My Crib notes (or lack thereof)

A month ago the magazine I work for (which unfortunately is coming to an end this month after a good run) got a request from publicists for The Cribs about doing a story on the band. The Cribs is not usually a band Blur would cover – because it would be difficult to get in touch with it (since it is a British-based band) or because Blur mainly focuses on Athens groups or other up-and-coming bands – but since it was offering, we said why not.

Usually with these interviews I don’t need a lot of time – 15 minutes at the most – to get what I need for a decent-sized story. You never realize how much people can say in 15 minutes until you have to transcribe interview notes (the bane or reporters everywhere). But I was excited at the prospect of talking to a member of The Cribs for several reasons: it’s a great band with a long history, the new album is quite good, and its new band member is Johnny Marr, who previously wrote the music for one of my all-time favorite bands. I was pretty sure it wasn’t Marr I was going to talk to, which is fine since the story really needed one of the Jarman brothers to tell the story.

On Jan. 19 I was asked what my deadline was, and after writing I needed to have the 15-minute interview done by Feb. 1, the response was “I will definitely be able to get you on the phone with a Crib before Feb. 1st.”

Feb. 1 comes along, no Crib. This is not usual with publicists, and since I know this (and my real deadline wasn’t until Feb. 12), I wrote back again asking if there was any news. This time the response was “I am waiting on management to give me a time. I will let you know as soon as I have.”

OK, fair enough. Feb. 4 rolls around, I still have time but time is waning. So I inquired again, and my response was thus: “I just found out from management that we can probably get Gary on the phone early next week. Would that work?”

Yes, Gary Jarman would be perfect, set it up. So I got all my notes in order and waited.

Early next week arrived. Nothing. “I am still waiting on times from management. I will reach out to them again.”

They didn’t reach out, and that was the end of it.

I won’t be writing a story on The Cribs – a story I might add they wanted us to write and one I was excited about writing – because “management” decided Gary didn’t have 15 minutes to talk to some American reporter. Hey, that’s fine, I never really thought they were going to come through anyway.

It’s a shame, I had some good questions set up, and perhaps the Athens community might have learned a little more about a very good British band. But it doesn’t appear as if The Cribs need any publicity.

So, you know, good luck with that.