Chris Baio backstage at The Orpheum in Boston. (Photo courtesy of Jessica Teller/WERS)

Before playing a sold out show at the Orpheum in Downtown Boston, Vampire Weekend bassist Chris Baio sat down for an interview with WERS.org. Baio talks about blogs, bands and Boston, and reflects on the past 18 months on the road.

You had a few weeks between touring Europe and playing shows on the East Coast. Did you have the chance to work on some new music in that time?
Very little, actually. We did have a practice that was exclusively to work on new stuff and also on a remix together … right before Thanksgiving. Other than that, I mean, we were on Conan and we did the MtvU Woodies, and other than that it’s only been a couple of other days at home really. So it hasn’t been long enough, I guess. Our game plan, as far as new material goes, is we’re going to finish up this tour in a week. We’re going to take two and a half weeks off, and then on January 4th we’re going to regroup and just really start writing and recording.

Do you plan on working with any other artists in the future? Perhaps some African pop musicians?
We haven’t really ruled anything out. I think we’re always open to playing with other musicians and definitely working with other people. For right now the game plan is the four of us in a rehearsal space for the immediate future. But I could definitely see us working with someone else, whether it’s someone that we mix with or someone that we have come play on our record, we’ll see.

Your life has changed pretty drastically in the past 18 months. Does your success ever feel surreal, like it’s not happening?
In a lot of ways I would say it’s the opposite. It’s almost more natural, which maybe sounds a little bizarre, but it’s just the life that we’ve been living for the past 18 months. We spend so much time just sitting in cars going from place to place, just sort of hanging out as friends having, you know, pretty stupid downtime or whatever, and it’s not like it’s a surreal moment. I mean, there are definitely some points in the past year and a half that stick out. One being when we played Glastonbury over the summer, and we walked out on stage and there were 40,000 people, which you know, I cannot honestly think I’ve ever been to a gathering of people that are that many. So to go out on stage and perform for that many people was definitely a rush and definitely surreal. Playing SNL, also, in March, which is such an institution—I can think back to so many performances there and just having watched the show growing up—that was definitely a special moment for us. But, overall, those moments are very few and far between in the average life of a touring band.

Is Vampire Weekend’s success influenced by the blog era?
I think it’s very hard to say, I mean, maybe the way that our music spread, which is through the Internet, shows a different playing field from how the music industry was 15, 20 years ago. A lot of people sometimes ask us, “Oh, do you credit blogs for all your success?” But the fact of the matter is we were interviewed by Rolling Stone before Stereogum ever wrote about it, so it’s hard to find a clear causality there, if you know what I’m saying.

What about college radio’s influence?
I mean … our label XL, it’s very important to them. I know that we’ve printed up certain singles specifically for college radio, and as far as I know we’ve gotten good support there.

And you worked at Barnard’s college radio station. Did that have any affect on you? Did you end up being the one booking the shows early on for Vampire Weekend?
Yeah, a lot of the shows I would book early on. One of our first shows off-campus was at a place in Brooklyn called Pete’s Candy Store that is super, super small. There’s a PA there, but you control it from the stage. It can probably fit maximum 30 people. But that was from me sending an e-mail out and just attaching an mp3, which I found to be the way that I always communicated with people when I was doing college radio, and sort of spreading music or having music sent to us. And also, when our first tour came around, which was in July of 2007, which was right after I graduated, I had spent the last semester of college booking a lot of that tour. About midway through we had an actual booking agent come on and fill a lot of the gaps, but a lot of the tour was booked by me, definitely.

Must have been crazy to get out of college and jump right into this.
My timing was pretty lucky, I mean, yeah. I graduated, I moved home with my mom for two months, and we got in a minivan in July and just went to the other side of the country, all the way North.

And you’re a year younger than everyone else in the band.
Yeah, everybody else graduated in 2006.

So, Rostam and Chris Tomson, they both studied music at Columbia.
Yeah.

But you were in Russian regional studies. So, if I asked you two years ago what you would be doing in 2008, what would you have said?
I also studied math, and actually, during my last semester I interviewed for Teach for America, and I had accepted a job to teach math at that point. But I had to tell them that I wasn’t going to be able to do that when we all decided to go for it as a band. So if you had asked me two years ago–if you asked me February 2007–I probably would have said, “Oh, I’ll be teaching math two years from now.”

Do you keep up with what people are printing about the band at all?
Definitely early on. I would say that can be an encouraging thing, but at this point, everybody’s said everything about us, negative or positive, which I think is sort of the nature of blogs and music on the Internet. … To really keep up with it, odds are I’d be more, yeah, I don’t think it would really help me as a musician, or as a person, to really care. It sort of just is what it is and it’s sort of this world that if you really want to get wrapped up and really care about what people are saying about you on the Internet, you can search out so much and read so much, but at the same time, if you don’t look at it, it’s like it doesn’t exist. That’s kind of where I’m at now, having read both a lot of really positive things and a lot of really negative things about our band.

What’s the most annoying criticism that you’ve heard?
(long pause) That’s tough to say. The most annoying? I don’t know–I never like it when other people in bands have sort of–I guess I would say talk shit about us, because I think they’re basically doing the exact same thing we are, which is just making their music and playing, and we’ve never talked shit about anyone else because that’s sort of a weird mentality, I find, to bring to music. I mean, competition in one way can be good, if you’re trying to really better yourself and make the best records you possibly can, but when it manifests itself in saying “Oh I think this band fucking sucks,” I don’t know, I just don’t find that constructive in any way.

Are there any artists or albums that everybody in the band would place in their top 10?
We’ve been having a lot of trouble with that this year. I have found, very sadly, that with all the touring we’ve done, I’ve listened to the least amount of new music of any year, I think, in my life. I mean, we all like The Walkmen record. I don’t think all of us have heard the Gang Gang Dance record, but some of us like it—I really like that record. Lil Wayne, some, but I don’t think all of us have listened to it. It’s hard.

Have you ever played in Boston before?
Yeah, we’ve played here a bunch actually. We played at the Middle East twice. The first time was in August of last year, and the second time was about a year ago at the end of our second U.S. tour in December. We played at the Middle East again with our friends Ra Ra Riot and Tokyo Police club. In February we played at the Museum of Fine Arts, which was really fun because my sister went to the Museum School … she graduated in the Spring. It was her last semester, so it was really nice to hang out with her and to sort of see where she was going to school and then to play at the Museum.

The Middle East is an awesome venue.
Yeah, totally, we had a great time both times there, and then, it’s sort of weird, you would think that since February we would have come back to Boston, but it seems like a lot of the touring we’ve done has been abroad. All summer we were in Europe and Australia and Japan. But it seems kind of weird that we wouldn’t go to such a big city three hours from where we live since February. I think it’s really nice that we’re coming here and pretty much ending our year here, for the most part.

A few days ago there was a review about you guys in the New York Times. The writer, Jon Caramanica, said Vampire Weekend raises several questions. Most importantly: are plaid and khakis really cool again? Are they?
(laughs) Sure, why not, I wear plaid all the time. I think people should just wear what they want and what they feel comfortable in. If it’s plaid and khakis, that’s fine, if it’s something else, that’s fine too. I actually don’t wear khakis.

Which two bands would you rather see in a Royal Rumble: Puddle of Mudd vs. Staind, or Papa Roach vs. P.O.D.?
(laughs) I would go with the first one … uh, yeah, I would say that first one. But I don’t want to wish ill on any band, so I hope everybody could sort out their differences before it came to blows.

You’re really big on not talking bad about any of the other musicians out there.
Yeah. Because they’re just doing the same thing. They’re just out there making their music and even if it doesn’t necessarily appeal to me, it does appeal to some people.

That’s remarkable…
Well, there was one point kind of early on where some of us had sort of made fun of Nickelback a little bit in interviews. But then we were playing a venue called the Kasbah in San Diego, and in the office there were all of these Playboys—they were getting free issues of Playboy—and in it there was this 8-page interview with Chad Kroeger, the singer of Nickelback, and they were asking him like, “Oh how do you deal with all of this hate, I mean, so many people hate you,” and he’s like, “Yeah, I don’t know, I mean, I’m not Hitler, I’m just writing some songs.” I think I can … (nods)

Who would you rather see perform as a solo artist: the lead singer from Nickelback, or Fred Durst, from Limp Bizkit?
I don’t know, I read somewhere that Fred Durst is directing movies? Is that true? Do you know that?

Yeah, I did hear about that, I mean, I haven’t seen a lot of buzz around it…
Yeah, but there’s a precedence of him striking out on his own artistically outside of the band that he operates in, so maybe there’s a chance of him going solo one day. (laughter)

Sorry about these, I’m kind of running out of questions, but … anything else about what you’re going to do in the future?
In the future, you know, like I said we have a week of touring left on this album which is pretty incredible, because we’ve been doing this for a year and a half. Beyond that we’re going to get a little bit of rest at the end of the year and sort of put our nose to the grind in the beginning of the year and work on our album. We’re going to go to Mexico and South America in March for a little break in between when we’re working. I mean, I’m sure we’ll have some songs recorded by then. It will give us some perspective on it since we’re not going to be working on it everyday at that point. Then, you know, hopefully when we get back we’ll work for a couple more months, start touring in the summer, put an album out early fall.

I heard somewhere—I don’t know where it was, but that you guys went to Columbia?
Oh yeah, (laughs) what are the odds? Where did you find that?

Yeah, it took a lot … but … is your music inspired by the place where the band formed?
I mean, I think you could probably say that about almost any band, that the personalities that come together, and then the place that it happens obviously has some influence on the music they make. How to isolate that, and how that sort of manifests itself in our music, as opposed to something that I listened to when I was 12, or something that someone else in the band listened to right when the band was forming, it’s hard to say.

This interview was originally published on WERS.org, December 14, 2008.

Boston Police make an arrest across the street from the Cutler Majestic Theatre around 1 a.m., March 27, 2008. Two busts occurred at the same address within an hour of each other. (Photo by Ross Dallas/The Berkeley Beacon)

By Ross Dallas

It’s dark at the corner, except for the glowing white light of the 7-Eleven.

A man in a heavy coat stands in front of the convenience store, holding the door for customers and asking if anyone can spare change.

At 2:20 a.m., a police car flashes its lights, and those standing nearby walk casually in separate directions.

This is the intersection of Stuart and Tremont streets. And it’s on the same block as Emerson’s Little Building and Cutler Majestic Theatre.

In the first four months of 2008, the number of reported robberies here has already matched the total for 2007, according to the Boston Police Department.

“It is one of our identified hot spots,” said Boston Police Capt. Bernard O’Rourke. “When we assign our police officers, we assign a lot more to that area.”

O’Rourke said crime in the area is partially a result of the intersection’s nearness to St. Francis House, a homeless shelter on Boylston Street.

He also said the steady pace of late night customers frequenting convenience stores makes it easy for criminals to blend in.

Chief George Noonan, director of public safety at Emerson, said crime in the Theatre District echoes to the neighborhood’s past.

Before Emerson’s campus left the Back Bay, the Theatre District was the center of a thriving sex industry complete with strip clubs, prostitution and porn theaters. Locals called it the Combat Zone, and the name stuck.

While adult entertainment has been reduced to just two strip clubs and a few pornography stores, people still come to the same intersection for drugs.

“This is where it’s always been,” Noonan said. “The drug dealers don’t want to move because this is where the people are coming.”

Emerson students interviewed said they have had their share of shady encounters on the block.

Senior Shae Minnillo said he witnessed an older businessman smoking crack cocaine in the bathroom of a bar across the street from the Cutler Majestic Theatre.

The audio major said he usually gets asked for money and cigarettes whenever he walks toward the 7-Eleven.

“It’s like any city,” Minnillo said. “You just avoid eye contact.”

He recalled an October 2005 incident in which two people were killed and a third person injured during a shooting at the intersection of Warrenton and Stuart streets, just behind the City Place building.

Tom McCusker, a senior writing, literature and publishing major, said one of his first impressions of the area involved someone screaming at him while McCusker was filming for Emerson Independent Video. The man, McCusker said, seemed under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

“We told him that we weren’t taping him,” McCusker said. “He eventually walked away but he walked away screaming at us.”

McCusker and Minnillo both said they have seen as much crime and drug dealing next to Downtown Convenience, on Boylston Street, as on the corner of Stuart and Tremont.

McCusker remembered once seeing police tape and blood on the sidewalk outside Downtown Convenience.

“I think I’ve gotten used to it,” McCusker said as an undercover police vehicle flashed its lights and turned on its siren next to Downtown Convenience.

O’Rourke said the nearby 7-Eleven is taking steps to control crime and shoplifting by installing security cameras. He said the store also switched from being open 24-hours to closing at 3 a.m. O’Rourke said he feels people will no longer have an excuse to remain on the corner later than that.

Noonan said he attends Midtown and Park Plaza neighborhood meetings, and frequently hears concerns about crime from Emerson administrators, local landlords, bar owners and area tenant groups.

“Never is there a meeting where the intersection of Tremont and Stuart streets is not mentioned,” Noonan said.

A version of this article appeared in The Berkeley Beacon, Emerson College’s student newspaper, March 3, 2008.