Vampire Weekend Cover Band Creator Sets the Record Straight, Sorta

It was the Craigslist ad heard 'round the world: Someone out there (well, in Brooklyn) wanted to form a Vampire Weekend cover band, and promised tacos to those who showed up to audition. Since then, all sorts of questions have been circling—no one felt sure it wasn't a joke. Even when the new group, which has now been dubbed The VW Bugs, launched a MySpace (and attracted 12 friends!) and started Tweeting, it still wasn't clear if the whole thing was legit. But Katharine Brandes, the woman behind The VW Bugs, insists that it is.

In an e-mail to Paste, she assured us that not only does the group exist, but The VW Bugs are practicing, recording, and planning gigs, and they will be the subject of a Web-based documentary ("we are somewhere between pre-production and post-production," she says). Despite this guarantee, the rest of her answers didn't quite quell our suspicion that this might just be one of the biggest practical jokes in the past three to 70 years.

Paste: One would assume that you're a pretty big Vampire Weekend fan. How big of a fan would you say you are, exactly?
Katharine Brandes: I'm the mid-sized sedan of Vampire Weekend fans.

Paste: How did the idea for the Vampire Weekend tribute band first come to you and what made you decide to follow through with the idea?
Brandes: I was rollerblading through Williamsburg, and I thought to myself, what this town really needs is a Vampire Weekend Cover Band.

Paste: How many responses to the ad did you receive and how did you settle on the final group?
Brandes: There were three rounds of auditions and we finally settled on the final five members, all of which are Princeton students. There were somewhere between 3 and 70 applicants.

Paste: How do you respond to people who ask if this whole thing is just a joke?
Brandes: Who is saying that?

Paste: How true is the "The VW Bugs realize that they collectively only have the partial album of Vampire Weekend's self-titled" tweet?
Brandes: C'est un mensonge blanc. [Editor's note: Translates to "It's a white lie."]

Paste: What challenges do you think the group will face as they pay tribute to a current, relatively new band that are different from challenges faced by groups who pay tribute to bands that have either disbanded or have been around for several years?
Brandes: In this post-9/11 Internet age we live in, it's possible for the tribute band to usurp the power of the band to which they are paying tribute. The younger generation has grown used to not paying for intellectual property and, in so doing, respects it less. In this way, this Vampire Weekend Tribute band is a sort of thought-experiment on the inherent morality of the Internet and what meritocracy is.

Paste: What can you tell me about the reported documentary about the VW Bugs?
Brandes: This is happening. We've been filming, and it will be aired in webisodes eventually, hopefully on Pitchfork TV since they've been covering us with as much gusto as UsWeekly covers the octomom or Jon and Kate plus eight. (What is their appeal anyways?)

Paste: Do you have a background in PR/management?
Brandes: Well, my real job is being in charge of branding/marketing for a fashion brand, so 'si.'

Paste: I know everyone's going to ask--but what's the deal with the tacos?
Brandes: Actually, we've moved on to Banh Mi now, so asking me about tacos is like asking Brangelina about the Brad-niston days—just a totally different era.

Related links:
Reviews: Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
News: Peter Gabriel to Cover Vampire Weekend
News: Vampire Weekend/Ra Ra Riot Supergroup's LP Gets Date

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