On Monday, we broke the weird story about Wayne Coyne bringing an inert grenade to Will Rogers World Airport. Since we published the original report, it's gone semi-viral in the music and gossip blog industry. TMZ, The New York Post, Spin (and Spinner), The Daily Mail, StereoGum, Fuse and hipster bible Pitchfork all covered the story, which gave us a 20% jump in typical site traffic. Even our own Oklahoman got in on the action, but unlike all the outlets mentioned above, they failed to give us any credit for breaking the news. Assholes.
Wayne Coyne did give a brief interview to Pitchfork about the event. He kind of took responsibility for creating the "dumb accident", but naturally shifted most of the blame on the "bureaucracy" of the TSA. Remember, he's Wayne Coyne. He can do no wrong.
Here's a snippet of the interview:
The truth is unfortunately boring," Coyne said. The night before the flight, the band had been up all night at a house party-- "you know, pot and booze and drugs and people playing music until six o'clock in the morning"-- where Coyne picked up a "non-explodable" grenade and took it with him as a souvenir. "It was an actual grenade that was now missing its explosive parts and painted gold. I just threw this gold grenade in my bag and had not quite thought about it."
He was forced to think about it, though, once the airport X-ray machines picked up the grenade and TSA began digging around his bag. "They all believed what I was saying; they all believed it was just a dumb accident," Coyne said, continually referencing the "bureaucracy" of airport security. "The bomb squad guy came out, and once he comes out, there's two weeks of paperwork that has to be filled out. Everybody could immediately tell what it was. But it's too late-- the merry-go-round had to go its whole way around before you could get off."
"They were all very nice to me," he added.
Well isn't that special! The TSA agents were nice to Wayne. It must suck being a local and international celebrity, huh? At least he didn't have any other bombs in his luggage. He has been known to travel around with Christmas on Mars DVDs.