Or at least I am very certain it helped.
Anecdote time.
Back in 2014, I was being interviewed for a paid internship at Slacker Radio. A position at the time I desperately needed to make ends meet. To mask this, I was rocking an unfitted blazer with a black V-Neck, trying to give the appearance that my life was somewhat together. However, as the interview was getting further in, I had a feeling that I wasn't leaving enough of an impact. At the time, most of my background was working in digital video and college radio, which sounded like a miss for Slacker Radio. Then I heard a magic sentence:
“We have professionals curating their respective genres here at Slacker.”
My response was “Do you have a metal guy? I like to think I am a pretty knowledgeable in metal. Like you guys ever hear of the pirate metal band, Alestorm?”
That’s right, I name-dropped Alestorm in an interview. You see at the time I was listening to the Back Through Time album in my car to get prepared for Sunset on the Golden Age album, which was due to hit in 3 months. And to me, there may never be a better time to get into the plundering specifics of the band to solidify my knowledge of unique metal groups. In the next 5 minutes, I would go into great detail Alestorm. From the live antics of drinking and sing alongs, to the shanty songs, to the lyrics about wenches and taverns and even lead singer Christopher Bowes' copious keytar; I covered it all.
By the time I finished up my ramblings -- almost forgetting that I am in an a job interview -- we wrapped up the meeting.
My response was “Do you have a metal guy? I like to think I am a pretty knowledgeable in metal. Like you guys ever hear of the pirate metal band, Alestorm?”
That’s right, I name-dropped Alestorm in an interview. You see at the time I was listening to the Back Through Time album in my car to get prepared for Sunset on the Golden Age album, which was due to hit in 3 months. And to me, there may never be a better time to get into the plundering specifics of the band to solidify my knowledge of unique metal groups. In the next 5 minutes, I would go into great detail Alestorm. From the live antics of drinking and sing alongs, to the shanty songs, to the lyrics about wenches and taverns and even lead singer Christopher Bowes' copious keytar; I covered it all.
By the time I finished up my ramblings -- almost forgetting that I am in an a job interview -- we wrapped up the meeting.
Now, if you are wondering if they hired me… well, I’m kind of the Slacker metal guy and writing this article for LiveXLive, so what do you think? Surprisingly I was hired and then after a year became a full time employee, working at a dream job that I probably wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for Alestorm.
So what’s my point? The next time you’re hard pressed in an interview, you might just want to consider talking passionately about pirate metal. It worked for this guy.