This past weekend, guerilla journalist (check out the full transcripts of some of his crazier interviews in Chart mag) and MuchMusic personality Nardwuar the Human Serviette brought his veteran punk-pop band The Evaporators to Toronto for a pair of Canadian Music Week gigs at the Horseshoe Tavern. While most know him for his wacky interviewing style and remarkable ability to infuriate rock stars, Nardwuar is rapidly gaining rockstar status of his own with the success of the Evaporators’ new release Ripple Rock. Nardwuar kindly took time out of his schedule last week to talk to The Varsity about the new album, and some of his interesting adventures in, er… journalism.

TS: Who are you?

NARDWUAR: I am Nardwuar the Human Serviette from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada-singer, screamer/occasional organ player for The Evaporators.

TS: Ripple Rock is #1 on almost every campus radio station in Canada. After so many years of faithful service to CiTR-FM Vancouver, how does it feel to have your band topping the college charts?

N: Actually, it’s quite a good feeling! We have been submitting music since 1989 … but we haven’t shot up the charts like this! I’m totally stoked and honoured, and I’m also pretty stoked that it made it up to #28 on the CMJ Top 200 for North American stations, which of course includes Canadian stations. I am enjoying every little minute of it, so thank you for asking! We feel great!

TS: Can you tell me what you were doing on February 21st, 1986?

N: Wow! You have been digging deep! I was actually celebrating because we’d just done our first practice on February 20th, 1986. The song we jammed on was actually “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” by The Clash. I remember the guys came over and we started playing the stuff, and I really didn’t know how to sing-I still don’t know how to sing-but I remember having the song playing in my ghetto blaster in one ear, and the band was in my right ear, and I was just yelling it out! That was pretty cool.

TS: You once made some trouble for former Prime Minister Chrtien, didn’t you?

N: I went to the closing conferences at APEC in 1997, and I asked him a bunch of questions about punk rock and protesting… the answer he gave was wildly quoted across Canada: “For me, pepper, I put it on my plate.” It was pretty hilarious because all the media quoted this answer Jean Chrtien gave, but they didn’t credit me! The media probably didn’t want me there in the first place because I’d been at the Mikhail Gorbachev press conference a while earlier, and members of the media were offended that I told him too “keep on rocking in the free world.”

TS: You once interviewed Bill Kaysing. Do you think the moon landing was faked?

N: He’s the guy who put that theory out, and I totally believe it! It’s actually one of my favorite interviews I’ve ever done. He had a really interesting theory about how if the moon landing was true, when they took a picture of Earth from the moon, how come there were no stars in the background? Kaysing believed that there were no stars in the photo because if there were, amateur astronomers could add the distance up between the stars and prove that it was faked in the Nevada Dessert. It’s a great theory that’s out there, and people can check it out at Nardwuar.com!

TS: Do you ever talk to Sebastian Bach of Skid Row anymore?

N: I never ever talked to Sebastian Bach again after he took my favorite toque off my head and smashed the tape I used to interview him. I never did get my toque back!

TS: Well Nardwuar the Human Serviette, keep on rocking in the free world, and “shave-and-a-haircut” –

N: Whoa, an alternate version! Doot-doodle-loot-doo –

TS: Doot doo!