Last week, Fred Nicolaus, one half of Department of Eagles, looking dapper in a blue blazer with a gold button, stood outside a Starbucks in Manhattan and spoke with me about a number of topics, including Conan O’Brien, Jerry Springer, and bad puns. The bulk of the interview will be published in Thrasher magazine in the near future, but what interested me most was the heart-warming drawings on the band’s website. Nicolaus’ mother, an elementary school teacher, put on her son’s album during a free drawing session and the class produced some amazing results:

Click here for more.

Fred and I spoke about the drawings, and since it probably won’t be published in the interview, I’m going to put it here:

I was looking at the website and loved the section where your mom had her students do drawings based on your music.
That’s my favorite part of the site. The funniest part about them is that I don’t understand this concept of a band being two people on a tropical island. There were about twenty of them and almost all of them had an island. It’s really weird; it’s a simple motif and I can understand why kids would be attracted to it, but I don’t know what it has to do with playing music. Normally when you see people on a desert island it has nothing to do with music.

I think my favorite was the one with the guy saying, “I know, I rule!” and the other guy saying, “Yeah.”
Yeah, that one is great.

Have you decided whether that’s you or Dan that’s ruling?
That’s Dan and I’m the one agreeing. At that point I don’t think the kids had met Dan so maybe it’s an extrapolation of his personality.

How did your mom decide to do that?
Well, I don’t know if you have any relatives are teachers, but my mom is always working my brother and I into her stories. So every time I go to visit the kids know everything about what’s going on in my life, like if I just broke up with my girlfriend or something. There will be 5-year-old kids telling me “I’m so sorry.”

And if you haven’t heard In Ear Park yet, I highly recommend checking it out.

In Ear Park

No One Does It Like You

This entry was posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 12:38 pm and is filed under songs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.