The Definitive Nadir D’Priest Interview!

As many of you know by now, I’m a huge fan of Waste Some Time With Jason Green on YouTube. If you love hard rock, punk, and music in general, you just subscribe to this great channel. There’s a number of ways you can support the show, from subscribing on YouTube to joining the program’s Patreon page and dropping a few bucks to get your question answered on weekly Live broadcasts. Jason truly does his homework, citing stats from many of the obscure videos and articles diehards like us read. That said, he adds his own spin, and does a fantastic job as an interviewer staying true to the course of the interview. It’s important to ask questions succinctly and knowing the difference between patiently letting the guest finish and losing control of the show. What I mean by that is simple. You ask the question and let the guest answer to their heart’s content, BUT, you never let the interview get derailed by a wordy answer that sees the guest go off on such a tangent that the whole interview becomes a runaway train. Knowing when to interject (fancy word for interrupt, LOL) is the sign of a great interviewer. I know because I’m a great interviewer as well.

What Jason does with music interviews is what I do with my thousands of fitness features. Interviewing is cool and all, but it gets old if that’s all it is. Question, answer, question, answer, question, answer. If that’s all you do then more power to you, but it starts to feel redundant. Interviews that can easily pass for conversations are the gold standard. Moreover, interviews that skip the inside jokes and hidden meanings, are always hits. Some interviews are full of innuendos and double and triple meaning statements accompanied by winks and grins. These types of interviews SUCK! They suck because it’s obvious the guest is a star, right? After all, they’re the ones being interviewed. And it’s clear – 99% of the time time – that the interviewer is either connected or respected enough that the star is appearing on their platform. So it’s obvious that both the star and the interviewer are insiders so why overstate the obvious by dancing around topics with cue words and chuckles meanwhile the frustrated audience sits their with WTF written across their face? Thankfully Jason would never do an interview like that. A great example of Green digging deep but sharing the knowledge is when he asked Nadir to speak on working with a certain producer who didn’t have a musical background. And Nadir hit the nail on the head by explaining that working with that gentleman wasn’t about his musical prowess, or lack thereof, but it was all about the vibe he brought.

With regards to Nadir D’Priest you couldn’t ask for a better example of an all-around rocker! I think everyone is well acquainted with tall tales of rich and famous rockers from VH1’s Where Are They Now to MTV Cribs! But seldom – if ever – have fans gotten the other side. As D’Priest mentions, they did get a taste of that when London inked with Shrapnel Records, but most of the band’s history dealt with paying dues, getting into scrapes, and dealing other real-life situations like getting their guitars stolen and labels changing its band name. He spoke about his time with underrated and legendary guitarist Lizzie Grey. How’s that for an oxymoron? He spoke about how talented he was and how hard he worked towards his vision of making London a mega success. He also spoke of Lizzie’s demise, which many fans are clueless about.

I really enjoyed hearing about the choice to go with D’Priest over London for the Playa Del Rock record. I always figured it was done over legal reasons and/or maybe inner band squabbling. It’s very interesting and disturbing that a record label thought ditching a name with that much history for the singer’s last name made marketing sense. Perhaps if London were selling gold records they could have resisted the idea, but Nadir spoke very candidly about the situation they were in from the very first deal. They could either make do with what was offered or they could eat crow.

The truth is if London hadn’t taken the shitty deal that made Non Stop Rock possible they would never have been on the Metal Years, they never would have had follow-up records, and they probably wouldn’t be talked about today. Whereas some bands may have sided with pride and not looked twice at anything less than a million dollar deal – others were all about making it – no matter what!

I don’t think there’s any question they made the right move.

So why didn’t they make it? Well, I’d say they did make it. As Nadir says in the Wasting Time interview, there were 2,000 working bands in L.A. all trying to get gigs, deals, and sell records. The fact London got a deal the first year Nadir joined and that they were able to make follow-up records is making it. The fact they worked in world-recognized studios, participated on tours, and had videos on MTV, VH1, and radio stations around the world, is making it! I think the question is why didn’t they make it huge? And that I think is covered really well in the interview by Nadir. While Lizzie was super talented and had an ironclad work ethic, his vision for London may have cost the group valuable time. Nadir says the two were like two peas in the same pod. They got along like brothers, but Grey was going for a sound and look that had come and gone ten years prior. Nadir talks about how as a teenage singer he more or less had to set the glitz guitarist straight. It wasn’t adversarial per D’Priest but it was very much framed in what was actually working for the band and what had not. Ultimately, Lizzie would go his own way, but Nadir would carry on with London.

I can’t recommend Nadir D’Priest’s interview on Waste Some Time With Jason Green enough! What’s unbelieveable to me is that Nadir/London are currently without management and actively wanting to play!! How can this be? Surely there’s a guy, gal, group out there that knows marketing, knows venue owners, and knows social media. I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to piece together a nice string of U.S., Mexican, European and Asian club dates for a band with this kind of history and a solid playlist of songs. London would also make a fantastic addition to various package deals and/or festivals. I can list 5-10 London songs that I know of and which would make for the core of their setlist. Then of course there’s Nadir’s solo stuff, maybe they could do a version of Public Enemy No1, and maybe dazzle the crowd with new music for upcoming releases.

Jason does a lot of work with Golden Robot Records. Maybe they might want to look into backing London for an upcoming record?…

One thing I’d love to hear and maybe I’m the only one (though I highly doubt it), would be Nadir re-recording some Spiders And Snakes tracks in a tribute record to Lizzie Grey. Again, S&S is 100% Lizzie’s British glitz style and that was the antithesis of what Nadir wanted with London, but it would be a heck of a cool tribute to hear what Nadir would do with these songs while paying homage to his old brother in arms. I’d buy that record, cd, and/or digi download in a heartbeat!!

In closing, WATCH THIS INTERVIEW, and WATCH IT AGAIN AND AGAIN!! Please support Waste Some Time With Jason Green and please support NADIR and LONDON! Great job fellas!!