I’ve said it before more than once, but I’ll say it again: The Onion AV club consistently puts out some of the best pop culture writing on the internet. Their interviews are particularly insightful, and this one is no exception.

Holy shit.

Speaking of things I missed, the link above is to a post written by Tom Gates, The Format’s former manager, about the band’s breakup. He wrote it in 2009, exactly a year after Sam Means called to break the news to him.

Recalling the crazy reality of managing a band that got dropped from their major label and recorded an album that didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding, he writes:

[T]hese two guys (and their band of merry men) would work nonstop, doing almost anything that I asked them to do (the bad examples are hilarious and, given my ego, must appear in their stories and not mine). We opted to release their second record with only the help of the company that I worked for, a concept which is now gaining popularity but seemed like assisted suicide at the time. We tricked out the internet, trying almost anything that was invented in any given week, with the band’s newfound freedom allowing us to out-maneuver the clumsy beasts that are known as Major Record Labels (not without making some hilarious errors in judgment along the way). Nate answered the same ten questions about 5,000 times, in twenty languages. Sam minded to the business, phoning daily to keep tabs on finances and projections.

In short, we kicked some serious ass and, in my opinion, created our own luck using the technology that confused most other contemporary recording artists. Our ship may have looked beautiful from the outside but inside all of the passengers were screaming the same thing as we hurled along into uncharted space.

‘Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.’

Wonderful, heartfelt writing about a band that will always have a special place in my heart.

Read it now.

I stumbled across this 2008 interview with Nate Ruess of The Format/Fun that I had never seen it before. In it, he briefly discusses why The Format broke up:

“Nothing too specific that I could think of. I would like to believe with everything I’ve been told that it was more a matter of being burnt out and not feeling like we could make another record together because we never had a free moment away from each other. It was nothing dramatic. Sam and I have never really fought before, so it was nothing like that. I think he wanted to do other things and I’ve always wanted to be in a band with Jack and Andrew, so it really worked out nicely.”

Nate also provides this interesting tidbit:

“I had the opportunity to keep The Format name, but it’s not The Format without Sam. And right now, I’m so excited to be part of something new.”

Definitely worth a read.