uh, I just thought of something fun that we could do with our band,” he said.

“That’s rad,” DeLonge said evenly. “Cool.”

The Vampire Weekend members got up to leave. DeLonge shook their hands and said, “Consider this stuff.” Then he asked, “Why are you guys so mellow?”

Later, in their van:

The band members seemed rattled. “I started thinking about all kinds of things while he was talking,” Batmanglij said. “Like what it means to be in a band. Tom DeLonge is not that old. He’s thirty-three. Seven years older than me — that’s crazy.”

Tomson said, “You gotta hustle.” No one spoke for a while.

Hahahahahahahahaha. You the best Rostam!

I found the movie trailer Tom had the band sit through. It looks pretty much like your favorite movie trailer back in 6th grade.

Angel & Airwaves’ Love Trailer….

Closing Tentacles:

• Will Rostam be in the same position at Tom Delonge in the near future? Will Vampire Weekend ever turn their own trailer into a full-fledged movie?
• Will a collective dislike of Blink 182 between Vampire Weekend and their indie fan base create a bond that shall never be broken? Who doesn’t like reading about people who dislike Tom Delonge’s music?
• Is Vampire Weekend the most polite band in the world? Is this good or bad?