I remember vividly the first time I stumbled across Nardwuar the Human Serviette. It was the summer of 2002, and I, like many music listeners, was just embarking on what would be an ongoing love affair with the White Stripes. I'd bought three of their records — White Blood Cells, De Stijl and a bootleg of the 2001 Peel Sessions — watched their buzzmaking MTV Movie Awards performance, and even seen them in concert for the first time, at Chene Park in Detroit with the Strokes opening. At that time I also frequented White Stripes.net, an obsessively detailed fansite and message board which regularly posts interview and live performance downloads for obsessively detailed fan dissection. It was on this page where I found an audio interview with the Stripes by some oddball Canadian who called himself "Nardwuar"...and as I listened, I realized that this interview was quite possibly the most surreal exchange I had ever heard.
You have to realize, too, that I wasn't even getting the full experience. Hearing Nardwuar, whose squeaky, lisping, Canadian-accented voice falls somewhere between Emo Phillips and an overexcited first-grader, is weird enough as it is, but seeing him is something else entirely: the Prince Valiant haircut covered by a tam'o'shanter, the mostly-plaid, vintage and mismatched wardrobe which looks like the aftermath of an explosion in a particularly uncool senior citizen's closet. In the White Stripes interview (now available in Real Video, MP3 and transcribed text form on Nardwuar's almost unnecessarily well-designed website), the "Human Serviette" wore a voluminous stars and stripes windbreaker, and opened proceedings by unveiling a gigantic poster of the Stripes' fellow Detroiter, Bob Seger, as depicted on his Stranger in Town album cover. Then, the grilling began: a flurry of rapid-fire questions, everything from Billy Childish to Loretta Lynn to Jack White's alleged exploits with groupies via Internet rumor. He would punctuate these questions by repeatedly asking for the names of his interviewees. Jack and Meg, standing helpless beside this whirlwind of hyperactivity, appeared alternately bemused and stricken.
"Nardwuar vs. the White Stripes" (his interviews are always best described in antagonistic terms) can be seen in excerpted form on his new DVD, entitled Doot Doola Doot Doo...Doot Doo! after the "shave and a haircut" rhythm with which he ends every session. I was glad to see it, since the summer when I first heard that interview still makes me a little nostalgic. But the thing is, it's neither the most interesting nor the most surreal thing to be seen on this disc. In a mind-boggling five and a half hours of footage, Nardwuar's DVD features Q&A sessions with such luminaries as Iggy Pop (he asks a series of questions about his cock), Marilyn Manson (he exposes his bare chest for no apparent reason), Vanilla Ice (he asks whether Ice was "necking with Corey Feldman" at a party), and ex-Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev (he says his trademark closing line, "keep on rockin' in the free world," in Russian). His singularly obnoxious, sub-gonzo interviewing style - which has provoked at least two hair metal has-beens, Sebastian Bach of Skid Row and Kevin DuBrow of Quiet Riot, to near-violence - is usually the root of these interviews' hilarity; whether he's peppering an obviously perturbed Henry Rollins with questions and no space for answers or bringing in Canadian "rock warrior" THOR to bend bars with his teeth in front of an aloof, arrogant and for once wordless Gene Simmons. But this isn't some warped Canadian version of Punk'd, as Nardwuar himself would be quick to remind us: schtick or no schtick, this dude takes himself seriously.
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