How did it feel to jam with Rick Nielsen and Peter Frampton on The Colbert Report?
RS: Oh my God, it was great. The whole experience was incredible. I wrote that silly song about Stephen just to be cute, just hoping I’d get a mention on his show. The week that I was writing it, he sparked up that controversy with The Decemberists, so I kind of rewrote the lyrics so the song had his back against his detractors. [Laughs.] Then I sent the song off to him. Apparently he had a writers’ meeting, and the whole thing consisted of him singing and dancing along with it, and a couple days later I got the call asking me to play on the show. I knew that Peter Frampton was going to be the stand-in for Stephen, but I didn’t know Rick Nielsen was going to be there until my wife and I walked into the dressing room. Rick Nielsen is the reason I even took up music in the first place. When I was in sixth grade, [Neutral Milk Hotel’s] Jeff Mangum and I went to see Cheap Trick play. It was my first concert. We met [Olivia Tremor Control’s] Will Hart at that show. That was a seminal show f
